Brand Me: Digging Deeper Pt3
Back in February I had a catch up with David Royston-Lee co-author of Brand You to discuss the next phase of digging deeper into my own person brand.
The discussion back then got me thinking quite a lot about what I wanted to do with both my career and personal life. The conversations covered a few things that were very important to me such as what I enjoy doing, what I am good at doing and what I don’t enjoy doing. We also discussed work life balance and that made me realise that my balance was all wrong. I was spending so much time commuting, working, thinking about work that I was missing out on my little ones being little.
My Goals
So, I came away and set myself some goals, amongst them:
1. Get a full time SQL role before the end of 2012
2. Become a SQL Contractor before the end of 2017
3. Buy my dream car (mini cooper)
4. Become a Consultant working 3 days and gardening 2 days by the end of 2022
I have achieved goals 1 and 2, and am picking up my dream car in a couple of weeks, so these will improve my work life balance in the immediate term.
Big Thanks
All this would have never have happened without the Leadership course delivered by Margo at Bute Ltd as I think that it was one of the most important things I have ever done in my life. It has helped my assertiveness, confidence and communication which helped tremendously during the interview processes to say the least.
Brand Me: Digging Deeper Pt2
Back in February I had a catch up with David Royston-Lee co-author of Brand You to discuss the next phase of digging deeper into my own person brand.
He described the next step as “The Exploration Phase” and during this phase I need to look into the things that are important to me and to find out more about my goals, such as my aspiration to work in a gardening position.
The questions that I need to ask myself
- What exactly are my values?
- What do I want from my physical environment; location, space, light, heat?
- What opportunities are open to me within my current role; coaching, learning?
- What opportunities are available to me outside in gardening?
- What opportunities are available to me in SQL Server; expert, contracting, consultant?
Next Steps
The next thing that I am doing now is looking into how I can get involved with gardening schemes in my local community. I feel that I need to “Explore” this to find out whether I would really like to have a career in gardening by trying different things.
I am currently looking to contact my local wildlife conservation group and getting my daughter (Half-Pint) involved as well so that we can hopefully enjoy it together.
I also plan to find a course of two in horticulture and take time out from work to attend.
Basically, I have to stop talking about my dream to become a gardener and find out whether it is actually what I really want at all.
Watch this space.
Brand Me: Digging Deeper
Earlier this month, I met up with David Royston-Lee (DRL) to discuss my online presentation about his and John Purkiss‘s book Brand You. We had arranged to meet to discuss digging deeper into the section of my digital presentation Brand Me which i created online at Prezi.com
The meeting was very thought provoking and inspiring and at the time I probably did more listening than talking which is a trait or a reflective learner such as myself.
I came away with my head buzzing about our conversation and how I could/should be looking to do more of the things that I am good at and enjoy.
At the time of my presentation and completion of the first exercise of the book, I identified My Talents as follows:
- Desire to improve myself
- Performing within a team
- Taking on challenges
- Leading Others
But what do these words actually mean?
Originally, when I arrived at these statements (which were pointers to the spoken content of my presentation), I had identified a trend in things I am good at or achieved , but upon deeper reflection, these statements are vague and don’t give insight and clarity to myself. They read like a few buzz words and phrases that I pulled from a hat, and don’t give the “What” or the “How”, so require elaboration.
My Task is to look at each statement that I have made and examine it to identify with more clarity what make it ring true. It maybe that what I have written is an incorrect interpretation of My Talents and so these are liable to change, in fact, as I continue to develop as a person I believe that it can and should change.
What are the achievements that I am proud of?
- Winning trophies for football
- Individual
- Team
- Pushing myself to study for and pass my SQL Server exams.
- Gardening
- Landscaping, Designing, Creating, Nurturing, Learning , doing
- DIY
- Design, Painting & Decorating, Using Tools, Preparation for a good finish, doing
- Coaching Others
- Taking charge of the structure of football training
- Teaching colleagues how to do things for themselves
- Designing
- Layouts for web pages
- Diagrams for learning
- Colour schemes for my home garden
What are the Themes running through these Achievements?
- Hard Work
- Learning
- Coaching
- Attention to Detail
- Creativity
- Structure
You would have to be fortunate to get success without working hard and even though I could easily sit back and wait for fortune to shine on me , I don’t believe that it will unless I put in the hard graft.
I like to learn new skills so tat I can put them into practice to help me achieve success and I have demonstrated this by studying for qualifications, researching new or different ways of doing things and applying these to my work to come up with the best solution.
I am rather creative by nature and I enjoy using colours and changing layouts. Whether this be in my home, garden or in the workplace. I have taught myself techniques in design that I can apply to my job (CSS) which I use often in the design and structure of web pages. When I am writing code I like it to be functional, reusable, well laid out, and logical in its structure.
I like to lead by example as well as coaching others so that they can perform tasks for themselves. I believe that coaching others towards finding their own solutions, will free up my own time to do more of the things that I enjoy.
What I enjoy doing
When speaking with David we talked about understanding what the things that I enjoy doing are and how I can go about doing more of them and less of the things I don’t. We discussed how that when you are doing things that you enjoy, you get a spark about you, become self-motivated and energise yourself and those around you.
We spoke about how it is good to try and challenge yourself to practice something that you enjoy doing but are not good at, so that this can then become something that you are good at instead.
Looking at the themes that ran through my talents I would say the at the things that I enjoy doing
Are learning, being creative, and coaching others.
Life-Work Balance
Life-Work Balance was something that reoccurred during our chat, whereby, one should make more time for family and friends and to involve them in the pursuits you enjoy as well. David felt, and I agree with him, that if you enjoy life outside of work, you can bring this positivity into your work life and vice versa. If you are doing something that makes you happy and breeds a sense of accomplishment at work, then this means that you arrive home happy to.
The next stage of this project is an exploration phase where i shall dig into My Values amongst other things.
Inside Brand Me: (3) Identifying My Unique Combination
This is the third insight into the content of my online presentation Brand Me – Rob Bagley whereby I try to explain how i arrived at my unique combination.
What is my Unique Combination?
For this exercise in the book I had to think about my life, my experience and myskills that make me unique.
I picked a short description to the sectors I have worked in, what I provide, details of relevant qualifications and some information that people may not know about me.
Putting these together gave me my Unique Combination below
My Unique Combination
- 15 years experience in Reinsurance, Share Registration and Communication sectors.
- Finding quick solutions to big problems
- MCTS in SQL Server 2008 Admin
- MCTS in SQL Server 2008 Development
- Ability to pick up new skills
- Manager of a football team at 24
- I like making and creating things from wood, cardboard and paper
Brand You | The best-selling guide to building your personal brand
Inside Brand Me: (2) Identifying My Values
Identify Your Values
To discover what values that matter to me were, I had to firstly think of 20 people that I admire who could be family, famous, fictional, dead or alive.
I admittedly struggled to fill this list at first, but the more I thought about one person I triggered of a list of those others with similar traits.
Once I had my list I had to think about what is was I admired about them, which gave me my 5 values that matter:
- Determination
- Leadership
- Professionalism
- Talent
- Dedication
I was a bit of a fan of the popular card game Top Trumps when I was younger and once I had my 5 values that matter, thought that these would be great to use as the basis of a visual element of my presentation, rating each of the famous people that I admire, and to engage the Activist learning styles I provided all the attendees with a colour copy of the Top Trumps for them to cut out and keep.
People That I Admire
Tony Adams
What I really admire about him is that he was always a good leader of his team who hit rock bottom with his alcohol addiction, but managed to turn his life completely around and also his playing style to rise back to the top for his club and country. He also setup the Sporting Chance foundation to help other sportsman to battle their addictions.
What epitomised his change was the goal he scored against Everton in 1998 on the final day of the season, where surged forward from the back to score a cracker of a goal.
http://www.sportingchanceclinic.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNaE2H_w-4
Alan Titchmarsh
Being a very keen gardener I really admire the talent, skill and passion for gardening that Alan brings.
http://www.alantitchmarsh.com/
Sir Bruce Forsyth
I just really admire Bruce for still growing strong , presenting Strictly Come Dancing despite his advancing years.
His quality continues to shine through.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Forsyth
Eddie Kidd
I just cannot begin to put into words how incredible his completion of the London Marathon 2011 was in spite of being a paraplegic after a motorcycle accident in 1994.
Gene Hunt
I love the way the Gene Hunt inspires his changes and does whatever it takes to get the job done.
https://twitter.com/#!/genehunt
Jonny Wilkinson
Jonny Wilkinson was a consummate professional who practice and practices his talents (mainly kicking) and about which the England Rugby Team formed their successful World Cup campaign in 2003.
In the final against Australia in Australia his won the match with a drop kick in the final minutes of the match.
http://www.jonnywilkinson.com/
Macho Man Randy Savage
Macho Man was the coolest wrestler during my formative and impressionable years with his flamboyance and incredible persona.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Savage
Oscar Pistorius
I think that it is truly amazing how Ocsar has battled for the right to compete against able bodied athlete with the aid of his carbon fibre legs. He has overcome much red tape such as “having an unfair advantage” of his false legs to be able to compete. In 2011 he competed at the World Athletic Championships a won a silver medal in the 4×400 relay.
John Prescott
Purely for the way that he punched back at a man who threw an egg at him whilst out campaigning for the forthcoming elections at the time.
https://twitter.com/#!/johnprescott
HRH The Queen
I admire the way that she always maintains a dignified stance and her commitment to the country.
http://www.royal.gov.uk/hmthequeen/hmthequeen.aspx
Michael Vaughn
I have never been into cricket but I admire the way that under the leadership of Michael Vaughn, the England cricket team transformed from a oft derided bunch of players to winning the Ashes in 2005 for the first time since 1987.
The Ashes of 2005 seemed to take on the excitement of a football tournament and became a really thrilling series.
http://www.michaelvaughan.net/
Brand You | The best-selling guide to building your personal brand
Inside Brand Me: (1) Identifying My Talents
Identifying My Talents
This is the first insight into the content of my online presentation Brand Me – Rob Bagley whereby I try to explain how i arrived at my list of talents.
One of the very first exercises in the book asks the reader to look at their past achievements and experiences that they were particularly proud of.
As I drew up my list I noticed that it was very heavily influenced by my sporting successes and leadership as well as gaining qualifications by applying myself to self-study.
I next had to analyse what it was about these achievements that could be identified as a tangible talents and from my list I identified my main talents to be:
- Desire to Improve myself
- Performing within a team
- Taking on challenges
- Leading others
Brand You | The best-selling guide to building your personal brand
Brand Me
I have just finished my presentation based on a fantastic book called “Brand You” by John Purkiss and David Roysten-Lee and thankfully it went okay.
Thanks to you all for your feedback to any surveys I may have emailed or texted to you in the last couple of months, as I could not have done it without your help.
Here is the link to my online presentation Brand Me – Rob Bagley
Really big Thanks must go to Margo at Bute Ltd for a fantastic job of delivering the training and of course John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee for writing the fantastic book Brand You | The best-selling guide to building your personal brand which was the basis of my presenation.
Am also feeling the love for www.prezi.com the online presentation software company which I used to add the style to my substance.
I am really gonna miss the training now that it has ended as it has been one of the best things I have ever done, but don’t see this as an ending, just the start of bigger and better things…. Time will tell if I crash on my arse! 😉
I shall gradually blog the contents of my presentation over the coming weeks so look out for it.
robbagley 