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Many of the Portfolio Executives and Fractional Directors I work with have a level of personal humility that means you take it for granted that you’re doing a good job and don’t crave explicit recognition. However, as you build and develop your portfolio and want to create long-term sustainable relationships, you must get explicit recognition from your clients. How do you go about this?
Referencing your Initial Diagnosis
Remind your clients of your progress against the issues you identified in your initial diagnosis—see the article on ‘Building a Diagnostic’. CEOs and other executive team members often forget how far they’ve come and how much you’ve been part of that journey. So, part of your responsibility is to help them recognise how far you’ve gone and the specific contribution that you’ve made in that process.
To do this successfully, you must regularly set out what you’re trying to achieve for them. You need to focus on the things that will make the most difference and frame them as increasing shareholder value through increased revenue, reduced costs, and better-managed risk.
Example of a Portfolio Executive Marketing Director
Imagine you are a Portfolio Executive leading the marketing function. Look at the critical value drivers you achieve initially and set out your plans for the future. Is it that through your efforts, you’ve increased awareness of your client’s offer? Have you shortened the sales cycle because you’re providing better-quality leads? Have you enabled them to position themselves in a more profitable market? Is the revenue much more predictable because you have a marketing engine regularly generating well-qualified leads? Help them to understand the difference today from when you started last quarter, last year, or even two years ago.
Additionally, seek recognition from the other stakeholders at your client. You should strive to lead through influence rather than only position and direction. Part of your role is to grow and develop a powerful team of people who are working with you and breaking down the silos. A marketing director should demonstrate value to the sales director, position the product development function to address the most valuable markets and create long-term asset value for the finance director from brand capital and trademark registration. Demonstrating and articulating these impacts will develop recognition of your value in the executive team. Getting recognition from the people who work for you is also essential. Encourage them to share how you’ve developed them, stretched them, taught them new things, and what it’s meant for them from a work-style point of view. Get them to reflect on the excitement they’re feeling and the motivation they’ve got. Remind them of how you removed the poor performers, which meant they used to work harder to cover the failure of others. When you come into an organisation, you may recognise that you’ve got the wrong people on the bus or the right people on the bus but in the wrong seats. Moving those people around can make a dramatic difference to them and shift what’s going on in the business. Get recognition for the difficult conversations you had to address long-standing issues.
Recognition for Added Value
The third area where you can get recognition from your clients is when you do things beyond your core remit, such as making valuable connections, introducing potential partners, helping them see their world differently, and helping them network within their industry or profession. This adds value beyond your primary role of ensuring the right things get done and done right.
Final Thoughts
As you work with clients, encourage them to explicitly recognise you, perhaps by writing a LinkedIn recommendation, responding to articles you write on LinkedIn, or supporting posts you’re sending out where you remind people how great it is to have you as part of their team. Continually reinforcing your value for your clients and getting recognition is vital to building your presence and reputation. You ignore it at your peril.
Charles McLachlan is the founder of FuturePerfect and on a mission to transform the future of work and business. The Portfolio Executive programme is a new initiative to help executives build a sustainable and impactful second-half-career. Creating an alternative future takes imagination, design, organisation and many other thinking skills. Charles is happy to lend them to you.