We recently connected with Dr. Jennifer Jones Bryant and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Dr. Jennifer , thanks for joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
P – Professional Presence
It’s about poise and how you are showing up. Are you self-aware of these habits?
Awareness of habits will help you communicate the information you want to share.
Confidence: Part of developing presence is conveying confidence. What if you don’t feel confident? One way to enhance your confidence is to speak about what you know.
Communication: Up your game to communicate effectively. It’s essential to regulate your reactions, recognize emotions in others, and manage your responses. Let other people speak first. Ask questions and make them feel understood. Remember to smile, make eye contact, and lean forward. By staying in the moment and maintaining focus on the conversation, you can ask the right questions and lay the foundation for trust and openness to your influence. Also, to convey confidence, use what a 2014 Harvard Business Review article calls “muscular” language. Instead of saying, “I just think…,” try, “I strongly suggest…”. Instead of “Maybe that’s possible,” say, “Here’s my plan.”
Appearance: Dress—and feel—the part. There should be a strong connection between who you are, who you want to be, and how you look. For instance, if you want to be successful in the financial sector, you need to look like someone who understands and can be trusted with money. Identify the people who are successful where you work and study how they put themselves together. Focusing on your appearance can also go a long way toward boosting your internal confidence. A person’s interior life and external presence are deeply connected. When people pay more conscious attention to this connection and embody presence, they can expose their unique talent to the world in ways that enhance their happiness and success.
O – Outline Your Goals
Write clear and measurable goals, then create a specific action plan for each goal. Read your goals weekly and visualize yourself accomplishing them. Reflect on your progress to see if you are on target, and revise action plans and milestones if needed. Celebrate successes, no matter how big or small, and reflect upon them. Taking time to celebrate every success will build your confidence and make it easier to keep pushing to reach those large-scale future goals. Not to mention, a celebration can give you closure on goals you’ve been working toward for a while, encourage you to continue, and make every success even more worthwhile.
W – Well-Informed
Focus on your work and industry. Have a growth mindset and continue researching, creating, and innovating new products or services. Make it one of your goals to learn a new skill, immerse yourself in your industry, learn the inner workings of your business, and know your audience and competitors. Become an authority in your specialized field.
E – Embrace Your Network as an Opportunity to Grow
Some days, we may seem powerless. Knowing when to ask for help is a POWER move. You can’t have a successful career in a vacuum. Seek advice from mentors and sponsors. A mentor teaches you, and a sponsor champions you on your behalf. You want mutually beneficial relationships with people whom you can help and who, in turn, can champion your ideas and provide the advice and information you need to be successful. When you invest in your professional and personal relationships, that investment can pay you back in dividends throughout your career. Networking will help you develop and improve your skillset, stay on top of the latest trends in your industry, feel the pulse on the job market, meet prospective mentors, partners, and clients, and gain access to the resources that will foster your career development.
R – Reach Within and Identify Your POWER
True super P.O.W.E.R. comes when you’ve intentionally chosen to live your life unashamed, unapologetic, and confidently by showing up as your authentic self. Power is accepting who you are and releasing the negative stories in your head. Fear will creep in, sending signals to your brain that you will fail. To counter that negative mindset and remain motivated, you must fill your mind with uplifting and inspiring information. Power resonates with feelings of hope, freedom, and attunement with your inner self to speak truth to power and positively contribute to the world. Real power arises when people connect what they do to who they are. It is a concrete practice that allows one to be powerful with a purpose by influencing others and giving support through serving others. Serving others is key to sustainable growth and creates the influence that powerful people project—the kind that inspires and uplifts.
In conclusion, each new risk you take, each new step, brings you closer to owning your power. Reach within to bring out your SUPER P.O.W.E.R.! You have unique capabilities within yourself to ignite your fire. Transform your mindset, take action, and positive results will come. Find the fuel that ignites your passion. You must believe you can do it and take the necessary steps to increase your power.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
I get mid-level Corporate career women hired, promoted, or transitioned to another job. My company provides coaching that inspires, empowers, and motivates clients to reach their career goals through leadership and personal and professional development. We do this through personal engagement, competence, and integrity.
Services include but are not limited to personal development, resume critique, accountability calls, life coaching, and career counseling. In addition to a vast skill set, the company specializes in diversity, inclusion, and belonging training, leadership training, and professional development.
Here’s a way readers can find more about my background in my bio:
Dr. Jennifer Jones Bryant
Executive Founder of Reaching Within, An Empowerment Journey LLC, Best Selling Author, Award-Winning Certified Life Coach, Career Strategist, Mentor, Adjunct Instructor, and Global Speaker
Dr. Jennifer Jones Bryant’s passion is to help others find and grow their inner strength to accelerate to the next level in their career. She focuses on the key messages of reaching within yourself, making a difference, and being true to your core values and beliefs. Dr. Bryant is a Fortune 100 executive of Associate Experience, where she focuses on leading the continuous improvement of associate engagement, culture, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, and overall organizational effectiveness through 4 key areas: enablement, inclusion, engagement, and people leadership. She also leads one of the largest women empowerment Business Resource Groups with over 24,000 members. Prior to her working at a Fortune 100 Company, Dr. Bryant retired from the federal government with 31 years of service. From clerk-typist to Executive Director, her 31-year career with the federal government spanned many functional areas, including leading teams in business management services, process improvements, and employee engagement. She received various awards in different areas, such as leadership, customer service, innovation, civil rights, and diversity initiatives. Dr. Bryant’s formal education includes a Master’s of Science Degree in International Affairs, a Diversity and Inclusion Certificate from Cornell University, an executive leadership certificate from American University, a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, and two honorary Doctorate awards in leadership and philosophy.
As an international bestseller, author and speaker, she regularly receives speaking invitations from federal agencies, academia, and community organizations. She was featured in Essence Magazine, Brainz Magazine, VIP Global Magazine, Speakers Magazine, Faith Heart, Glam CEO, Power 20, Women of Dignity, VoyATL, ShoutOut Atlanta, One Tribe, and UpWord global magazines, Making Headlines News, Radio One, WTOP, and WUSA Great Day Washington.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
People are at the center of all things!
My leadership philosophy has been that people are at the beginning, middle, and end of all processes and decisions. Once you invest in people, they will go above and beyond for the mission. I believe that people move organizations, and inclusive leaders mean a commitment to ensure that all people feel a sense of belonging and the value and support they need to achieve their full potential. Once people feel valued and included, they make the real change that leads to greatness and increases high team morale.
Inclusivity is key!
Inclusivity is critical when managing a team and increasing high team morale. Companies have offered hybrid or fully remote working arrangements where employees come into the office at least once a week or work 100% remotely. Building connections with remote employees is essential so employees don’t feel isolated in this new work reality.
As a leader, cultivating and adopting inclusion practices are key to managing remote employees by following these tips:
* Survey and pulse your team: Find out how they wish to engage with the team.
* Create Team Norms: Partner with the team to develop how they will interact, collaborate, and work together.
*Enable remote employees with the right resources, and be sure to ask them how you can support them to be effective; for example, ask about their technology needs or how best they want to be included enabling them to perform.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I have had my share of disappointments, including being fatherless during my childhood and spending my teenage years caring for a mother with medically diagnosed schizophrenia and bipolar – a time during which my only sibling was incarcerated. After going through domestic abuse in two different relationships during my twenties, I looked past my challenging beginnings and reached within myself and my reliance on faith to find strength. I realized that my burning desire to expand beyond the path that was set for my childhood, I wanted to pursue a career in public service.
I found a day job working for the federal government, cleaned bathrooms in that same building, and attended college at night. After graduating college, I moved up the ranks quickly, going from a clerk-typist to senior management in my twenties, and later retired from the federal government as a certified senior executive while working through my depression from the loss of my mother, my brother(my only sibling), and ending of my 18-year marriage. As I walked through my healing journey, I started embracing the abundant blessings in my life, including my two lovely daughters, my second marriage, a host of loving bonus children, and supportive friends and family.
My stories of overcoming, resilience, and reaching within ignited a fire within me to help others with their journey by launching my business, Reaching Within, An Empowerment Journey. Reaching LLC. Our mission is to supply coaching that inspires, empowers, and motivates clients to achieve their career goals using our well-versed techniques. I have over 25 years of industry experience, various credentials, and more, enabling me to offer an array of specializations. Services include but are not limited to: personal development, resume critique, accountability calls, interviewing preparation, life coaching, and career counseling. In addition to a vast skill set, my company specializes in leadership training, professional development, and effective communication.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ReachingWithinEmpowerment.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ReachingWithin
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.j.bryant.14/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-bryant-15a7a622/
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/ReachingWithin
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4BC_24_TxziCnz8Dhbihqw
Image Credits
Lindria Dockett