Personal Branding – Who Do You Want to Be?

I read an article where a teenager said to her father, “Why do people ask what do I want to be, when they should be asking who do I want to be?” Good question! So, who do you want to be? What are you about?  What do you stand for? 

I have so many friends and associates who are out of work, and since my professional expertise is in Human Resources and Management, this post started out as a professional how-to for building your professional brand.  But as the article developed, a greater point came to light.  Professional and personal branding really should be one and the same.

What is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. So, what are they saying?  Do you know? Are you brave enough to ask? Can you take an honest answer?  My hubby has a saying, “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”  Make sure you really want to know before you ask.  Then be brave enough to implement the changes that fit with your personal branding, and let the rest go.

You Want to Learn to Pivot

Pivoting is different from growing because it means we’re willing to identify change and implement it. It’s not enough to be able to forecast rain.  You have to see it coming and build and ark.  Develop your intuitive skills, trust your gut, whatever this means to you, then act. You can’t simply adapt to change.  To be truly effective, you must see change coming and pivot before it’s even needed.  It does you no good to see change coming and dig your heels in, you’ll get run over by that train.  Use those moments to pivot and create a miracle.

Focus on Results

Ok.  This one might be the only purely professional point. Why should people want to spend time with you, hire you, buy from you, invest in you.  I’m not referring to task-oriented things like, “I’m a good manager”, “I’m punctual”, “I take care of my customers”, etc.  Your resume should not list your responsibilities, it should highlight your accomplishments.  It’s not a historical document, it is a marketing tool to attract a manager’s attention enough to want to pick up the phone and call you. How did you make things better for your past employers? Focus on your results.

Be a Willing Student

According to Korn/Ferry International, in a world where technology is replacing human jobs at an exponential rate, people need to adapt quickly to stay relevant.  I wrote a bit about relevance in this post. Be aware of your blind spots.  Personal branding is your very image, and women of a certain age have an image problem to overcome in society.  Don’t feed into the stereotype by being inflexible and unwilling to learn.  Keep your skills sharp and be an early adapter to new processes and technology.

Be Consistent in Thought, Word, and Deed

Don’t say one thing and do another.  My grandma used to say, “Your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”  So be sure your actions match your words. You have to live your brand and be the same at work as you are at home.  When I was a young professional, a common thought was to never mix business with pleasure.  Business was business, and friends were friends.  I became all the different things to all the different people.  I was mommy Jonni, wifey Jonni, Jonni the friend, Jonni the executive, the manager, the employee, the coworker, the daughter. Then, after almost 25 years of marriage, we divorced.  Suddenly, the “me” that I had carefully crafted shattered, and I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.

Be Authentic

Be genuine, don’t hide. With the fight knocked out of me, I was simply me, a little damaged, authentic, vulnerable, and open.  I stopped putting on airs and being what I thought others wanted me to be.  Suddenly people asked me to lunch, and to social events outside of work.  My income nearly doubled. My influence grew professionally, and personally.  I developed deep friendships like I had never had before.  Where I had once felt so lonely and distrustful, I suddenly felt people had my back. I didn’t worry about making mistakes, and nobody mentioned if I did.  It was a process, but we developed mutual respect and trust.

Treat People Well

Build a personal brand around giving, not taking. Help others.  Create a positive impact. However, you want to express this, your reputation is your brand, so make sure it’s a good one. I can’t stress this enough.  People need to trust you and like you in order to spend time with you. Your personal brand needs to be a genuine reflection of who you are and what you believe. You won’t attract everyone, but you’ll attract “your people”, people who will run through fire for you.

Accept Failure

In fact, if you have the fortitude, celebrate your failures.  You’ll learn from your mistakes and refine your message that much more.  The more refined, the clearer your message, the richer and more concise your brand will become. As I illustrated above, sometimes your mistakes and failures can change your life in unexpected ways.

Find a Mentor

Surround yourself with people you respect and can learn from.  You can have an official mentoring relationship, or it can simply be organic.  Find people who embody your goals and values.  As the old saying goes, You are judged by the company you keep. Or, according to Tom Corley in his book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life, “You are an average of the 5 people you hang out with.”  In a five-year study of 177 self-made millionaires over five years, he found they made an effort to only spend time with people they aspired to be.

Choose Your Friends Wisely

To me, this isn’t about money.  Your crowd influences your perspective, your politics, your weight, your style, and even how you see yourself.   When I was a kid, I smoked.  In fact, I smoked for 20 years.  When I finally decided to lay down the cigarettes, I had to figure out my triggers.  I changed my habits to avoid those triggers.  I had to stop hanging out with people who smoked, which were a large part of my social network.  Happy hours and coffee breaks all went away. There were no more smoke breaks at work.  My entire social circle changed.  When I quit smoking, I became a non-smoker.  I didn’t just become a smoker who no longer smoked.  It’s a fine detail, but an important one.  I changed my entire life, not just my health, with that one seemingly small change. I started hanging out with a different type of person. This wasn’t intentional, it was organic, and it was a great change for me. Also, here is a good place to mention that not everyone is going to be “your person”. That’s ok. You can still celebrate your differences and learn from each other…or not.

Be Generous in Spirit

All it takes is a stroll down the empty food isles at the grocery store to see how many people are functioning at the very lowest rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. People focus squarely on “me” and lose sight of “us”.  As soon as basic needs are not met, people shift their focus to the very basics.  Only when those are met do they look up for more.  I’m suggesting that you try to focus on the greater good, and not survival of the fittest.  Pay it forward. We can all be generous in spirit. Applaud the success of others. Believe that the blessings will come to you, too.  You’ve heard that we are as weak as our weakest link, but as Kahlil Gibran so beautifully wrote in The Profit, “This is but half the truth.  You are also as strong as your strongest link.” Be the strength to bolster the weak.

Build Good Habits

In this incredible time of change, we are all redefining ourselves in one way or another.  It might be in very small or very large ways.  Growth might have been thrust upon us, or made as a conscious choice.  With decades of experiences to draw on, I’ve refined my list of who I want to be, but in the most important of ways, it remains the same.  No matter the venue or situation, I want to reflect these attributes.  Some days I do pretty well, others I fall short and have to give myself some grace.  But I never lose sight of these cornerstones.

• Good habits
• Positive mental outlook
• Trustworthiness
• Encouraging attitude
• Fanatic loyalty
• Financial stability
• Hard work ethic
• Individual accountability
• Strong willpower and discipline
• Passion and enthusiasm
• Gratitude

So, who do you want to be? Comment below, if you’re inspired.