Each Wednesday, as part of the Praxis program, we have a Zoom call with our cohort—a combination of debriefing the week, discussing deliverables, and completing small exercises in real time. These calls are incredibly important to the program; however, I had a prior engagement on the night of our second call that I couldn’t reschedule. Instead, I watched the recording, completed the exercises (modified slightly since I was working alone instead of with a partner), and wrote up the results.
The first exercise was a personal branding exercise, broken down into several elements. First, we were challenged take a couple minutes and write 2-3 sentences about how we want to be seen. Here’s what I wrote.
Jessica is a writer, speaker, and storyteller who is passionate about helping companies design systems, operations, and strategies that create positive cultures for their employees and produce results.
I wasn’t sure if I should focus more on how I want to be seen professionally, or if it should encompass personal hobbies and traits as well. I went with the former, but it was neat to see how some of my fellow participants wove in the latter as well.
The next part of the exercise was to pair up with someone and spend five minutes Googling them to see what kind of information you could find. Since I didn’t have a partner, I Googled myself. I can’t remember ever having Googled myself before, so this was fun. When I searched my first and last name, nothing came up about me. When I used my first and middle names, my website appeared about halfway down the first page of Google results (though I wonder how much of this is due to cookies and whatnot and how much is actually pure Google 🤔).
After Googling each other (or in my case, me Googling myself), everyone came back together and compared notes. Did the description a person wrote of themselves—how they wanted to be seen—align with the information found about them? Since I was doing both parts myself, I had an advantage when it came to this, as I’d borrowed language for my short description from longer things I’ve written about myself. Given this fact, and how I’ve been working over the last couple weeks on making sure that my website does intentionally reflect how I want to be seen, I think the statement I wrote does accurately summarize the information available about me online. With that said, I want to continue to finesse my about page to make it more clear and concise.
At the end, our advisor Amanda shared how she does this exercise every six months. This is definitely something I want to implement personally as well, as a way to regularly reflect on who I am and how other people see me.
The second activity was more of a reflection on the five traits post we wrote last week. Amanda posed three questions to us:
- How confident are you that your current top five are sufficient to get you where you want to be?
- Who are the kind of people you need to network with to get where you want to be in the next year?
- What can you do to improve your chances of connecting with these kind of people?
As I observed in my initial post, I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by fantastic people who push me to be more of the person I want to be. I know that as time goes on the people I spend the most time with will change, if only by necessity due to location and proximity. Through Praxis, I’m already making connections with people I know will be assets professionally in the next year, and I can continue to improve these relationships by embracing opportunities to connect with the larger Praxis network.
In summary, while it was fun to Google myself, there’s great benefit to be had from showing up in person for Praxis Wednesdays, and I’m looking forward to the next one!