Who tells your story?
In the workplace and throughout your career, you become known by your colleagues, managers, clients, and team. This is your professional network. They know you by your work and contributions, by your personality, by how you show up every day. Who you are as an individual becomes your distinguishing factor of how you are known as a professional. Every interaction you have with your colleagues gives people an experience of you.
What do you want to be known for? Do you want to be known for your expertise in a niche area? Do you want to be known for building relationships that impact sales? Do you want to be known for your problem-solving abilities, for your thought leadership, for innovating a new product, service, process, or policy? What do you want to be known for?
In the Broadway show, Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, you may have heard of it. Hamilton was the founding father that was perhaps least known. Miranda wrote the lyrics to a song called “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” One of the lines is,
“And when you're gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame?
Who tells your story?”
What story do you want people to tell about you? Legacies are created over a lifetime, and having a vision for your legacy is essential to intentionally create your legacy, one day at a time. How will you live into your intentions for your legacy today? And tomorrow? And every day of your life. Who do you have to be in order to create the legacy you want? And what would that person do?
Now that you have a vision for what you want to be known for, think for a moment about how others know you today. What are you known for right now? What do your friends and colleagues experience in you? When you leave the room, what’s missing?
