Art of Branding

Article by Catherine Kaputa in Execunet Newsletter, May, 11, 2010

You got the appointment and
spent the last week researching the
company and fine-tuning your résumé.
But you blew it in the first five minutes.
That’s because you planned everything
but the most important thing — making
a great first impression with an “elevator
speech.”

The First Ten Seconds
May be All You Have
People make judgments about you in a
matter of seconds: winner/loser, strong/
weak, hire/don’t hire. Such judgments are
based on first impressions: how you enter
the room, what you’re wearing, your body
language, your facial expressions, and the
first words out of your mouth.
These first, blink-of-an-eye impressions
are powerful. Research shows that
how you are viewed coming out of the
gate is usually indelible and doesn’t
change over time.
That’s why it’s important not only
to research the company, but also how
you look, how you walk and how you
connect to others at the meeting. It all
starts, of course, with the first words
you plan to say.
Most people flub the most basic
and popular opening statement, “Tell
me about yourself.”

The 60 Second Elevator Speech
The words you use to introduce yourself
and your accomplishments can be
powerful and memorable or instantly
forgettable. Too many people waste the
beginning of a pitch with a long-winded
life story while their audience is wondering
why they’re there and what they do.
Instead, prepare an elevator speech, a
pithy explanation of who you are, what
you’ve done and can do for them, and
why it matters.
Here are the tenets of creating and
delivering a great elevator speech:

Be Short
An elevator speech should last about a
minute and a half, the time it takes to
go up a few floors in the elevator.

Position Yourself and
Your Value as an Employee
It should contain a value proposition: why
you and your business accomplishments
and abilities are relevant in the marketplace.
Strong positioning for you could
be to represent innovation and growth.
So frame your career story that way.

Be Memorable
Include a memorable phrase that embodies
the idea, like an ad slogan. Another
way to add interest is through analogy.
Try to put two different ideas together to
express who you are and what you are
about, such as “I’m a cross between
_____ and _____” or “It’s like ______”
relating the business to something in a
totally different industry. For example,
one market researcher who specializes in
the women’s market calls herself “the
Oprah of Madison Avenue.” I often
define myself in my elevator speech as
“a personal branding strategist — you
might say I’m a cross between a P&G
brand manager and an executive coach.”

Be Conversational
Your elevator speech shouldn’t seem
wooden and rehearsed. The key is to
practice, but to avoid memorization
so you don’t sound like you’re scripted.
Keep an elevator speech as conversational
and spontaneous as possible.

Look the Part
It may seem superficial. After all, why
should you be judged by your looks?
Self-presentation — your visual identity
in branding terms — is important
because of the link people make between
what something looks like on the outside
and what is on the inside. The fact is the
way you look, carry yourself, your facial
expression, the clothes you choose all
talk — sometimes more loudly than
what you say.

Project Confidence
There are easy things you can do to
project confidence — even if it has been
battered internally. Stand tall. Give a
good firm handshake. Make eye contact.
Smile. Ask questions, too; don’t just
respond to questions. When you engage
in conversation and ask questions, you
level the playing field because you come
across as someone who has options, too.

Brainstormer Exercise
Try this short brainstormer exercise to
get you started. Set a stopwatch for 60
seconds. Practice your elevator speech.
What hooks, connections, stories, or
analogies can you add that will make
your opening more powerful and relevant?
Test different approaches to your
elevator speech with a few colleagues.
What works best?

I have a passion to improve the personal branding awareness of men and women. So it’s been a humbling experience sometimes to observe how I come across on camera. As a speaker and workshop leader, I am in front of the video camera more and more these days. And as an author, I’ve been interviewed for my point of view on various personal branding topics. Seeing the person who is me on camera after an event can be a humbling experience. Ouch! Is that person actually me? All your flaws are magnified (every “umm” and “you know,” every brushing back of your hair.)

Here is some wisdom from a friend, Carol Ross, from her blog, A Bigger Voice, on how to become better in front of the camera:

To become more natural, tape yourself often

Aim for authentic

It’s not about you, it’s about the message.

Here’s a link to Carol’s entire post on her explorations with her flip camera.

Catherine Kaputa

SelfBrand (www.selfbrand.com)

Twitter@CatherineKaputa

LinkedIn

CIO.com
In 2009, personal branding became the buzzword of choice for job seekers and career coaches alike, and for good reason. When done right, personal branding–the act of identifying and communicating your unique value to people who can help advance your career–promised to be the job seeker’s silver bullet, his surefire way to stand out in a crowded job market.

The social media and social networking technologies that took 2009 by storm sure made personal branding easy. Too easy, perhaps, since many job seekers made careless mistakes in their haste to brand their way to a new job.

Personal branding experts say some of these mistakes can undermine professionals’ job searches and career management plans. For example, too much self-promotion can alienate the audience you’re trying to reach, says Catherine Kaputa, an advertising executive turned personal branding strategist.

[ Personal Branding Really Is the Key to Finding a New Job ]
Kaputa and two other prominent personal branding strategists list the six most common and most damaging personal branding mistakes people make, so that as you recharge your job search for the new year, you can ensure your personal branding efforts put your best face forward.

1. Putting the cart before the horse. The biggest and most common mistake people make is using the tools for personal branding, such as blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter, without first taking the time to define a strong, authentic brand for themselves.

“One of the most prevalent myths about personal branding is that it has to do with just creating a lot of visibility,” says personal branding strategist and Career Distinctionco-author Kirsten Dixson.

Consequently, people lay “a lot of digital footprints,” she says, before considering who they are, what they want to become known for long-term, and how they can differentiate themselves from people with similar goals and backgrounds.
Kaputa advises clients to think strategically when they’re defining their personal brand. She recommends they go through many of the same exercises marketers use when releasing a new product. These include such tactics as: SWOT analyses, setting goals for themselves, considering the visual and verbal identity for their personal brand, and establishing a marketing plan for themselves.

Dixson says honing in on your personal brand is hard and takes time, but it’s worth the effort as it guides all of your future personal branding efforts. What’s more, many of the other personal branding mistakes people make stem from not having a clearly articulated brand. Therefore, taking the time to define your brand sets you up for success and function as a preventative measure.

2. Having an unfocused brand. Many job seekers purport to practice personal branding. But instead of identifying and demonstrating their unique value through their communications, they continue to brand themselves as, say, an IT project management expert and a business process improvement expert and a virtualization expert.

“People have ’slash’ identities, and it’s a problem,” says Kaputa, author of You Are a Brand! “In the world of branding, being a generalist, jack-of-all-trades gets you nowhere.”

3. Adopting a copycat or generic brand. The purpose of personal branding–and, indeed, any kind of branding–is differentiation. Savvy job seekers work to brand themselves in order to distinguish themselves from other job seekers with similar backgrounds and skill sets. So don’t fall into the trap of branding yourself a “results-driven manager” or “turnaround CIO,” says Kaputa. You’ll just look like everyone else who’s describing themselves the same way.

“You want to own an idea,” she says. “You want to stand for something that’s a strength and a competitive advantage.”

4. Behaving inconsistently. When you commit to personal branding, you commit to having one identity, one voice that’s consistent across all media, all channels (e.g. phone, voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging), and between the physical and online worlds.

If you represent yourself as a paragon of professionalism on your LinkedIn profile, says Dixon, but you leave mean-spirited comments on blogs or your e-mails come off as less than professional, your target audience will question your authenticity.

5. Not committing to social media and social networking. Blogs and social networking sites are effective vehicles for personal branding, but only if you use them regularly. Otherwise, you look lame and uncommitted.

“If you establish a Twitter profile but you never tweet, it’s going to hurt you more than help you,” says Dan Schawbel, personal branding expert and author of Me 2.0.

Similarly, Schawbel adds, if you have a LinkedIn profile, make sure it’s 100 percent complete. And if you’re taking the time to write a blog, you must also take the extra time to promote it so that people can find it in a sea of more than 133 million blogs.

“You have to be as committed to your social media profile as you are to your husband or wife,” says Schawbel. And he means genuinely committed.

6. Over-promoting yourself. Some people go overboard with self-promotion when they embark on a personal branding campaign. Too much self-promotion can do more harm than good. That’s why Kaputa advises clients to think about the frequency of their self-promotion efforts.

Too much self-promotion can manifest itself in the way people represent themselves on the comment section of blogs, adds Schawbel. Most people leave their name, URL and their comment, as is customary. But some people who are trying too hard to brand themselves also leave their title, the name of their company and their personal branding statement, he says.
“They look bad because they’re over-promoting themselves,” says Schawbel. “What matters is writing a great comment that inspires or states an opinion on the post. When you do, people will click on your URL. It’s about the soft sell.”

Follow Meridith Levinson on Twitter at @meridith.

It’s the Nobel Prize season. This year the Nobel Prizes generated an enormous amount of media attention – much more than usual – because some news commentators were surprised that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after such a short time as president.

Now, I will never receive a Nobel, and most of you won’t either. So you may be wondering, why I’m talking about this in the context of personal branding?

From a branding perspective, the Nobel award is the ultimate brand label one could aspire to. The Nobel is arguably the highest honor in the world one can receive. In terms of branding, it is a label that will always be attached to anyone who receives it, It gives every person who receives it very special status.

Like the Nobel Prize, awards are common in business to acknowledge and recognize top performers and to inspire top performance in all employees.
The world takes special awards seriously because they are “branding labels” that define and position someone as special in the minds of others.. If you receive an award for outstanding performance in your division or a special leadership title, you will be branded differently than your colleagues.

Your job title is an important branding label, too. Having a corporate title sets you apart from someone who is aspiring to one. If your job title is VP, you will be viewed differently than someone who is a director, or from someone who is a SVP

Different labels carry different assumptions. A number of research studies bear this out. For example, if you resume says you graduated from Harvard College or other well known and well respected school, people assume you are better than a candidate from a lesser known school – assumptions that may or may not be true. That’s why in personal branding, it helps to acquire credentials and performance recognition to help your brand stand apart.

But if you didn’t graduate with a brand name school, have no fear. An Ivy League brand is an edge, but not an overwhelming one. And it’s an edge that wanes over time. Then, what is more important is your work career and accomplishments – the projects, experiences and companies aligned with your brand. After all, only 11% of S&P 500 CEOs had Ivy degrees in 2008. For women, though, school credentials seem to carry more branding firepower. Of the top fifty women on the 2008 Forbes list of the 100 Most Powerful Women, 20% had Ivy degrees.

You have lots of opportunities to enhance your brand alliances throughout your career. You can already experience the branding power of labels and alliances just by working at PepsiCo. Every industry has its leading brands. In management consulting, McKinsey is the top brand. In packaged goods, it’s P&G. In investment banking, it’s Goldman Sachs. In the food and beverage industry, PepsiCo is the leader. And by working at PepsiCo, you are branded as top-notch as well.

What you want to do is to acquire additional performance labels and credentials throughout your career to differentiate Brand You. That way you’ll keep the brand narrative relevant and up-to-date. It will give you personal branding power.

It’s the Nobel Prize season. This year the Nobel Prizes generated an enormous amount of media attention – much more than usual – because some news commentators were surprised that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after such a short time as president.

Now, I will never receive a Nobel, and most of you won’t either. So you may be wondering, why I’m talking about this in the context of personal branding?

From a branding perspective, the Nobel award is the ultimate brand label one could aspire to. The Nobel is arguably the highest honor in the world one can receive. In terms of branding, it is a label that will always be attached to anyone who receives it, It gives every person who receives it very special status.

Like the Nobel Prize, awards are common in business to acknowledge and recognize top performers and to inspire top performance in all employees.
The world takes special awards seriously because they are “branding labels” that define and position someone as special in the minds of others.. If you receive an award for outstanding performance in your division or a special leadership title, you will be branded differently than your colleagues.

Your job title is an important branding label, too. Having a corporate title sets you apart from someone who is aspiring to one. If your job title is VP, you will be viewed differently than someone who is a director, or from someone who is a SVP

Different labels carry different assumptions. A number of research studies bear this out. For example, if you resume says you graduated from Harvard College or other well known and well respected school, people assume you are better than a candidate from a lesser known school – assumptions that may or may not be true. That’s why in personal branding, it helps to acquire credentials and performance recognition to help your brand stand apart.

But if you didn’t graduate with a brand name school, have no fear. An Ivy League brand is an edge, but not an overwhelming one. And it’s an edge that wanes over time. Then, what is more important is your work career and accomplishments – the projects, experiences and companies aligned with your brand. After all, only 11% of S&P 500 CEOs had Ivy degrees in 2008. For women, though, school credentials seem to carry more branding firepower. Of the top fifty women on the 2008 Forbes list of the 100 Most Powerful Women, 20% had Ivy degrees.

You have lots of opportunities to enhance your brand alliances throughout your career. You can already experience the branding power of labels and alliances just by working at PepsiCo. Every industry has its leading brands. In management consulting, McKinsey is the top brand. In packaged goods, it’s P&G. In investment banking, it’s Goldman Sachs. In the food and beverage industry, PepsiCo is the leader. And by working at a top company, you are branded as top notch as well.

What you want to do is to acquire additional performance labels and credentials throughout your career to differentiate Brand You. That way you’ll keep the brand narrative relevant and up-to-date. It will give you personal branding power.

In our careers, we are groomed to think in terms of incremental or bold moves up. But lateral moves can be even more important.

Recently, I was speaking to a senior executive at a major global company – we’ll call her Kirsten. She told me this story. “I had a very good situation at my company early in my career. I was happy, liked the work and liked the people in my department. Then, one day after I had worked there five years, my boss said to me, ‘Kirsten, you’re talented and hard-working, but if you want to go anywhere in this company, you need to know something outside of this department. You need to know how the larger corporation works. You need to know people in other businesses and what they do. You need broader experience.’”

Kirsten was smart and ambitious, but, at first, she didn’t like her boss’s advice. She was content. She hadn’t thought of moving precisely because she was doing well and liked the people she worked with.

From a branding perspective, when you are doing well but aren’t growing anymore is precisely the time to think of expanding your brand footprint. It’s the time when brands thinking in terms of expanding into new markets, adding more bells and whistles or building new alliances. And people should too. Learning new things and gaining new experience though a lateral move will help keep your brand relevant and vital.

Even though she didn’t want to make a change, Kirsten discussed possible lateral moves with her boss and interviewed for one. At first, it wasn’t easy. The new department and area of responsibility was completely outside of her comfort zone. She described early meetings where her new colleagues used lots of jargon she didn’t understand. Kirsten had a plan. She carefully took notes, then went back to her new team, and asked them to help her decode what was said and what she needed to do. Kirsten went on to make a series of lateral moves and well as moves up. She’s even set up a system in her division to actively promote and encourage lateral moves for employees. Today, she’s a C-level executive at her company.

A Brand For All Seasons

No doubt about it, it’s easier to succeed in a hot economy when revenues and budgets are high. In a tough economy, like this one, you need to make sure your brand is in tune with the current market conditions. By “in tune,” I don’t mean feeling down like the down economy – a sentiment I’ve faced with some of my coaching clients. It takes some visioning to see light at the end of the tunnel, but it is there. And there will be times in the future when the business prognosis is sunny.

In the meantime, here are some tips on how to thrive and succeed in the periods when belt tightening is the order of day.

1. Have a reputation for results.

Be a producer who gets results, and look for ways to cost-effectively improve your department’s performance. It’s also important to communicate the results of your successful projects and initiatives.

2. Resist the complain brigade

Morale can plummet in difficult times, especially if colleagues have been downsized and you have a bigger workload. Vow to keep positive. Complaining only makes things worse unless it’s done in a constructive way to come up with a better solution. As hard as it is to believe now, the economy will improve at some point in the future and if you are like most people, you’ll look back upon this challenging time as a period of growth.

3. Raise your hand

This is the time to step up to the plate and volunteer for extra projects or suggest ways to do something more efficiently or cost-effectively. You may even have the opportunity to expand your area of responsibility and even get a title change to reflect that. It’s happened to me in downturns.

4. Be visible

This is not the time to hide in the tall grass. Be a visible member of your department or company. Participate in meetings. Stay connected personally and virtually.

5. Be perceived as a cost cutter

Most managers are asked to come up with cost savings in tough times, so don your green eyeshade and come up with ways to increase productivity and cut costs at work. You get extra points for coming up with ways to increase revenue without spending a lot of money.

6. Align your brand with your company’s brand

During tough times, smart leaders focus the company on winning strategies and new innovations. Make sure your brand is in alignment with the company’s focus on innovation and results.

Let me know your thoughts on how to thrive in a challenging environment. 

Posted in August 11th, 2009
Dailybusinesssolutions.com

Guest Post By Catherine Kaputa
Ever since a certain assertive female decided she wanted to eat from a certain forbidden tree, influential women have been loved, hated, glorified, vilified, and misunderstood.

Our modern time is no different.
Yes, we’ve come a long way from the fifties and early sixties, when career women were viewed as a lesser version of men, and urged to pursue service-oriented “pink jobs,” such as nursing and teaching. However, today our ranks in the corporate workforce still thin out above midlevel. Today, women comprise less than 3 percent of senior executives in Fortune 500 companies. So, whether we are boomers, Generation X, or Gen Y, we’re still not where we want to be.
Do you know this woman? She could be in your office, she could be a friend, or she could be you. She doesn’t lack talent or work ethic, but her life and career aren’t on track. It can be hard for her to strike the right tone in the office. If she’s too nice, she’s viewed as weak and not up to the job. If she’s too assertive, she’s criticized for being severe. She seems to work harder than the men—for less rewards. She’s suffering from an ailment that mainly affects women that I’ve dubbed “Female Behavior Confusion Disorder.”

So what’s a woman to do? Well, for one, we have to stop trying to act like men in the workplace. Strong brands—products or people—are always built on authenticity. Don’t fight your nature. Instead, build on your innately female strengths and inclinations.
Research in gender studies points to key aptitudes that can propel career success for women —what I call “The Top 5 Female Aptitudes for Branding and Business Success.” Not all women have these qualities, and many men have these qualities as well. However, these are areas in which women tend to be stronger. You can use these five aptitudes to help you in the workplace.
Aptitude # 1: Social Perception.

Women are wired for empathy, the ability to read and identify the emotions and feelings of others through a sense of similarity—to walk in their shoes, as it were. MRI studies show that most women use both hemispheres of the brain to process emotional messages, while most men use only one hemisphere, giving women an advantage in picking up subtle non-verbal clues. Many women are also strong in intuition—it’s called women’s intuition for a reason.
How to use it in the workplace.

Intuition can give you another source of information beyond rational analysis. Pay attention to what’s going on behind the scenes. In meetings, for example, if something feels incomplete or not talked about, act on your hunch and initiate a follow-up, clarifying phone conversation. Empathy can be particularly helpful in business during tough economic times. Work on listening to others and asking questions. When people feel listened to and understood, they will pay you back by liking you and supporting you in return.
Aptitude # 2: People Power.

A lot has been written about the fact that women have the social gene, and it’s something that starts early. In one study, even one-day old baby girls were more fascinated by faces (or organic things) and boys more fascinated by inorganic things, such as mobiles. Playground studies of boys and girls point to interesting differences in how boys and girls play and relate with each other. Girls tend to pair off and play together one-on-one or with a small group. Boys tend to play with one group and then move to another larger group.
How to use it in the workplace.

Women are born to network and make strong emotional connections. Use your social skills to build as many professional alliances as possible. Leverage your “social gene” to get well-known around the office. Be a mediator and an influencer. In terms of your personal career goals, you can use your strong people skills to land new opportunities and positions in your company—and get noticed, recognized, and rewarded.
Aptitude #3: Communication Agility.

The female verbal edge is strong across the board. Girls, on average, start talking a month earlier than boys. Girls use a larger vocabulary at an earlier age, are better spellers and readers, score better on verbal memory or recall of words are markedly stronger writers. Women generally have better listening skills.
How to use it in the workplace.

Use your wordsmith mastery to develop a virtual identity for yourself and for your company: blogs, websites, wikis, online newsletters, and so on. Solicit feedback early and often at work, and find mentors with whom you can discuss your ideas and development. Be an idea bridger and a meetings facilitator. Become known as someone who can grasp—and restate—others’ points of view. Get practice as a presenter, and use your communications agility as a valuable business tool for promoting your great ideas and accomplishments.
Aptitude # 4: Vibrant Visual Identity.

Brand managers use product design and packaging to develop a strong visual identity for their brands, and women have more tools available to them than men do for creating a strong visual identity in the workplace. While men wear a relatively boring uniform to work, women have a variety of “imaging tools” in clothes, colors, accessories, hairstyles, jewelry, and make-up.
How to use it in the workplace.

Michelle Obama is the poster girl for what a powerful tool visual identity can be. She has a casual, American elegance, yet her clothes convey subliminal messages too. Her striding self-confidence, fit body, and clean American designs with bold colors result in inspirational magic. She favors immigrant American designers, a choice that reinforces the President’s political message. You can do the same. If you don’t have the body of a fashion model, then do something wonderful with your hair and clothing. Work on your posture and gait. Think about what your visual image conveys, and find visual “props” that add originality and a confident, powerful statement.
Aptitude # 5: Leadership that Includes and Empowers.

One study of male and female group dynamics involved groups of pre-pubescent boys and girls, segregated by gender and given tasks to accomplish cooperatively. The girls used their social skills and worked together and formed a kind of committee. The girls all took part in discussions about how to accomplish the task, while the boys jostled about and picked a leader, who then directed the group on how to get the job done. Both had positive outcomes, but each gender used very different models. Women’s inclusive, collaborative style of leadership is increasingly valuable in today’s complex and interconnected global business environment.
How to use it in the workplace.

Recent episodes of Celebrity Apprentice pitted women against the men—and displayed how their unique group dynamics gave the women a decided advantage. In the real workplace we can see the effect of these different leadership tendencies, too. Men tend to have a more directive management style, and women tend to have a collaborative style with shared decision making. Leverage your more inclusive leadership style so you can lead in a way that doesn’t seek to have power over people, but empowers others instead. Consult others on important decisions. Create teams and a “personal board of directors” who can advise you—and be sure to include men too. Conduct brainstorming sessions. Give public credit to people when they contribute. Such a leadership style will result in loyal, committed, hardworking colleagues and employees and will give you a distinct advantage and reputation as a problem solver.
* * * * *_Catherine Kaputa is a writer, speaker, and the founder of SelfBrand LLC (www.selfbrand.com), a NYC-based personal branding firm. Her newest book is The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business (Davies-Black, 2009, www.femalebrand.com).

Top 10 Ways to Use Your Female Advantage in Business

By Catherine Kaputa, Author “The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business”

The conventional wisdom has been that women have trouble succeeding because they don’t act like men. But playing it like a man doesn’t work because it brands you as tough and aggressive. And it’s stupid for the most basic reason. We’re not men. And that’s an advantage.
It’s common sense to be authentic, and it’s smart branding. Your personal brand must come from who you are and what makes you tick — including your strengths and aptitudes as a woman.
Here is my top 10 list of how to use your female aptitudes to increase your success in business:
1. Turn up your empathy quotient (EmQ)_Women are strong in empathy thanks in part to higher levels of estrogen and oxytocin. So it’s no wonder that when President Obama cited “empathy” as a key factor in his selection of a Supreme Court justice, the four finalists were women._How to leverage empathy: Be approachable and empathize with the feelings of others. People will feel understood even if you are giving them bad news! You can use empathy to build consensus around a common goal.
2. Create an appealing package_Studies show that attractive people not only make more money, they are viewed as smarter, more productive, and even kinder than others. Women have an advantage because we have more “visual packaging tools.” _How to package yourself: Don’t mimic the male model — that’s so 20th century. Use the French women’s model: Dress like a woman and accentuate your best features. If you don’t have the body of a fashion model, do something wonderful with your hair and clothing. Develop a distinctive look with a signature color, accessories and so on. Work on your posture and how you move.
3. Reach out and connect
Women have the social gene and an innate ability to build relationships and connect with people, studies show. Women are natural-born networkers, team builders and relationship mavens.
How to use people power: The larger your network, the more career capital you’ll have. So don’t just use your people power to develop deep relationships with a few; use it to also develop a broad network of more casual acquaintances with all types of people.
4. Speak with panache
Women routinely outscore men on oral and written tests because they use both hemispheres of the brain — left and right — to process verbal and emotional messages.
How to use your verbal agility in the workplace: Use your verbal skills to speak up: Ask great questions and listen actively. Hone your business conversation and presentation skills. Pitch yourself for a move up or a lateral move with interesting “stories” about your past performance.
5. Be inclusive
Choosing inclusion over exclusion is a powerful female strength. In today’s modern, global companies, the ability to work well with diverse groups will set you apart.
How of leverage inclusiveness: Encourage different perspectives and offer goodwill to everyone — friends and foes. Cultivate strong alliances and be loyal.
6. Read between the lines
MRI imaging and other brain research show that women are much better at picking up subtle emotional messages than men are. Women can pick up body language and are able to detect unspoken signals of unhappiness, frustration, and confusion.
How to leverage emotional intelligence: Look beyond verbal messages to the real message people are conveying in meetings. If something feels uncomfortable or incomplete, act on your intuition and follow up with a phone call.
7. Empower others
Studies show that women tend to work together collaboratively, empowering different members of the team to contribute and accomplish tasks. So rather than seek power over others, the female leadership style seeks to empower others.
How to leverage the female leadership style: Create teams and a personal “board of directors” who can advise you — and be sure to include men too. Give public credit to other people when they contribute.
8. See the big picture
Women tend to take in various perspectives and consider a larger framework when solving a problem or making a decision, while men’s style of problem solving tends to be more linear and transactional.
How to leverage big-picture thinking: Use your problem-solving style to uncover risks and opportunities, and bring more creativity and innovation to your work.
9. Be likeable
Women’s gifts for relationships, compassion, connection and empathy make them the more likeable gender. And let’s face it, the workplace is a personality contest too, so likeability is a key factor in success.
How to leverage likeability: Smile and be positive — as opposed to being serious and stern — and you will win over business fans and be more influential in your work.
10. Brand yourself
Use the nine female aptitudes listed above to brand yourself for success.

Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker and the founder of SelfBrand LLC (www.selfbrand.com), a NYC-based personal branding firm. Her newest book is “The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business” (Davies-Black, 2009, http://www.femalebrand.com/). Her previous book, “U R a Brand! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success,” won the Ben Franklin Award for Best Career Book, 2007.
Copyright 2009 Catherine Kaputa. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without prior written authority.
Story Filed Wednesday, July 29, 2009 – 10:18 PM

Good Job News for Girlie Men
by Bob Goldman

Creators Syndicate Inc

This economic disaster does not play favorites.
Pick any person, in any job category, and you
will find fear, depression and uncertainty. Even
the strongest people, with the best prospects,
the most education, and the highest level of job
skills live in fear of a sudden reversal that will
put them permanently out to pasture.
When it comes to feeling scared and hopeless,
this economy — as they say in employment ads,
back when there used to be employment ads –
is an equal opportunity employer, male and
female.

Or is it? According to personal branding expert
Catherine Kaputa, female job searchers have a
“feminine advantage: distinct, hardwired
advantages over male counterparts and
competitors.”

If you’re a woman, Kaputa says, all you have to
do is leverage your natural advantages. What a
man is supposed to do, Kaputa does not
specify. (”Giving up” might be one strategy –
putting down your beer, stripping off your
football jersey, enjoying one last, loud burp, and
walking into the sea.)

In her new book, “The Female Brand: Using the
Female Mindset to Succeed in Business,”
Kaputa presses her case that “women are
naturally wired for success.” Using what her
publicity person — a woman, naturally –
describes as “the latest brain science,” the
author “debunks old and misguided workplace
myths that women must think and act like a man
to succeed.”

Unfortunately, in this economy, even thinking
and acting like a man is no guarantee for
success. That’s why I feel it is absolutely fair for
men to use the “feminine advantage” to solve
our job problems. For a girlie man like me, this
should be relatively simple. But the way I see it,
even a he-man like you could benefit from
taking on few of these girlish traits.

For example:
This economic disaster does not play favorites.
Pick any person, in any job category, and you
will find fear, depression and uncertainty. Even
the strongest people, with the best prospects,
the most education, and the highest level of job
skills live in fear of a sudden reversal that will
put them permanently out to pasture.

When it comes to feeling scared and hopeless,
this economy — as they say in employment ads,
back when there used to be employment ads –
is an equal opportunity employer, male and
female.

Or is it? According to personal branding expert
Catherine Kaputa, female job searchers have a
“feminine advantage: distinct, hardwired
advantages over male counterparts and
competitors.”

If you’re a woman, Kaputa says, all you have to
do is leverage your natural advantages. What a
man is supposed to do, Kaputa does not
specify. (”Giving up” might be one strategy –
putting down your beer, stripping off your
football jersey, enjoying one last, loud burp, and
walking into the sea.)

In her new book, “The Female Brand: Using the
Female Mindset to Succeed in Business,”
Kaputa presses her case that “women are
naturally wired for success.” Using what her
publicity person — a woman, naturally –
describes as “the latest brain science,” the
author “debunks old and misguided workplace
myths that women must think and act like a man
to succeed.”

Unfortunately, in this economy, even thinking
and acting like a man is no guarantee for
success. That’s why I feel it is absolutely fair for
men to use the “feminine advantage” to solve
our job problems. For a girlie man like me, this
should be relatively simple. But the way I see it,
even a he-man like you could benefit from
taking on few of these girlish traits.

For example:
Tune in Emotionally: Women are especially
“intuitive and empathetic,” says Kaputa. It’s a
condition she chalks up to a higher level of
hormones, such as estrogen and oxytocin. By
being more open to others’ feelings, her theory
goes, women can form closer bonds to “build
strong and healthy work relationships.”

Accepting for a moment that a “healthy work
relationship” actually exists, this lack of
hormones is a difficult hurdle for mankind. You
could ask for extra estrogen on your double
cheeseburger, or add an oxytocin chaser to your
boilermaker. But the harsh truth is that, in the
game of biology, you have to play with the
hormones you were dealt. That leaves guys with
testosterone, a hormone more connected with
caveman violence than with intuition or
empathy.

To be wildly successful in business, you need to have a distinct brand, or career identity. Self-branding means being able to articulate a simple, clear expression of who you are, doing it consistently, and delivering on it again and again, so that when people think of X, they think of you. Or when people think of you, they think of X.

To find out if you need to work on creating a stronger Brand You, answer these questions.

· Can you explain your big idea clearly in a couple of sentences, so that people know what’s different, relevant, and special about you?

· If people were to Google your name, would they find you and discover high-quality information about you and your accomplishments?

· Can you clearly define your key target markets and the best way to market yourself to them?

· Do you have a visual identity that is appealing to your target markets, consistent with what you stand for as a brand, and different from others?

· Do you have a personality and a leadership style that are assets and engage others?

If you answered “No” to any of the above questions, you have more work to do to perfect your brand image. Here are eight tips for creating a stronger self-brand.

Keep your brand focused. The more specifically you define who you are, the better your chance of selling yourself. If you come across as a Jill of All Trades, people will wonder how good you are at any one thing.

Make your brand different. Being like everyone else will stunt your success. Ask yourself: “What’s different, relevant, and special about me?” Use analogy, as in “a cross between X and Y” or “X on steroids.” Look at who you are, and then accentuate your difference.

When others zig, you should zag. Nonconformity and nontraditionalism will help you stand out from the pack. Think Obama. When everyone else was emphasizing experience, he made “change” his brand. Finding the “white space” between popular ideas sets you apart as a creative thinker.

Create a verbal identity. From a branding perspective, your first and most important decision after you nail down your brand idea is your name, or verbal identity. The best names are easy to spell, different, and short. An unusual first name is always a plus.

Create a powerful visual identity. In many ways, women have an advantage here; they have many more “imaging tools” to work with, including hair, makeup, clothes, shoes, accessories, jewelry, and colors. Like it or not, you are a package–just like a product on a shelf. Spend time thinking about how to make your image more powerful and distinct, whether it’s by working on your posture, or by updating your hairstyle.

Establish powerful alliances. You will be defined by the people, projects, causes, and organizations with whom you are allied. Obviously, an Ivy League brand is an edge. But you can earn the same cachet through alliances you create. Smart networking creates branding firepower.

Take charge of your brand. You don’t neglect your car, do you? Your personal brand needs periodic upkeep and maintenance too. Try to remember that everything you do at your job reinforces your reputation and your image. If your actions or accomplishments seem out of step with your brand–especially over time–it may be time to revisit, reinvent, and update your brand.

Define and prioritize your target market. If you work in a company, your boss is your key target market, followed by other senior executives. These are the people who have the most power over your brand, so let’s designate them your primary target market. Your secondary target market will likely include colleagues, clients, your network, and your staff. Their thoughts about you will also play an important role in your success. Focus only on your target markets, and don’t try to appeal to everyone.

When you start thinking of yourself as a brand, you discover how powerful it can be. Rather than being viewed generically as one of the worker bees, you’ll be someone who stands for something distinct and desirable–a brand. In today’s over-communicated society, the brands that stand for something relevant and build positive perceptions are the ones that succeed.