Boost Confidence and Build Your Professional Brand with Intentionality

In this episode, I discuss why intentionality is crucial to boosting confidence and shaping your career. Through mindset exercises and introspective reflection, listeners are encouraged to define their professional brand and embrace intentionality. Also in this episode: 

• How relying solely on external validation hinders personal growth.
• Why the concepts of clarity of purpose, consistent messaging, and cultivating relationships, are keys to your intentionality. 
• Three steps to build intentionality and your professional brand.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

Hey, I'm Jill Griffin. Welcome back to the Career Refresh podcast. Today I'm talking about intentionality. Intentionality is like a little hidden gem and we often overlook it until we realize that it has enormous value in shaping our careers. When I was thinking about writing this episode and I was reflecting on my own journey and my thoughts around intentionality, I found it really funny how I navigated through the early stages of my life education, career without truly understanding concepts of intentions. I know it sounds so funny now, but that's how it went.

Speaker 1: 1:27

So, growing up in a very structured environment for me, like Catholic school had a lot of structure, rigor, focus, with an emphasis on discipline and I don't mean physical discipline, I mean just sort of like the discipline to get things done. And you may have experienced this too if you grew up in a similar environment that, whether it was your schooling or your home environment that created a lot of structure with an emphasis on focus. And you may realize that when you stop and think, that kind of structure has a lot of benefits, especially when you're young, but it's also, at a certain point, stops serving you because it shields you from the need to pause and consider your own intentions and to think for yourself, because something else is always doing it for you. And this is really what I realized that, as my life unfolded and presented many opportunities and challenges, that external structure that once guided me was no longer there. So, all of a sudden, it was like this vacuum of uncertainty and choice. And what should I do? And as a young professional, I didn't understand, like, what shifted here? What's going? What is it? Why isn't this working right?

Speaker 1: 2:42

So what I come to realize is that when we solely rely on external sources for motivation and direction, it's not sustainable. Motivations, values, opinions, confidence, all of those things. When it comes from external sources and not ourselves, we're really going to struggle with the level of uncertainty and, friends, when our sense of self depends on others, we become reliant and there's a constant need for external validation. Right, this is a lot when we hear about people wondering around self-confidence or imposter syndrome. Right, they're thinking about have I heard what I needed to hear? Has someone given me input that I need to get? Because they're so used to getting it outside of ourselves and we don't really teach people how to do it for themselves until, frankly, you enter into a career or an experience where, all of a sudden you're like, ah, I need help, right?

Speaker 1: 3:38

We don't often teach children this and this idea to have someone constantly helping us, you know what to think, how to act, how to respond. It really shields us from difficulties and inhibits our ability to develop self-trust and confidence and inhibits our ability to develop self-trust and confidence. This is the concept you may have heard of preparing the child for the path and not the path for the child. You want to prepare the child for the path, not curate everything that everything's perfect for the child, and unfortunately, many caretakers do this today. And when you remove adversity from a child, then the child doesn't learn how to trust themselves or build confidence. Now, when you combine this with real world experiences and the velocity of change and as you're growing up, you can understand why this would be so hard without having a clear sense of self. And listen, this is just what we did.

Speaker 1: 4:34

The gift today is that we get to do it differently and we get to teach the young people around us how to think about things, to manage their mind and to how to do it differently. So we're now thinking independently. Individuals become really passive and dependent on others for direction, and you've probably have seen this at times in your workplace or within certain teams or departments, you're like what's going on over there or where a senior executive. At one point I heard them say about a particular department that they're a sea of producers and that wasn't a compliment, right that they could produce something, but they weren't able to think. And sometimes we need both. Sometimes we need people just to chop wood and carry water and get it done, and other times we need people to pause and really think through a strategic solution to the particular problem in front of us.

Speaker 1: 5:22

And this is where the idea of confidence and intentionality comes in. It's obvious that we need to build confidence. So how do you do it effectively? And one way, like I said, is intentionality. So first you want to think about clarity of purpose. This is where you define your goals and values. You're not your title, you're not your job, but that's another episode. You can navigate your professional journey with purpose and intentionality when you are clear about your strengths and values. This clarity builds confidence.

Speaker 1: 5:54

The next thing I want to tell you is that consistent messaging is key, whether it's internally, meaning your mind, you're telling yourself, or externally, you're telling others. Consistency of communication is essential when we spend a significant amount of time thinking about what others should do and how others should respond. We need to put that direction and spotlight on ourselves. We should invest equal effort in determining our own intentional responses, and that consistent messaging is going to build a strong professional brand that others can rely upon. And guess what? That helps your confidence. The next is cultivating relationships. Strong relationships can help support your goals and you can be in reciprocity and help others support their goals. The pandemic taught us the importance of connections, underscoring that the intentional networking and strengthening of our relationships with others really helps support our professional brand. I've spoken to many college graduates who graduated during that time, in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, and they didn't have the community. They had the university community, but then they left that community and went into the workplace. They didn't have that and that really impacted their ways of growing, learning the system, learning how to work within an organization and being able to deliver confidently on their work.

Speaker 1: 7:16

So I'm going to give you some homework. Grab that notes app. First, spend time in positive visualization. Right, you spend a lot of time in negative visualization, because that's what we do. You're human. It's a negative bias. Your brain is doing what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to protect you, but I want you to think what do you want your professional brand to represent? Pick one strength, one skill and one mantra. Right, we need those reps, we need those thoughts. That's what I mean by mantra. We need the thought. That's like you know what I'm really good at doing this. We want that kind of thought, that mantra. The next thing I want you to do is I want you to take that skill, that strength, and I want you to do what I call an MSA on your professional brand.

Speaker 1: 8:06

That's monk, scientist and artist. So I want you to ask yourself what would your inner monk do? What would the version of yourself who is at peace and attuned to your preferences and desires say about who you are as a professional brand and what you want to do with intentionality? Next, what would the scientist inside of you do? What data or information might that scientist need in order for you to build your intentionality and your confidence? And lastly, what would the artist inside you do? What creative exercises might they do to free up your thinking? How might they find a creative way to intentionally express themselves? What would happen this week if you got really quiet, tapped into your internal guidance and asked your internal scientist, artist and monk what's best for you, instead of consulting the usual suspects.

Speaker 1: 9:07

If there's a gap between where you are and where you want to go, think about what you need to do differently in order to close that gap. And as we navigate the evolving work landscape and shift away from traditional office settings, it's crucial to recognize the impact that physical structure and external motivation may have had on your success. If, in order to continue to be successful, you need to develop relationships, think about where you need to bring in those close relationships and being intentional so that you can thrive in any environment and friends. Who is helping you with your career strategy? Who is helping you navigate the complexities of the workplace? I'd be honored to help you, and you could read more about how that's possible in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 9:57

Friends, I'd love to hear from you about how that's possible in the show notes. Friends, I'd love to hear from you. Comment on any of my socials, dm me or email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom and if you like this episode, friends, please give a rate and review. It really does help. It really does help get the word out to other people who may also benefit from this content. So, until next time, embrace possibility, stay intentional, inspired and kind.