“Treat your résumé as your professional brochure!” was a response I recently gave a client during one of our telephone coaching calls. He wanted coaching around marketing himself in this phenomenally difficult economy. His objective was to powerfully promote himself as a senior leader. This more often than not comes forward as a request from many of my clients who are either doing well within their current role and wish to move higher in their organization, anticipating eventually leaving on their own volition, anxious about their organization engaging in future downsizing or have recently departed their organization.

Similar to when one is contemplating a product purchase, most decision makers want to quickly access a concise summary of the key benefits, qualilities and potential added value of the product or service being considered. The key decision making information is typically available in hardcopy or electronic brochure formats. “This is no different for you” I shared with my client. “You’re the product! Just like other high end products or services that are presented to potential buyers in a powerful and impactful way, so it is that you need to market and present yourself. Would it be beneficial for you to create just such a powerful brochure to market and present yourself? Do you want to substantively increase your chances of having your ‘professional brochure’ put on to the ‘yes pile’ as opposed to the ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ applicant piles?” The answer was a quick and unreserved yes.

As my client and I coached in real-time over the phone, I asked him a series of specific questions to advance his foregoing agenda. From these we quickly developed a draft version of his chronological résumé. My contribution focused on being a ‘process expert and coach’ in service of his developing this critically important professional marketing document. My client’s focus was clearly being the ‘content expert’. Within about two hours he had a substantive document that he could quickly move forward with. What remained was his applying final content touches and being prepared to come back with his finished document so that we could then quickly create a ‘Functional’ version at our following coaching session should he consider exploring opportunities in other industries.

Recalling our conversation, the following are few of the key points shared with him as we went through the process. Some folks spend weeks or months attempting to do just this.

• Keep the Document Short: Keep the résumé short and to the point. No more than 3 pages for senior professionals and executives.
• Maximize White Space: Don’t fool with the margins! Make it an absolute breeze for the reader to go through and see the key points . . . bingo, bango, bongo and over to the ‘yes’ pile.
• Create An Overarching Statement: After inserting the name and contact information, tell them exactly who you are professionally, what key areas of expertise you bring with you, where these came from and how you will add value to the organization once on board. This is the most critical part of your résumé!
• Apply Bob’s Rule of Two: Other than your overarching statement at the top, never ever go beyond two lines in any other part of your résumé . . . keep it simple, powerful and very very easy read!
• Keep It Results Oriented: Your résumé should scream results and high contribution to potential employers! Otherwise, why hire you? Use the CAR approach to describe each of your key achievements (Challenge/Action/Results).
• Finish With A Bang!: Now that you’ve told them that you not only can and will do the job, don’t hesitate to now share with them that you also fit in nicely with the way they do business by describing your personal qualities and core personal competencies. This is the icing on the cake that nudges the decision maker in the right direction.
• Judiciously Use Color: Thoughtfully apply the use of color, particularly in key headings, that can be highly effective in making your résumé stick out from others and increase its chances of ending up in the ‘yes’ applicant pile.
• Create A Range of Alternative Résumés: Be prepared to develop a range of alternative résumés for you to pick and choose from depending on each presenting opportunity. Never use the same one for every opportunity that arises!

These are some of the key considerations when developing your professional brochure.  Hopefully, you will find the foregoing both intriguing and in service of your future success and fulfillment.

Let me leave a question with you. “What do you now have to say no to in the development of your personal brochure in order for a potential employer to say ‘yes’?”

Other related concerns you may have to contend with might involve your supporting marketing correspondence, focused market research, powerful strategic networking, highly competent interviewing, nimbly handling negotiations, and assuring successful value-added leadership transition into the next role. But foregive me for I digress . . . those are possible future blogs. Are they of potential interest?

Bill Fitzgerald, Principal with FitzDrake Search, is like a brother to me. Our friendship started when we partnered through Pepperdine University’s Master of Science in Organization Development degree back in the late eighties and has continued to grow from there. One of the brightest and most pragmatic people I know, Bill has a long list of writings and publications behind him. One of these is a synopsis of a recent article titled ‘What It Means To Lead’ that he has graciously allowed us to include on our blog. Enjoy!

“Now more than ever our country, our institutions and our communities yearn for exceptional leadership. Whether it’s the failing banking system, the rising cost of health care, shrinking state budgets or the fact that we are fighting two wars, the solutions we seek will require acts of leadership from many. 

This article presents a very pragmatic way to think about leadership that can empower many to lead. Everything we read in the popular press tells us that exceptional leaders are in short supply. A way to address this shortage is to have a clear picture of what we need and expect from our leaders. This will make hiring leaders easier and will also provide a road map for developing future leaders. With this as our guide, we may actually find there are more leaders among us than we realize!

To understand what it means to be a leader, it helps to define the specific tasks, or the “work” required to be successful as a leader. The “work” associated with being an effective leader can be referred to as the “7 C’s. The 7 C’s are highly interrelated and provide great insight into how effective leaders spend their time and attention.

1. Establish Clarity

Clarity of purpose is typically part of an overall strategy. An effective leader crafts a clear statement of purpose that defines a reason for existence that goes far beyond self interest or economic gain. It is a statement that speaks to a higher level calling and comes from the heart, not the head. It is a statement that resonates with customers and consumers and motivates employees to excel. 

2. Gain Commitment

Once there is clarity, the challenge facing all leaders is how to build commitment. Commitment cannot be legislated if what you seek is intellectual and emotional engagement. It involves being informed, involved, making a difference and having skin in the game.

3. Ensure Coordination

Coordination is about getting key stakeholders all pulling in the same direction. Effective leaders understand the systemic nature of organizations and know how to leverage their full potential by ensuring alignment and being “hands off”.

4. Build Capacity

Building capacity is how you create the capability to deliver results on a sustained basis. This notion of Capacity comes from the late Joel Henning and Jim Meselko. This involves building business literacy, having access to key information and resources, having choice and choosing accountability.

5. Facilitate Change

Effective leaders understand the dynamics associated with change and how to manage change to achieve their desired outcomes. They do this by building alliances and reducing resistance.

6. Demonstrate Confidence

Effective leaders demonstrate a confidence in themselves which gets expressed as respect for those around them. This is based on a set of beliefs and assumptions about people and organizations that are apparent in all of their interactions. These include a true belief in people, operate from a presumption of good will, make courageous choices, acting fully out of integrity, share enthusiasm about possibilities.

7. Apply Competence 

Competence as described here is not usually considered in discussions of leadership. Competence is the application of whatever technical or business skills are necessary to achieve results. First is context, wherein effective leaders bring or quickly acquire business, technical or industry knowledge that enables them to be effective. Second is the fuel, that is highly effective leaders also have a passion for results. 

The work associated with being an effective leader can be daunting. Being a leader is a demanding role that requires hard work and sacrifice. Stepping into a leadership role is a choice one should make with eyes wide open. Those who have already made this choice can use the 7 C’s to assess their own performance and identify areas to improve upon. Anyone in the position of needing to hire a leader can use the 7 C’s to assess potential and make a more informed decision. In either case, the 7 C’s outline a way of behaving that can lead us to the outcomes we hope to achieve.”

Thank you Bill for these powerful insights. If you truly take the foregoing to heart there is no doubt that you will be better able to lead your organization through these extremely trying times. Your people and organization are counting on you for just this! The question I want to leave with you is “What do I need to say no to in order to say yes to being an even more powerful leader?”.

Here’s a fascinating blog by one of the world’s leaders in large-scale real-time organization change, Jake Jacobs with some profound lessons for us all that I just have to share with you. Enjoy!

“My buddy and colleague Bob Benwick recently posted a blog entry about a talk he had many years ago with my mentor Kathie Dannemiller. We were at an EDS large scale event and Bob walked up to Kathie and asked her whether the group was where we expected them to be at some point during the event. As was her loveable (and point blank) style, Kathie turned to Bob and said, “…they are exactly where they should be! It’s irrelevant where we think they should be! It’s where they are now that we need to work with. They will move forward at a speed that works for them. So what’s your next question?”

Bob says he learned a valuable lesson that day. Having worked with Kathie for a while, I had learned the same lesson years earlier. There’s a joke I heard years ago. The consultant shows up at the wrong venue, works the entire day with the wrong client….and never knows the difference!

That’s an extreme case. But how often do we get caught up with whether we’re “on track” with the agenda? After 20-plus years of doing this work I can’t ever remember actually being on time. A while back I was facilitating a meeting with a colleague. We were two hours behind on the agenda with one hour left in the meeting. My colleague was a little worried. She asked, “What are we going to do to catch up?” I looked at her somewhat puzzled and responded, “What do you mean?” Now she REALLY looked worried! I imagine she was thinking, “So first this guy can’t follow an agenda. Now he can’t even tell time!”

She was looking down at the typed agenda, back at me, and then at her watch. She actually had to do this several times (I’ll admit it took me a short while to figure out what was going on), then I realized, she was measuring our progress against the written agenda, not what was happening in the group. Having learned my lesson from Kathie long ago, I wasn’t worried at all. We were two hours behind and I was able to tell time (a relief to both my colleague, me, and any other clients I’ll ever work with!). The two hours we were behind were only “real” when compared to what we had typed up as the agenda a couple of weeks earlier. The group was right on track with the work they needed to be doing. In fact (possibly miraculously) we even ended the meeting 15 minutes early.

Barbara Bunker, another mentor of mine, put this same lesson a different way. She used to say, “Structure is helpful. It gives you something to deviate from.” The lesson in all of this? Make sure you have a solid structure for any meeting you’re leading. At the same time remember the purpose you’re aiming to achieve. And most of all, pay attention to the group you’re working with. As Kathie said, “….they (always) are where they should be!”

Thank you Jake. Clearly Kathy and Barbara have had a profound impact on all those who have had the wonderful opportunity to connect with these two giants in the field of organization development, be they clients or OD consultants. A simple question I’ll leave with you is “Do you know the difference?”

Recently I had the opportunity to lunch and celebrate the New Year with a former professor of mine, Marilyn Hamilton, whom I met while doing my graduate work. I have  enormous respect for Marilyn and realized I was absolutely pumped following our lunch together. She has become a very special person in my life and a valued ‘advisor’.

Following two years of hard work Marilyn recently completed and published an intriguing book! She enthusiastically shared her exciting research encompassing a ‘whole system view’ of creating productive cities that had enormous potential for addressing the diverse needs of the today’s diverse populations. The result was publication of an exceptionally worthy and forward thinking book entitled ‘Integral Cities, Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive’ . Powerfully aligned with the field of urban studies, Marilyn mentioned, “It’s been extremely interesting to hear the many unsolicited and exciting responses to my book and how its application and meaning have actually extended far beyond what my intent had initially been” (listen Marilyn.)

I’ve read with delight an interview that Marilyn had engaged in while promoting her book. It was obvious from the content of the interview that the application of her model was totally applicable to a diversity of today’s public and private sector organizations. Using two of her favorite expressions, Marilyn and I engaged in our rich conversation around conformity enforcers and diversity generators. What great terms! She had been able to capture the blinding glimpse of the obvious around how readily the bee community and their various roles truly show up in all organizations.

Marilyn made note of the fact that the energy of conformity enforcers, that she claims make up 90 % of a hive community, quickly diminishes over the course of each season as the bees gather resources from the same flower patch. She explained that the inner judges of a hive, measure the return and withhold and/or reallocate limited and precious fuel as pollen amounts decrease. Adjusting the budget mid-stream so to speak? She went on to explain that as the conformity enforcers eventually accept the need to change, they make the necessary shift to new resources and adjust to the new findings of the diversity generators….a new flower patch. The outcome for the hive……. new found energy!  The roles of both the conformity enforcers and diversity generators are vital to the survival of the hive….and to any business community for that matter!  Presto, explaining the behavior of many an organization in today’s world of white water change and transition.

I’ve found the ‘hive’ metaphor an exciting prism to view organizational leadership from with huge possibilities for further exploration and study. Clearly, bees must be doing something right to coexist in a container the size of my shoulder bag and yet readily adapt to change!

How readily do the conformity enforcers in your organization embrace the work of your diversity generators? How critical in today’s world is the role of diversity generators who hold enormous potential for revitalizing the energy of others in each and every organization trying to survive and prosper? I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings. Go for it!