I challenged someone. She now has a blue badge.
Juliana Chan, PhD
Ex-MIT | Creator of LinkedInese | I help industry experts launch powerful brands | Founder, Find Your Superpower | Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum ??
Find Your Superpower newsletter 058
Read time: 5 minutes
Topics covered: LinkedIn, branding, storytelling
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Two years ago, I met a friend for coffee.
Let’s call her Penny*.
(Story anonymized and shared with her permission.)
Like everyone else, Penny was a “lurker” on LinkedIn—yes, that’s what they’re called.
She certainly wasn’t an active LinkedIn content creator and she mostly used it for irregular work updates like when she received a promotion or an industry award.
This coffee session took place before I started coaching individuals on LinkedIn—at the time, I only coached corporate teams.
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On mindset and action
Please allow me to get a little philosophical for a moment, if you don’t mind.
In life, most of us don’t take action on our own accord. We must be challenged.
There must usually be an instigator, a call to action.
It could be a push: something negative like a parent or a close friend getting a terminal diagnosis or dying.
It could be a pull: something positive like creating a target to earn a certain amount of money by a certain age.
Or it could be someone we trust appearing in our lives to nudge us into action. There are many ways that a mentor or coach can metaphorically “wake us up” and handle our objections. They can gently nudge us or they can even dare us.
Good cop, bad cop.
But both strategies basically require that the following questions be answered:
?? what will I gain from this action?
?? what will I lose if I don’t take this action?
?? why now and not sometime in the future?
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Juliana the good cop AND bad cop
So I decided to try a experiment. I would both nudge and dare Penny into action.
The good cop said (paraphrased): “Penny, there are so few successful female CEOs like you out there. Your work is truly important and you’re doing great things in <insert context>. Like many others, I am truly inspired by what you have done in your career.”
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The bad cop said (paraphrased): “But your ideas are hidden from all of us. Why? You’re the CEO. Who’s gonna talk about your company if you don’t? Penny, you gotta show up on LinkedIn and represent all of us in male-dominated fields.”
Something must have clicked in Penny’s head because she started posting on LinkedIn after that.
A year or so later…
BLUE BADGE!
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Communication is in our job description
As a professional, posting on LinkedIn and speaking at industry events isn’t vanity or humble bragging.
It is part of our job description.
It’s about sharing our unique and valuable ideas with the world.
If we bury our head in our work—especially the remote folks like me—nobody is going to know about all of the amazing things we are doing.
If we’re not building in the open, we can’t find the collaborators and mentors who could be real assets to our professional growth. We can’t attract talented individuals who will join our team and help us build.
If we’re dimming our voice because of excuses, limiting beliefs and success blocks—“I can’t do this because <insert strong opinion>”—then the world cannot possibly discover our goodness.
So let’s unlock our abundance into the world!
PS: a blue badge is just a shiny object, I think we all agree on that. The primary objective as always is to discover our professional voice and share our ideas with the world for career and business outcomes.
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Next bootcamp launching soon
If you need someone to challenge you into action on LinkedIn, I volunteer as tribute!
My bootcamp coaching style is both empathetic (good cop) and drill sergeant (bad cop) combined into one.
Don’t believe that it is effective? Check out my reviews here.
If you want to join us, get on the waitlist for my next six-week Find Your Superpower LinkedIn Bootcamp, which will be opening for registration in a matter of days.
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Thanks for reading issue 058 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.
For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 37,000+ people, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.
Author of The Leadership Letter weekly column; Consulting Expert with OnFrontiers; advisor and mentor on leadership and public service; retired U.S. Army and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Officer.
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9 个月Juliana Chan, PhD really connect to the point you made about building in public. It seems obvious but people can't support you if they don't know you exist. That's why I continue to show up and share.
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9 个月This is a great story about Penny's journey to becoming a LinkedIn Top Voice! ?? It highlights the importance of taking action and sharing your voice professionally.