At the recent SobCon event in Chicago, I gave a talk to my fellow bloggers about my perspective on what it means to have a body of work and how to go about developing and communicating it.  I suggested that there are four critical steps: Cultivate a Burning Desire to Excel in Your Field, Hone Your Chops, Develop Your Own Point of View, and Build Your Body of Work

Then, I asked them to answer the following corresponding questions about themselves, their work, and their relationship to it:  

1.  Why do I love my work?

2.  What more can I do to deepen my knowledge, expand my wisdom, and broaden my experience?

3.  What do I think about [everything I've learned from others]? If I could flip the proverbial magic switch, and make my field different, what would I change?

4.  How do (will) I express and communicate my point of view through everything I do and how I do it?

They’re great questions, if I do say so myself, and I recommend you answer them, too.  I think you’ll find that they’re applicable on many different levels.

To wit, take a look at Miguel Cano’s post over at The Living Room blog.  He’s taken these questions and expanded them out to apply to a brand or company.  His adaptation looks like this:

1.  Cultivate a burning desire to excel in your industry: Does every employee love the products or services and content your business offers and produces?

2.  Hone your chops: What can your business do to improve each employee’s knowledge about the business, expand staff’s industry wisdom and broaden everyone’s experience.

3.  Develop your own point of view: Have you taken your employee’s insights into consideration, and what does your business think about those ideas?

4.  Build and broadcast your brand’s body of work (BOW): What methodology can your business offer to employees to allow each of them to express their passions and insights about your business and industry? What platform(s) should your business embrace to house employee’s passions and insights?

Can you think of other ways to adapt and apply these questions to your life and work?

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As the president of Extreme Leadership, Steve Farber has gained a reputation as a “leadership expert” in his own right.  He's the author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership, , is a leadership consultant and speaker, and the author of the national bestseller The Radical Leap, and The Radical Edge.