Building & Leveraging Your Professional Brand to Own Your Career

By Ernie Humphrey, VP, Thought Leadership, Stampli

Nothing is more important for career success than taking ownership of your career. Doing that as a Finance professional presents unique challenges as most of us are not social by nature. Professionals need to build networks within and beyond work, develop their professional brands within and beyond work, and engage their networks within and beyond work to take control of their careers. There is no “I” in a successful career for anyone. I can say that after speaking with thousands of finance professionals over the past few decades.

I want to share some specific tactics and best practices for building and engaging the network you need to take ownership of your career.

Building your network is not always easy and is an ongoing endeavor. You need to identify who you want in your network and where and how to engage people to get them into your network. I want to offer specific channels and tactics to accomplish all three.

Consider the following for determining who to target to get into your network:

• Who Do You Want to Know
• Who Do You Need to Know
• Who Do You Already Know
• Who Knows Who You Want to Know
• Who Knows Who You Need to Know

In terms of channels to leverage in engaging your network prospects, consider:

• Social Events
• Professional Conferences
• LinkedIn
• Professional Associations
• Public Speaking
• Podcasts
• Online Communities
• Alumni Networks

Inspiring people to be in your network and engage with you:

1. Communicate the value you add to members of your network
2. Ask how you can help your potential connections
3. Communicate how you can collaborate with them in mutually beneficial endeavors

Part of inspiring people to be in your network is your professional brand. If you have a strong professional brand people will want to be your network and already know you that would be a worthwhile connection.

A professional brand matters in relationships with people most finance professionals fail to consider including relationships with finance team/peers, colleagues at your company outside of finance, and your business partners (customers, suppliers, banks, technology partners).

The good news is that there is advice I can offer that is relevant in building your professional brand with people within and beyond the boundaries of your work environment:

1. Listen listen, listen
2. Know What You Know
3. Communicate What you Know
4. Appreciate What You Don’t Know
5. Communicate What You Want and Need to Know
6. Understand the Value of Your Relationship to Your Colleagues and Business Partners
7. Communicate Your Expectations to Each Colleague and Business Partner and Let them Know What to Expect from You
8. Invest in Knowing People
9. Learn the Professional Languages of Colleagues and Business Partners
10. Ask Colleagues and Business Partners to Share with You Their Biggest Work Challenges
11. Help them Solve Work Challenges
12. Let People Get to Know You
13. Be Authentic in Your Communications
14. Communicate Bad News Proactively
15. Build Trust with Colleagues so they Have No Fear in Communicating Bad News to You Proactively
16. Actively Collaborate

You need a strong professional brand and engaged professional network to control your career. Taking control is not easy and once you have it you need to maintain it. You deserve control of your career.