How do you increase your Value? Paolo Gallo explains more

By Paolo Gallo, Executive Coach, Author “The Compass & The Radar” www.paologallo.net

If you were a portfolio manager of a Private Bank your job can be summarized in a few words” to increase the value of the portfolio you are responsible for”. If for example you have to manage the wealth of your client, let’s say “100”, your client hopes and expects that the value will be higher in the future.  110? 120? This is irrelevant as in the long run, the clients expect “more value”.

What if you were the Portfolio Manager of …yourself? The Real question is ” how do you increase your own value? What is your real wealth, what are your assets you will need to increase? No, I am not referring to your bank account or whatever “fortune” you may have. I am referring to increasing your value as a professional, a crucial element in a fast changing economy squeezed between the speed of the 4th Industrial Revolution and the consequences of Covid19.

This is not an academic question. It is a truly relevant one and would make the difference between being part of the people who are shaping the new context and will remain relevant and employed and the one who will be considered “useless workforce” according to the definition of Yuval Noha Harari.

In my role as executive coach, I have noticed that most people confuse value with salary. Sure, there must be a correlation between the two but if you focus exclusively on increasing your salary without increasing your value – and the value that you bring to the company or clients you work for – sooner or later you will find it too expensive for the job market and you will be excluded.

One typical example: a person that has been over promoted, not based on merit, well beyond his/her capacity may find himself in a difficult spot and – I guarantee – will sooner or later let go as the value he/she brings is lower than the salary he/she receives.  So: how can we increase our value? We have 3 assets to curate, increase and protect.

“Knowledge”.  Learning is a mindset not a diploma nicely framed somewhere in the attic. To cope with machine learning we need to become learning machines. How? Point is that learning never stops and we need to keep on “sharpening the saw” as brilliantly explained by Steve Convey in the 7 habits of highly effective people. Learning however has to find some concrete application. If I were to say that I know by heart all the recipes of Italian Cuisine but I have never cooked a dish in my life, I will not have any credibility.

“Relationships”.  I called it the social capital we have, the network we have built over the years. How to develop your network? It is not having whatever # of followers on social media. Is about doing and being at the service of other. To a certain extent your social capital is like your bank account. You can ‘withdraw’ only if you have made a deposit, if you have invested in building relationships based on trust. It does not work when people think of relationships only when it is convenient to them and then disappear if they perceive that you can’t bring any value to them at that moment.

This is a purely transactional way to measure relationship “you exists only because I need you”. To the contrary “I exist, because I can help you”. Being able to build a strong relationship is key to increasing your value if done ethically and with sound judgment by fostering collaboration with people and organizations you want to be affiliated with.

“Reputation”. Reputation is what people say about you when you are not there. If you think about it, it is about your ethical footprint. Ethics is defined by what you are NOT prepared to do in achieving your objectives. Example. We want to progress in our careers but not at all cost, we want to do it as decent people. It is important to remember the difference between visibility and credibility.

We can be amazing portfolio managers of yourself by increasing our value by investing in our learning, relationship and reputations. This is the real value we offer to our society, communities and to the people we love.

Paolo Gallo

Author: “The Compass & the Radar: the art of building a rewarding career while remaining true to yourself “ @ Amazon.co.uk

CHRO – Chief Human Resources Officer, World Economic Forum, since April 2014. His appointment is the latest chapter in a career in leadership, human resources and international organizations that spans 70 countries. Prior to joining the Forum, Paolo Gallo has been Chief Learning Officer at the World Bank in Washington DC and for six years Director of Human Resources at EBRD in London.