CFA Podcast: Personal Brand and Skills Assessment

This CFA Institute podcast entitled "Personal Brand and Skills Assessment" defines personal brand and delves into the relevance of brand to personal and professional success in organizations.

The key takeaway is this:  whether you manage it or not, you have a personal brand.  Others make assumptions about you based on their experiences with you and with your work/impact.  Greater awareness of this can lead to greater career success.

Worry

This time of year tends to reveal worries about things that cannot be controlled.  Some reminders from throughout the ages are below.

Little Book of Leadership

Enjoy The Little Book of Leadership.  After reading about leadership in this presentation, slide 43 is my favorite:Best,Bryan

Actualized Leadership

Here's an interview of Will Sparks, talking about actualized leadership.  Exciting work, and can't wait for his book, Actualized Leadership, to come out soon.

• Part I
• Part II

Enjoy!

MarketWatch article:"What I've Learned From the Market Bubbles"

Quick hit:  check out "What I've Learned From the Market Bubbles" on MarketWatch.  Very quick read, and a nice macro view of a repeating bubble trend.

The Selfishness of Good Deeds

Interesting article posted yesterday on FoxNews.com from Nancy Colasurdo called "The Selfishness of Good Deeds."  Very quick read - maybe 2 minutes?

Nancy writes, "What in the heck is so wrong with feeling good that you’re helping someone? When did anything that makes the “self” feel better become so frowned upon?"

She's touching on something we explore from time to time in discussing the value proposition - that give vs. get:  what you get is often not monetary.  Keith Ferrazzi touches on this as well in his writings, that there are several currencies with which we are able to exchange.

Proxy voting: owning the firm - a follow up

Speaking of owning the firm, here's a note from Wealth-Bulletin.com, noting that "Investors are more careful with their own money."

You get the gist of the article in the first few sentences, so here's the rest:  firms with family ownership (as defined by Oddo, an investment firm in Paris), perform better than others. :)

Leadership Skills Continuum

Business Finance magazine has an November/December article called "The Leadership Skills Continuum."  Jeffrey Thomson from the Institute of Management Accountants writes that different leadership skills need to be developed along the career life cycle.

Article link

Thomson identifies five specific career points, and the skills to develop at each:

1. entry level


2. young professional


3. seasoned practitioner


4. senior management

He also calls out the three soft skills entry-level associates need to learn:

1. emotional intelligence (see this earlier post)


2. effective communication


3. time management

These three skills can be improved at almost every point in an organization, from the new hires all the way to the executive suite.  It's helpful to remember that these soft skills will go a long way in making you more successful in your career and in life.

Your brain at work

Check out the web site, yourbrainatwork.org.

It's a collaborative effort by The Conference Board and the Dana Alliance (wholly supported by the Dana Foundation).  The Conference Board is one of the best business reference & research sites I've seen.  The Dana Alliance is a group of neuroscientists "committed to advancing public awareness of the progress of brain research and to disseminating information about the brain in an accessible fashion.

The site is very easy to read and understand, and is a nice reminder that we all need to continue to build our experiences...and build our brain.

Enjoy!

Harvard Business Review: networking

Harvard Business Review published a couple of  articles this year around networking, and I wanted to share them with you:

"Start Networking Right Away (Even if you hate it)"

• From the January 2009 issue


• Key quote:  "Time spent in the early days building a network will save time down the road when you're trying to solve problems, leverage resources, and achieve success."

"Approach Avoidance"

• From the October 2009 issue


• Key quote:  "find a good role model; put outside interests to work inside the organization; engage with the network consistently, not just when they need help; and have faith that practice will pay off."

Enjoy!