Imagine you are the Product… Can you write your story?
By: Nithin Raju D
Tags: Digital Identity, Storytelling, Helping Others, Job Hunting, Product Management

Can you define your approach to influence others?

We all grow up seeing influential figures in our lives who inspire us. Everyone desires to be a person of influence in his family, community, friends and work circle. Let’s imagine you are a product manager - you will usually not have authority over people from whom you need to get the product built i.e. S²D³ cross-functional teams. However, influencing without authority is a key role that needs to be mastered by the product manager. The six principles of persuasion in the classic book, Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini gives you examples of how you can increase your ability to influence others in an ethical, scientific way.

Can you define your approach to influence others? How many principles of persuasion do you adopt intuitively?

What defines you as a great product manager is your ability to influence others by your approach, work ethics and most importantly your attitude towards treating people with respect. The ability to communicate and disseminate the Product Vision effectively and its impact on the value to the organization brings people together to work towards a common goal and make it a success.

How authentic is your story?

There are 7,710,752,033 unique fingerprints in this world as of 09:32 am IST, June 14th, 2019 (Source: Worldometers).

Every person’s journey is different. Why tell a similar story then?

The ups and downs of our lives are unique to us and each of those incidents has different emotions to convey. It may not be possible to craft your story in detail but you can always write a beautiful headline of each experience of your life so that interested people ask about the story that resonates with them.

An example of a mindmap of YOU

Nikhil Chadha suggested making a mind map of yourself, which I think is a fantastic way to articulate your story: your likes, dislikes, headlines of different stories of your life, your psychological attributes, your desire and initiatives to help others and give back to the world. This exercise can be a powerhouse of all the unique features in your product (remember you are the product), one that needs timely updates as life teaches you more, that can be leveraged as per the needs of your users and convey the authenticity of your story to the people whom you interact with.

What drives you?

“Dream is not something that you see in sleep, dream is something that does not let you sleep” ~ Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam

We need to reflect inside to realize what drives us forward. Things that we are passionate about allows us to create an aura of energy that is infectious, it bites people and spreads the infection. It is important to work on projects that propel us forward and surround ourselves with people who multiply this energy. The environment you’re in plays a major factor to maintain your drive and organizations need to encourage activities that keep the drive of its employees up and racing. This will create an enabling environment where people stop drawing the line between work and life, enjoy coming to work and even challenge themselves to go beyond their comfort zone to bring the best in themselves and others to deliver immense value to the organization.

What makes you credible?

Life in the rearview mirror (Source: Photo by Lucas Pezeta)

What have you accomplished? What will help you to keep succeeding? What skills of yours can help others? Turn back and see your life till now just like you would in a rearview mirror. Note down the things that people appreciate in you and see how can you leverage them to make the best of your present day.

“Give your best today and the rest will be taken care of, including your future”

In this fast-paced, overloaded lives where we are constantly on the run without knowing who we are racing against — Pause. Reflect. Walk — you will observe that life will be 10 times less stressful and if you can help others do it, the impact will multiply in magnitude hard to describe.

When given an opportunity, help others and the next question — what if I don’t get such an opportunity, be on the lookout and you’ll surely find one. This will make you more credible and people love to surround themselves with credible people and accept them as leaders.

What should you do now to become a BRAND?

Many of us know the busy day of a recruiter. With the number of applications pouring in for each job opening, the feeling in the mind of a recruiter when she sees another CV pop up in the portal is

The feeling in recruiter’s mind when she sees a new CV in the applications portal

similar to the feeling when you see a pamphlet in the daily newspaper.

The kind of efforts you put while writing your CV and how you perceive your CV would be received -

Your perception of your CV when a recruiter sees it

Now to bridge the gap in reality — you should always strive to be the hardest working person in the room and it is your job to ensure that the work is seen by the right people at the right time. How?

Imagine you are a parent whose child is suffering from a high fever at 2 am in the night at a village in India. Would you think twice to go see a doctor even if it means the nearest hospital is 6 km away? Similarly, if you need your story to be heard by people who need to hear it, don’t wait for the opportunity to come. Create the opportunity to tell your story. Go the extra mile!

Your contribution and potential is a journey and you are on the path to becoming a brand that people would love to work with. In short, jobs will become an outcome. Become a Brand and remember to stay humble.

Become a Brand and stay humble (Source: Photo by freestocks.org)

How to write your personal statement?

Imagine you were applying for a nurse position at a hospital. Here are 3 versions:

Version 1: Newly licensed Nurse looking for a challenging nursing role in a medical facility where I can put my skills to the test.

Version 2: Dependable licensed NMC Registered Nurse trained to work in high-stress environments and stay calm under pressure. Seeking to leverage meticulous record-keeping and analytical skills to help St Francis Hospital with your upcoming challenges.

Version 3: Bilingual (English and Dutch) Pediatric Nurse with 15+ years of experience in the intensive and neonatal care units of a community hospital. Seeking to leverage management experience as Chief Pediatric Nurse at General Hospital, helping to implement new staff training programs.

Most of us will choose version 3 now but will end up writing something similar to version 1 in their resume. Your personal statement should convey clearly how you can add value to the organization instead of just highlighting your aspirations.

How should you create your digital identity?

LinkedIn, Blogs, Medium, Social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Meetups, Stack Overflow, Quora — all these channels are opportunities to create your digital identity.

“Treat others the way you want to be treated” “It is largely about creating content that helps others”

Be a content creator: Writing about your experiences at work and life with an intention to help others avoid mistakes we did, adding your perspective of other’s work before resharing gives a positive message — you will notice a lot of influencers on social media adopt this approach, writing about things you’re good at, answering questions like you would teach your kids on Q&A forums helping people with questions they are struggling with.

Be a connector: Help two people connect i.e. one in need to give work and one in need to get work, guiding aspiring people at meetups are some of the ways you can create digital content. The advantage is people reciprocate by sharing within their network helping your work to benefit more people.

Creating your Digital Identity

Create, Engage and Grow Value. Here the word ‘Grow’ is highlighted to indicate how you should strive to grow value by helping content reach the people who need it in your network by adding your perspective and sharing it or by linking people who may benefit from the conversation. You may observe the kind of work created and appreciated by power profiles and influencers to understand the way you should create your digital identity.

Movement is the key. Strive for consistency, not just popularity. Nikhil gave an example of an active contributor who suddenly became inactive for more than 3 months. Probably, she went through a low phase in her career or her life. Can you guess what she did after she came back? She wrote a story about the 3 inactive months hoping someone will benefit. Keep your content creation regular is important even if there are situations where a break is inevitable. It's okay to come back and write about it.

In summary…

It is your story and you control the lens. Remember that the different digital channels that make up our online identity are GIVING places — the more you give, the more you get and mostly in ways that you cannot predict. Share your with your friends and family to take constructive feedback and keep it continuous. Why? Because your life is not a still photo but an action movie! Let your story climax be your visiting card — a conversation starter that will bring people of eminence and people who seek help towards you.

Please share your links to your story in the comments below and a few claps if this article helped you to write your story :)