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See and Be Seen

This Corporate Success post plays off of the Increase Your Market Share post. Think of yourself as a brand in your corporation. In order to move up in your corporate world you have to convince the higher ups to buy your brand. You want the people above you to WANT you to work for them. They should be asking you to work on their projects. How do you do that? One way is to be seen.

Just like a product in a store, no one is going to buy the product if they don’t know about the product. The same goes for you in the corporate world. No senior manager is going to want you to work for them (or promote you for that matter) if they don’t know about you. So you have to see and be seen. What does that mean? Attend lunch & learns. Attend corporate functions. Attend a happy hour once in a while. If you were not invited to the happy hour then get invited. It never hurts to ask someone who was invited if you could tag along with them. Attend the company quarterly meetings instead of getting stuck at your desk with too much work. Get in front of everyone’s face as much as possible.

You can then take that a step further and create your own events. Organize a lunch and learn where you give a presentation on Best Practices. Take the last 30 minutes of the day and drop in on some folks to see how they are doing. You would be amazed at how well this one works. Drop by the VP’s office after their meetings are over but before they go home. Let them know that their speech was right on the mark and you agreed with their key points. If you didn’t agree with their points then say, “I just need more clarification on “X” point so I can understand it from your perspective”. You don’t want to be a TOTAL brown noser…..just a slight brown noser. This last suggestion may get you more work but hey, that’s the key to moving up. You get the projects from the right people, do well with those projects and those right people will want to see you succeed.