Something a lot of managers who want to be ready to step up to the next level come to me about is personal branding. Its a phrase or name I don’t really like. 

Essentially, how do I act like a senior manager or in more simple terms, how do I give people at work a good impression of me.  

The higher you go up the corporate ladder, the more people you meet and the less they know of you as a person. There are many reasons (too many to mention) why this can cause managers to worry. 

Some are frozen by the fear of always wanting to always give a ‘perfect’ impression, others can’t deal well with people they don’t know well or more specifically don’t know them well, and in many cases, people struggle with talking about areas they don’t feel they are ‘the’ expert in.  

Apart from remembering that quite a few people around the meeting table will feel the same as you about this, here are three things you can do: 

• Think about who does it well – we've all worked with some great people. Think about those senior managers that left a good impression on you. Why was that? Was it the way the spoke to you, was it that they listened? Did they follow up? What's stopping you doing that? 

• It’s a marathon not a sprint– try not to see every single interaction as a ‘must win’ and a verdict on your abilities. We won’t blow people away every time we speak. Some conversations or input to a meeting may not be your best, that’s fine. Give yourself a break. Try to assess your input over a longer period of time, not one offs. 

• Focus on what you can control – You can’t control whether people ‘like’ you or what you do – so don’t judge the success of any interaction by that. If you are happy with how you approached it, what you said and how you did it, that’s good enough.