This sign made me laugh last week – up in the hills around Hawick Southern Scotland.
So why is this relevant? Maybe a bit tenuous but it set me thinking about why and what you must do to promote you and your team. Particularly with your internal audience. There is no magic fairy doing it for you.
To be fair to me, not so tenuous, is that I often advise teams (as I was doing recently), about how they can promote the great stuff they are doing, or intend to do and enhance co-operation with others. That is how they can influence their Directors/Non-Execs and, more widely, across the organisation, to persuade and achieve their objectives.
Why is it important to do some of your own public relations?
- To build trust: Demonstrate a deep understanding of your subject and control the narrative about how it helps others achieve their aims and make clear you aren’t going to ‘stitch’ them!
- To increase visibility: Makes you known to decision-makers and potential collaborators.
- To position you and your team as experts: Establishes you and the team as a thought leaders, which can lead to new opportunities and influence.
- To enhance cooperation: In my experience it is rare that you can succeed in isolation. Almost certainly, you will need partnership and cooperation with other internal teams, who will also have competing priorities. So being visible and ‘getting out there’ enhances understanding and going back to the first point, builds trust.
- To ensure that you are relevant: You need to make sure that you are recognised as a key component in achieving your organisation’s strategic and operational objectives. If you don’t do that, then there will be obvious questions about what value you add!
I am not suggesting that you do a Trump and talk about how bigly good you are but there are ways to influence and enhance your profile, without showing off and being over the top. Here’s a few ideas:
- Find out more about who you work with: What makes them tick? What spins their props? Don’t make assumptions – really find out about them. You might be surprised!
- Tell your story as well: Make sure that there is a consistent narrative on what your key motivations are. Your professional and personal story will create connection. Honestly – this works.
- Network internally: Meetings – online – LinkedIn. Engage the people you want to persuade. Connect with them on LinkedIn. You will find out about them and vice versa.
- Present with impact. Think about the audience: How do you hook them in with the first 20 secs of a presentation? What’s the emotional connection? How do you make it relevant to them? What can you do for them to make their life easier and potentially enhance their reputation?
There’s much more that you can do and if the above sparks interest and you want to chat more about how I can help you and your team, then get in touch.
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