Personal Brand: Why it Matters for Your Career
Why Personal Branding Is More Important Than Ever
One of my newer coaching clients, Ashley, a younger contract individual contributor that was obtaining her masters degree, was being overlooked for a full time position. Some discussion about why with her manager revealed it was because hardly anybody knew her.
This was not entirely surprising, as the company she was close to having over 100,000 employees, but it was still surprising as the teams she regularly worked with gave her praise for her strong work ethic and good results. It turns out that the economic whirlwinds pushed the decision making all the way up to the president and vice presidents of her specific business within the company. Unfortunately the President and Vice Presidents had no clue who she was.
Ashley made the mistake many people make early on in their careers. She believed her efforts, education, or performance were enough to outcompete her colleagues and secure a full time position. She overlooked (or was simply never taught) the value of building a personal brand.
What is a personal brand?
Ashley’s managers knew he was a strong performer. Why wasn’t that enough for her to land a full time position?
In the fast-paced and competitive world of high-performing organizations, standing out and making an impact is crucial for professional success. While having a good reputation is important, it is not enough to truly differentiate oneself and excel in today's corporate landscape. To truly thrive and maximize your potential, you need to cultivate an outstanding personal brand.
Confusion often arises when we try to differentiate between reputation and personal branding. Although they are related, they are not one and the same. Every individual possesses a reputation, which is formed based on the impressions they make, the relationships they cultivate with managers and peers, and how effectively they communicate. Colleagues may describe someone as warm and collaborative but occasionally late for meetings. These collective actions and behaviors shape an individual's reputation, reflecting the opinions and beliefs others form about them.
On the other hand, personal branding is a more intentional and deliberate endeavor. It involves shaping how you want others to perceive you. While reputation is centered around credibility, personal branding focuses on visibility and the values you outwardly represent. You possess the power to define your personal brand by aligning your intentions with your actions. By consciously modifying your decisions and behaviors, you can influence how others perceive you and foster emotional and intellectual connections with the image you aspire to portray. When your desired image aligns with the opportunities you seek, you increase your chances of securing them.
Now that we understand the significance of personal branding, let's delve into how you can begin building your own brand
.
Step 1: Identify Your Driving Forces
To embark on the journey of personal branding, start by exploring what truly motivates you. Reflect on the following questions:
- What gets you up each morning to go to work?
- Which skills or talents are you most proud of?
- Which skills do you wish to develop?
- What kind of tasks or projects energize you?
- Which subjects are the most intriguing to you?
- What impact do you aspire to have on the world in the next 10 years?
- What do you have in common with your role models?
Write down your answers to these questions and identify any overlaps or alignments you discover. This exercise will aid in recognizing the values, beliefs, or goals that currently drive you. For example, you might realize that you excel at conflict management, enjoy brainstorming new ideas, and thrive in collaborative environments. Moreover, you may learn that the individuals you admire exhibit curiosity, compassion, and creativity.
By identifying and reflecting on your driving forces and aspirations, you can leverage your existing skills and competencies to deliberately demonstrate behaviors that showcase your strengths and passions. Furthermore, this knowledge will guide you in pinpointing the new skills you may need to acquire to reach your desired destination. A career coach can help you in this process if it feels overwhelming to take it on by yourself. Read more about some career coaching considerations.
Step 2: Align Your Values with Organizational Goals
While understanding and shaping your personal brand is essential, it is equally vital to connect your brand to the goals of your organization if you aim to grow within your current role. Begin by examining successful and admired individuals within your company. Observe the consistent behaviors and traits they exhibit. What are their most valued strengths, and how do their actions contribute to the advancement of the business?
Returning to step one, reflect on the goals and values you identified. Can you find any alignment between your current skills and the qualities that your organization rewards? If you discover such alignment, focus on developing and nurturing those areas. However, if there is a lack of alignment, you may need to expand your competencies. This exercise will help you envision a personal brand that not only reflects your aspirations but also aligns with the strategic objectives of your company.
It can often be helpful to choose a keyword or attribute that encapsulates your personal brand. Examples include leader, innovator, creative, or techie. Building upon our previous example, suppose you join a Research & Development (R&D) team at a consumer goods company. If you observe that your organization consistently introduces cutting-edge products to the market and values leaders who challenge the status quo and think outside the box, you might choose "innovator" as your key personal brand attribute.
The subsequent step would involve identifying the specific traits and behaviors you need to develop and consistently demonstrate to be perceived as an innovator. These may include observable characteristics such as generating creative and resourceful solutions to problems, integrating ideas from various sources, and building upon suggestions made by others during meetings. Divergent thinking is a great skill to have to become an innovator.
Ultimately, your goal should be to align your passions with the core values of your organization. By doing so, you can fuel your professional growth and reinforce your personal brand.
Step 3: Mapping Your Stakeholders
Just like in the commercial world, a brand cannot succeed if it remains unknown to its target audience. In the case of personal branding, failure to showcase your brand to a broad audience, especially key decision-makers, significantly decreases your chances of accessing more prominent and better opportunities. To increase your visibility within the organization, consider creating a stakeholder map, again it is just like a commercial brand you have to have a target audience, the stakeholders, but it also helps to be appealing to a broader audience as well.
A stakeholder map is a tool that helps you identify the influential individuals within your organization and strategize ways to connect with them, both formally and informally. There is no one right way to create a stakeholder map. It can be as simple as a list of people you wish to know or individuals who can assist you in progressing within the organization. Alternatively, it can be a more comprehensive document that includes the names of influential leaders, their roles and responsibilities, and how they can potentially advocate for you.
Regardless of the method you choose, the most crucial aspect is understanding who you want to reach out to and why. Remember that the success of your organization's leadership team depends on the excellent work of individual contributors, such as yourself. This provides you with a natural opportunity to reach out and learn more about them: their interests, professional challenges, problems they are trying to solve, and their involvement in alumni networks, charities, and personal and professional affiliations. Utilize the knowledge gained about these stakeholders to position yourself as someone who adds value to their lives and possesses the ability to make a significant impact on the organization.
Step 4: Enhancing Your Visibility
Once you have your stakeholder map in place, the next step is to reach out to the individuals on it. Initially, this may feel slightly uncomfortable, so don't hesitate to seek assistance. Approach your boss, a senior colleague, or a teammate who has been with the organization for a while and ask for introductions.
When connecting with these individuals, propose the idea of a brief discussion. Frame your request around seeking their advice on a topic within their area of expertise. During your introduction highlight a shared hobby, aspiration, or alumni affiliation to build up rapport. Remember the goal of this meeting is to network and recruit some stakeholders to be in your corner. Add as much value to them as possible. Be prepared with some ideas on how they can approach a challenge they are facing. Do not hesitate to mention it in your message when initially scheduling the meeting.
When you get into the discussion of their problem emphasize your skills and interests, and explain how these competencies add perspective or value to their current problem solving process. Consider this initial message as an opportunity to showcase your personal brand. Clearly articulate what you stand for and, most importantly, how it relates to making a positive difference within the organization. Additionally, receive feedback on what they think of your solutions as this will help inform you on any skills you can develop to build your brand. If you do have something you want to seek their advice on save it for the end of the meeting and make sure the request or question you have is simple, think of something that they can answer in 30 seconds or less so you don’t burden them. Many of the top performers are constantly busy so approaching them with a complex problem during their coffee or lunch break lowers the chances of leaving a great impression.
Suppose, for example, you wish to connect with the Vice President of Business Development at your firm. Your message could be structured as follows:
"Hi Tom! During a recent town hall meeting, you emphasized the importance of determining better leading & lagging indicators to enhance the effectiveness of our business strategy. As someone passionate about data analytics and having worked as an analyst for the past three years, I would love to share some ideas on using interactive data visualization to transform vast pools of data into actionable information for our business projections and strategy. Could we schedule a 20-minute discussion?"
The key is to genuinely show interest in your colleagues' concerns, aspirations, and the problems they are striving to solve. By doing so, you can highlight and frame your own strengths in a way that supports and assists them, without making it seem like your primary focus is self-advancement.
While building a personal brand may initially appear self-promotional, it is not. Your personal brand is how you define and communicate the distinctive value you bring to your career. It has the potential to strengthen your connections, foster authentic relationships, and help others understand who you truly are and what you stand for. Ultimately, a well-crafted personal brand can propel you toward realizing your goals and aspirations. Building that brand can sometime be difficult, schedule a consultation with us today and see how we can make it easier for you.
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