How do you build your personal brand in a large organisation?

To get ahead in corporate life, you need to get noticed and be visible. If that’s something that causes you some anxiety or you don’t know where to start, then fear not! You can build your own brand and reputation in a way that feels authentic to you. How? Let me give you an example….

Meet Hannah, a client of mine who, when we met, had recently been promoted to financial controller of a bank.

She had great technical expertise but was still trying to do everything, even though she had a large team to manage the compliance aspects of the role for her. She also felt that her line manager, the CFO, didn’t really notice her or what she was capable of doing. Consequently, she felt underconfident in her role, unable to influence her peers or be seen as equal to them.

I worked with Hannah to help her become more visible across her organisation so that she would be seen as a competent, strategic financial controller and not a technical finance compliance expert.

The first thing she worked on was her delegation skills to help her free up more time to do the more strategic aspects of her work.

What other strategies did we work on together? Well..

• Keeping a record of what you are doing. Having in one place a list of projects you are working on, with whom, the type of work, your successes and learnings can help you when you are having conversations with your line manager. With Hannah, she put in a system of recording what she had stopped doing and delegated to her team (attendance at routine meetings). She was working on a couple of projects to streamline her team’s work, and she made a note of these too.

• Having a good relationship and conversations with your boss and people who will advocate for you. Harvard Business Review research found that employees who put in the groundwork to build solid relationships with their seniors were 82% more likely to get promoted when compared with colleagues who hadn’t stayed in touch. The conversations should be varied. It might be an update on projects. It might be asking for informal feedback. You can ask them about their work and how you can support them. You should also use these meetings to share positive stories about your work and impact. One of Hannah’s roles was to put together financial papers that the CFO would use to report to the Board. She spoke to her CFO beforehand to find out what was on his and the Board’s mind – and therefore was able to make suggestions as to what specific info may be helpful to them in her reports.

• Taking part in meetings. Say something in a meeting, even if it is only to ask a question. Through this, you can demonstrate your knowledge, curiosity, or critical thinking skills. Hannah and I worked together a lot on this! At the time of our coaching, everyone was remote, and so we worked on how she could get her point across in senior management meetings without fearing she would be talked over. She made sure to carve out time to plan for the meeting, knowing what was on the agenda and what points she would be able to make that would be helpful for the discussion.
• Growing your network. You can do this in several ways. Think about why you want to grow your network – do you want to meet more senior people, or perhaps people who work in a particular department that you are interested in moving to? Hannah took time to build relationships with her peers in the senior management team to get to know them as individuals, this meant that when she was trying to get some of her changes adopted, she was able to get them on her side a lot easier.
• Find mentors and sponsors. Hannah approached her previous line manager and had now moved to a different part of the bank to go for coffee as an additional sounding board for how to work well in the financial controller role – particularly regarding internal politics.

As a result of improving her visibility, Hannah gained a lot more confidence and became more trusted by her CFO. The relationships she built across the senior leadership team helped her to push through her agenda for change which gave her more credibility. When the bank restructured shortly afterwards, she became part of the trusted inner circle. That knowledge helped her and her team position themselves to be in a better place after the reorganisation.

If you feel like Hannah, these pointers will help you grow your confidence, improve your visibility and get your career going in the direction you want it to. If you would like to work on this with the support of someone else, then do get in touch, I’d love to work with you.