In this session, Vicki Knights, an engaging speaker and qualified positive psychology practitioner, discusses the importance of being visible as a mid-career professional. Vicki explains how hiding behind a company mask can limit your joy and potential at work. 

She presents four surprising ways that building your personal brand and getting visible can improve your well-being and career prospects. Vicki covers the benefits of forging genuine connections, boosting confidence through authenticity, creating exciting opportunities, and empowering yourself and others. 

Tune in to learn how showing up can lead to a more fulfilling professional life.

[01:06] The Importance of Visibility

[02:11] Four Surprising Benefits of Getting Visible

[02:17] Building Genuine Connections

[05:09] Boosting Confidence Through Authenticity

[07:48] Creating Exciting Opportunities

[08:37] Empowering Yourself and Others

Speaker Links:

Grab Vicki's free 12-page visibility guide at https://vickiknights.co.uk/

Podcast: Showing Up with Vicki Knights: https://vickiknights.co.uk/showingup

Links:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.

https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed

If you're a mid career professional, you need to

know our next guest, Vicky Knight.

Why?

Because so many people I come across, particularly if they

work for big companies, have made themselves utterly invisible when

it comes to personal profiles.

They hide behind the company mask of protection, and in doing so,

they hide their human selves.

Now here's the clincher.

As we age, The longevity and potential joy that we can experience from our work

becomes more and more dependent upon our uniqueness and our connection to others.

So that mask of protection can, as we get older, become an invisibility cloak that

limits our potential for joy at work.

Vicky is such an engaging speaker.

She also uses science to show you why and how to take your own visibility

cloak off without feeling naked.

Let's dive in.

Hi there.

I am Vicki Nice, and I'm going to be talking to you

about the joy of showing up.

And at the end of this 10 minutes, you should feel much

more excited about getting visible and building your personal brand.

So many people think about getting visible and showing up online in a similar way

to how I think about household chores.

So something that has to be done, but something that I

really don't enjoy one bit.

So instead, I want to share with you the four surprising ways.

That getting visible will make you love your work even more.

So we all know the obvious benefits of getting visible, right?

There's so many studies that show that being visible online grows trust,

and we know that it helps you to build your personal brand and creates

more opportunities for you, but that doesn't mean it's easy or doesn't come

without a huge amount of resistance.

So I'm a qualified positive psychology practitioner, so I'm going to be

infusing some positive psychology principles into this session to show

how getting visible can improve your well being as well as help you improve

your career and get more opportunities.

Okay, so let's get started with the four surprising ways that getting visible

will make you love your work more.

Okay, number one is getting visible will build genuine connections and friendships.

So all of the friendships and connections that I've made since

running my business for 15 years have been as a result of getting visible.

So there's this interesting psychological theory called self disclosure, which

refers to the process of sharing personal information about yourself to others.

So this act of sharing, which often includes emotions and sharing your

vulnerabilities, the theory states is pivotal in forging genuine connections.

So the self disclosure theory suggests that being open leads to

deeper relationships because it helps develop trust and invites the other

person to share in a deeper way too.

So when you, as a mid career professional, share your journey and your

challenges, you just seem more human.

This authenticity encourages your network and your peers to engage

with you on a more personal level.

Now, this isn't about having to cry on LinkedIn or share deeply personal

stories that you don't want to share.

It's absolutely not something you need to do.

In order to build trust with your audience.

I sometimes feel that personal branding seems to be conflated with

being overly vulnerable and the two do not have to go hand in hand.

So when people in business share their own stories, they not only appear more

human and relatable, but they're often inviting others to connect with them

on a more personal and emotional level.

This view is also backed up by the mere exposure effect.

Which is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to develop

a preference for things simply because they're familiar with them.

Think about when you hear a song for the first time on the radio.

Often you need to listen to it for a number of times in order to like it.

So showing up in your work regularly creates familiarity, which the brain

interprets as safe and trustworthy.

So by infusing more of you into your work, you leverage this effect.

Each interaction where you show a bit more of your true self.

reinforces familiarity.

People begin to feel like they know you personally, even if they've actually never

met you in real life, this breeds trust.

And as we know, people need to trust you before they feel

comfortable doing business with you.

And this has never been more important than it is now.

So in my own experience of hosting podcasts and sharing more of my

personality and my values and my journey, it's meant that I've built a

deeper relationship with my audience.

So sometimes when I go to conferences, people will come up to me and start

chatting to me like they know me because they feel like they do because

they've heard me talking on podcasts and sharing my story for years.

So when people see that you're genuine, they're much more likely to want

to do business and work with you.

So showing up in your work builds bridges between you and your

peers and your audience, and it builds genuine connections,

interactions, and friendships.

So number two, showing up is a celebration of you and it increases your confidence.

By getting visible in a way that feels completely and utterly authentic

to you, studies have proven that it will actually make you happier.

Yes, really.

There was a study done in the 1990s by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that demonstrated

that living in alignment with your values is actually proven to make you happier.

Different professionals were studied to see which ones were happy and

which were unhappy and unproductive.

And the most important factor the study discovered Was alignment with core values,

the happiest and most productive people were taking actions in line with their

values because this gives them a constant sense of motivation because they see how

the work they're doing today leads to a long term vision they find meaningful.

So when you're weaving your passions and your strengths into your visibility,

this becomes a representation of you, which is incredibly fulfilling.

So let's quick look at the concept of flow here, which is

also known as being in the zone.

It originates from the same psychologist, Csikszentmihalyi.

He described flow as a mental state of complete exorbitant in an activity.

So this state is characterized by a sense of complete energized

focus on the task at hand.

There's often like a sense of timelessness that accompanies this experience.

You know when hours can feel like minutes and you also lose

your sense of self consciousness.

I'm sure you can all think of tasks in your work where you're in Deep flow.

Flow occurs when there's a balance between the challenge of the task and the

skill level of the person performing it.

So if the task is too easy, it leads to boredom.

If it's too difficult, it results in anxiety.

Flow is found in that sweet spot in between.

Though in terms of positive psychology, flow is not just beneficial for

productivity, but also for happiness.

So engaging in tasks that induce flow is intrinsically rewarding and has been

linked to greater long term well being.

for listening.

So when you're crafting your visibility strategy, you need to ensure that you're

getting visible in a way that aligns with your personality and your values.

the visibility tasks that you're doing create a sense of flow for you.

So for example, if one of your signature strengths is curiosity and

humor, and you love having joyful, interesting live interviews with people

on LinkedIn, you're much more likely to enter a flow state when you're

working on this kind of marketing.

Your audience will be able to feel this joy and passion for what you're doing.

Which will mean that they'll connect with it more.

So aligning your business activities with your values and strengths and creating

a strategy around activities that put you in a flow state, all will lead to

increased confidence and well being.

And we can't say no to that.

So number three, visibility creates exciting opportunities.

When you get visible in your work and you build a personal brand, you

become a voice in your industry.

You establish yourself as an expert, someone who knows what

they're talking about and has the experience to back it up.

This helps you to gain credibility, increases your chances of being noticed

by people in and out of your industry.

This can lead to collaborations and other opportunities to meet

new people and develop your career.

So, so many of the brilliant opportunities I've had in my business,

such as features in magazines, being invited to speak at conferences

and contribute to people's books.

Being a guest of brilliant podcasts, being booked to do

talks within people's communities.

None of these opportunities would have happened if I hadn't been visible in

my business and proactively sought out these kinds of opportunities.

They don't just come and fall in your lap.

And number four, showing up empowers yourself and others.

Every time you put yourself out there, you reinforce your self belief and

demonstrate your capabilities, not just to yourself, but to the world.

This is closely tied with the concept of Albert Bandura's theory of self

efficacy, which is the belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations.

So each act of visibility boosts your self efficacy, leading to greater confidence

and a proactive approach to challenges.

And your visibility can be incredibly empowering for other people.

So for example, when others see you overcoming the fears and the resistance

they have to get invisible, they see you showing up with confidence, It

encourages them to believe they too have the capability to show up and be seen.

It provides them with evidence that it's possible to show up with

confidence and that the barriers they perceive can be overcome.

So by being more visible in work, you're not only increasing your own

confidence, but you're also helping to inspire others to do the same.

So let's just recap those four unexpected joys of getting visible.

Number one, it will build genuine connections and friendships.

You never know what wonderful people you're going to connect with.

Until you start getting more visible.

Number two, showing up as a celebration of you.

Number three, getting visible creates exciting opportunities.

Number four, getting visible empowers others as well as yourself.

So I hope this has made you feel more excited about showing up in your work.

And it's helped you to see that it's not something to be feared,

but instead it's something to be celebrated and it will actually

improve your wellbeing and increase your confidence if you do it right

and in a way that's authentic to you.

If you want more inspiration and motivation to get visible, the best place

to start is by listening to my podcast.

Just search for Showing Up With Vicki Nights, wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also grab my free 12 page visibility guide at vickiknights.

co.

uk.

Thank you so much for listening and enjoy the rest of the Joy at Work Summit.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my

Life Satisfaction Assessment.

It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas

of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you time.

I call it D.

It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.