Make Your LinkedIn Profile Better With A Simple Shift In Your Mindset

 Your leadership mindset is showing — and your LinkedIn profile is proof. Whether you’re a business coach or a CFO, actively hiring or open to work, the way you lead tends to shape the way you show up online. On LinkedIn, as in leadership, most people fall into one of two camps: those who lead with “me” and those who lead with “we.” Understanding which mindset drives you — and what you actually want to achieve on the platform — is the first step to building a profile that truly reflects who you are.

Let me give you an example: Because May is my birthday month, I was recalling my most recent birthday parties. Two years ago, when I was celebrating a milestone birthday, my husband and I planned a big party — with friends flying in from out of town and a delicious dinner. We played music, sang, and told stories together. The celebration was joyful and a significant way to mark the occasion. The following year, I celebrated with just my husband and two teenage daughters, asking each to bring a book, movie, song, or podcast they loved so we could experience it together. As a mother of teenagers, that connection was priceless — the evening quieter, the cake homemade, the conversation deep. At one party, I was the center of attention. At the other, my guests were. Neither is better, but their outcomes are different.

It is the same with the leadership mindset. At certain moments, leaders need to be in the spotlight, the sage on stage. They need to prepare their leadership stories that catch people’s attention, resonate with shared purpose, and inspire action. At other times, leaders need to be the guide on the side. The one who is excavating the stories that their colleagues, clients, and team members need to share but don’t yet know how to. These stories that leaders facilitate will in turn help them be better leaders — leading with better information, more perspectives, and an openness to new opportunities.

So what does this have to do with your LinkedIn profile? Your About section is like your birthday party. You can be the center of attention — listing your accomplishments and expertise. It is customary and expected that people will brag about themselves in their About section. On the other hand, you can use the space to focus on the people you want to connect with. What do they need? What stories remain buried that they don’t yet know how to tell? How can you contribute to their success? This mindset is less expected, and it can be quite rare on LinkedIn.

 

The Benefits of the Others-Centric Mindset On LinkedIn

1. You worry less about yourself. This means less anxiety and less nerves. When I threw the milestone birthday bash, I worried about what to wear to the party. When I was listening to my daughters and husband share their favorite song and podcast, I had absolutely no concern about me whatsoever. My attention was outward.
2. You don’t have to brag. Showcasing your success, while sometimes necessary, is egocentric. When you change your mindset to think about how your skills can benefit others, it’s suddenly not self-serving. You can share your gifts freely. Take a retired superintendent in my neighborhood who channels decades of leadership into community impact — serving on a childcare center board, leading a children’s choir, and volunteering at a local health program. Whether she’s setting tables or ensuring state compliance, she gives her expertise wherever it’s needed most.
3. You don’t need all the answers. When you lead with an other-centric mindset, you know that you don’t need to have all the answers. Perspectives and experiences from the people around you can help you make strategic decisions. When you are others-centric you can focus on asking crazy good questions.

How To Put An Others-Centric Mindset To Work In Your LinkedIn Profile

When you understand who your audience is on LinkedIn, it’s time to think about how your skills, expertise and experiences overlap with your audience. I like the way Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Emeritus Chip Heath conveys the others-centric mindset: “To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from ‘What information do I need to convey?’ to ‘What questions do I want my audience to ask?’” Switching from focusing on what you need to write on your LinkedIn profile to focusing on what kind of response you want the reader to have is an effective way to implement the others-centric mindset.

For example, Elijah Jones, a freelance grant writer, starts his profile off with “I write grant proposals for nonprofits that are too busy running programs to write them.” This sentence not only shows what Jones does, but centers the audience he’s trying to reach with his skills:  Nonprofit leaders who need help fundraising for the great programs they run. It names a pain point while elevating the audience he’s trying to attract. They feel seen.

With all these qualities in mind, I’ve started to edit my own LinkedIn profile by switching my mindset. Rather than focusing on my credentials and competence, I’m focused on making my reader feel seen, and inspiring them to ask questions about how my expertise in storytelling may help them thrive. Before the opening lines were:

“I begin my Mondays with a 1,000-meter swim and a raw jalapeño. Diving into each workweek, the energy and zest are fuel for the thinking and creativity required to serve my clients.

Clients like Adyen, BP, PayNet/Equifax, PwC, SC Johnson and United Airlines will attest to the power of leadership storytelling.”

In this opening, I am trying to show the caliber of clients I’ve worked with, while also trying to offer a bit of my personality. (If you’ve not tried jalapeños on Monday mornings, I’d say give it a whirl.)

In my new opening, I’ve kept the jalapeños, but saved the list of clients until later. Instead, I want to make sure I’m paying attention to what skills I can bring that help potential clients succeed. I want them to feel seen, heard, and understood:

“I begin most Mondays with a 1,000-meter swim and a raw jalapeño.

Yes, some necessary suffering is by design. More importantly, leadership storytelling requires energy, curiosity, and the willingness to stay awake to what others miss.

The leaders I work with rarely lack expertise. More often, their organizations are overloaded with information, but starving for clarity. Stakeholders have data but struggle with meaning. Teams communicate constantly yet still miss what matters most.

That’s where story discovery comes in.”

Shifting Your LinkedIn Profile To Match Your Leadership Mindset

Here I’m not touting my accomplishments (not yet), but making sure readers can identify themselves and what challenges their team has been facing. I also want them to feel curious, and therefore, open to learning about how storytelling can help them and their team communicate more effectively.

In the end, your LinkedIn profile is just one point of contact in the process of building a relationship. The LinkedIn profile that earns real connection aims to impress and resonate. The best way to get someone’s attention is by giving them yours.

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