From, “Am I worth it,” to “I am worth it.”

Earlier this month I had the good fortune of being invited to address cohorts of professionals, students and entrepreneurs on the ‘use’ of the personal brand as a tool for career advancement and business growth.

In the process of unpacking these conversations as a part of self-reflection, I found that almost always, what came up, either as a pointed question that was queried of me, or organically in the flow of the conversation, was clarifications on ones' #strengths and #capability. As a believer that the personal brand must be held by ones’ innate capabilities, that the interactions across each of the different fora, ‘sailed’ into the realm of capabilities is of no surprise. 

I address capability in the context of competitive advantage.  What differentiates you from another professional who holds the same (or similar) designation, in a similar industry, with similar qualifications and experience?  

The question is: What is your competitive advantage to compete with the others in the slush pile of resumes?  

And, my ask is: 'Can we move away from experience and years, and, display qualitative inputs by way of approach - the ‘what,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why’ you did what you did.  By analysing experience in this manner, what follows is a crucible of capabilities that sets you distinctly apart from others.  From number of years what you will find is a rich narrative of reasons of why you fit that role.  By evaluating your experiences in this manner, what you are actually doing is unearthing your capability and going deeper, converting this capability into an asset class, that you own to monetize your professional worth. Such a discovery shifts the tentative question of “Am I worth it?” to a confident statement of “I am worth it.”

With the new way of work, heightened by the pandemic, acquiring new skills and certifications seems a likely way to future-proof ourselves in these challenging economic landscape. The quest for acquisition of new certifications is very exciting. But when looking at options of re-skilling, my suggestion is to dedicate an equal investment of time and resource to re-assessing yourself. Review your experiences.  Make an inventory of your achievements.  Process your learnings of the failures that you have encountered.  Acquiring new learning is a big positive.  But to process new skills, gain experiences from them and become proficient takes some time and doing.  While fulfilling new learning think equally about your past successes.  Have you re-evaluated your experiences that make your existing experiences relevant and desirable in the new format of work?  Have you considered the need to re-position your capabilities keeping in mind the gig ecosystem?  Are we fully engaging with our embedded capabilities?  Do you know what your capabilities are? And how have you used them?  Are you really in touch with your inner self that has so far defined your professional worth?

The reality is that each of us are gifted with certain strengths and capabilities.  These are innate to us, so deeply embedded in the way we work, that two things happen. One is that because they are so natural to us, we don’t realise that we own them.   We take them for granted, leaving them unattended on the wayside of our career path. And, two, belittling their value simply because them come easily to us, while focussing on the quest of new learning, without fully capitalising on the capabilities that we are powered by.

Competitive advantage is not only about acquisition of new skills.  It is about exploration.  It is about digging deep into the crevices of experiences and successes to unearth those gems of capabilities that for years we have taken for granted.    And that if we don’t value them and use them as a metric of our professional success, then why will our managers, hirers, recruiters around us consider it as an asset?

The next time that you are examining which skills you need to upgrade to, wait a while.  Ask of yourself if you are engaging with your capability with the same intellectual curiosity and professional wisdom as you are with a possible set of new qualifications.