Why your personal brand is important for your success
I would argue that your skills are not your most attractive asset on the job market today. In this competitive world they are merely table stakes. Your career today is no longer just built on what you know and what you can achieve. Today it is very much also about your personal brand and your network of relationships.
“My personal brand? Come on, I am who I am,” you might say. Wrong. You are who other people believe you are, and this will determine how you can build and nurture the relationships that can define your career and determine whether you achieve your vision of success. Whether you know it or not and whether you like it or not, you already have a personal brand. The people you work directly with and peers that you know throughout your industry all have perceptions about your experience and your capabilities.
I know talking about your personal brand is somewhat controversial and seen as manipulative in many countries. This creates even more incentive for us to deal with this subject in a straightforward manner—down to earth and applied in practical ways rather than flashy and fancy strategies. It also makes it even more important that you identify your values as there is nothing phonier than a personal brand or self-identify that is not coherent with one’s values. I think we can agree that authenticity is a great asset today with regards to products and services. The same goes with you.
Once a perception of you—your personal brand—has been created, it is difficult to change it.This works positively as well as negatively, so make sure you are aligned with your values and your future plans when you start actively working your personal brand.
Why Does It Matter?
Why should you care about personal branding? I have learned that an added focus on personal branding—and on building relationships that can help you leverage it—is an investment, not a cost. It creates freedom and new opportunities for you to do what you care about. If you have a strong, positive personal brand, you are more apt to:
• Receive interesting assignments or be given more freedom to choose what you’d like to do.
• Receive more recognition and better pay.
• Be given more opportunities to represent your company externally, which in turn might open up new career options outside your present job.
The purpose of polishing your personal brand is to get others to communicate the right message about you and your competences. It is also about expectations, opportunities, and rewards. You can’t have success if you can’t handle professional expectations. The people in your personal network base their expectations on your personal brand, your personality, and your skills.
When your network is well-developed, your personal brand helps create your opportunities. No opportunities, no rewards. Simply put, your personal brand can define your career, so why not try to make the best of it.
Certainly, if you were launching a new product or service, you would spend considerable time considering how to define and polish its brand. Doing the same thing for your personal brand is really no different. You want to be visible to senior management and you want them to understand your unique set of abilities and your capacity to help them achieve corporate goals. You want to make sure people are aware of your achievements and of any new skills you’ve gained since you were first hired. You want to be known as someone who can uncover and solve problems, and is persistent and willing to take on new opportunities. All of this can be done without coming across as too self-promotional or egotistical.
Of course, it’s important to remember that polishing your personal brand is not enough. You must still continue to further develop your knowledge and other assets. Your career development ends quickly if you only think about milking your assets (your knowledge and your network).
I will talk more about how create and develop your personal brand in a later posts.
Stefan, great post here. Being known for expertise is crucial if you want to establish a successful career. It sounds easy, but there is actually a lot of strategy and dedication involved.
Very good article. You make a good point. I look forward to reading your future post re: creating/developing personal brand.
Hi Stefan, I agree with dan – this is something I have been looking at for some time and only wish I had enough money for a self advertising poster campaign, lol!
I do believe in people buy people and marketing yourself is as important as your company, especially in today’s climate and smaller organizations.
Hello Stefan. Thank you for sharing this very good post. Very clearly written and well-stated.
It is surprising how many talented individuals (who recognize the importance of branding for products and services) tend to downplay the significance of promoting and managing their own personal brand. Some of it may be the "I am who I am" mentality that you referenced in your piece. I suspect some people may view managing their personal brand as self-promotion and may fear that this is distasteful. But if we don't know someone and can't mentally "position" him/her based on what we can glean from his/her own branding efforts, then we are left to guess. I'd rather proactively establish my own personal brand attributes than leave it to others to position me. I wonder if others agree with this?
Thanks again Stefan.
David
Stefan, completely agree with you! Personal branding is so crucial, as it is the beginning of the entire job search or career development process. We, with our experience, skills, expertise and leadership styles, are all products and our employers are our customers. But just like with products, why we pick some products over other similar products? We pick them for their brands, their differentiating essence.
Write down 5-10 words (adjectives or nouns) that represent you, your strengths, your unique qualities and/or your differentiators. Then have your coworkers, family, friends etc. do the same thing, and find out where these overlap. This will show you where your perceptions meet others' perceptions and this is a great place to start. I also recommend taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality assessment to identify your unique personality type and google the type to find out more information on how you best function in teams, at work, in relationships etc. This will really help you establish your personal brand.
Pick one word from all of this that best represents you and make this your one-word brand. The beauty about the one-word brand is that it is really easy to follow up with a personal brand pitch filled with more information and adjectives supporting it. The one-word is also more memorable to employers and anyone else you present it to.
Make sure to translate your personal brand consistently across all of your channels, including your resume, your cover letter, your emails, your online profiles and social networks, your interviews etc.
Chris
I couldn't agree with you more Stefan. I would like to add to the conversation by stressing how important it is to have a strong ability to honestly self assess your own strengths and weaknesses. Knowing truly what your strengths are enables you to leverage those strengths to further positively impact your employees, customers and shareholders. Knowing your weaknesses obviously allows you to improve to close the gap or surround yourself with people that complement your skills and mitigate your weaknesses.
Stefan-
Excellent post and so very true on many counts. One other reason for not building things I've heard, albeit surprisingly, is that some people seem to think they haven't done enough to deserve a personal brand. This has been said more than a few times, in the midst of helping others position as experts online.
However, having expertise and being known for it is VERY important and can really make you into something amazing, as someone people need for what you know how to do. You can carve a recession proof and career building position if you become known for and needed for something that is deeply felt and known about by you.
Your post is well thought out and builds a strong position. One other point to make – your personal brand being built on solid ground (I like Chris's one word description idea, too) with good positioning on the internet can be of importance now and into the future. There is simply no reason to wait. Build the brand now, especially if you are battling for position online with others in your field or others with your name (or perhaps both!!!) It is "never too late" but over time, the front page of Google and the "first name to come to mind" fills up – per subject area.
Look forward to more from you on the subject.
Andy
This was a great post and I agree 100%. Our personal brands should tell our story in a concise and memorable fashion. We need to better package ourselves. Like it or not, we already have a personal brand in the minds of those we interact with, but we need to act as or own brand managers.
A friend of mine once told me that a good practice is to write ones own obituary. What would it say of you? Is it in line with perceptions?
Great article. Working as project developer for a branding agency in China, I really think that the right personal branding opens doors for the company but also for myself as a young professional in China. Found your website today and definitely keep following your interesting posts.