021: Joanna Bloor - Defining What You Want to Be Known For

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Thank you for having me.

Yeah, super. Well, so let's go right into kind of the story of how you got into this. You know, how did this come to be sure.

So it started, gosh, a little over five years ago when I was one of the tech executives at Pandora and at the time was known for building out ad technology stacks and how do you make all of that digital advertising stuff work? And I was invited to be part of a group of other tech executive women in the Bay Area to have a conversation around this idea of what do you want to be known for? Because what the group and one of the founders of this organization called High Power actually realized is that in conversations, in talking about executives. So people who are moving into really senior positions, so C3 positions or board member roles or things like that, that the title that you have or the company that you work for didn't actually really matter so much. It was more of what are you known for? And a little jokingly we coined it the Bob Effect. As we talked about this, we talked about the fact that when decisions are made at VC firms or at the board level or at the C suite, you are looking at teams and you say, what does this team need in the way of talent? What does this team need in the way of leadership? And the conversations today, because most of the people in these conversations are guys, we're having this conversation about this fictional person called Bob, who is the best IP litigator, or he's the guy who knows how to build a sales organization, or he's the guy who is known for really understanding certain industry. And this conversation that we were having was how women specifically really weren't doing an enormous amount of work around this idea of, well, what are you known for? And how do you think about, how do you articulate what you are known for? And we thought that that might be one of the reasons why women were not getting into the C suite and beyond. As I mentioned, this whole conversation started about five years ago for me and I spent a year with 12 other women talking about this idea and thinking about, well, how do you actually figure out what you want to be known for? And there were a couple of surprises in the process. The first one was how incredibly difficult it is for anybody. Man, woman, doesn't matter. And it doesn't actually matter what stage of your profession or your career you're in. How hard it is to actually articulate that for yourself. One of the most common answers I get when I go out and ask this question of people is, well, I'm really good at getting stuff done and I'm really good at connecting with people. And I go, wow, is that incredibly compelling? What is your value proposition there? So how do you actually articulate that in a compelling way? The other surprise that came out of the process was that once you have figured out what you want to be known for, the actual process of articulating that and explaining it through both your internal network so the people who know you and love you, but also your external network. Because in a world of social media and everybody writing op EDS on various different publications or something as simple as a blog or medium or something like that is actually work. And really looking at, if you think about the executives today that we admire, that almost in today's world, and especially in the technology space, that executives, in a strange sort of way, have become the new celebrities. And with that, a company needs to think about not only their own brand and what is the story their brand is telling, but what is the story their executive is telling. And you think about as an example, like Steve Jobs is a really dramatic example, but his personality was as tied to Apple as a company and what his brand was as the company and the products itself. You look at other examples just in the Bay Area, and Marc Benioff is described as the benevolent billionaire, which technically has nothing to do with CRM or supply chain software, which is what his company does, but is completely additive to. And one of, I think the most intriguing examples, especially as a woman executive, is Sheryl Sandberg, who in her case is not the CEO or the founder of the company, but is the coo. And her what is she known for? And I ask this question of lots of people as a use case is she's known for lean in. She's known for being an advocate for women, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that again, has nothing to do technically with Facebook as a brand and a product. And yet I don't think anyone would argue that her work and her curation of a brand for herself hasn't actually been additive to the company as a whole. Because people want to work for Facebook because they want to work with Sheryl. And so having that experience in talking these women five years ago and being genuinely transformed personally by the experience, and then starting to watch this play out in all levels of the organization from people who are really starting out and are saying, well, what is the value would I bring to a company all the way through to the C suite? Really got me intrigued by this question. And when I left Pandora a year and a half ago and said, well, okay, you've been thinking about this question. What do you want to be known for for now, 4ish years, I decided that this was going to be my calling and my mission. And I would actually build a whole philosophy around the question. I would be known as the woman who talks about what do you want to be known for? And so this is what here today.

That's awesome. So, well, you raised a whole world of things there, right?

That's a big question. It's a big, big question. Yeah. It always, like, everybody gets a little uncomfortable at the beginning when they first ask it.

Well, so first is to connect it into our world. Right. In the world of gazelle scaling up the Rockefeller habits, what do you want to be known for? Ties into a number of things in our 7 strat of strategy. And it ties into purpose and brand promises and core competencies, and then ties into words you own and. And a multitude of other things. But in the background of what you want to be known for is maybe a little bit of purpose. Certainly brand promises are things that we want to be known for. And of course we're always emphasizing three of them and core competencies. What you're actually really, really great at is right at the heart of what you're speaking to on the executive side. It's not as often that people that bhag and then words you own or figuring out things like keywords or core words that people would want to be known for and spring immediately to mind. That's a critical thing for many folks as well. Focusing in on that and through all of those things. I think that there's initially a certain anxiety on the part of many people of picking the thing and picking it wrong, like getting it wrong and then missing some opportunity by having selected something to be known for. And then the other thing is perhaps maybe not being able to figure it out or it being uninteresting. And so how do you deal with all that stuff?

Sure. Well, there's a lot there. You're right. So yes, there is a lot of anxiety about getting it wrong and I think also a lot of challenge around the But I'm more than just one thing. And you think about a corporate brand promise, you think about how complicated that is for a company or product and it's those same exercises that you go through with a company and organization around, well, so who is the audience you are trying to connect with and how do you want to connect with them and what is the conversation you want to have with them? And if you start to ask those same sorts of questions the way you do for any brand, quite frankly, you start to find those same connections happen at the human level. I think the other thing to consider especially around the anxiety of picking the wrong thing is you think about any major brand in America, especially those that have been around for several years. And I certainly hope that you and I will be around for many years moving forward. It's okay for those words to change. And I think about when I ask this question, well, what do you want to be known for? People really start to think, oh my God, what is this? That's going to be etched on my tombstone. And that's absolutely not the question I'm asking. It's what is it you want to be known for in this phase of life? And we often forget that as professionals we all go through major or sometimes minor but several career pivots throughout our lives. I think about myself personally. There was a time in my life that I was selling very high end swimwear in a store in Texas which is such a completely like what I was known for There was making women walk into a store, have to take most of their clothes off and wear a teeny, tiny piece of fabric and feel good about themselves all the way through to sitting down and have a conversation, gosh, less than 10 years later, about how do you use technology to accelerate the supply chain and advertising, buying? And you think about, that was the same person in the case of me, and yet I was known for something completely different along the way. And if you talk to anybody, you find that that happens. I think another really great example of that is that exercise that seems to be going all over social media, specifically Facebook at the moment, where people are like, what are your first seven jobs? And what I find intriguing about that is that there are all these crazy different jobs that we have. And so to sum all of that up on, like, how do you choose and how do you think about that? That it's really about, what do you want to be known for right now and in this future state? And because of, I think it's kind of boosted by the Internet and the ability to rebrand yourself, you can always try things on precise and change them as you move forward. And when I talk to people about this, I actually, when I go through the process with somebody, at the end of the exercise, I go, okay, now that we have figured out what your thing is, it's time to try it on. And I actually encourage people, part of the homework that they get is to go talk to five people that know and love them. So people who aren't going to. Who already have an emotional investment in you. And I say to them, you know, go talk to the best. Talk to them about what you want to be known for, and then ask them what they hear. And so not what is feedback. Give me feedback, because it is such a personal journey, but it's what are the words that are resonating with them? And then I ask them to call those Same people back 48 hours later and say, okay, what do you remember? And what they learn from that is what words are naturally almost sticky to you, which ones are genuine? Another word a lot of people use at the moment is authentic. Because it is a process of trying those on. And then it's continuing, continuing. Ask that question as you evolve as a person, as you evolve as a professional. Because we all do go through those phases in our career where we're like, well, hang on a second. I was that, and now I want to be something else. It's also really simple. I was talking to somebody the other day who I said, look, you just need to practice saying the word out loud. And they looked at me like, but I can't say this word. And I said, well, do me a favor. I said, spend the next week just going around and adding the word purple to as many sentences as you can. And then at the end of the week, pay attention to what has happened. And she came back to me afterwards, and she was like, oh, my God. People started to say, oh, you're the purple lady. And I said, incredibly powerful. Yes, words are incredibly powerful and can stick to you that easily. But she then went around and picked another color for the following week because I was like, look, try this on. See what happens. And, you know, she became orange later the next week. It's. It is a bit like you do think when you think about what do you want to be known for. It does feel very like, oh, my God, it's my legacy. But we are many dimensions, and so you can have.

It's malleable, right? It's changeable. You can play with it over time.

What has to be consistent, however, is that it has to be you and it has to be genuine, because people will sniff out something that just sounds cheesy and not you. If you go through the process. And this is, you know, when I talk to a lot of people, this is the thing that comes up a lot of, well, how do I make sure that I don't sound insincere? How do I make sure that I don't sound like I'm bragging about myself? And that's a bit of a challenge. It's a little like, you know, you think about when you see yourself in a photograph, you go, oh, my God, I don't want to look at that. It's that same process that we go through, right?

So I think that, I mean, when I'm working with someone on leadership development, right, and our core thing is the scaling up. We're working with the whole team and people, strategy, execution, and cash and the four decisions there. But through all of that are the leaders themselves. And there's often a primary leader, like the CEO, and then often there's a rising leader that we're working through, and they're trying to figure out some of that same stuff and find their voice, find their place in the whole thing and the way to speak it, and they struggle with that. So when I have someone preparing to give a talk, a key thing in a new domain or something like that, then I'll have them do the work out loud in the mirror, and then I'LL have them practice it. And then when they get hung up about being known for something, we'll do the same thing. I'll point out to them the need to just relax about it, that you can change it. It's not like this isn't the tombstone etching. This is a part of the. This is a place or a path along the whole process of life. And I think both those things are really helpful. Getting practice in saying them and getting them out and then making sure that you talk about authenticity. And I think that. And sincerity and what's genuine. And I think people could say a lot of stuff sincere that they really hope and wish for, but it's not really authentic or genuine because it lacks any vulnerability or any reality to ultimately becomes pretense. Right. Something that they're pretending, like playing apart. And if the opposite is really true, it's more useful to say, hey, I'm inspired by this. I'm strong, struggling with this, and I'm not there yet. Than it is to say, fake it till you make it.

Yeah. I mean, there's balance there, right? Because I also, like, I also fundamentally believe that the whole concept of being believed in and believing in what you're saying, and, you know, I think about the. The morning rituals we have where we're like, okay, I am this kind of person, and this is who I want to be, certainly have impact. But you're right, it's absolutely the. I'm trying this on for size. How does this look? How does this feel? And I read an article just the other day that correlated the more successful you are with something like this, whatever your particular talent might be, the stronger the self doubt is. I was particularly inspired the other day. I was listening to an interview with Tim Gunn, the Personality on. And I'm completely forgetting the name of the show. It'll come to me later on Broadway and Tim Gunn.

You mean the Project Runway show?

Yes. Thank you. Yes. Project Monday. What I found surprising is you think about who Tim Dunn is today, and he's this full personality. Like, we could all very clearly state who Tim Gunn is known for. And yet what I learned from listening to him is, first, the entire Project Runway transformation didn't happen until he was 50. So you think about, oh, well, you know, what do you want to be known for is just for people who are building their profession. Well, this is somebody who, you know, as somebody who's tapping up against 50 themselves. I was like, oh, gosh, is it too late? So he went through this huge transformation, and then he Also confessed that his entire look as a brand visually, because it's not just about the words, it's about how do you represent yourself with visual elements. The whole beautiful suit with the pocket square and everything like that was actually not created by him. It was created by somebody else who said you are not being yourself and being real and being authentic visually and you need to dress in a certain way for what it is you want to do. And how when he first started wearing the pocket squares and the whole matching outfits and looking as sharp as he does today, he said he actually felt very uncomfortable and very not good with himself. And I thought, well, a. I thought that was a really incredibly vulnerable moment to share with the audience. But you look at somebody who is fantastically successful and you think, gosh, they are there immediately. And we all go through this. How do I try on not only my visual look, but my verbal look for size and get comfortable with who I am as you move forward.

So there's two really old, really old books now that I recommend continually to people in this area. One of them is what color is your parachute? And that's. Have you read the book before?

I haven't, but I have heard about it, yes.

So it's just an old, it's a really old book. It's been updated a number of times. It's a massive bestseller and it really has. You examine your life and think about what are all the different elements that got you to this point. So at whatever stage of life you're in, figuring out what have you done, what about it have you loved and so on. And when working with a CEO on their thing, I'll have similar things like what places did you love and what did you hate and what bosses did you love and what did you hate and what jobs did you love and what did you hate? And through those we can sort of figure out some personal brand values and. And they start to point to some of that. And then the other book is very forward looking and that's Wishcraft. And people are reluctant, the same way that they are on the other one, to actually wish for something for a whole variety of reasons, like afraid they might not get it and they don't want to say it out loud and afraid somebody will laugh at them for what they want and so on. But when you're trying to figure out where you're going to take your business and your career, thinking about what do you really want and what would you wish for if you were unconstrained is. Is helpful in pointing to what you want to be known for, what you want to go to work on, what you want to highlight at this stage. And the other thing I think that's really helpful is getting a longer term. So if you ask me what do I want to be known for this year, it's very constraining, right. And I think a lot about how to accomplish it and so on. But if you ask me what do I want to accomplish in 20 years, I'm like, anything seems possible, right? I'm way.

It's also equally paralyzing when anything is possible. Yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan, so I'm a big fan of Witchcraft. I'm familiar with that, with that publication as well. And you know, if I, you know, I think about the conversations I have with people again around this question and that fear of judgment is probably the most paralyzing part of this process. I frequently, I've kind of lost count of the amount of times people have said, well, what will people say about this? And what I throw out to you and to your audience, because it is a very, very sounded fear. I absolutely have it myself almost every day. We would not be human without it is if you think about, if you are able to clearly articulate who you are, what your unique skill set, value proposition, whatever it is you want to call it, but where you are amazing, then the people, and I am careful with this language, but the people who want to buy you. So whether it is a potential employer, vendor, partner, all of the people who want to interact with you because we, you know, business is as much as getting stuff done as it is about connecting. But the people who want to connect with you know what they are getting. And you think about, you know, if you buy a product, it doesn't matter what it is and it doesn't meet expectations, you are far more disappointed in its value than if you buy a product and you know what you're getting. Now if you buy a product and you are delighted by the experience and you get more than you were expecting, then the opposite happens. And for people specifically, because of this fear of judgment, because of this, somebody used a fantastic phrase once and said, you know, it's this itty bitty shitty committee, that little person that sits on your shoulder and says, you are not good enough. If you allow that voice to mellow who you are, what you're about and where your contribution is to this world, then people aren't able to actually understand what you can do. And I talked to not only people in the C suite about how do they build a voice around? What do they want to be known for, both internally, externally, but how that can actually accelerate work within their own company. And you think about the role of CEO and how hard it is to understand what talent you have in your organization, because there's a lot of people and you have to remember all of this. But if you knew, oh, this is a person who is fantastic at storytelling, or this is the person who can see process in 3D in their head. So if there's a complicated process we need to work out, here's the right person to plug in there, or I need to build a team that has these three elements to solve a particular problem. Here are the people who are really not only great at it, but great at collaborating. It just makes that entire process much, much easier. But if we show up just as all I get stuff done, then it's a bit of a guessing game on how do you make things work. So not only do I believe it's an important thing for executives to understand, but I think it's an important thing for everybody in the organization to understand so that we can all do our best work. And you talk about the future, really getting to a little bit of the futurist. You think about how artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, all of the technology that is knocking on our door as a human being in the workplace, we are going to be collaborating with machinery. And if your work is just doing a robot is going to take over or a robot's going to do your job for you. And so how do you think about who you are and what you do is, I think, going to become more important as more technology seems to automate and or collaborate with us with work? And so how are we evolving as people as technology seems to rise up? And now I'm getting super nerdy and futurist, but absolutely this is why I'm starting now with this conversation, because I think it is going to shift as the next wave of technology starts to descend.

Well, I think it shows up differently in different places. There are skills that we pick right at different points in life and things that we enjoy doing, things that we get good at doing, things we find fulfilling. Those are all different things. And then how we leverage them in each setting, each stage of life. I'd be willing to bet there are aspects of that first job in sewing swimwear that you bring into the work that you do. If you're getting people comfortable trying on clothing and feeling good about themselves, getting people comfortable, trying on new ways of expressing themselves and feeling good about themselves in the process. Sounds like a lot of the same kind of thing. Helping people to figure out what it is that makes them happy, what makes them proud, what they're great at, and then express that. And I think that applies not only to our senior execs, but also to the companies they represent. What is your company actually good at? And then that shows up into our brand promises and our values and everything else. And it's very distinct from the kind of boilerplate stuff that sometimes people throw up and say, oh, yeah, we're all about integrity in this place. Right. But if you're a company like Enron and Enron had integrity as one of the things that they put on their list of company values. Nobody else's definition of integrity would include Enron on its list of examples. But if you said winning is everything, right. Well, they succeeded at that. Of course they. Well, they ultimately failed as a business. But embodying that winning, and for somebody to win, somebody else has to lose would be another aspect of that whole thing. But figuring out who you actually are would make a real difference in that and what its expression means. Today, we've covered a lot of things, but I think people have enough stuff to begin with. And, and at the heart of it, it sounds like getting out there and talking to people around you, trying on new ways of expressing things, new words, seeing how they sound, seeing how they resonate, interviewing customers and coworkers and bosses and people like that about who you are individually and who your company is and so on. Finding out why people chose you, why people came to work with you. All of that are ways of revealing those things and then picking the heart of the few ideas that. That you really want to focus on. Sounds like at the core of your process.

Yep, it is. I pinch myself every day. I get to talk to a lot of people about why they matter and then how to tell it to the world. And it's a wonderful thing to do because once they figure it out, I only ever see success across the board. Everybody's happier.

Awesome. So we're going to put links to Amplify Lab and your social stuff so people can get in touch with you and learn more and. And talk to you about that kind of work. And I really appreciate your being on the show with us today.

Thank you for having me. Enjoy the conversation.

Thanks so much. Joanna Bloor. We'll talk to you. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our scoreboard software powered by Align. It's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill Gates one more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.