Think Strategic Communication
Does talking about your accomplishments make you feel uneasy? For many of us, it absolutely does. We just weren’t raised to spotlight ourselves. However, if you want others to see your value and see how capable you are, you have to get comfortable showcasing your wins. In this week’s newsletter, global communication expert, Jessica Chen, chats with Top 50 Business Thinker, Thinkers50, Communications Coach, and author, Dorie Clark.
Below is a small snippet of their entire conversation held on our Soulcast Media | LIVE show on LinkedIn. If you’d like to watch or listen to the entire interview, click below. The transcript has been slightly edited for reading ease.
📺 Watch the full live event here
🎙️ Listen to the Podcast episode here
On Self-Promotion
Dorie – A problem a lot of people have with any kind of personal branding is that if you’re not used to it and it’s not a modality you’re naturally comfortable with, people basically create a straw man, and say, “Oh if I were to do personal branding, if I were to talk about my accomplishments, I will become, ‘insert this image of the most sleazy, awful self-promoting car salesman guy in the world.'”
And so, quite logically, they say I don’t want to be that. And so it gives them permission to not do any of the things that actually they know in their hearts are important for making sure people know about it. There’s just this easy polarization, which gives people excuses to not think about self promoting at all.
What I want to emphasize is we can’t get away with creating some kind of ‘fake straw man.’ Because there are lots of ways to be informative without being sleazy. There are lots of ways to educate people about what you’re doing and be helpful.
We have to find them. We have to find the way that’s comfortable for us, but it doesn’t mean that we have to turn into some kind of evil person that we don’t want to be.
On The Long-Game
Dorie – It’s essentially looking at the outcome that you want to achieve and working backward. The question is, how do you balance things out and make choices so that, yes, you do what is necessary in the short term so that you can keep the ball moving, but you keep your eye on the long-term prize.
We don’t have perfect control. But we often have more control than we think. And to me, that’s what the long game is about.
The happiest, the most engaged people are the people who make progress, even incredibly small progress every day towards something they considered a worthy goal. That’s the key here.
📺 Watch the full live event here
🎙️ Listen to the Podcast episode here
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