What Benefits Do You Bring To Your Work?

I promise the headline is not a rhetorical question! 

While maybe a little provocative, the question I pose is a purposeful one for any leader. Let me open the folder on this.

My work in the space of personal brand has been a steady thread of my coaching career. Going back to the summer of 2018, I’ve worked to pull through the foundations of “brand” from the world of marketing into the world of leadership. Today it’s a foundational part of many of my coaching engagements and deep work I do with some amazing and courageous creative leaders. It’s all captured in the Personal Brand Wayfinder, my proprietary framework and toolset that I’ve created alongside my collaborator Lance Odegard.

Through this work to drive a deeper understanding of ourselves and continue the path to personal improvement and fulfillment, it’s often hard to have a clear picture of the benefits we create through our work. While jobs and life circumstances change and evolve over time, the fundamental benefits you create and catalyze are ever-present and evergreen.

You are not defined by your job. The benefits you create are elemental to you, and are not owned by any title or company or time period. Getting to clarity around them is a pretty tectonic insight.

In the traditional world of brand and marketing, we experience products through many vectors. Arguably the most important of these vectors are the benefits we derive from a product or service. We are provided functional benefit (what the product does for me) and also emotional benefit (what it feels like…the experience we get from using the product). 

What’s just as important is that we prioritize emotional benefits over functional benefits in the products or services we choose to support and advocate for. While functional benefits are often replicable by multiple brands with little meaningful differentiation, emotional benefits are unique and personal. They create the strongest affiliation and connection. They matter most.

Here’s an example…I love my Arc’teryx jackets. I have a closet full of them to prove it! They provide me with tons of functional benefits (keep me warm and dry, work well in the west coast BC climate, come with a lifetime warranty, fit my long/lean body well), but it’s the emotional benefits of these jackets that win my heart and loyalty. Everytime I put on one of my Arc’teryx jackets, I feel something…they represent the healthy and outdoor lifestyle that I value, they are a sustainable brand that shares my care for the planet, and they are connected to my hometown that I love. Without getting too maudlin, they make me feel like the better version of me. It’s a bond that I reward with my many purchases and relentless advocacy for the brand.

These same truths live in our personal brands. We all provide functional benefits through our work - what everyone gets from working with you. And we all provide emotional benefits through our work - a set of feelings and experiences of what it’s like to work with you. 

Functional Benefits

These are the things that are the best definition and articulation of ourselves in the work environment…the things that we love to do and also do really well. Our skills and expertise light up through the functional benefits that come with working with us and how we bring them to any working context with full effect. As you have moved through our working life, think about the three most important things you bring to everything you work on that create amazing outcomes for the organization and its people.

Emotional Benefits

Work is not simply a functional experience…it’s emotional as well. In every single interaction we have, we leave an emotional imprint on others. The “feels” of interacting and working with us are the most impactful element of our experiences and relationships. Getting to a sharp definition of the emotional benefit that others will have from working with you allows you to embrace the most holistic view of yourself. In fact, these are the most important benefits you provide in the working context, because they are the adhesive that connects you to other people in the social and human experience of work.

So, here’s an example of a creative leader I’ve worked with in recent times who, through coaching and self-exploration, was able to clearly articulate the benefits they create through their work. They are also benefits that they carry into many roles they’ve had in their career:

Functional Benefits

Clarity of what’s happening in the business

Confident decision making

Systems/habits that sustain momentum

Emotional Benefits

Optimism

Sense of calm

Belief in yourself and the team

Note the difference between the functional and emotional. The functional benefits connect closely to the core work and role of the leader. They are the kinds of things we can measure through KPIs, documentation, and other artifacts. The emotional benefits extend far beyond the job or the company and are connected to feelings, bonds and connections that have the most impact. It’s easy to dismiss them as being “intangible” or “soft skills” but in reality, they are the gold. 

And while I don’t know this for certain, my hunch is that people will always remember this leader by their emotional benefits. That will be the story that always sticks and travels with them through the entirety of the career journey.

So how do you do this work? How do you get to a clear articulation of the benefits you bring to your work?

This all takes deep exploration for sure. But, like all things, it starts with curiosity and asking questions. So here are a few questions to push you forward to define your benefits.

Reflective Questions To Identify Your Functional Benefits 

• What’s the value you bring to all your relationships? In your work?

• What outcomes can you create with ease and impact?

• What are the biggest wins you regularly put on the board?

Reflective Questions To Identify Your Emotional Benefits

• What’s the “emotional aftertaste” that stays with people after an interaction with you?

• What feelings or emotions do you regularly evoke within others?

• What words do others use to complete this sentence: “When I work with you, you make me feel…”