What makes you special?
Have you ever tried to answer that question—clearly, authentically and without hesitation? It is the key question any potential employer will have about you. If you don’t know how to answer it, you are signalling to the interviewer that they don’t need to know it either. When we put ourselves forward for a new role, we are in competition with others. Like it or not, we’re compared side-by-side with other capable candidates. We can all do the job, but we will go about it in very different ways. What makes us stand out can be the difference between getting the role and being a strong contender. Of course we need the requisite skills, experience and aptitude, but are we going to be the only person who ticks those boxes? Unlikely. In a sea of appointable people, the successful candidate will be the one with something extra—someone who makes it easy for the interviewer to choose them.
This goes beyond self-awareness; it is about leadership optimisation. To be the easy choice in any role race, a successful candidate must do four things:
Know their strengths and limitations
Be able to articulate the strengths and limitations in a clear and objective way, with examples
Show what they do to maximise their core strengths*
Show how they mitigate limitations so they don’t reduce their leadership impact*
* make this very practical, not theoretical.
What makes you special is the combination of your personality traits, your experiences, the skills you have acquired, what you have learned, and the values you carry from childhood. It is the essence of you. It is your story—and you must be ready to tell it. That story is your personal leadership brand.
