by Caroline Leach | Oct 16, 2019 | Careers, Learning, Social Media
photo by istock.com/akinbostanci
What question do people ask the most about social media?
This is a busy speaking month for me, and I’ve been reflecting on themes in questions. I’ve been talking about personal brands and building careers and companies through social media.
What am I hearing across a diverse group of audiences? What do people ask in the Q&A following my talks? What do they want to know in one-on-one chats?
This month includes talks with CEOs affiliated with the Community Associations Institute, and community members at an author’s panel. It includes employees at Ericsson North America, and employees and guests at Otter Media‘s We Gather women’s leadership event. At the end of the month, I’ll speak with students at the USC Rotaract Club.
What people often ask is a form of this question: what’s the best way to share professional updates on social media without sounding too self-promotional?
Said another way: what’s a good approach to being active on social media professionally without coming across as arrogant and turning people off?
We’ve all probably seen people in our social media feeds — whether it’s LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter — who make it all about themselves. Sometimes it can be tempting to tap the “mute” button and make those posts go away.
Yet, if we don’t share about our professional accomplishments, there are downsides. We run the risk of being underestimated in our abilities. We may be overlooked for future opportunities. We may not be able to make the impact that we want in our work.
The happy medium: a social media trifecta
So what’s the solution? It lies in a formula I call the social media trifecta. In every post you share about your work, strive to balance three elements of your content.
- First, share what you did and why you’re excited about it.
- Second, share how your team and your colleagues contributed.
- And third, share what’s special about your organization that enabled your contribution.
With this approach, you highlight your own accomplishments in an engaging way. You also showcase the work of others — something good leaders do frequently. And you’re a good brand ambassador for your organization, in an authentic way for you.
In addition, offer something of value to your network. What insight or idea could you include that would help them in their work?
Here’s an example. Laura Ramirez and her colleagues at Ericsson created a fabulous Career Learning Day. Workshops, activities, and employee groups engaged colleagues in career development. My keynote speech included 3 questions to help people create a personal brand statement and 4 steps to build a personal brand. Afterwards, I posted pictures about the event and the great people at Ericsson. My post included bullets for the questions and the steps in my post. People who weren’t there could also benefit from the key concepts.
Who does this well? Here are a few …
Who do you know who does this well? Please share and tag people in the comments. And maybe it’s you!
by Caroline Leach | Jul 22, 2019 | Careers, Change, Leadership, Work/Life
photo credit: iStock.com/wildpixel
“I’m in the process of changing my brand. I love what I do and I’m thinking about creating some new avenues for myself. I would love to get your thoughts. Let me know if you have some time to chat.”
“I appreciate your latest blog post, as it makes me contemplate my own situation. I think I’m making a difference in my work, but I’m under appreciated. I know you were in the corporate world for a long time, and I truly value your opinion.”
“I’m trying to figure out what to do next in my career. I’m focused on survival where I am, while feeling a bit of imposter syndrome. I want to make sure whatever it is I choose to do next is totally worthwhile. What do you think?”
These are a few samples of different notes I got this year from different people in different roles at different companies. Yet for all the differences, there’s a definite theme.
People ask for my advice on making changes in their professional lives. Whether it’s moving up where they are, shifting direction into a new area of interest, or clarifying if they’re really doing what they want to do, the obvious pattern finally hit me.
People want to know how to successfully navigate change, sometimes reinvent themselves into someone new, and make their professional lives more fulfilling.
Finding a Perfect Coach
Early in my corporate career, I wanted a coach. I was intrigued by leaders in business, sports and the arts who had coaches helping them be their best. I wanted one too.
I was looking for someone who could guide me in making difficult decisions. I wanted someone who could help focus my efforts. I was eager to achieve my initial career goal of becoming a VP of Corporate Communications.
But how to find one? It couldn’t be just anyone. It had to be someone who I felt a strong connection with. Someone who I felt really “got me.” Someone who could help me figure out the next steps on my path and nudge me in that direction.
The law of attraction came into play. It often does when you declare an intention, mentally file it away, and then subconsciously take steps toward it.
When I was a communications director in the early 2000s, my supervisor gave me an opportunity to attend a week-long leadership development program at the Center for Creative Leadership.
To say it was life changing is a major understatement. Along with fellow participants, I completed multiple leadership assessments, joined team-based activities to further uncover our leadership styles, and got one-on-one coaching.
My coach turned out to be the person I’d been looking for and more. We had an incredibly intense afternoon session. It uncovered some of my deepest fears and called into question many of the beliefs and assumptions I had let guide my career to that point.
At the time, I was struggling with integrating an ambitious corporate career with being a loving parent of two young children. I looked around the company and my community and didn’t see a lot of role models who were combining both. I felt isolated and alone, not to mention overwhelmed. I was almost ready to leave the corporate world to focus exclusively on parenting.
The only problem is that would have been a disastrous choice for me. My leadership profile is one who likes to be in charge – planning, building and orchestrating large-scale activities. (In the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, I’m an ENTJ, affectionately known as “the commander.”) I needed to figure out a way to make the work/life situation work for me, my family and my career.
And that’s what my coach helped me come to see. I was so happy with her guidance that we worked together for seven years. Sometimes I had a boss who approved a company payment for her services, and sometimes I paid on my own. Because it was just that valuable.
Either way, the impact was incalculable, both for me and the company where I worked. Within two years, I achieved my goal of becoming a VP of Corporate Communications. And I accomplished other important goals as well, although some still proved to be elusive.
Reaching a Painful Inflection Point
Fast forward another seven years and I found myself in another difficult place. “Bored and burned out” was how I described myself to a new coach. A life and leadership coach, Tina Quinn had long been someone I admired in my community. We connected through a friend who was trying to help me move forward with my life.
For a time, though, I resisted meeting with Tina. I just didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to confront the issues, because that would mean making a change. And change can be painful.
Although the funny thing about change is that in retrospect, I can say that every major change in my life has ultimately been a good one.
We began with my one-year goals and an assessment of my energy leadership, a tool that surfaced how I viewed my work and my life. From there, Tina and I explored ways I could change my view of the world and consciously choose to show up differently.
It’s thanks to this work that I’m where I am today. I’m still striving toward newer and invigorating goals and dreams. And I have a set of tools to better show up in the world and make the journey a more joyful one.
Navigating Waves of Change
In reflecting on change, I’m grateful for some of the changes in my own life. After a few difficult early years in the work world, I chose a new career in corporate communications and took a series of steps to get there.
When another employer was acquired, I had the opportunity to move into marketing analytics. And while I didn’t choose that role, it did give me the view of marketing I wanted.
More recently, I made the leap from the corporate world into the entrepreneurial life. I’m not sure I would have been able to take the steps I did without everything I learned in working with a coach. Talk about a life lesson in feeling the fear and doing it anyhow!
Along the way, I always enjoyed the opportunity to inspire and uplift others. One way I do that is through speaking.
One of my favorite volunteer roles in a philanthropic group called National Charity League was being the inspiration chair. I opened each meeting with encouraging words and stories to uplift fellow parents, professionals, and community leaders.
And my corporate roles gave me opportunities to help others with their development. It was deeply gratifying to put together the first-ever leadership development program, a week-long experience for top executives, at a former employer.
Later, I got to work with HR colleagues to create a marketing leadership development program, to develop future-focused skills among high-potential marketers.
When I was launching my business to write, consult, speak and teach about what successful people do on social media to build their careers, some of my colleagues and friends suggested that I offer coaching as well.
At first I resisted. It didn’t seem core to what I was doing in the social media space. And back to my ENTJ profile, I confess that sometimes I like being the field marshal, organizing and directing a team toward a common goal. Coaching felt a little bit behind-the-scenes to me.
And yet …
The requests kept coming. One of my first social media clients told me how excited he was to be getting social media advice and coaching all in one. Several other people wanted to bounce ideas off of me.
And I found I loved our conversations. It was energizing to help people solve problems in their work lives. I enjoyed asking questions that could help people see new possibilities for themselves and begin taking steps to get there.
Which is a long way of saying that I’m launching a new service with leadership coaching. The focus? Successfully navigating change and transition to achieve big goals.
Introducing a Coaching Practice to Help You Navigate Change
What does a coach do? There are many definitions. An especially good one comes from the International Coach Federation. ICF defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
With my background and experience, my focus is on helping people successfully navigate change in their professional lives. This includes:
- Changing careers by choice or by necessity
- Navigating a corporate merger or acquisition
- Moving up to the next level of performance and responsibility
- Managing life as a high-performing leader and a dedicated parent
- Leaping from the corporate world to the entrepreneurial life
If you’re contemplating how you can change, reinvent and transform your career, I’d love to hear from you. We can work together on a short- or long-term basis, depending on what you want to accomplish.
If it involves reinventing your personal brand, we can couple our work with a customized social media plan to launch and build your new brand.
And wherever you choose to navigate your career, I’m wishing you all the best on your journey!
by Caroline Leach | Oct 10, 2018 | Careers, Change, Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media, Work/Life
These beautiful photos of my farewell celebration are by Jessica Sterling
If you’re here, it’s because I really like you.
That’s how I started my remarks at my corporate farewell event exactly one month ago today.
As is my writing practice, I thought about what I wanted to say, who I wanted to thank, and how I hoped people would feel. I gave myself the speechwriting assignment and let my subconscious go to work on it. I find that ideas pop up while I’m doing other things.
Except with everyone else going on, it wasn’t quite done by the time the event arrived. Usually I like to ideate, write, iterate, memorize and then speak without notes. That didn’t happen this time.
This next part is for my colleagues who have told me I always seem prepared and poised. You may get a zing of delight to know that I was still writing my remarks in my Evernote app while my husband Kevin was driving us to the event.
So of course I couldn’t memorize it. And in the spirit of keeping it short, I left out a lot of what I wanted to say. So I’m sharing it here, for my friends and colleagues who were there, and for many others who aren’t in Southern California and couldn’t be there.
______
My daughter was 11 months old when I came to work at DIRECTV as a communications manager.
In my interview, Jeff Torkelson said, “It’s really busy here. Do you think you can handle it?”
Those words haunted me at the end of my first week. Everyone was running around with their hair on fire. No one seemed to leave at the end of the day. It didn’t seem like anyone else had a baby at home. I realized I’d made a big mistake in taking the job.
But I couldn’t quit after a week. So I decided I would commit to a year. After that I would find a new job.
But then I found ways to succeed in the environment, like doing thinking and writing projects in the early mornings. And without my even asking, my male and female bosses offered me the ability to work from home one day a week when I returned to work after my son was born.
So much opportunity grabbed me. And it didn’t let go.
A transitional time like this reminds me of wise words from great leaders.
Eddy Hartenstein, the charismatic pioneer who founded DIRECTV and the father of modern-day satellite television, said upon leaving the company many years earlier that “we are victors, not victims.”
I remember Eddy coming to my office to practice his talk before his farewell event. My colleague Tina Morefield and I listened and tried not to shed tears. I still get chills thinking about it.
Mike White, another legendary leader at DIRECTV, often said that “sometimes you need to replant yourself.” He is a model of ongoing reinvention and lifelong learning. He’s a super-smart English major who became a CEO.
After 30 years in the corporate world (!), it was time for me to replant myself. It felt like being in my 20s again, graduating from UCLA and wondering what to do with the rest of my life. So I began to look back over the years for clues.
When I was 5 years old, I loved to read and write. My uncle gave me what used to be known as a typewriter (younger readers can Google it). I’d type up stories, letters and calendars. Anything, really.
My grandmother and my mother encouraged my writing (along with my parents requiring that I take math and science every year in high school). My dad suggested I study English in college. But I wondered what kind of a career I could have. How would I become financially independent? If only I’d known then about where Mike White’s career journey would lead.
So I studied economics. And I ultimately found corporate communications, at the intersection of business and writing. It fits perfectly with my Strong Interest Inventory profile of artistic, social and enterprising interests.
Julia Cameron who wrote The Artist’s Way might have called it a shadow career. Because I really wanted to be a writer. But I didn’t know how to do it and live the life that I wanted.
That’s probably why I started an internal blog at DIRECTV in 2012 when my team launched a social collaboration website. And I started this blog on New Year’s Day 2015 to explore the future of corporate communications. I had a lot of support and encouragement from my boss at the time, Joe Bosch, our chief human resources officer.
Now writing is the foundation of what I’m doing as an emerging entrepreneur. I’m writing, consulting, speaking and teaching about how professionals can grow their careers and business owners can grow their companies through social media.
With that said, the time with my colleagues in the corporate world was anything but a shadow career.
That’s because of all the incredible things we did together. There were so many challenging projects. But we brought everyone’s talents together, worked as a team and made it happen, again and again. It was fun and rewarding along the way.
At our first-ever dealer conference called Dealer Revolution, I remember dancing the night away in what was then the Texas Stadium after Kerin Lau and her events team made the 2,000-person event happen. We got to meet Rod Stewart before he performed that night. When it came time to take photos, I hoped I wouldn’t be taller than him. I wasn’t disappointed.
The ever-incredible events team
There are KaBOOM! playgrounds in New Orleans, Atlanta and Las Vegas. Children are probably happily playing on them right now, thanks to the work by Tina Morefield, Brooke Hanson, Brynne Dunn Jones, Jamie Zamora, Andy Bailey and so many more.
Anthony Martini joined us when many of the installation and service technician companies were insourced. Out of nothing, he built the corporate communications infrastructure. And working with Carlos Botero, those communications helped create a workforce so engaged that Willis Towers Watson wrote a case study on it.
Launching social collaboration with Michael Ambrozewicz and Thyda Nhek Vanhook and IT colleagues Mike Benson, Frank Palase, Brian Ulm and many others was my first real introduction to social media. It made me want to crawl under my desk and hide until it went away.
But that didn’t happen so I had to conquer my fears and move forward. I launched an internal blog so I could learn and model what it was like to try new things, look silly in the process and learn from everyone in the community.
Creating an employer brand with Michael Ambrozewicz, Linda Simon and Rosanne Setoguchi along with Mark Schumman bordered on the sublime. I remember the electrifying moment when Vanessa Sestina completed the puzzle with our tagline, we entertain the future.
Then it came time for the corporate campus to be upgraded. It meant new ways of working in open and collaborative space. There was a lot of hand wringing. Fellow members of the Campus Launch Advisory Board will remember. In the end, Paul James and Hilary Hatch did an incredible job and Tyler Jacobson communicated it to perfection, with great counsel from Reza Ahmadi.
When we got the news that AT&T was going to acquire DIRECTV, it was the thrill of a lifetime to be part of the integration team led by Jennifer Cho at DIRECTV and Jeff McElfresh at AT&T. What seemed at first like having a front-row seat to a Harvard Business Review case study was actually like getting an MBA in real time.
Through it all, I was passionate about advancing women at the company through mentoring circles and employee resource groups. What a thrill when Dan York brought the Academy Award-winning actor Geena Davis to speak at the company not once, but three times. She is doing incredible work to bring gender parity to television and film roles. And Phil Goswitz was able to have Gywnne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX, come and speak to our women’s resource group.
Some of my mentoring circle friends
And as a capstone, I got to work with Fiona Carter as she championed gender equality and inclusion in the company’s advertising and media. I’ll always remember the inspiring work to measure and communicate inclusion with Chris Cervenka, Bill Moseley, Eric Ryan, Michelle Smith, Brett Levecchio, Caitlyn Wooldridge and so many more.
I’m beyond proud of the inclusive advertising being produced by Val Vargas, Sarita Rao, Sandra Howard and many others at the company. They are all role models that I hope many others in the industry will follow.
And whenever I didn’t know what to do or needed to brush off criticism, I got the best advice from my husband Kevin. Borrowed from the film Madagascar, he’d always say, “Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.”
There are so many more incredible memories and people (like my most recent team members Stephen Santiago and Sabrina McKnight). It’s been an honor to work with all of you. I learned so much from you. We’ll always be connected by the DIRECTV and AT&T family.
Things came full circle last week when I heard from Tina Quinn, who was my coach over the last year. She recommended Steven Pressfield’s book, The Artist’s Journey.
It picks up where Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey leave off. Early in my corporate career I read about the hero’s journey. It articulates the timeless sequence of events for nearly every story, novel or film.
“The artist’s journey comes after the hero’s journey,” Pressfield says in his book about the lifelong pursuit of meaning. “Everything that has happened to us up to this point is rehearsal for us to act, now, as our true self and to find and speak in our true voice.”
There is a rich personal history that I draw upon now. It’s in no small part thanks to the people I spent the last few decades working with.
You have each inspired me in your own way. I am profoundly grateful.
So my question to you is, are you doing what you really want to do?Where is your artist’s journey leading you?
Thanks to Jessica Sterling at JessicaSterling.com for these beautiful photos of my farewell celebration
Recent Comments