What Do You Bring To The Table?

Are you looking for a new job? Or maybe you’re seeking a promotion, or a pay raise, or more responsibilities, or a role on a key strategic initiative. If so, then you need to be able to clearly communicate what you can bring to the table. Ideally, you’d also have a succinct version of that, your elevator pitch.

It sounds simple enough, right? But it’s often harder than it seems. Many of us struggle when presented with the need to describe why we deserve what we’re seeking, and our inability to be able to do that often holds us back from the opportunities that we really want. That, in turn, can lead us to feel a sense of stagnation and frustration, or to make suboptimal or even damaging career decisions out of a perceived lack of choice.

In the years I’ve worked with, mentored, and coached junior people, I’ve seen this happen time and time again, and usually, it’s because these individuals:

1. Sell themselves short, prompted by an inner critic that makes them afraid of giving themselves credit where it’s due
2. Take too narrow a view of their strengths, and miss an opportunity to sell their full selves
3. Aren’t honest with themselves about their weaknesses, and therefore don’t adequately acknowledge and address them
4. Are uncomfortable with self-promotion, and hope (often in vain) that those around them will just naturally notice all the things they’re good at or magically read their minds as to what they want from their careers
5. Can’t articulate it all clearly, meaning that the essence of their message is lost in the rambling
6. Fear rejection or disagreement?and therefore avoid making their pitch all together

If this feels familiar, I suggest an exercise I call the personal balance sheet, which draws its name from one of the core corporate financial statements. It will feel like a simple articulation of strengths and weaknesses, but there’s a bit more to it than that.

So, create a table. The rows will be your capabilities. Take a broad view, including not just skills and experience, but also your knowledge, past contributions or impact, situations you’ve faced, your network and relationships, work style, disposition, and character attributes. It’s important to do this exercise holistically, as these other areas are often every bit as important as your skills. For instance, if you’re looking to play a role in sales, but haven’t been in sales before, having a broad industry network and a demonstrated ‘hustle factor’ could be the difference in helping you make the case that you could successfully make the transition.?

Then create two columns. On the left would be your strengths, or what you bring to the table, and on the right would be your weaknesses, or what you lack. Do the exercise in a way that’s generally relevant to your current career direction or aspirations and not necessarily specific to a particular situation. Be sure to take a positive view of yourself (shut off that inner critic!), but also acknowledge your weak spots or development needs.

What does this exercise tell you? What strengths hadn’t you considered before? What weak spots do you need to focus on? Overall, how much difference is there between your strengths and your weaknesses? This is your value, akin to the ‘equity’ portion of a financial balance sheet. The greater it is, the better chance you have of getting what you’re seeking. The smaller it is, the more you have to work on, if you’re going to get what you’re seeking. As appropriate, you can adapt this general view of your strengths and weaknesses to a more specific situation, such as by evaluating yourself against the role requirements for a job you’re aiming for.

If you do this exercise thoughtfully, you’ll address the first three issues in the list above. But how can you address the other three? Here, I recommend several actions:

• Create a 30-45 second version and a 2-3 minute version of your pitch
• Practice it on your own, and then with family and friends. Get feedback and refine it
• Keep practicing it until you're comfortable with the delivery
• Then test it with your manager or a mentor or someone in HR, without attaching it to an ask (in other words, before you really need it). Continue to refine it
• Develop a plan to work on your weak spots and round out your strengths

This way, you’ll be ready when needed. You should revisit your personal balance sheet every 3-6 months to give it a fresh look, update it with any new information, and revise your development plan accordingly.

If you’re diligent about all of this, you’ll steadily be putting yourself in a much better position to get what you want from your career. And when someone asks you what you’d bring to the table, you’ll be ready.

JR and the PathWise team

Recent and Upcoming Podcasts

March 3,?Own Your Career, Own Your Life, with Andy Storch.?Andy is an author, speaker, consultant, connector, podcaster, and conference and community host. He is on a mission to teach and inspire people to own their careers, live with intention, and achieve their goals. We talk about his book,?Own Your Career, Own Your Life,?and his career journey

As always, our “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts are available on all the major podcast platforms, with video versions on PathWise’s YouTube channel

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Recent and Upcoming Members-Only Content

March 3 – External Orientation.?It’s easy to get so focused on the day-to-day aspects of our jobs that we neglect to see what’s going on in the world, in our industry, and with our competition. But it’s critical to maintain external orientation, to spot trends, opportunities, and threats, and that’s what we’ll cover this week.

March 10 – Power. Within any organization, there are those with more power and those with less. But power comes from more than just the position we hold, and we’ll talk about sources of power, how it is built and maintained, and how to use it to your advantage.

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March Book Summary

Drive, by Daniel Pink, presented by PathWise’s Daniela De Luca.?Each of Dan Pink’s books brings a fascinating exploration of a topic, and?Drive?certainly delivers on that. In it, he explores what motivates us (and those around us), and he argues that it ultimately boils down to three things: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. If you want to better understand how to get the best out of those around you, it’s a must-read.

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