Personal Branding: What’s Easy is Hard

We all have talents and skills that we bring to the world. The interesting tidbit about our talents and skills is that, to us, the living is easy when we are using them. Something that is not in our skill set is hard, if not difficult.

We’re told, of course, to work harder on what is hard to us in the first place.

I have a better suggestion: work on what is easy for you.

Yes. Easy.

Understanding business is easy for me. I had a boss not so long ago who had no idea who Gen Y was and what the big deal was about recruiting them. I did a three-minute fill in on who Gen Y was, what the stereotypes — and strengths — were of the group, and why recruiting them was different than recruiting other generations. Ticking them all off, one bullet point after another. Right off the top of my head.

You’d have thought from the looks around the room that I had just arrived from Mars.

But, to me, seeing how people fit into a corporate culture and what needs to be done to help make them successful is as easy as falling off a log.

Concentrating on what is easy, however, is hard. Most of the time, we are so close to our own talents and skills that what we have a hard time understanding that those talents and skills are…well, talents and skills.

If you don’t have a good idea of what is easy for you and whether or not that could be a skill, ask a coworker what you do that, to them, looks easy. Or, have them tell you what is hard about what they do that they think you make look easy.

What you easily do is a talent. Your talent was so easy for you that you didn’t know it was a skill for others to use. That’s why what is easy for you and hard for others is part of your Personal Brand.

Scot

Photo credit: Facebook profile by b d solis on Flickr

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