Let’s be honest. You have enough on your plate right now that adding something like defining and enhancing your personal brand can easily feel like a “nice-to-have” but not rise to the level of “must-do”. This line of thought, while understandable, is a strategic mistake that can have significant consequences to your career prospects and overall satisfaction with your professional trajectory. Unless this is the first week of your first job ever, you already have a personal brand. It could be thought of as what others would say about you if asked for a reference and likely includes your talents, talent gaps, skills, style, and impact. The issue is if you are only peripherally aware of this brand (or not at all), you are not optimizing one of the most important assets you have for professional success. Personal brands are the engines of careers. You know the saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know?” Well, at PBX we think that is only part of the story. We believe that what you know is important and who you know can be even more important but what others know, think and feel about you is the real key to driving opportunity. Ok, so let’s assume you are convinced and you want to start working on your personal brand. You may fall into one or two categories right off the bat. First, you could be someone who already has a pretty good sense of your brand. If so, the first step is determining your brand weaknesses. This can be challenging because you could become overly critical or defensive and unable to see the weaknesses. We all have bind spots that can only become known to us if we are willing to see them. One way to identify your brand weaknesses is to utilize existing feedback to identify trends over time or to actively seek feedback from those that you believe will be honest and thoughtful about where you can improve. If you don’t think you have a good sense of your brand yet you fall into the second category. For this category a good first step is to engage in some structured self-assessment. Attempt to create a picture of yourself from the perspective of others in your context. You may want to ask for feedback but you may simply engage in the exercise of “mapping” your own strengths and weaknesses through self-reflection, assessment instruments and leadership or personality assessments. This work will pay dividends later on when you begin to strategically manage your personal brand. It becomes the baseline from which more advanced personal branding work can occur. Remember, rarely, if ever, is a personal brand built or rebuilt overnight. Your brand takes time to develop and a clear and guiding strategy to use for the greatest impact. To enhance your brand, invest in you. Regardless of which category you fall into make sure to articulate a personal brand statement. This can be as simple as an “I am” exercise. For example, a personal brand statement may be something like “I am a seasoned executive in marketing with a passion data-driven product marketing strategies”. Is this the end all and be all of your personal brand? Not even close. A brand statement isn’t worth much until you do the hard work to substantiate it and that comes over time and with great intention and reflection. As a starting point it can provide you something to “market test”. You might ask some trusted stakeholders to share their reaction to it and to help you make it more accurate and more powerful. Let’s look at one example of how personal branding work can be beneficial, even critical, to career success. Amanda is working in a high level sales role at an organization in which she has worked for the past 5 years. She has repeatedly been overlooked for promotions and feels underutilized and as though her expertise is undervalued. Those immediately around her seem aware of her value as it relates to cultivating strong customer relationships but those in decision-making positions do not. In this case we would argue that Amanda’s perception of her differentiators or “superpowers” is not aligned with her personal brand as it currently stands. If Amanda’s goal is to continue working at her current organization, she needs to take action to determine what is causing the disconnect between her self-image and her personal brand. Then, she can focus on enhancing her personal brand and making her differentiators front and center to those in decision-making positions. Alternatively, if Amanda’s goal is to find a new job at a different organization, developing and honing her personal brand will make this process more productive and lead to greater recognition and awareness of her strengths and talents during the hiring process. In either case, the outcome will be one that leads to greater career satisfaction and success. When we know and actively manage our personal brands we build our confidence which is critical to professional progress. The sad truth is competence does not always translate into confidence. Further, competence can, in some contexts, be fairly easily overlooked. Competence combined with confidence on the other hand is hard to miss!
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