5 ways to increase your professional value this year

Successful professionals are always looking for ways to get better and improve their value in the marketplace. Just as improving a property here and there can improve its market value, your professional value can also improve with some deliberate and controlled actions.

Pursuing continuous improvement is not limited to career professionals; entrepreneurs and corporate organizations also do this; because the shareholders of a business are happier when the market value of the business grows steadily year on year.

What you attract in life is a function of what you have become. If you wish to be successful and command more value in the marketplace, you must focus on working hard on yourself to BECOME more valuable and attract better value.

Moving from a current state to a desired future state requires planning and deliberate execution. To improve your professional value you will need to; first, identify the areas of your professional life that need improvement or updating. You can achieve this by performing a SWOT analysis.

Having Identified your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; you are armed with information to set SMART objectives, timelines, and required actions that will up your value.

The benefits of this approach are two-fold: firstly, it allows you to better understand your strengths and weaknesses; secondly (and more importantly), it will supply an opportunity for growth that sets the stage for future success in your grow.

In the rest of this article, I will be sharing 5 (five) action plans you can consider as you look to increase your value in the marketplace.

1. Get an advisory team (personal board of directors): According to Kisha Wynter in her award-winning DIVA method. She described an advisory team as key strategic relationships you will need to build or hire (in the case of an executive coach). An advisory team will comprise of Mentors, Sponsors, Coaches, Connectors, and Mentees. She recommends you network and cultivate these relationships even before you will need them.

Your advisory team must challenge and stretch you out of your comfort zone to take bold steps and improve yourself. You can use them as sounding boards, to get advice and feedback.  Remember to start small and grow the team as your gain mastery. Learn from them and most importantly act. Don’t forget to follow up and report back to them and think of how you can add value to them.

2. Acquire new skills and refine existing skills: Skills have become the global currency in the 21st century economy. The benefits of acquiring new skills are wide-ranging. It can help you stay competitive in the marketplace, improve your prospects, provide you with more opportunities for promotion and bigger gigs. Also, refining existing skills improves your mastery resulting in an increased sense of accomplishment and improved performance.

You must cultivate the mindset of a lifelong learner, continuously scanning your industry to identify new and highly sought-after skills that aligns with your goals. Then, invest in acquiring them. Also don’t forget to hone your old skills by putting them to use often.

3. Attend conferences and workshops: Attending conferences and workshops are great opportunities to make new connections with other professionals in the same field and stay up to date with happening in your industry. Many conferences provide speakers from all over the world, which exposes you to different cultures and ideas. One of the benefits of the pandemic is the opportunity to attend global conferences right from the comfort of my home for far less the price of in-person conferences.

Be sure to network, follow up and cultivate the relationships. Trap down new wisdom and knowledge shared by the speakers and set out action to put them to use and master them.

4. Get certified: Professional certifications are an independent assessment of one’s knowledge and skills on a subject matter. Certifications offer immediate ROI because they confirm your competency and mastery of a subject. Pursuing one is a sure way to show your potentials in the marketplace.

Identify highly sought after certifications in your industry, preferably from globally recognized brand. Then, invest your resources to acquire them.

5. Be visible: You have done all the hard work to improve yourself, don’t let it go unnoticed. If you have completed a project, flaunt it, if you created a design or artifact, share it out there. You acquired a new certification, tell the world about it. Share your accomplishments with graphics and visuals on social media platforms. 

You do not light a candle and put it under a bushel, rather you set it on a candle stick to give light to others. Let your light shine out to the world, some one out there may be waiting on you to light up their own candle.

Finally, remain curious with a continuous learning mindset, learn and experiment until you find what works well for you. Remember that true success is what you attract because of who you have BECOME. So, your focus must be on the process of becoming and all other things will fall into place.

I wish you good health of mind and body as you pursue to do more, become more and attract more value this 2022.