Career goes beyond your current organization or job. In broader perspective, it is the sum total of the various jobs and responsibilities you may hold during your lifetime.
“Your Influence + Your Visibility Quotient = Your Impact”
In Part (1) of this article, we discussed the first two key steps:
- Build Up to a Good Visibility, and
- Clearly Articulate Your Visibility Quotient (VQ)
(For reference to Part (1), please go to thinkmy3d.net/resources)
Here in Part (2), we will discuss the second two key steps:
- Communicate Your VQ in a Compelling Manner, and
- Ensure Your Message Makes the Newsletter
thinkmy3D Program (thinkmy3d.net), equips you to assess your ability to
build-up, articulate and communicate your visibility quotient (VQ) in a compelling manner (Discover), identify and fill any skills gaps (Develop) and Deploy your new skills to raise your visibility and advance your career.
- Communicate Your VQ in a Compelling Manner
Visibility Quotient (VQ) is an impact-focused achievement, which should be communicated to others in a manner different from traditional way of communication:
- first it should start with a statement of leadership purpose rather than of a business or career goal.
- secondly, it should be focused on impact.
According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), impact-focused communication differs from traditionally focused in many ways:
For communication to be compelling, it must:
- align with your sponsor’s, advocate’s and audience perspective;
- be concise;
- be clear from the audience’s perspective;
- be relevant both to the audience and to your goal that points to impact
- describe outcomes
- feature a strong brand voice
Examples of impact-focused compelling communication:
- “Between time period X and Y there was A% of change, because of my leadership skills in hiring the right project team, delegating work according to people’s strengths and prompt appraisal & feedback that guided good performance.”
- “My Company is a global science company that never stops inventing. Using 52 technology platforms, our integrated team of scientists and researchers works with customers to create breakthroughs. Our inventions have improved daily life for over 100 of millions of people all over the world.”
- Mirasee’s article highlights an impact-focused (not feature-focused) compelling communication demonstrated when Apple first launched the iPod:
The feature (1GB of MP3s) means little to most people. Whereas the ability to have 1,000 songs in your pocket transformed a generation.
- Ensure Your Message Makes the Newsletter
‘What’s in a name? Not much if more people don’t know you,’ …. Flanagan.
As simple as it sounds, many people miss the mark: Test your message!
The story is about your stakeholders and how they can find answers to their pains within your story, and compensate you for your contribution. Your message must, therefore, get found, build trust, educate, inform, nurture and convert to willingness to support or vote for you to advance your career.
Since career is the sum total of the various jobs and responsibilities you may hold during your lifetime, the more your VQ goes viral, the better it enhances your career.
Forbes published an interesting article: “How to Get Your Hashtag Trending.” Getting your VQ message to make the newsletter is like getting a hashtag to trend. There are so many variables that go into what creates virality. Most importantly, it comes down to two major precepts: content and distribution. Build up to a good visibility, articulate them properly and put them in the hands of the right sponsors/advocates/influencers, then ensure that the message is crafted in a manner that it is simple and easy for them to make it viral.
To increase the chances of your message trending,
- create a relatable or funny topic that everyone can join in on and are compelled to share.
- Put your message in the hands of as many influential people as possible. The more sponsors and advocates you have, the higher the chance of the message making the newsletter.
- Ensure concurrent messaging to gain traction. In order to get a message to trend, there needs to be some kind of simultaneous push from influencers for consistent period of time. Ensure consistency of your visibility quotient (VQ) – must be consistently achieved period over period before, during and after your reward. And send out a VQ message to your influencers and sync up with them on an ideal time to launch the message.
- Influencers building influencer: Aside from getting influencers to share your message with their audiences, it is key to have influencers ask their followers to join in to increase virality. When influencers ask their audience to get involved, it creates a ground-breaking effect and it prompts others to ask their friends to join in the conversation.
No doubts, making the newsletter will advance your career. By articulating a compelling story that your stakeholders can consume, you’ll better establish yourself as a credible professional within your field.
CONCLUSION
Build Up to a Good Visibility, Clearly Articulating Your Visibility Quotient (VQ), Communicating Your VQ in a Compelling Manner, and Ensuring Your Message Makes the Newsletter are critical ingredients to advancing your career to the peak. Achieving this requires your deliberate effort. You must equip yourself with distinctive competencies including visioning, analytical and strategic thinking & reasoning, effective communication skills, stakeholder management skills, effective leadership and ability to influence others. Equipping you with these critical competencies and skills is what my3D Innovation Program achieves.
JOIN my3D Program!
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by Tilda MMEGWA. Tilda is a leadership content contributor to thinkmy3D programs.
She is an internationally top-rated Leadership and Executive Coach.
–Tilda is a selected speaker at international conferences, she was rated highest, #1, in Strategic Thinking (2006) by the Society of Management Accountants of Canada and she is an award winner (1983 and 2018) for her academic excellence. Her key focus areas: Strategic Leadership, Corporate Governance, Business Growth.
