Every great brand has its own brand identity. Apple is known for their innovation, Louis Vuitton is known for their quality, BMW is known for their precision. What is your brand identity? What are you known for? If you only have 60 seconds to make a great impression in a networking function, what three words would you like people to use to describe you afterwards? And is the impression you are trying to make relevant to your next career step?

For example, if you have been a lawyer for 15 years and you are looking to transition into a Career Consultant position, do you know the difference between these two brand identities? How different and in what way and why? For instance, your previous brand identity could be “highly intellectual and straightforward”, and in your new role although these qualities are still important, the brand identity might become “approachable and empowering”.

Or if you have been a marketing manager for last 10 years and want to move up to the Director level, have you analysed what is required for you to get there besides the knowledge and tenure? Have you identified what image and language you should start to adopt so you have a higher likelihood to be promoted? For instance, your previous brand identity could be “creative and hands on”, and the new brand identity could be “strategic and analytical”.

Every classical marketer has been trained to use Brand metrics, 4P strategy and SWOT analysis as a starting point to devise a branding and marketing plan. Let’s have a look how you can use similar approach to create a personal brand and marketing plan for yourself?

The most basic brand metrics are brand awareness, image and consideration. Brand awareness in other words, means among the targeted groups you have chosen, how well known are you? Brand image represents the brand identity I mentioned previously. One way to test whether what you are trying to portray matches people’s perception is to ask for feedback. Brand consideration tells you the % of people would consider you for the next job or promotion. Sometimes you might have very high awareness but very low consideration rate. When that happens, you perhaps either are targeting the wrong group or making wrong impressions.

4P represents product, promotion, place and price.  In career planning, you are the product. What is your promotional strategy? There are some great tools available such as professional network site LinkedIn can serve as your promotional channel. Place means distribution, besides self-promotion, who else can promote you? Perhaps it is time to look for some people who are willing to support and champion you among their networks. Price is your personal worth. Salary is an obvious way to measure your personal worth.

Sometimes women don’t negotiate salary hard enough as we view the opportunity and learning itself more important. However if you don’t negotiate the right price, then you are underselling yourself and that may create an impression that you are not as marketable. If you are looking for a very steep pay rise, then it is very important for you to make sure you can speak and present yourself at that level, you might want to do some role plays with more senior people to get a feel first.

For some people, you might at the stage of your life that you would like to take a career break and look for jobs with less pay and less demands, same principles apply, you need to adjust your brand image. Otherwise, you will always end up getting higher pay and more demanding roles.

SWOT represents strengths, weakness, opportunity and threats. For every position and profession you are going for, it is important to do a customized SWOT analysis. Let’s explore one at the time. When you love doing something you are good at, that something becomes your strength. If you are good at something you don’t enjoy, that is just a skill. If you love doing something but you are not very good at, that is just an interest. Only when interest and skill overlap, it becomes your strength. Weakness could mean your skill gap or personal flaws that might prevent you from achieving your potential.

Based on strength-based positive psychology, you will become a more productive and fulfilling person if you are fully aware of your strength and use them as often as you can. It is lot easier for human beings to excel at what we are already good at than eliminate our weakness, so while being aware of our weakness is necessary, you perhaps want to spend at least 80% of your energy in maximizing your strengths.

In addition to the strengths and weaknesses self-assessment, it is equally important to be aware of what external opportunities and threats are. This awareness will place you in a much more advantageous position in an ever changing marketplace. For example, do you know which industry sectors are booming in next 12 months? What skills might become less important moving forward? What qualifications and knowledge will be in most demand in next 2 years?

Finally, what is your brand value? Is what you are doing now or in the future aligned with your intrinsic value? When we try to strive for goals that are aligned with our real value, not only we will have a higher chance to achieve the goal, but also feel more satisfied and have a higher level of wellbeing both psychologically and physically. By nature, we human beings are goal organisms; it means that we constantly set goals for ourselves. Many people work hard towards their goals, only to realise it is a “Hollow Victory”. So before you set off to conquer your next career goal, ask yourself “what is my value? Is this really important to me both short-term and long-term? Am I really doing this for myself?”

Yu Dan Shi is the founder of SuccessWe International www.successwe.com – an innovative organisation specialising in personal development, career management, developing human potential, and building Passionate and High-Performance individuals, teams and organisations. Yu Dan had a successful 15-year corporate career in marketing, sales, and general management in both Australia and Asia.  She held senior executive positions within several Fortune 500 companies. Yu Dan has an MBA degree and additional qualifications in Coaching Psychology, Marketing and Computer Science. Yu Dan also chairs Australia Computer Association Women’s Board in NSW. Yu Dan has coached hundreds of professionals, business owners, executives and teams. Yu Dan is fluent in both English and Chinese. She lives in Sydney and is the mother of 2 school-aged children

The role of the Business Coach is to coach business owners to improve their business. The business coach needs to be committed to motivate and empower their clients in achieving the optimum performance. Business coaching helps owners of small and medium sized businesses think outside the box and navigate their way through any challenging situation.

From the feedbacks we get from our clients, the benefits gained by business owners who have worked with our business coaching consultants include: 

• More time focusing on business priorities
• Increased clarity on goals and values
• Increased self-awareness to unleash the client’s true potential
• Reduced stress
• Improved work/life balance
• Increased leadership or management skills
• Improved knowledge on sales, marketing, business system and strategic planning
• Ability to grow and expand client’s business faster

Studies have shown that coaching used in conjunction with training can make the training up to 4 times more effective as coaching involves specific goal setting, collaborative problem solving, practice, feedback, supervisory involvement, evaluation of end results etc.

Fundamentally, compared to many forms of training and consulting, coaching can deliver greater results yet at a more affordable price. And more importantly it is tailor made to suit individual business needs and conducted in an honest, trustworthy and motivating environment.

Resiliency in brief is the ability to bounce back from extraordinary hardship and adversity. It is a sign of strong willpower and positive attitude.

Looking back the history, you will find that many great men and women faced enormous obstacles in their life yet they overcame the challenges and became a better, wiser and stronger person. Nelson Mandela, Hellen Keller, Abraham Lincoln, all of these people encountered unbelievable hardship yet they were never resentful towards these dark moments in their lives, in quite contrary, they credit their adversity as the building blocks to their future success.

Greg Werner once said, “The road to your championship will not be a smooth, wide and easily travelled freeway. No, great accomplishments are never realized without first having to endure steep climbs, hard falls and sharp turns. The key to your success is perseverance and focus. Keep your focus on that which you desire to accomplish, your championship, and continually discover ways to, and ways not to, achieve your goals. Fall down and/or get knocked down 10 times and get back up 11…, and in so doing learn, grow and move closer to your championship.”

The same principle applies to our professional life. The recent global economic crisis certainly has made many organisations and people feel vulnerable. This is when possessing quality such as resiliency will actually carry people through this difficult time.

Think back your own career, did you have setbacks? How did you deal with it? Did you feel angry and unfairly treated? Did you blame yourself or? Did you spend a great deal of time in analyzing the situation and were trapped in that negative state of mind for months or years? OR did you move on quickly and put all your energy in moving towards the new direction and your new goals? Most of us have a huge reluctance to change. We would like to preserve the status quo and stay within our comfort zone. But the world is changing fast. The current climate is the time when people who are successful move ahead because they grasp opportunities and are more adaptable to change.

Dr. Spencer Johnson wrote in his international best selling book “Who Moved My Cheese” that “The quicker you let go of your old cheese. The sooner you find new cheese.”

Reading through many great books written by the world’s best leaders, you will find that when they personally face setbacks in their career and personal life, one consistent quality they possess is the resiliency. Being resilient means being confident and have a faith in yourself and your ability to re-built and reach new goals again and again.

The resiliency topic is very close to my heart, as I personally had to overcome a few adversities and put resiliency into practice throughout my life. I was born in a remote village outside Shanghai, China. I had an under-privileged childhood but I cherish that memory very much as I would have never become the positive and grateful person I am today without those experiences. My condition was not as bad as what you have seen from the Slumdog Millionaire, but pretty harsh still. For instance, I never owned a toy in my entire childhood, and I had to study under an oil lamp until age of 7. My wonderful mother worked 16 hours a day every day and she only made A$4 per month to raise a family of four.

My parents had to work very long hours, so from age of 3 or 4 years old, I had to become self-reliant, it is not unusual of me walking around and fetching things for myself in the public without adult supervision. I started Year 1 at age of 4 and would walk a long journey to and from school everyday by myself no matter how harsh the weather conditions were. Missing meals are just norm. In summer holidays, from age of 6, I would pack myself a bag and travel several hours on buses to go to visit my aunty in a different city on my own. Human beings can adapt to change very quickly if we have got no other choices left and if we have got no fear. Children are fearless. Human beings only become resistant to change if we start to become fearful or start to over-analyze the situations like the mice “Hem” and “Haw” in the “Who Moved My Cheese” book.

I was told early on by my parents that education and resiliency is the only two things I needed in order to have a better life outside my hometown. When I graduated from one of the top universities in China at 17 years of age, life became a lot more enjoyable. I was offered excellent graduate jobs in best companies. At the same time, both my parents had also overcome their adversity and achieved great success in their professions. My father became a world renowned math professor while my mother completed her Master degree in her 50s and became a highly respected math teacher.

I started to lead a very comfortable lifestyle, I could have chosen to stay in that comfort zone forever. But I wanted to learn more about the world and other culture. So at 21, knowing nobody and with little money, I left a well-paid managerial job in Shanghai and moved to Australia to study my MBA degree. I worked several labour jobs to support myself and was elected as the International Student Representative upon graduation. Interestingly, the keynote speech I made at graduation ceremony was “Overcoming Adversity through Resiliency”.

Like many overseas professionals, I faced great challenges with my initial job search in Australia. After graduating from my MBA degree, it took me a year to find a job, and I had to take a few steps back in my career and took on a telephone sales role at Dell in 1999 despite the fact I had already had four years management experience in China and two highly regarded degrees. However, I didn’t feel resentful or unfairly treated. I stayed positive and resilient which eventually saw myself bridge the cultural gap and progressed rapidly in IT sector. In less than 2 years, Dell promoted me to the Head of a business unit for Asia Pacific. Since then, I held several senior executive and management positions within a few leading technology companies.

Looking back, I wasn’t a natural sales person and didn’t love the job, but I threw myself into the job with enthusiasm nevertheless and consistently became a top performer. I also constantly reminded myself all the positive things being a sales person like getting to know the customers and competitors first hand etc. I also shared my long-term career goal with my manager and my General Manager from Day 1. I proactively asked what development areas I needed to focus on and seeked out mentor. I ended up working for a senior director voluntarily for 6 months and took on a-year long accent correction course. I didn’t know when I would be given a more suitable role but I never once doubted myself.

Working as a company director while raising two young children was another challenge I faced in my career. Especially given the fact that I and my husband, who also worked in a full-time corporate role, had limited family support locally as all grandparents lived inter-city or overseas. I again used similar approach, I reinforced my career goal and my personal value, I proactively seeked out mentors and any help I could find, I identified the areas I could no longer contribute due to family commitment but compensated it with the new skillsets I have acquired. I now have given up my lucrative corporate career to pursue my long-term passion in coaching. With an aim to assist individuals and organizations to reach their greatest potential, I since embarked on a very exciting and rewarding venture.

So how can you build up the quality of resilience?
1. Accept the reality and move on
2. Create a long-term vision and stay focused on working towards that
3. Be proactive – seek out mentor, coach, ask for advice, read great books
4. Believe in yourself even when nobody else does, be self-reliant
5. Find a meaning in everything you do even in a job you dislike, look hard enough, you will always find something positive
6. Be open-minded and adaptable, let go of old beliefs
7. Surround yourself with positive and supportive people and network

The most important thing is to recognise that change is a way of life and start to learn to enjoy change, treat every change as an opportunity not an obstacle.

Yu Dan Shi is the founder of SucessWe International – an innovative coaching and training organisation specialising in personal development, career management, building Passionate and High-Performance individuals, teams and organisations. Before founding SuccessWe, Yu Dan had a successful 15-year corporate career in both Australia and Asia. She held senior executive and management positions within several Fortune 500 companies. Yu Dan was the ANZ Chief Marketing Officer for Lenovo, as well as a Dell executive for Asia Pacific and Japan. Yu Dan has an MBA degree and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Yu Dan is a trained coach with the Institute of Executive Coaching.  Yu Dan also chairs Australia Computer Association Women’s Board in NSW. Since 2001, Yu Dan has coached hundreds of professionals, business owners, executives and teams. Yu Dan is fluent in both English and Chinese. She lives in Sydney and is the mother of 2 school-aged children.

Although the first phase of the battle has been won on the twin fronts of equality in educational opportunities and workforce participation, the barriers to women’s career development have persisted.

Three recent reports from: McKinsey & Co UK, The European Diversity Commission & The Institute for Employment Studies may shed some light on why this is so.

In Australia, women now experience equal or greater representation in the fields of law, economics and business. However, at the senior executive level this figure falls to an average of 10.7%, dwindling further to only 2% of those sitting in the CEO’s chair.

We begin our careers with a promising gender balance of roughly 50:50, only to face a 2:98 gender imbalance at the end. In Australia only 54% of companies have at least 1 female executive manager, (compared with 60% in the UK and 85% in the USA).

Internationally, the key factors preventing women rising to the top of their professions are extremely similar. Four common barriers are; male dominated workplaces, childcare issues, managing family commitments, and a lack of suitable development opportunities.

Through neglecting women’s development Australia is cultivating the skills shortage. By only selecting from 50% of the talent pool Australian companies are diluting the quality of their senior management teams. It’s such a shame our typical response is to import foreign senior executives at a premium price, when there are so many eligible female candidates languishing in junior positions.

Why do we continue to make huge investments in a world class education system, producing a plethora of highly qualified female graduates, only to underutilise them in our workforce?

Companies with a higher proportion of women in their top management have better financial performance. This is evidenced through 36% higher stock price growth, 10% higher return on growth equity and nearly double the EBIT growth compared to the industry average.

The McKinsey Report also detailed hugely improved performances for companies with higher levels of female executives. In these companies corporate brand image was 69% stronger, employee motivation 58% higher and customer satisfaction 57% better.

When you combine the financial data with the human capital data what emerges is a very strong argument for developing women in business.

None of this is news. It was 1998 when the first McKinsey report was released stating companies with more women in senior roles performed better, so why has change been so slow?

The piece of the puzzle I find most disturbing is that 54% of senior female middle managers were childless, compared to only 29% of their male counterparts. The Harvard Business School Review confirms that the higher women climb professionally the fewer children they have, but the reverse is true for men
This is a sensitive topic to discuss, because interpreted superficially it may seem to reinforce the old stereotype that women need to make a choice between career and family; an ultimatum society does not push upon men.

Look a bit closer though, and all it really indicates is that women need to take greater control of managing their business development so that they can fulfil their potential both professionally and personally.

Yu Dan Shi is the founder of SucessWe International – an innovative coaching and training organisation specialising in personal development, career management, building Passionate and High-Performance individuals, teams and organisations. Before founding SuccessWe, Yu Dan had a successful 15-year corporate career in both Australia and Asia. She held senior executive and management positions within several Fortune 500 companies. Yu Dan was the ANZ Chief Marketing Officer for Lenovo, as well as a Dell executive for Asia Pacific and Japan. Yu Dan has an MBA degree and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Yu Dan is a trained coach with the Institute of Executive Coaching.  Yu Dan also chairs Australia Computer Association Women’s Board in NSW. Since 2001, Yu Dan has coached hundreds of professionals, business owners, executives and teams. Yu Dan is fluent in both English and Chinese. She lives in Sydney and is the mother of 2 school-aged children.