Unforgettable Presence (eBook)

Get Seen, Gain Influence, and Catapult Your Career

Lorraine K. Lee (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
299 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-28173-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Selected as a Next Big Idea Club Must Read

Are you an ambitious hard worker and high-achiever-but feeling stuck, unseen, and struggling to move up in your career?

Being great at your job isn't enough anymore. In today's competitive workplace, ambitious professionals need to master both how and where they show up if they want to stand out and be recognized.

Lorraine K. Lee knows this journey firsthand. As a shy, overlooked introvert who became a sought-after keynote speaker, she discovered that success comes not from working harder, but from being intentional about your professional presence. Through her role as a founding editor at LinkedIn and work with Fortune 500 companies, she's helped millions of professionals develop an intentional, powerful presence that takes them from invisible to unforgettable.

Drawing from research-backed principles, personal anecdotes, and insights from interviews with dozens of industry leaders, including bestselling author Daniel Pink and Radical Candor's Kim Scott, Unforgettable Presence teaches you how to:

• Master virtual presence using proven frameworks for standing out in today's workplace
• Deliver impactful presentations with confidence and authority
• Develop executive presence at any career stage
• Leverage LinkedIn to stay top-of-mind and be recognized for your expertise
• Transform your team's presence and impact as a leader
• Give and receive feedback that inspires change
• Lead meetings that your teammates don't dread

This guide introduces practical frameworks to help you build influence and be seen as a leader, and gives you concrete tools to increase your impact immediately. You'll learn to communicate with confidence, build strategic relationships, and advocate for yourself and your team effectively.

Whether you're an introvert seeking greater visibility or a leader looking to amplify your team's impact, Unforgettable Presence provides the proven frameworks and practices to ensure you're remembered for all the right reasons. It's time to take control of your career trajectory by mastering both how and where you show up so that you can create a presence that makes you truly unforgettable.

Textauszug

Chapter 1
Crafting Your Career Brand

Before we dive into the tactical career advice and frameworks, it's important that we're first thinking smartly about our careers.

To do that, we need to talk about a phrase that makes many people cringe: “personal brand.”

I understand why people don't like it. It can feel self‐promotional, and like you're putting on a fake persona. It might seem like it’s only something for social media influencers or someone trying to sell something. Clients have told me that they believe a personal brand is something reserved for people who are shameless about marketing themselves.

Here's the thing: what if I told you that you already have a personal brand?

In fact, we all do. Your brand is your reputation and what others say about you when your name comes up in conversation. It's the adjectives and accomplishments they associate with you when deciding whether to put you up for promotion. It's whether they even know you exist.

Your brand is your story, the quick summary of what you offer other people. It tells people how you can help them and why they should want to work with you. It tells your colleagues what they can depend on you for and what makes you unique.

Being thoughtful about your brand is not about being self‐centered. It's not a way for you to trick people or make you sound more important than you are. It's a shorthand for other people to understand how you can help them and what makes you uniquely you.

Your personal brand can also be thought of as your career brand: it's your reputation at work. It helps people quickly understand the value that you offer and what it's like to work with you. It shapes important decisions like whether you should be part of a key project, how to share important feedback with you, or even who gets that promotion.

“Everything I do can impact my broader image: from a single line in an Instagram post to running into fans at my local dive bar,” says Natalie Marshall, the content creator and advisor better known as Corporate Natalie. “I do feel like every move I make has the power to alter my public image, and how I carry myself is vital.”

Developing an intentional career brand helps you influence what people say about you when you're not there. As the saying goes, “Your reputation precedes you.”

You can choose two paths: take the time to craft your brand and control your story or leave it to chance and let others do it for you.

Not convinced that your career brand is that important? Let me share a story about how my reputation created visibility and opportunity for me.

▪ ▪ ▪

I had been packing for an international trip when I heard the ping go off. The LinkedIn News team was getting ready to launch its first‐ever Top Companies feature, and the team was under a tight deadline—with a ton of work still to be done thanks to a finicky new website platform.

The project lead was asked by his boss to choose someone to help him bring the project to the finish line. The person he chose? Me. I wasn't anywhere near the most experienced nor the most convenient (I was the youngest person on the team and would have to fly cross‐country to New York), but my reputation as someone who could be depended on had spoken for itself. I quickly packed a separate suitcase ready to take on the challenge.

I landed in New York, and we quickly got to work uploading text and photos, copyediting, and tackling whatever last‐minute fire drills popped up. I worked late into the evenings and was back in the office before the sun rose. Thankfully, we got it done.

On the day of the launch, munching on celebratory snacks, I reflected on what got me there. It was my brand, even though I hadn't recognized it at the time. People knew me as someone who was prepared, reliable, and calm under pressure.

This illustrates what Daniel Pink, author of five New York Times bestsellers, shared with me about how important simply doing good work is for building your brand. “I think the best way to build your own brand is just to do really, really good work all the time. I think that that is 80% of it. I'm not naive enough to think that's all that it is, but I really do think that that is 80% of it.”

For most of you reading this book, you have that 80% locked down. It's that critical and nuanced 20% that can be the most challenging but remains an essential piece to ensuring you're seen as a leader. This is what we'll continue to tackle throughout this book.

The Mindset Shift: How to Become the CEO of Your Own Career

Many of us move through our careers believing certain truths. For example, “I will get promoted after three years because I will have paid my dues,” or “My boss will remember my goals and do everything they can to help me get there.” It's not hard to understand why: as we go through our school years, we're told what to do by authority figures in order to succeed. When we enter the working world, it can be easy to assume that there'd be at least some sort of clear path forward.

In reality, it's more like a roller coaster—full of exciting highs, unexpected drops, and sharp turns that you can't always see coming. While a great manager can certainly be a guiding force (and there is plenty of advice in this book for how managers can support their direct reports), you will ultimately care the most about your own career and be the one most invested in achieving the goals you've set out for yourself. In other words, you must think of yourself as the CEO of your own career.

When you adopt this attitude, you become responsible for your professional development and the opportunities you create for yourself. You set your own vision for your success by setting clear goals, making informed decisions, and advocating for yourself. It all comes down to you—and that should be an exciting feeling!

Here are just a few of the ways you can shift your mindset:

• Before: Hard work alone will pay off.
• After: If no one sees my work, it will be like I didn't do it. I need to actively share my accomplishments.

• Before: My network will grow naturally.
• After: I need to make sure I'm actively building relationships, not just when I need something.

• Before: Feedback comes during annual reviews.
• After: Feedback should be continuous if I want to grow faster.

• Before: Promotions and raises happen with enough time.
• After: I need to advocate for myself at every opportunity.

Bringing the outlook of a CEO to my career changed how I interact with people on a day‐to‐day basis. It made me proactive instead of passively letting things happen to me. It made me think more strategically about my career by being more vocal about my goals and intentional with building relationships. I began looking at company metrics and thinking about how my work connected to the bottom line. It boosted my confidence to feel more in control, and it ultimately put me in the driver's seat of my career. It allowed me to take charge of my professional presence.

How to Share Your Accomplishments Without Bragging

Most of us downplay our accomplishments to a fault. Don't get me wrong, humility is a good quality—but it's important to your career advancement, your team, and your company leaders that you learn how to talk about your successes.

If you're feeling uncomfortable vocalizing your work, think about different ways to frame the information by using these strategies:

• Share learnings or wins that others can benefit from. By doing this, you're helping them learn faster and avoid mistakes. At Prezi, I published a weekly newsletter highlighting the work from my team. I'd often have data scientists and engineers I rarely worked with reach out with ideas or resources after reading it.
• Present work grounded in data and facts that align with the company's bottom line. If you've positively impacted a company's bottom line, leadership will want to know. Bring the information to them in an easy‐to‐digest way. No one can argue with cold, hard facts!
• Use collaborative language like “we” and “us.” When you do this, you're seen as more of a leader1,2 (and if you use more “I” language, you're seen as more junior). It's a simple adjustment with powerful results. In that same weekly newsletter, a majority of the newsletter was taken up highlighting my team, with a few updates from myself. I believe a great leader lifts others up, and in the end, their successes are your successes, too.

If you're not sure how to communicate with the right tone, ask someone you trust for feedback. At LinkedIn, I would ask my managers to review emails before I sent them out to make sure I was framing things strategically and in a helpful way. Learning how to share your work is a skill unto itself, so be patient with yourself as you learn it.

How This Shows Up for Underrepresented Groups

For those coming from an underrepresented group,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.4.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Bewerbung / Karriere
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management
• Schlagworte: Business Communication • Career Advancement • Career Branding • career growth • leadership skills • Management tips • mid-career professionals • Personal Branding • professional development • teamwork strategies • virtual presence • workplace communication
• ISBN-10: 1-394-28173-0 / 1394281730
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-28173-2 / 9781394281732