Wednesday’s Smart Shibboleths #6: Establish Your Personal Credentials Quickly with A Useful Professional Profile

The Purpose of A Personal/Professional Profile

One of the most important steps in crisis work is quickly establishing a connection with senior people. Many years ago I developed a personal/professional profile which briefly and succinctly explains: who I am, what I do, how I work, and what I believe. It has always been a conversation starter. Each topic leads to me sharing relevant recent experiences and talking about next possible steps for the client’s problem. It generates questions you need to hear and promptly respond.

Establishing connections at any level, but especially at senior levels, is up to you and the sooner you accomplish it, the more quickly serious work can begin. Fail to connect early makes progress difficult, maybe even impossible.

My Profile

Purpose:	Through helping resolve the significant troubles of others, find and do what will be the most important things I will ever do in my career and life.
Vision/Aspiration:	To be an authentic trusted Communicator, Coach, Counselor and Strategic Thinker; to be the first call when leaders and managers face their toughest, touchiest, most sensitive and devastating situations. And the last call before taking action.
Mission:	To be the table, truly strategic; promptly finding those exceptionally achievable, ethical, honorable, powerful, and sensible ingredients for solutions to the most challenging leadership, management, and organizational problems.
Disciplines:	Trustability; Verbal clarity; Management Perspective/sensitivity; Findable, Gettable, Doable, Achievable, Knowable approaches; Tomorrow focused; Thoughtful, incremental advice; Intuition-Pattern Sensitivity; lifelong learning; Teach, Coach, Counsel to inspire and expand Management and leadership influence and success.
Values:	Constructive approaches; Curiosity; Honesty; Inconsistency*; Positivity; Pragmatism; Promptness; Truthfulness.
Principles:	Candor; Communicate Promptly-Intentionally; Destiny Management; Empathy/Compassion/Apology; Engagement; Openness; Responsiveness; Transparency; Truthfulness.
Passion:	Help all staff functions i.e. PR, HR, Law, Security, Strategic planning, etc. be more effective, have critical access, influence, and impact; be sought after earlier and have more productive successful impact and influence on events.

This connection step is so important that if a technique like this one fails to work for you, it’s likely best to help your client find someone they can connect and work with. Be prepared to get out of the way.

Remember, in true crises, where victims are caused, usually only the boss’ job is in jeopardy. They know it. Early connections must happen fast. That means to always act in the client’s best interest rather than yours.

*Inconsistency is the greatest hallmark of strategy and a strategist. It can also be one of the greatest roadblocks to executive decision-making. Most solutions to serious problems involve intentionally thinking differently about results, decisions, and outcomes.

Remember, every senior person believes that they are a better communicator than anybody, even you. They also believe that their communication skills are why they have the job they have. Remember, too, if all you have is information about how the news media works and how reporters behave, most senior people have made up their minds about these topics already. Focus on finding useful, appropriate, and often inconsistent options for them to choose to develop the solutions their problems require.