Below is a list of useful resources I often review and send to high performers who want to continually improve themselves:

Leading People and Organizations

• Mindsets and practices of the best CEOs (McKinsey – pdf version)

• What makes an effective executive (Harvard Business Review)

• Google’s new manager training (facilitator guide, slides, and workbook)

• An atlas of strategy traps (Boston Consulting Group)

• What makes a leader (Harvard Business Review – pdf version)

Communicating Effectively

• Think fast, talk smart (video – Stanford Graduate School of Business)

• Three strategies for introverts to speak up in meetings (Fast Company)

• How to have difficult conversations and stay true to yourself (Lean In – guide)

• A plain English handbook (pdf – Securities and Exchange Commission)

Managing Your Career

• How to pick a career (that actually fits you) (Wait but Why)

• Top 10 practical tips for managing up (LinkedIn)

• The brand called You (Fast Company)

• Why you hate work (NY Times)

Mastering Yourself

• Managing oneself (Harvard Business Review – summary)

• How to get strong (NY Times)

• Why procrastinators procrastinate (Wait but Why)

• How to find a hobby (NY Times)

If you want to go beyond articles and dive deeper into any one of these topics, check out Robert’s book recommendations. If you know of other highly practical resources that you reference frequently, feel free to send them to us or share them in the comments section.

Photo by Syd Wachs

The post Timeless resources to help you be more effective at work (updated Jan 2020) appeared first on Robert Chen.

These were the questions I asked myself during Professor Stew Friedman’s Total Leadership program at Wharton. What attracted me to take this course was Stew’s concept that work-life balance doesn’t work because it implies having to make trade-offs. Instead of managing life as slices of a pie that gets smaller or bigger at the expense of each other, his alternative was to consider different areas of your life as independent circles that can potentially overlap with each other.

This new construct helped me unlock the creativity to better optimize my life and it has transformed the way I live and work.

Before this course, I felt at the whim of my goals and the needs of my stakeholders. I felt forced to make tradeoffs in one area of my life because of the demands of another area and instead of leading my life, it was leading me. The process I learned in this live workshop with peer coaching helped me gain control over the important areas of my life. You’ll see below five insights that might be helpful to you as you think about leading all areas of your life:

Lead Your Life: Don’t Use One Area of Your Life to Make Excuses for Another Area

Before this program, I would often feel guilty that I did not get home early enough to spend time with my kids. I would use work as my excuse and rationalize that now is the time to focus on my career and once I’ve “made it”, I can carve out more time for family. Along the same vein, I would use my two young sons as the excuse for not exercising. I would tell myself, “How can I afford to work out if I don’t even have enough time to spend with my kids?” Then I would use the time I needed for work, school, family, and exercise to justify why I slept on average only five hours each night.

I found myself often saying how much I wanted to do these things but explaining how I couldn’t because of the many legitimate excuses that I had. Looking back, that was a weak way of living. This experience has taught me to either do what I say is important to do or stop saying it’s important to me. Either way is fine but continuing to make excuses is not.

As part of this course, we all conducted personal experiments. For my experiments, I committed to getting 7+ hours of sleep, getting home before 7pm during most of the work week, and exercising daily, which included running 2x a week. I was initially skeptical since I’ve had so many false starts trying to implement similar positive habits but I’m excited to share that so far I’ve not only sustained these habits but I just completed my first half-marathon after never running a race in the past.

What made the difference this time was clarifying the vision I wanted for my life and taking control to bring that vision to life. Essentially, leading myself to where I wanted to go.

Sleep Really Matters

I was lucky to choose sleeping 7+ hours as one of my experiments because there was no habit change that yielded faster and more drastic results than getting 7+ hours of sleep. I used to subscribe to the “you can sleep when you retire” and “I’m successful because I work harder and longer than everyone else” mantra. I’m beginning to see the fault in this thinking and realizing that I may have spun my wheels more often than I am aware of or care to admit.

After consistently getting 7+ hours of sleep, I noticed my mood becoming more positive and relaxed. What surprised me the most was that I immediately stopped craving coffee (I was drinking about 2-3 cups a day for the last few years).

I also found sleeping sufficiently a linchpin habit. The days when I was well rested, I almost always completed every other habit change along with my work and school goal for that day. It allowed me to exercise more self-control and discipline.

Create Constraints to Force Creativity

Forcing myself to get home early, sleep enough hours, and exercise daily meant taking time away from other areas of my life, especially work. Initially, I was worried I wouldn’t get my work done leading to adverse consequences. What I found instead was the most important work was still getting done and since my deadlines were tighter, I became more effective with my time. Having less time for work began to prevent me from over-engineering my work and school projects.

It also helped me to be more creative about my time. Instead of agreeing to drinks or dinner with a client, I would offer to meet for breakfast or lunch so I can keep my commitment to get home early. I started running and working out with other people as a great way to catch up with them. Interestingly, by creating constraints and forcing myself to keep these new habits, the quality of my life has increased at home and at work.

Be the Building Block for Other People’s Goals

One of the key exercises in the Total Leadership process was to set up conversations with the most important stakeholders in the different areas of your life. The goal is to ask your stakeholders about their expectations for you and how you’re doing in meeting those expectations.

Holding these conversations, I realized that I often see people around me as building blocks to my success and drive our interactions in the direction of my agenda and accomplishing my goals. Hearing people’s expectations of me have made me realize that other people have their own needs and aspirations and to create long-term, positive relationships with them, I need to be the building block for their goals and success.

If you want people to see you as a leader, they first have to recognize that their life will be better because they follow you. There is no better way to do that than to become a critical part in their quest for success and meaning.

Grow the Relationships You Take for Granted

Every year I have clear goals to improve and to grow my career. It seems like the natural thing to do. What’s interesting is when I reflect on my closest relationships, I don’t have the same aspirational tendency. I don’t think about growing these relationships and at best, the relationship stays where it is. The only time I pay attention is when the relationship gets strained and I spend just enough energy to get it back to the original level.

Applying the same growth mentality from my career to my personal relationships, I asked my wife, family, and others close to me what we needed to do to take our relationship to the next level. Just by having these conversations, my key relationships are beginning to thrive and grow and it’s having a positive impact on other areas of my life. When you ask people about their needs and truly listen, they often become open to sincerely understanding your needs. Another benefit to this exercise is it allows you to decide which relationships may not be worth investing in because the other person doesn’t want to engage.

To start this journey, craft the vision for your life and clarify your values. You choose the life you want to have and the key idea is to align your actions to bringing to life your vision. Stay attuned to how you’re tracking to your vision and continue iterating with experiments to find overlap in the different circles of your life.

If you would like to dive in deeper, check out Stew’s Total Leadership book, which outlines the exercises in his process. You can also take the Coursera version of the course.

Photo by Brooke Lark

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• You despise people who kiss up to the boss because you feel that one’s work should speak for itself.
• You could care less what your boss thinks or wants as long as you’re doing what’s best for your clients or firm.
• You plan to actively sabotage your boss or make him look dumb because he is incompetent and constantly takes credit for your work.

Although you may be justified for these behaviors, your unwillingness to manage up will make it hard for you to succeed.

In Power: Why Some People Have It and Some People Don’t by Jeffrey Pfeffer, he cites a study that shows your supervisor’s commitment to and relationship with you matter more to your job success than your job performance. I’ve experienced this finding in my career and I can bet you have as well. This dynamic is exacerbated at more senior levels because output at the higher levels is more intangible and harder to quantify.

We can spend energy debating the fairness of whether relationships should matter more than performance, but that won’t help you move up in your career. Instead, you’re better served to focus your energy learning practical ways to manage your boss.

Managing up goes beyond just getting along with your boss. It’s about forging such a strong relationship that your boss will go above and beyond to help you succeed.

Leveraging conversations with senior executives on how they got to their current role and what they want from their direct reports, you’ll see below ten tips to help you manage up and give your boss what they want. If you are the CEO or owner, you can extend these tips to apply to the board or your clients.

The core theme to these tips can be summed up in the one question you should constantly ask yourself:

How do I make my boss’s life easier?

Here are 10 ways to answer this question:

1. Lead and manage yourself well

One of your manager’s main responsibilities is to manage and lead you. If you can lead yourself well, this will save your manager a lot of time.

Start by taking responsibility for your responsibilities. Ensure you understand what your boss has assigned to you – both the specific outcome desired and timeline for completing the task. It’s easy for your boss to forget that it’ll probably take you longer to complete a task than if she did it herself.

Do your boss a big favor by following through on the goals that were set. If you’re in a role with quantifiable measures for success like sales, managing yourself well means crushing your numbers so your boss doesn’t have to worry about you. When you don’t do your job, your boss will have to step in and fill the gap because they are ultimately responsible for your results.

Learn early in your career to manage your time and energy effectively. Two books that can help are Getting Things Done by David Allen and The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.

2. Work on your boss’s goals

If you are good at your job, your boss’s peers and others will notice and will want you to help with their initiatives. Just because a project interests you, it doesn’t mean you should do it.

You want to first consider your boss’s main goals and to work on the projects and tasks to help him achieve his goals. Take time to understand the larger context of your role and how you and your boss add value to the organization.

If everything you work on helps your boss succeed, you will be invaluable to your boss. Remember that you can’t win if your boss fails. To take it one step further, strive to give your boss the credit (read more about the canvas strategy).

3. Overcommunicate

Employees frequently and unintentionally frustrate their bosses by not keeping them in the loop.

Whether it’s an update for an assigned project or mentioning an impromptu conversation with your boss’s boss, by the time your manager follows up with you about something, it’s too late. They’ve already heard something from their boss or peer and were caught unaware or they have a task pending that requires information from you.

Update your boss before they need an update. To make life easier for yourself, get into the habit of asking your boss how often they want you to keep them in the loop. When in doubt, overcommunicate. This is especially important when it looks like your project may fail. Give your boss warning way in advance so no one is caught by surprise.

4. Flex to your boss’s style

Everyone has his or her own preferred communication and management style. Take time to observe and match your boss’s style. 

If your boss is:

• Innovative and enjoys taking risks and performing experiments, then focus more on the big picture and supporting her experiments. Catch your boss’s enthusiasm.
• Cautious and values routine and minimizes risks, then focus on sticking to the tried and true and slowly introduce change.
• Empathetic and pays attention to employee feelings and overall mood, then highlight your own ability to be attuned to the human element.
• Driving and demands much from herself and her staff, then focus on high-quality execution and setting a high bar for you and your peers.

Don’t argue and don’t be a “yes man”. Form your own views and challenge existing assumptions but do so in your boss’s preferred style.

5. Show loyalty

Always support your boss (as long as he operates ethically). This means executing his decisions as if they were your own. This also involves standing up for or supporting him in meetings where he or his ideas are being challenged and staying away from publicly or privately criticizing your boss.

Instead of pointing out your boss’s faults, find ways to fill in his gaps. For example, if your boss is great at getting things done but does so in a brash way, help him repair or build up those relationships.

The more your boss feels you truly have his back, the more he will have yours. All leaders need competent people they can trust to continue progressing in their career. If you act in a way that threatens your boss, don’t be surprised if your own career grinds to a halt.

6. Value your leader’s time 

Every time you meet with your manager, be fully prepared so you don’t waste her time. Have your agenda ready along with updates that your manager might be interested in. Every minute she spends with you is time away from completing her own tasks. 

If you plan to share a problem, come with an analysis of the issue and a proposed solution. If you don’t, you’re dumping unexpected work onto your boss’s plate, which most people don’t appreciate. Don’t make your boss think for you.

7. Do what others won’t

Bosses find it difficult to assign mundane or difficult tasks that need to get done. Since these tasks consume a lot of time, are not glorious and don’t develop new skills, most employees won’t raise their hand for these assignments.

Step up and help. Take the assignments that are annoying, boring, or difficult. Show that you’re not too proud or afraid to do what it takes to help your boss or to pay your dues. Extend this attitude to tasks that are not your exact job responsibility.

When you constantly step up and perform well, your boss will see you as the team’s go-to player. This recognition will give you access to better assignments that will boost your career.

8. Succeed with difficult people

One senior executive shared with me his frustration when his direct report failed to get along with her peer from another line of business despite numerous intervention from their bosses. These two employees’ inability to settle their differences hurt both their reputations and now one of them is no longer with the firm.

You rarely get to choose your boss or your peers. When you’re unable to collaborate effectively or manage conflict with others, your manager ends up stepping in. This is a drain on their time and a headache he doesn’t need.

Learn to develop strong working relationships with everyone by honing your emotional intelligence. Show you’re willing to do what’s best for the team and the firm and that you’re not just all for yourself. Build a reputation of creating win-win outcomes for all of your interactions.

9. Keep learning 

Take charge of your own growth. Although your manager should guide and coach you, you’re ultimately responsible for mastering your craft and the softer skills needed for success.

The more competent you are, the more credible you’ll be. Set goals for WHO you want to be as opposed to WHERE you want to be. Attend conferences where you can learn about the newest developments. Take an active role in industry groups to network and hear what others are doing.

When deciding on which skills to develop, find the intersection between the skills your firm and boss needs and your interest and talents. Lean on your strengths.

10. Know when to let go

When communicating with your boss, timing is everything. Know when to push and when to back off. Gauge the mood of your boss and think about how your boss would react to your information and request. When possible, wait for the right moment to speak up. 

Questions to ask yourself:

• Is this matter urgent? Is it urgent for your boss?
• Will this information or request help your boss succeed?
• Do you have information your boss is not aware of and needs to know?

It is essential to know when to back off. If you’ve already spoken to your boss about something and she is not getting back to you, consider the following before pressing the issue:

• How much of this is my agenda vs. what’s good for my boss, the team, and the organization? Is the timing only right for me?
• Did I already make my point?
• If it’s bad news, do I really need to be the messenger?
• Is the current environment or my boss’s mood friendly to what I’m asking for?
• Could I be overstepping?

Take time this week and observe your activities and interactions with your boss. Gauge which activities are helping to make your boss’s job easier and which ones make your boss’s life more difficult.

Photo by Kenny Louie

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You’re hardworking and confident in your abilities.

Unfortunately, if you’re working at a high-performing firm, everyone else feels the same away about themselves.

Ask yourself: Do others recognize me as a top performer?

If you’re not sure, then they probably do not. It’s not because you’re not good – it’s because most people are not focused on you. Like you, they are too busy working on their own careers. To succeed professionally, you need others to be aware of and acknowledge your capabilities.

I’m not asking you to pander to other people. Your self-worth is not determined by what other people think of you and to sustain excellence, it’s important that you do great work for yourself and not because you want to impress others.

Other people matter only because they can assess your value to them and they determine whether you get promoted if you work for a firm or win the business if you work for yourself.

To ensure your success, focus on these three core activities at work:

Continuously hone your craft

Whether it’s sales, research or design, you want to master every aspect of your job. Reflect on your work quality last year to assess how much you’ve improved. The more you are embarrassed by your work last year, the more you’ve improved since then.

To start systematically mastering your craft, break down your function into core elements. If you’re a consultant, your major buckets might be business development, industry knowledge, your specific consulting expertise and project management. For each of these elements, drill down to the tangible skills you can build.

For business development, you might include the following:

• Building rapport – networking
• Focused listening and needs analysis
• Qualifying the opportunity
• Organizing your approach
• Persuading others
• Pitching your ideas
• Negotiating

You can improve each one of these skills through guidance and practice. To hone your craft, you must develop a passion for it. In her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth sums up her research on top performers with two practical equations:

Talent x Effort = Skill

Skill x Effort = Achievement

To sustain the effort needed to turn talent eventually into achievement requires one to devote the time to practice deliberately. It’s difficult to put in the time needed if the interest is not there.

Identify your interests and strengths and carve out time daily to improve yourself. Take courses, read books and talk to the masters in your field and industry.

Focus on the right stuff

If you’re talented, curious and ambitious, there is a good chance you will want to start new initiatives or be pulled into various projects to help your company improve and drive results.

As a team player, your tendency will be to join many of these initiatives. It’s important for you to understand that your time is limited and not all initiatives are worth it for you. To be successful, you want to align your energy to help your company achieve its top priorities at the given time.

Working on your firm’s priorities helps you gain the right visibility because top initiatives are typically staffed with and overseen by key leaders. To figure out what your firm is focused on, listen attentively to the CEO town hall and closely observe what the top leaders at your firm are working on. If you work for a public company, read your firm’s annual report and the CEO’s letter to the shareholders to glean insights on the core focus for your firm.

Also, ask your boss where you can best contribute. Make sure to ask for details so you fully understand the necessary outcome. Your goal is to find out what you should be doing and how to go about it. Ask your boss for specific examples to gain insights into the behaviors and results he’s looking for.

Once you know your firm’s top priorities, join those project teams and deliver results.

Build a reputation for being helpful

The reputation of the lone wolf might sound appealing but it rarely gets you to the top.

In a recent conversation with the Head of HR at a Fortune 100 bank, she highlighted the importance of taking on cross-functional projects to build up the right relationships:

“As you move up in your career, your goals will have a broader scope requiring coordination across different functions and lines of business. The more you’ve helped others, the easier it’ll be for you to marshal their help for your projects.”

To better help others achieve their goals, continue honing your expertise and widen your network so you can add more value. Be generous with your time but be judicious as well so others don’t take advantage of you (I recommend reading Adam Grant’s Give and Take to learn how to spot a Taker). Your goal is to become a true resource for others around you.

Do others come to you for help? If not, then you might need to work harder on your reputation as a trusted giver.

Working on these three areas consistently requires perseverance:

• Deliberately practicing your skills every day can be a grind.
• Working on your firm’s top priorities even when you may not completely agree is difficult.
• Giving your time and energy to others takes time away from your own projects and interests.

If you can stick with these three activities, you will stand out from the rest.

Inspired by Change Anything by Kerry Patterson and Grit by Angela Duckworth

Photo by Banalities

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“So, what can I do to get promoted?” 

Many of the managers I coach have told me this scenario is becoming more and more common. In an era of ever-shortening job tenures, employees seem to be taking the initiative on advancing their own careers more than they used to. They’re less likely to wait for someone to give them what they believe they deserve.

That may not always pay off. Instead of admiring your initiative, your manager may find your request annoying, entitled, and lacking in the self-awareness it usually requires to earn a promotion. In fact, after reading my article on asking for what you want, one senior executive wrote to me to vent his frustration on precisely this point. Here’s how he put it:

“there’s a certain level of accountability that’s missing in our society today. Before you ask, I think you need to demonstrate a level of proficiency/impact … I have had people ask me for more when they haven’t finished their “current job”. One needs to be self-aware and assess where he is before asking for more. I am put off when folks ask for more too early. This is also the number one gripe managers have with millennials.” 

He goes on to suggest that employees ask themselves (before asking their managers),

“What do I need to do before you say yes?”

To get the guidance you need without coming across entitled, consider doing the following before you approach your manager:

1. Master your current role

Doing your job competently does not mean you’ve mastered it.

In Joe Azelby’s book, Kiss Your BUT Goodbye, he highlights how what he terms “PSA”, or “Premature Self Adulation,” limits one’s career. The key point is that you want to have a clear picture of your abilities—specifically, one that squares with your boss’s view of them.

You may believe you’re doing a great job, but is that recognized by others and reflected in the less-subjective measures of your performance? If you’re in sales, for instance, are you the top seller on your team? If you’re in a service role, are your client-satisfaction scores the highest possible?

Before you ask for a promotion or more responsibility, crush your current job by doing every aspect of it consistently better than others. “Satisfactory” probably isn’t good enough.

2. Know your WHAT as well as your WHY

To make for the most productive conversation with your boss, know not just WHAT you want but WHY you want it. Sometimes your boss may not be able to give you WHAT you ask for at the time that you ask for it, for reasons beyond her control – office politics, market conditions, what have you. But she may still be able to meet your requests in other ways if you can articulate your WHY.

When you ask for a promotion, what is the real ask? Is it more engaging work, better access to key clients, developing your skills, earning more money, etc.? None of these is necessarily more valid than the others, but you need to be clear and honest about your rationale. Once your boss knows why you’re interested in a promotion at this stage, they’ll find ways to accommodate you as best they can if they truly value you.

3. Make it easy to say “yes”

Be ready to have something to show for yourself that proves your worth. Have specific evidence of your performance. Especially if you’re worried your boss will feel you’re not ready, you want to show that:

• You’re already doing what will be asked of you in the new role
• Your new role will help your boss or firm achieve their strategic goals
• Others, including those senior to you and your boss, will vouch for you

When you show how your promotion helps your boss and remove many of the risks, the decision becomes much easier to make.

The next time you want to ask for a promotion, remember to first:

1. Crush it in your current role
2. Understand clearly WHAT you want and WHY you want it
3. Collect evidence that makes it hard to say “no”

One bonus tip is to pick the right time to ask. Know what’s happening around you – if you’re not in the right industry or your firm is experiencing tough times, there might not be any room for you to move up. If you’re in this situation, figure out what you want and why you want it. This will help you decide whether it’s worthwhile to stay or to go.

Adapted from Robert’s article at Fast Company.

Photo by Jason Hargrove

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You can do the work but you can’t control the results.

Whether or not you get promoted, make a deal or get the resources you need all depends on the decisions of other people. Unfortunately, Peter Drucker is right – the decision maker may not be the best person to make that decision but they still get to decide.

If you’re not getting what you want, think of what you can do to influence the decision. It doesn’t help to blame or judge the decision maker.

If you’re the boss, hire good decision makers because ultimately, they decide what happens.

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This insight came from a recent conversation I had with the CEO of a top financial services firm.  He talked about the mentors that guided him, the peers who supported him and the employees who executed on his strategy. Before he became CEO, he focused on helping others get what they want and in turn, they helped him become CEO. When you hear it, it sounds obvious but when I reflect on my experiences and those of the high-performers I coach, it’s not common practice.

It’s easy to glorify the individual. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have come to symbolize entire companies. This constant exposure to individual heroes makes it easy to forget all of the other people who helped to make these companies successful.

If you want a successful career and to have impact, you need others to help you so your influence extends beyond one person’s effort and accomplishments. The simple way to get a village behind you is to:

Keep helping others win.

People follow a leader because they believe their lives will be better for it. If you want to lead, you need to know how you can make the lives of others better.

The two steps to achieve this is to:

1. Understand what others care about – take time to learn their personal and professional aspirations and struggles
2. Constantly find ways to help them achieve those goals or overcome those challenges

That’s it.

Look at the people in your “village” and list the 5 individuals who can make the most positive impact in your career.  Ask yourself:

• What are their aspirations and challenges?
• How can I help them today?

Photo by Bo Nash

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At some point in your career, you will encounter uncivil situations at work.

Your colleague knowingly takes credit for your work. Your boss berates you and actively blocks your next career move. Your colleague interrupts you in a meeting or checks their email during your presentation.

No matter how others disrespect you, your response to these uncivil situations is what counts.

To preserve the peace, most people let it go and respond with silence. This may work in the short-term but if the issue persists, silence often shifts to violence in the form of passive-aggressive behavior, disengagement or in some cases, real violence.

To be take back control of a situation that seems out of your control, consider the 5 C’s:

Clarity

Get a clear and accurate picture of what is actually happening. What assumptions are you making about the situation and the other person’s behavior?

What you might perceive as being unreasonable or unfair may be legitimate and justified from the other person’s point of view.

For example, if your co-worker jumps in during your presentation at work. You may perceive that action as taking credit for your work while your colleague thought she was jumping in to help you out because you seemed to be struggling.

The best way to challenge your assumptions is to ask the other person why they did what they did. It’s important to keep a neutral tone when you ask as opposed to using an accusatory one. To help you stay neutral, give the other person the benefit of the doubt first.

Contribution

Many times, other people’s actions are a response to your actions.

Look closely at your actions and see if they might be misperceived. A good question to ask yourself,

“Why would a rational, good person do

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When you are great at something, you’ll find yourself with more opportunities than you have time. Now the previously successful, say-yes-to-everything approach begins to hurt you. Not only will you be overwhelmed, but the more serious consequence is that you’ll end up confusing others about your brand.

To continue your success, you need to build and more importantly, maintain a strong brand.

Brands are the shortcuts people use to make decisions. When you buy Coca-Cola or a BMW, you know exactly what you’re getting. When people “buy” you, how sure are they about the quality they’ll get from you? The more uncertain they are, the more likely they’ll invest their time, money and energy with someone else.

To build your brand, take control of how others experience you:

• How you look and make others feel
• What you say and do (and how you say and do it)
• Where you are and are not

Before we look at how you can manage other people’s perceptions in these three areas, you must first be clear on your brand. If you’re not sure, a quick and easy way to get started is to ask yourself:

What adjectives do I want

[my target audience or ideal client] 

to think about when they think about me and my work? 

Take a few minutes and write down 3-4 adjectives you want your target audience to use to describe you. If you don’t have a target audience yet, think about the individuals you enjoy working and interacting with most often. For me, I want high-performing leaders to describe me as practical, focused on excellence, caring and thoughtful.

To build a strong recognizable brand, consistency is key. It’s not enough that you see yourself as the adjectives you’ve chosen, you need others to see you that way as well.

So how do you ensure others will use the same adjectives you chose to describe you?

Below are practical tips based on my work with leaders at Fortune 500 companies and top academic universities:

How you look and make others feel

Think back to an event where you took notice of someone you didn’t know.

The first thing you probably did was to size them up based on what you saw – their dress, their body language and the response they received from others. Processing this visual information, you guessed at their seniority, level of success, job function, etc. This judgement helped you decide whether you approached them to engage and learn more about them.

If you decided not to engage, then your impression is solely based on what you’ve seen. If you do approach them, you further fine-tuned or corrected your assumptions based on what you heard and saw during your interaction.

This automatic tendency to judge based on what we see is natural and a survival instinct. You judge others and people judge you constantly. You want to keep in mind that as you become more successful, the amount of time people have to get to know you at a deeper level drops dramatically. They will judge you based on what they see and the little they know. Unfortunately, in most cases, you won’t be able to correct any faulty assumptions.

Think of your senior executives or the President of your country (if you’re already a senior executive). How much do you really know about them? Probably not too much yet you may already have a strong judgment about the type of person they are.

This is why you need to manage how people see you and look the part you want to play. When people see you, will they automatically assume the adjectives you’ve chosen? How do you match up to what they are expecting? If you show up to Facebook with a dark suit and tie and talk about the work you do with Silicon Valley tech companies, don’t be surprised if people suspect your credibility.

Disney does a great job tightly controlling your experience with them. Everyone I’ve spoken to about Disney, uses very similar adjectives: over-the-top service, awesome experience, and not cheap. For those who haven’t experienced Disney firsthand, there is a high probability that you’ll have a great time when you do go.

When others interact with you, what do you want them to walk away remembering and feeling? How do you want to emotionally connect with them? What would you like them to say to their network about you? Is it consistent with the adjectives you’ve chosen?

To practically influence how others experience you, be thoughtful about:

What you say and do (and how you say and do it)

Your physical appearance, words, and actions make up the experience others will have of you.

We’ve covered what people see, now let’s focus on your words and actions. Do they align with how you want others to see you? Are you using words that resonate with your target audience and does your vocabulary match what they are expecting from you?

How do you say what you say? What does your tone, speaking rhythm, accent, and energy say to others? Powerful people tend to speak more deliberately. British accents tend to sound more sophisticated. Passionate people tend to speak with more energy. These are all ways people can interpret how you talk.

Now for your actions. What activities are you engaged in and do they help others see you the way you want to be seen?

For example, if you take copious notes during a meeting, people will likely see you as being a junior employee (unless you’re Richard Branson).

Other questions to consider:

• When speaking at conferences, what topics are you speaking on?
• What books are you reading?
• Do you take on projects that are consistent with your brand?

Which leads me to the last area of focus.

Where you are and are not

When you’re successful, people want to enlist you to help them. This means countless partnership or speaking requests, special project proposals, and event or board invitations. As a high performer, you’ll be tempted to help especially with requests from those close to you in your network.

Before you say “yes” to any opportunity, ask yourself:

How consistent is this activity with the reputation I want?

When managing your brand, knowing where you shouldn’t be is just as important as knowing where you should be. If you’re building a reputation as an expert on disruptive technologies in manufacturing, it’ll be confusing if others see you frequently speak on investing and personal finance, even if you can give quality advice on those topics.

Again, to build a brand that people recognize, you must be consistent. People have to have a similar experience every time for an extended period before they begin to automatically associate you with your brand.

This means better allocating your limited time by saying “no” to opportunities that won’t allow you to exude the adjectives you’ve chosen. When you attend an event that is either neutral or negative in building your brand, you’re essentially saying “no” to an event or activity that can positively enhance your reputation.

The same idea extends to the people you associate with and your environment. You will be judged by the company you keep and where you spend your time. If you spend a lot of time with innovative people, others will assume you’re innovative. Some people assume Googlers, Google employees, are smart and quirky despite never working at Google or meeting a Googler. Others assume those in labor-intensive roles are less-educated.

Look closely at where you’re spending your time and who you’re spending it with. Would your surroundings make a strong case for your desired image or is it something you need to hide?

Take time to architect your brand.

One tip is to study characters on TV or film. Great actors believably take on different character roles. The way they do it is by understanding what people expect from a certain character and matching their look, feel, actions and environment to the mainstream expectation. Professors wear tweed, sport beards and drive Toyotas. High-powered businessmen wear custom suits, gel back their hair and have chauffeurs. Bankers wear ties. Consultants don’t. The list goes on.

Decide on the brand you want and find an actor or actress that believably exudes those qualities. How does he or she look, act and make others feel? How is their environment portrayed? Get specific on the behaviors and mimic them.

It’s not easy to build a brand. That’s why the good ones are worth so much.

Photo by Vadim Timoshkin

The post Knowing Where You Shouldn’t Be and Other Tips for Long-Lasting Success appeared first on Robert Chen.

“It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”

Warren Buffet

Who do you spend your time with and how much time do you spend with them?

If you’re not sure, consider recording the time you are spending with other people for two weeks and analyze the data. How much time are you spending with people who are worse than, as good as or better than you?

Once you’re clear on the people who you interact with often along with their impact on you, make a list of all the positive behaviors you want to adopt. Then identify the individuals, living or deceased, who exude those qualities.

What might you do to increase the time you spend with those who are exuding the behavior you want to adopt?

How might you connect with these individuals?

• What conferences or classes do they attend?
• Are they on social media?
• Can you connect with them through your network?

If you can’t meet in-person because they’re too busy or perhaps deceased, are there biographies you read?

Choose who you keep around you to take advantage of drifting in the direction of the company that you keep.

Photo by Christopher Michel

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