Case Study: Recreating Personal Brand and Identity to Reenergise a Career
At a glance
- Kim MacLarty had built a successful career in big-name corporate enterprises
- Looking for a change in direction, she took over and, over a period of nine years, turned around a failing local deli
- Having combined both corporate and SME experience, she felt she needed to update her understanding of her motivation, direction, and future career opportunities
- Kim engaged Lesley Jones to discover these factors and create a forward-looking personal brand and identity
- The three-month mentoring programme enabled Kim to consolidate her motivators, strengths, and reasons to believe in herself, signposting exciting new opportunities for career growth
Background
An accomplished businesswoman with many years’ experience in big-name corporate organisations, Kim MacLarty totally changed direction when she took on and turned around a long-established but struggling local business, Halsey’s Deli and Eatery, in Hertfordshire.
The change in environment meant that Kim went from directing and managing to taking responsibility for doing everything herself, and although it was a fulfilling experience that ultimately delivered commercial success, it was not without its challenges.
Solution
To help Kim achieve her goals, at Lesley Jones we designed a short-term, three-month mentoring programme based around in-depth questioning and exercises, face-to-face discussions, and computer-assisted analysis.
As part of this process, we used our psychometric qualifications and skills to identify Kim’s motivators, and determine what would work best for her in terms of future opportunities: the types of organisation, the kinds of people, and, as well as, importantly, what Kim calls the “drains” – situations and environments she needed to avoid.
We also explored Kim’s upbringing and formative years, to understand the unchangeable roots of her personality, qualities, and values, and examined her work history to understand where and why she was happiest, and what sorts of environments stimulate her to deliver her best.
But exercises, explorations, and analysis apart, what Kim also valued highly was the close dialogue with us that enabled her to delve deeper into herself to pose some more searching questions.
“You genuinely need to sit and talk to someone,” she says, “so you can ask yourself things like ‘What does this mean in terms of how I deal with other people?’ Or ‘Do I need to adapt my approach to my team or my customers?’”
And in just a few short weeks, this combined process revealed some exciting new insights to help Kim set the course for the next chapter in her career.
Results and outcomes
Kim describes her engagement with Lesley Jones as an “incredible journey” that delivered a “massive eye-opener” - namely, the realisation that Kim’s principal motivator was a desire for freedom and autonomy that suggested she should ideally be running several businesses instead of being tied to one!
“This motivator was literally off the scale,” she says, “and this knowledge really validates and fed my hankering to start another business. It showed that trying new things is the right thing for me personally.”
The process also clarified many of Kim’s other aspirations, too, including her desire to mentor other small and medium enterprises (SMEs). “Identifying the motivators highlighted the sorts of people and businesses I should be working with, and the value I can add that will convince them to work with me,” she comments.
And in her current business, our programme has also had a positive effect, encouraging Kim to assess each individual and how she deals with them, rather than expecting them to adapt to her.
Proof – if any were needed – that knowing what’s good for you is often the same thing as knowing what’s good for your business!
For more information on how Lesley Jones can help you know yourself better to take your business and your career to the next level, get in touch today.