Your Personal Brand DNA®: Be Successful by Being Your Best Self
What if you knew which types of jobs and work environments would play to your true strengths and allow you to be successful by simply being your best self?
What If You Could…
- quickly and accurately make choices about how well you'll fit in any role or environment?
- proactively pursue roles, projects and organizations in which you'll naturally thrive?
- stop wasting time pursuing jobs and projects in which you have to work hard to perform?
- start clarifying your personal brand to position you for best fit roles and environments?
- take strategic action to improve how you manage, lead, communicate and perform?
- optimize your international career or business choices and personal branding strategies to maximize your success abroad?
What difference would that make to your international career? To your ability to thrive as a global leader or manager?
Your Performance is Not Defined By Behaviour Alone
High performance is driven by the ability to make choices that lead to desired results.
Looking at a person's behaviors alone does not provide a complete picture of a person's ability to perform. This is because behaviour is simply one way of expressing a choice - not an indicator of good choices. The multitude of ways we can express a choice can become much more obvious when working across cultures.
We can adjust or adapt our behaviours to fit a situation, but we cannot change our inherent ability to make the right choices.
Yet there are hundreds of assessments that depend on self-reported behaviours and preferences to predict a person's ability to perform at work. These include MBTI, Strengths finders, Predictive Index, 16PF and many others. Using these assessments to define best-fit roles or predict performance in a particular role can be dangerous for those who have developed adaptive behaviours and skills over time in order to perform well at work that do not reflect how they naturally operate.
Using Your True Strengths Leads to Optimum Performance
A person's true strengths are defined by their natural ability to make choices that lead to optimum performance. Hence leveraging your true strengths sets you up to perform at your best simply by being your best self. High performance can be achieved with ease rather than through tapping into the additional energy and focus required to use other skill sets to get results.
Your true strengths are part of your personal brand DNA. They help drive your performance, your fulfilment and your differentiation so necessary to stand out in today's global pool of talent.
With an awareness of your true strengths you can fully capitalize on their power to generate value in the world. You are equipped to communicate this value to employers or clients who are seeking it and increase your chances of success in their career or business.
A lack of awareness of these important assets can reduce your ability to see when your role, team, project or organisation choices are affecting your ability to perform at and enjoy work. This lack also makes it harder to identify and position yourself for roles and environments that would you set up for success as well as translate interviews into job offers or new clients.
Identifying Your True Strengths Can Be a Challenge
High achievers are usually aware of many of their strengths. But some natural talents come so easily to them they don't see them as a strength. Or they don't see how they contribute to their peak performance. Sadly this can result in some of their true strengths being underutilized or even untapped completely.
As well as being unconscious of their strengths, high achievers can also mistake a skill they've mastered to perform well at a job as a true strength. True strengths can be leveraged effortlessly, while skill mastery requires focus and practice - and can sometimes be draining rather than motivating. Hence roles dependent on skills not rooted in one's true strengths require more energy and effort to perform well, as well as potentially being much less satisfying.
Identifying true strengths can also be challenging when a high achiever is in an environment that triggers their blockers and weakens or neutralizes those strengths. For example, someone with strengths in innovative thinking and visioning has the potential to help an organization become an industry trendsetter. However they could also possess the blockers of unrealistic goal setting and the inability to respond to challenges to their ideas without anxiety or frustration - both which can affect the power of those strengths.
Using those true strengths in an environment that plays to those blockers may result in those strengths being seen as blockers or weaknesses - and work against them generating desired results. If this person worked in a team, organization or culture that was risk averse, their innovative ideas would be less likely to be adopted. They may be seen as reckless and untrustworthy rather than an innovator. Without trusted advisors from whom they could calmly receive and internalize honest feedback, they could take an approach seen as 'overly creative' to an important project that could have disastrous consequences.
Impact of Not Using Your Personal Brand DNA® to Drive Your Choices
In this example, the lack of awareness of this person's true strengths and the environments in which they can use them could result in reduced performance, lack of advancement or even dismissal, as well as a loss of confidence in their ability to perform. This expat's choice to take on exciting work in another country could quickly turn from a dream to a nightmare.
But this isn't because they weren't equipped to be a top performer. It's simply because their choice of role and work environment - or the organization, project or culture in which they worked - inhibited their ability to leverage their true strengths and succeed by being their best self.
Hence when high achievers don't build their personal brand or value proposition around their true strengths and unique qualities but rather around mastered skills and qualities they associate with top performance, they are positioning themselves for less than ideal fit roles and environments that:
- don't leverage all their natural talents that drive their success
- may trigger their blockers and inhibit their ability to perform at their best
- may force them to struggle or work harder to meet objectives
- can drain them of energy and confidence in their abilities
- may allow them to accomplish great things but they will enjoy them less
- can have a very negative impact on their ability to advance or realize their goals
It's clear that the price for not using your true strengths or Personal Brand DNA® to guide your career or business choices can be high. Some might even say crippling for the normally high achieving expat professional, executive or consultant. And yet many seem willing to pay it. This is why there are millions of unfulfilled, unhappy, unengaged, under performing and unemployed people in the world right now.
Stand Out and Succeed By Being Your Best Self
In today's competitive global marketplace, you can't afford to jeopardize your performance with poor role and environment choices. Being able to compete with top talent requires demonstrating a history of results that comes with performing well at work.
By positioning yourself using your true strengths and unique qualities for best fit roles and environments, you will naturally stand out in a highly qualified global talent pool. Your true strengths and unique style will help you develop a compelling, differentiated message of value and give you a competitive edge over those competing for the same roles.
This approach will position you as the candidate of choice for the opportunities that allow you to perform at your best by being your best self.
Knowledge is Power and Helps You Optimize Your Choices
What if you could get mathematical measurements of your true strengths, risk levels in decision making and approach to problems using your unobservable critical thinking patterns? What if you could paint an accurate portrait of your ability to perform by avoiding the bias and inaccuracies of self-assessed behaviors and preferences? What if you could use that information to target roles and organizations with confidence knowing that by doing so you are maximizing your chances for professional satisfaction and performance?
My customized interpretation of the Your Personal Brand DNA® assessments can give you the clarity and confidence to make choices that work for you. With 20 years experience in professional, organizational and business development worldwide, my expertise in personal branding and extensive training with these assessments, I can help you build a portrait of best fit roles and environments.
I can help you get more clear about your true strengths, what drives you, how others experience you, and the real value and impact you can make. Together we can build metrics to guide your career and business choices now and for rest of your professional life.
How Will This Translate Into Choices that Will Work for Me?
Click on the bars below to learn more about how my interpretation of these powerful assessments that can help you be successful by being your best self.
- How will your interpretation help me build an international career?
- After our assessment debrief and analysis sessions, you'll have profiles of best fit roles and environments, a list of core personal brand assets, and specific, tactical guidance around how to engage with others to optimize your performance.
These profiles, lists and specific guidance can help you:- confidently make choices about how well you'll fit in any role or environment
- proactively pursue roles, projects and organizations in which you'll naturally thrive
- stop wasting time pursuing jobs and projects in which you have to work hard to perform
- start clarifying your personal brand to position you for best fit roles and environments
- take strategic action to improve how you manage, lead, communicate and perform
- optimize your international career or business choices and personal branding strategies to maximize your success abroad
- What will I learn from Your Personal Brand DNA® assessments?
- My customized interpretation of Your Personal Brand DNA® assessments will show you:
- the strengths of your strengths impacted by the strengths of your blockers
- the types of roles and environments in which you will naturally thrive
- your ability to make choices that lead to high performance as a manager or leader
- your unique approach to problems and opportunities
- how you prioritize and what you most driven to, or attracted by, at work
- the core elements of your personal brand and how you create value
- how people most often experience you and your behavioral style
- How are Your Personal Brand DNA® assessments unique?
- Your Personal Brand DNA® assessments are the only assessments that can measure a person's unobservable critical thinking patterns and ability to make good choices that lead to high levels of performance.
Other assessments such as Myers Briggs, Strengthfinders, 16PF and 360° tools ask a person to describe themselves and then predict strengths and performance based on patterns of those self-reported behaviors and preferences. They cannot measure a person's unobservable critical thinking pattern which drives their choices and in turn their performance like the Personal Brand DNA® assessments can.
Assessments based on self-reported observable behaviors and preferences alone cannot predict performance because:- Studies show bias significantly affects the accuracy of assessments based on self-reporting behaviors and preferences. Results can be affected by a personal's emotional or physical condition at the time of completing the assessment. Bias can also be added when people are unable to accurately assess themselves or report the behaviors and preferences they would like to have instead of those they actually do.
- Performing well by using behaviors or skills learned in order to do a job does NOT definitively reflect a person’s true strengths. True strengths are defined by one's natural ability to make choices that lead to optimum performance. People often confuse a strength with the ability to adapt or develop necessary behaviors or skills to perform well in a less than ideal fit job. This most often happens with high achievers - driven to do what it takes to perform well. Adapting creates stress and affects performance and job satisfaction.
- There are many behaviors that could express a single choice - especially across cultures. A manager may choose to motivate an under performing team by modeling the desired behavior, using inspiring words, or setting goals with undesirable consequences for failing to meet them. It's difficult to determine if it's an error in decision making or in their choice of behaviors used to express their decision that is why they fail to perform in any given situation. Behaviors can be adjusted to achieve desired results while the ability to make good decisions cannot.
- Generic lists of strengths and ideal work environments have limited value as a strength in one role or environment can work against someone in another - especially across cultures. For example, strengths of a good manager (tactical) are not necessarily the strengths of a good leader (strategic). And a manager with strengths in planning will perform differently when managing a group of engineers spread over 6 countries on a long term building project than when managing a team of medical professionals in an emergency room.
- Having a strength does not mean a person can always access or use it. Without knowing the strength of a person's blockers, it's extremely difficult to manage them so a person can actually leverage the power of their strengths to perform well. The ability of a person to leverage their strength of creative problem solving could be strongly impacted by a blocker in practical thinking. Their choice of roles and work environments will dictate whether that blocker would neutralize their strength or have little impact on their ability to use it to generate desired results.
- How were Your Personal Brand DNA® assessments developed and who uses them?
- These tools were developed using technology that is part of a ‘human performance system'. The science behind this technology is based in nobel peace prize nominated research and study into how the human mind makes decisions. With the ability to mathematically measure a person's thinking patterns and risk levels in decision making, these assessments can predict performance in a particular role and environment with accuracy and precision no other assessments can provide.
This ground-breaking technology has been enhanced by over 30 years of ongoing study, Harvard research, documented reliability testing and scientific validation. These assessments are currently being used in Fortune 500 companies and organizations worldwide to guide their hiring decisions and develop their current and future leaders. Some of these companies include AT&T, Ford, Goldman Sachs, IBM and The World Bank. - What have others said about how they benefitted from using the assessments?
- “What I’ve gotten out of the Personal Brand DNA program is much more than what I came in expecting. This work with Megan has made it clear that not only have I spent years not operating in a way that would tap into my natural strengths, I’ve actually been doing the exact opposite – I’ve been making choices that activate my blockers, leaving me into a constant place of struggle. I see now that my best-fit roles and environments are actually roles and environments that I had never considered.
I also realize that I don’t have to (and in many cases cannot) change myself – instead, my focus needs to be on developing strategies and habits around who I AM and who I AM NOT that will play to my strengths and mitigate my weaknesses.
The uniqueness of this program is really two-fold: (1) the depth and accuracy of the assessments and (2) the work you do with Megan around those results. These assessments are not a simple "personality test" that you can read look over and incorporate. Because of their comprehensive nature, it truly requires a trained eye and a tremendous amount of insight and experience to be able to not only interpret the results, but draw conclusions and corresponding actions from them.
The combination of the assessments and Megan’s keen insight painted an eerily accurate picture of me. They allowed me to see some of the patterns in my life that I had previously attributed to circumstance but that I clearly see are the results of a pattern of decision-making that I’ve been stuck in. And since that is the way I’d always made decisions, I couldn’t see the alternative. I now see that I have much more power in deciding how my life and career goes than I ever gave myself credit for.
This program also really forced me to challenge the conventional ways I’ve learned to deal with different situations, make decisions and communicate with people. Megan coached me through some difficult realizations in a way that is at the same time supportive and confronting. It is in those most difficult moments that her coaching really came through and made a huge difference for me.
Megan was focused and was able to keep me on track despite my greatest tendencies to wander. She was absolutely committed that I truly understand and can internalize the learning and for that, I am ever grateful to her. I would recommend Megan as a coach to anyone who is prepared to do the REAL work of looking what in your life and career is working for you and what is not."- Liza Shurik, Global Health Consultant, Booz Allen & Hamilton, U.S.
“Megan has proved to be a great coach for me bringing to the table advanced insight and clarity of mind. She skillfully combines different scientific methods into a unique 360 degree assessment that helped me bring to the surface creative thinking and solutions that were stuck deep in mind. She increases career success by strategically focusing on what candidates are TRULY good at and ENJOY doing. In this sense, her assessment gave me the right career edge which has helped leverage my unique strengths. After completing the assessment with Megan I feel empowered to take the next step on developing an action plan to achieve my professional goals."
- Luciana Jabur, Multicultural Marketing Consultant, Expat in the U.S.
"I had been working in East Africa for two years when I decided to start a business with the people I worked with. I stood in a hot, tiny room before 25 rural artisans and excitedly explained the idea of collaborating with them and introducing their talents to an international market where they had a chance to earn a reliable income in the near future. “Your life is different from ours. I need to make money today so I can feed my kids tonight,” was the first response I heard. My sales pitch fell flat and it left me trying to figure out where I went wrong.
This experience underscored to me just how important it is to truly understand the people I am trying to influence. I approached Megan about my desire to learn more about how to become a better leader in a growing business and she suggested that I take a couple of professional assessments that will essentially provide a window into how I think critically, approach problems, and make decisions in a business environment. I found it to be an incredibly powerful way to see how I am wired to perform in a leadership role. The analysis revealed from these assessments provided me with enormously beneficial insight into how I think as a manager. I was also given actionable information on how to improve my communication style in front of various audiences. Had I known this information earlier, I might have better understood that the rural artisans I talked with don’t have the luxury of planning for the future, they live in the now and the choices they make are influenced by the their immediate needs. With this insight I would have delivered my message in a way that they can relate to in their every day lives.
I believe that the more self-awareness I have, the better manager and leader I can be for the people I work with. My biggest take away from the assessments is that even though my intentions may be good, it is not always how people experience me and this can have a universal effect on crucial business relationships, from those in rural villages to the boardrooms in corporate America. These assessments have given me a better understanding of what drives me, what factors I place the most importance on when making decisions, and how to adapt to others’ preferred communication styles all while getting things done. All of which are part of building a strong foundation to becoming the best manager and leader I can be.
Megan is a valued resource for me as I work hard to sustain this venture with my business and design partner who is based in Africa while I remain in California to market the products throughout the US."- Sarah Dunigan, CEO, Songa Designs, Expat in Rwanda
What next?
If you'd like to use these assessments to help build your personal brand and/or optimize your international career and business choices, contact me to schedule an initial conversation.
Or to learn how I can help you become a highly visible, sought-after expert or leader and build a career or business abroad, please go to the Solutions for Today's Challenges page.