Your Personal Brand and your Coat of Arms
There is a lot of talk these days about the importance of your 'personal brand'; how you always need to be aware of it, how you should project it and how you should protect it.
It is talked about in marketing circles as if it is a new thing and that it is borrowed from the world of products and companies, which all have their own branding that we can easily relate to.
The comparison to products, services and companies can be a little disturbing at first - surely we are human beings and not products (many may disagree!)? After all we have feelings, thoughts, opinions, beliefs, passions, we want to be appreciated and valued and we definitely don't want to be treated as commodities.
If we forget about the comparison to products and companies it gets easier and we can start to appreciate what our personal brand really means. Our personal brand is our story, it is what we represent, it is what we believe in, it is what motivates us, it is who we are.
If you deal with me this is what you get.
The challenge is to properly project our story so that others get what we are all about.
In ancient times the personal brand for our family was captured in our family crest or our coat of arms.
A coat of arms is described as a unique heraldic (a visual way of signifying rank) design on a shield or surcoat. A surcoat, and subsequently a coat of arms was used by medieval knights to cover, protect, and identify the wearer. The coat of arms symbolises the heraldic achievement which consists of a shield with a crest and motto.
These coats of arms came into general use by feudal lords and knights in battle in the 12th Century. By the 13th Century their use had spread beyond the battlefield to become a kind of flag or logo for families in the higher social classes of Europe, inherited from one generation to the next.
Your coat of arms or crest was effectively a way of telling a story about your family and what they represent.
Each of the colours and symbols on your Coat of Arms is significant and they explain important characteristics and values about you and your family.
In the case of my family coat of arms:
- the white or silver background denotes Peace and Sincerity.
- the green signifies Hope, Joy and sometimes Loyalty in Love.
- and finally the lion represents Deathless Courage!
So for those that know me well - do I match up to my family crest?
While my Coat of Arms captures and projects a 'story' and a set of values and beliefs for my family in many ways it also sets a standard and creates an expectation about our behaviour - something that we all need to live up to.
Ironically the use of the coat of arms evolved over time and started to be used by commercial companies, which are effectively the origins of the modern logo.
Telling your story today
Today we don't carry around a shield (just a business card..) and we don't wear a suit of armour so communicating our story can be a little bit more challenging.
The face to face personal experience has always been the most important part of our story. How we look, how we dress, how we speak, how we behave and what we do are powerful ways of telling this story. Those who interact with us get to experience our 'personal brand' up close and hopefully they will carry with them a positive version of our story.
For those at a distance our modern day coat of arms is our blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media accounts. This is where we get a chance to show our photo, detail who we are, what we have learnt, what we have done, what we believe in and then bring all of this to life through our regular conversations and interactions.
On LinkedIn the most common activity of users of the platform is looking at other people's profiles. I wonder why..
How is your coat of arms looking?
John McGlinchey
John McGlinchey is the Executive Vice President of Global Certification for CompTIA
Teamwork, the Great Wall and the love of a dog!
This was my fourth Christmas living in the US and more remarkably, it was the first time in thirty years I haven’t returned to Ireland for Christmas. Having traveled a lot over 2016, I decided that I would spend it at home and enjoy the festive period, American style. This last week has given me time to reflect on what was an incredible year for me personally and for CompTIA.
As always, the year started out with a little anxiety over the challenges ahead, will we achieve our goals? How would our new A+ launch affect our business?
There were many hurdles ahead of us but we needn’t have worried. 2016 turned out to be one of the best years ever at CompTIA and probably one of my proudest career periods of time.
There have been many new initiatives launched in 2016, which will give us a tremendous platform for the future.
If I could rewind the clock and give myself some advice at the start of 2016, I would say, be comfortable being me, do the basics well, stay in the moment, remain focused on the bigger picture and our strategy. And most importantly...Always, always have fun and enjoy it!
The success I enjoy at CompTIA has everything to do with my team. They are an incredible bunch, the best Sales, Product Management and Sales Ops people in the certification and education business.
We get together as a full team twice a year, usually at our HQ just outside Chicago. This year we decided to mix it up a bit and took our summer meeting "international" to London. This gave us a great opportunity to get away as a (very large!) group, away from our normal environment and push ourselves beyond our comfort zones.
It was a tremendous success, giving us time to bond tighter as a team. As always we learned a lot from each other and came away with some great initiatives and strategies for the remainder of the year.
I travelled around the world twice in 2016 and enjoyed some very funny moments and some spectacular experiences. Our team cruise on the Thames, climbing the Great Wall, seeing The Acropolis in Athens, going to Tokyo Disneyland and visiting the Akshardham temple Ahmedabad were all places I was privileged to experience because of the fantastic role I have at CompTIA.
One of the nicest surprises in 2016 came while we were waiting to board a flight from Shanghai to Beijing. The fog had come down around the airport and all flights had either very long delays or were cancelled. After a busy week and a long day, it’s not the news you like to hear. However, all that changed when our flight was the only flight to leave the airport that evening and on time.
We believed this good fortune was because Dennis Kwok was on board. Dennis is our VP for APAC and spends most of his life in airports or on a plane and is well known across Asia. However, it transpired that there was a very high profile Chinese politician on the same flight and there was no chance his flight was going to be delayed. Nice to have friends in high places although we still like to think Dennis was the reason!
Having played golf for over 10 years, 2016 was the first time I actually won a golf tournament. My team won the “Fall Member” tournament at my club, Cress Creek and I was particularly proud as I had selected the players. Although some did not know each other, we connected as a group and come out on top over the two days.
My wife, Fiona, Josie (our dog) and I moved into our new home on Cress Creek golf course, which was one of the highlights of the year for sure. Although the views across the course change depending on the time of the year, it is never anything other than peaceful, calming and revitalizing.
Josie is our first dog and having never owned a dog before, I was a little apprehensive. We adopted her from a shelter just over a year ago and I can say that she has had a massive impact on our lives. She is the most relaxed, funny and calming dog. She has added so much to our lives and only asks for love in return.
2016..thank you and a big thank you to all of the readers of my blog.
John McGlinchey
John McGlinchey is the Senior Vice President of Global Business Development & Products for CompTIA
My Christmas Wish for Jobseekers
A big thank you to Teresa Varela-Lauper, another one of my valued colleagues at CompTIA for being my guest blogger this week.
John McGlinchey
My 19 year old son Nicholas dropped out of college last year.
He tried it, didn’t like it and didn’t know what to do next. I know many people who have succeeded in life without college…. however, for the most part the odds are stacked against him.
Unemployment rates triple for high school graduates compared to those with a 4 year college degree. Couple this with an income disparity when you think of the pool of jobs available without a college degree and it’s not a pretty picture. (Bureau of Labor Statistics and Pew Research)
What are we doing to encourage our young people to get into IT?
And, how do we show our kids there are solid careers out there without requiring a 4 year degree?
How do we encourage change among businesses to hire and invest in these kids?
A career in technology will be a lifesaver for many….there is low unemployment, high demand for skilled workers and a mass of free training to encourage folks to start their careers here.
It’s my Christmas wish that our new U.S. administration will look at apprenticeship programs to help at risk employees learn new skills.
The UK has done an amazing job with this. Instead of talking about saving coal jobs, the better question is how can we re-skill these workers? How can we encourage businesses to take on that challenge and pay employees as they learn? Let’s look over the pond at a model that is working.
As for Nicholas, I’m happy to share he recently started an IT helpdesk program at Hunter Business School here on Long Island. This is a 15 month computer technician program where he will learn PC repair/installation, planning and maintenance and also earn his CompTIA A+ certification.
Let’s change the narrative for our future workers and ring in 2017 with technology apprenticeships.
Teresa Varela-Lauper is Director of Business Development. She works with SMB and Fortune 1000 clients in the US who are looking to attract and retain good IT talent as well as promote a culture of innovation and productivity. She lives in the Greater New York City Area.
Cyber Threat or Cyber Opportunity?
News of the most recent high profile cyber breach, that the concession stands in Madison Square Garden were compromised, has just been released.
But it’s not the fact that they were compromised that’s concerning but that the breach was in place for over a year before they even knew about it. This is a trend we are seeing more often this year.
It started me thinking about how organizations look at cyber security - it’s almost always in a negative way. The fear of the hack, the stigma associated, how will my business recover and most importantly my customer’s information will be widely available on the internet.
Behind all this fear and distress there is a genuine opportunity for businesses to move beyond this “roll the dice” conundrum.
Business owners, CEO’s, CIO’s should be considering how they can be the ‘first in class’ with their cyber security and to make that a selling point, a unique selling proposition, a reason why you should trust them and do business with them.
A business who views Cyber Security as the “Gold Standard” will probably have superior customer service, better products and respect your business a lot more. A business that can demonstrate and validate that their systems are impenetrable, could use this standard/benchmark to win contracts, a real way for their business to differentiate themselves from the competition.
As we enter the most intensive shopping periods of the year, either online or in store the pressure among traders and the anxiety among customers will increase. Almost every time I use my card, I think about whether the retailer has sufficient cyber security measures in place and do they have adequately trained and certified cyber technicians to protect my data?
As I have explained in previous posts, this is as much a people issue as it is technology, so are they promoting good cyber citizenship among their employees?
To achieve this “Gold Standard” is not impossible, but consider the peace of mind and the opportunity for the businesses that implemented and achieved that state of nirvana. They would have, the perfect infrastructure, all technicians trained and certified, proper risk management and governance in place, all staff would be aware of their cyber responsibilities and be good cyber citizens and have superior processes in place when a breach is suspected.
We need to come to terms with the reality of our situation, embrace the perspective the situation provides and re-frame it in our mind.
Out of adversity and challenges, opportunities are abound for those with the right cyber security mindset.
Carpe Diem !
John McGlinchey
John McGlinchey is the Senior Vice President of Global Business Development & Products for CompTIA
The long term cost of data breaches
I am just back from a whirl wind tour of India, China and Japan and one topic seemed to dominate every conversation - Cyber Security!
If I was to summarise the points that were raised by all of our colleagues. partners and clients in our many conversations:
- Security breaches are a wake-up call for many organizations
- Usually they do not update their cyber security infrastructure and keep rolling the dice waiting to be hit
- Instead of waiting, organizations must initiate a mechanism of threat sharing
- Cyber threats must be immediately shared so that appropriate security measures can be taken in time
- The stigma of being attacked must be removed
- Government must step up and set best practices for cyber security
- We can’t solve this problem with technology alone
- Essentially it’s a human problem.
- Almost all of the attacks we see are a result of human error
- We all need to become better cyber citizens
When I returned from this exhausting but exhilarating trip I was reading the data from the 11th annual Cost of Data Breach Study (sponsored by IBM), which is recognised as being the industry’s gold-standard benchmark research, independently conducted by Ponemon Institute.
In 2016 alone we have seen breaches with Centene Corporation, the FBI, Seagate, Verizon, the IRS, and LinkedIn to name a few.
This year’s study found that the average consolidated total cost of a data breach grew from $3.8 million to $4 million.
Over a 10-month period, Ponemon Institute researchers interviewed IT, compliance and information security practitioners representing 383 organizations in 12 countries: United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, France, Brazil, Japan, Italy, India, the Arabian region (a consolidation of organizations in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia), Canada and for the first time, South Africa.
While the amounts of money mentioned are staggering and could easily wipe out most businesses there is another cost that many people may not take into account.
When a company suffers a data breach besides losing money they will also suffer huge reputational damage - unfortunately when a company is breached customers and stakeholders see this as a big weakness. Was the company careless, were they not operating proper controls, are they to be trusted?
Often people don't blame the hackers (the thieves) for the breach but they will point a big accusing finger at the organization for being so "careless" - it's your fault!!
This long term damage could turn out to be much more detrimental that the initial financial loss.
Based on the feedback from my "tour" it looks like in too many cases the cyber penny has yet to drop!
John McGlinchey
John McGlinchey is the Senior Vice President of Global Business Development & Products for CompTIA
Everything is possible with a Growth Mindset
I’m touring Asia at the moment and over the next couple of weeks, the CEO of CompTIA and I are personally meeting with hundreds of business and education leaders and government officials in India, China and Japan.
At CompTIA we are committed to reducing the IT skills gap and increasing the number of Certified IT professionals around the globe.
No matter where I travel, those who are eager to join us in this effort have at least one thing in common: The Growth Mindset.
“People with Growth Mindsets understand and believe that our abilities and skills and even intelligence can be improved over time through dedication, discipline and practice"
RESEARCH supports this point of view.
Crucially our MINDSET has everything to do with how we view our ABILITY TO LEARN. It is not just about our skills, but it is how much we BELIEVE we can learn, how much we believe we are adaptable, teachable and stretchable.
Fixed or Growth Mindset?
It is really worth challenging ourselves to see what mindset do we hold - be honest!
To determine whether you currently have a GROWTH mindset or a FIXED mindset, let’s examine four statements.
As you read them, think about how much you may agree – or disagree with each point.
- Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
- You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
- No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it.
- You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
Okay – what did you think??
Questions 1 & 2 are fixed mindsets. 3 & 4 reflect the growth mindset.
Which one did you agree with more? You can be a mixture but most people lean towards one or the other.
You can also have beliefs about core abilities.
So for instance, I could substitute the word “intelligence” with “artistic talent”, "sports ability" or business skill.
In a fixed mindset, for instance, you believe “She’s a natural born singer” or “I’m just no good at dancing.”
In a growth mindset, you believe “Anyone can be good at anything. Skill comes only from practice.”
And it’s not just about ABILITIES
There are FIXED and GROWTH Mindsets around your Personal Qualities too – like PERSONALITIES AND CHARACTER - do you consider these to be innate, an inherent part of who you are from an early age? It is interesting!
Your personality mindset comes into play in situations that involve your personal qualities. For example, how dependable, cooperative, caring, or socially skilled are you? Can this change or is it fixed?
The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged
The growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.
Think about someone who is steeped in the fixed mindset. Think about how they are always trying to prove themselves, and how they’re super-sensitive about being wrong or making mistakes. Did you ever wonder why they were this way?
Are you this way? Now you can begin to understand why.
Universal language of learning
As I travel throughout Asia, I am noticing how many people from all cultures understand that important qualities can be cultivated. They are investing in IT education and in growing the Growth Mindset, which is the essential first step to maximising your learning.
Once you have a Growth Mindset then everything else is possible - do you have it?
John McGlinchey
John McGlinchey is the Senior Vice President of Global Business Development & Products for CompTIA
CompTIA EMEA Member and Partner conference 2016
Every year I look forward to our CompTIA EMEA Member and Partner conference and this year in the UK (11th & 12th October) was bigger and better than ever before. Since my move to the United States, it gave me an opportunity to meet old friends and catch up on all of the gossip!!
It just seems like yesterday that I did a quick video for YouTube (see below) in preparation for the conference.
The conference is always one of the highlights of our year in the region bringing together over 500 attendees, from a diverse and unique audience across Europe and the Middle East.
This year’s two-day event gave IT executives, commercial training partners and academic partners, a forum to network and share resources; gain knowledge they can put into action in their businesses upon returning home and benefit from and enjoy sessions customized for their specific market.
At the event we had some great high-level panel discussions and exceptional networking experiences with key IT influencers. We were also delighted to use the event as an opportunity to educate our partners and members about the current trends in tech and tech education. The rate of change in our industry is phenomenal but yet all of the core basics and philosophy such as best practice will always remain the same.
All segments are presented by leading industry subject matter experts so it is no surprise that 9 in 10 attendees say it has a positive impact on their business.
At CompTIA we work hard to ensure that it is a truly collaborative and rewarding environment, where the connections made will be just as valuable as the lessons attendees take home.
Even in our fast paced technology world you can never beat the value of face to face meetings and connecting in person!
The event was hosted by a combination of CompTIA leadership and industry experts, offering insights into key trends, relevant business challenges and the most notable opportunities in today’s market.
As always I was really busy between conducting the official welcome for the Certs Partner Track and introducing a session on our latest certification, Cybersecurity Analyst (CSA+), sitting on a panel discussing "The Value of IT Training and Certification - An International Perspective", presenting on the topic of "Growth versus Fixed Mindset businesses" and finally providing the welcome address for the Canon meeting.
Once again I left full of excitement and enthusiasm with even more new ideas and some new challenges.
See you again next year!
John McGlinchey
John McGlinchey is the Senior Vice President of Global Business Development & Products for CompTIA
Other people first
This YouTube clip of Simon Sinek presenting to graphic designers at a conference struck a chord with me.
He tells a story of plane experience that I could relate to. We can all relate to it - he spoke of a selfish "seatmate" and who put herself first for the whole flight, not engaging, not standing up when he tried to get into his seat and demanding the last cereal .."me, me me". Simon reciprocated and the journey was more unpleasant than it should have been for both of them.
We have all been on that flight!
If you do something for someone they tend to reciprocate.
Simon talks about the importance of trust between people, with our institutions, with companies, with brands and with the people we work with.
If we have common sets of values and beliefs we tend to form bonds together that build a mutual trust. When we have this trust between us then powerful groups can be formed with everyone working together, relying on each other, watching each other's backs.
If we are authentic and genuine and we live and behave true to our values and beliefs then we will build trust - if we don't then that trust will be broken. That trust is between people, our employers, our brands, our institutions and our teammates.
Groups that trust each other can achieve much more than the individuals in the groups - we all have different strengths and weaknesses and when we work together in a trusting, supportive environment than great things can happen.
In his talk he pokes fun at self-help books because they are too selfish - 5 Ways to make me succeed, 5 ways to get rich. Once again they are all about "me, me, me".
Instead Simon challenges us with the idea that life would be a lot more productive and fulfilling if we tried to help our neighbour and our work mates instead of having that focus on ourselves - without this mindset the power of the group will never be realised.
His big lesson is to forget about "me, me, me" and instead put other people first.
Let's start tomorrow!
John McGlinchey is the Senior Vice President of Global Business Development & Products for CompTIA
Are you an exceptional employee?
Have you ever wondered why some people have more successful careers than others?
A recent study surveyed more than 500 business leaders and asked them what sets great employees apart. The researchers wanted to know why some people are more successful than others at work, and the number one reason may surprise you.
Topping the list over qualities you might expect like “experience,” “education,” or other more quantifiable “skills” is this single, powerful word: “personality.”
The difficulty with this word, according to an article about the study by author Travis Bradberry, is to understand what those surveyed really mean when they put “personality” at the top of the list.
Our personalities are developed from an early age and are fixed by the time we enter early adulthood. Many important things about you change over the course of your lifetime, but your core personality isn’t one of them.
What leaders are really looking for and what they are referring to, then, according to Bradberry, is really Emotional Intelligence (EQ) which, Bradberry maintains is completely different from personality and from intellect (or IQ). Employers and leaders can and have confused these three qualities on many occasions.
Unlike your personality, which is more internal – prompting particular thoughts in your mind, for example; how you choose to externally react to those thoughts and situations is how our EQ is exhibited. These external EQ responses can be learned, practiced and developed.
Some of the EQ skills that set exceptional employees apart are:
- They forge ahead in their work, confident that they’ll be rewarded later but unconcerned if they’re not.
- They’re willing to admit when they’re wrong and willing to do things someone else’s way,
- They’re able to maintain their composure while presenting their positions calmly and logically.
- They’re able to withstand personal attacks in pursuit of the greater goal and never use that tactic themselves.
- They focus on what matters
- They think before they speak and wisely choose the best time and place to do so.
- Exceptional employees are driven to improve, without forgetting to give themselves a healthy pat on the back.
- They recognize when things are broken and fix them
- They’re accountable and they bring their mistakes to management’s attention rather than hoping no one will find out. They understand that managers aren’t out to assign blame; they’re out to get things done
- Exceptional employees are well liked by co-workers. They have integrity and leadership skills (even if they’re not in an official leadership position) that people respond to
- They neutralize toxic people. Exceptional employees control their interactions with toxic people by keeping their feelings in check. Even when things completely derail, emotionally intelligent people are able to take the toxic person with a grain of salt to avoid letting him or her bring them down
It’s important to notice that years of experience, coding skills, business degrees, etc. are not included in any of the key traits that leaders are looking for. For sure, these are required to succeed in your career but they won’t make you exceptional.
Bradberry and others explain that exceptional employees don’t possess God-given personality traits; they rely on simple, everyday EQ skills that anyone can incorporate into their repertoire.
Copyright 2015 John McGlinchey. All Rights Reserved.
Stop SLURPING DATA! The BIGGEST Challenge for Educators.
If like me, you are bombarded with data and information from every imaginable source, you are at times probably feeling overwhelmed. You suddenly realize how much you don’t know about the world.
We now have sophisticated tools to filter through that data and find the pieces we are most interested in, however, we are still constantly being confronted with stories we know nothing about, in countries we weren’t even truly aware existed. We must accept our present condition: we will always be more ignorant than knowledgeable about the world.
Our societies are too complicated and the human lifespan is too short to ever hope to try to bridge that gulf. We need to accept ignorance and handle it graciously.
This doesn’t mean we should revel in our ignorance, but we shouldn’t be bothered when we don’t know the latest trend or some news story, nor should we judge others as “stupid” if they don’t know some factoid. There is a fear that we will enter a conversation not being completely up-to-date, but what is the point of a conversation if all we are exchanging are the facts we already know?
We can consume all the facts in the world and still not comprehend what is really going on. People can be incredibly smart, even brilliant sometimes, and yet still be bad at deep learning. The internet has given us this omniscience that we have never had before, and we suddenly have this ability to see all of the details that we didn’t know about before.
But the key question is: How can we become more purpose-driven learners?
Jonathan Drori a visiting professor at the University of Bristol, posed four questions to science teachers, TV producers, science audiences and seven-year-olds during a TED talk. Surprisingly he found that the seven-year-olds did better than the other audiences.
One of those questions was - Why is it hotter in summer than in winter? We can all agree that it is hotter in summer than winter, but why?
He goes on the say that children get their ideas not from teachers but from common sense from their experiences of the world around .
The challenge is that most of us aren’t actually that good at learning. Sure, we can seek out facts, read news articles and tweets, and even analyze some tough problems.
But we need to develop thinkers, not information processors.
Danny Crichton’s recent article, How Should We Learn explains data is everywhere, and knowledge is accessible on almost any subject imaginable with just a few clicks. Suddenly, we have gone from people ignorant of our own ignorance to content consumers struggling to keep up with the information all around us. We can learn about almost any subject imaginable today, and of course, get the details and data that the internet always offers.
With all this knowledge and data available to us on so many platforms, we wonder why academic institutions still exist. The answer comes down to their ability to teach students both knowledge and wisdom. So far, this combination is not being achieved online or through books. It remains one of the greatest challenges for entrepreneurs in the edtech learning space today.
Hopefully, aided by a new generation of education startups – we can learn how to better navigate in a world where the frontier of knowledge is rapidly expanding and dynamic.
We need to inculcate purpose-driven learning and move away from a model of slurping up all the data in the world.
Copyright 2015 John McGlinchey. All Rights Reserved.