“How did you develop your personal brand, Hayley?”
This is a question I get asked at least once a week. Whether it’s a female leader I’m coaching who has been told she needs to “be more visible” if she’s going to progress. Or it might be a psychologist who is in the early phase of working for themselves. Or it might be a postgrad student wanting to cut through the noise and stand out on social media.
First, let me tell you a secret. This stuff doesn’t come naturally to me and I haven’t always been intentional about building my personal brand. It was only in the final years of a corporate leadership role, and then when I set up my business, that I really thought about my brand.
5 common myths about personal branding
There are five traps I typically see people fall into when I work with them on their personal brand:
- Doing great work = having a great personal brand
- My line manager will market my brand
- Personal branding is just self-promotion. And self-promotion is icky.
- Personal branding is only really relevant if you’re a business owner, a celebrity, or a social media influencer.
- Personal branding is only for the narcissists out there.
The first myth seems to be commonly adopted by women. Carol Frohlinger and Deborah Kolb call this Tiara Syndrome. This is the belief that being modest, working hard, and diligence will get you promoted and see you paid well. But here’s the thing. This tactic rarely works.
Personal branding isn’t just the purview of those who work for themselves. If you work in a high performing organisation or a competitive industry, pretty much everyone will be exceptional in some way. Therefore, to stand out, you need a strong personal brand.
As Catherine Kaputa says in her book Women who brand:
“…if you don’t brand yourself, someone else will, and it won’t be your brand”
A couple of other things to consider:
- Personal brand is not the same as reputation. Reputation is how others see you.
- Personal brand is much more intentional. It’s how you want others to see you.
We also take the ick out of personal branding by adhering to the advice from a 2020 study that suggests:
“Credibility and in particular, authenticity are two attributes that are understood to represent the crucial ingredients for human brands” (p.10)
4 benefits of personal branding
As Karen Kang says in her book Branding Pays:
“Without a brand goal, strategy and action plan, personal branding becomes akin to baking a cake without a recipe”
A clear personal brand, underpinned by a plan:
- Enhances your visibility.
- Helps you expand your professional network.
- Helps you attract new opportunities.
- Helps you get clear on and communicate your unique abilities and strengths.
7 steps to building a positive personal brand
Key to building a positive personal brand is to be intentional, strategic, with good self-awareness. As one study says,
“Personal branding is a strategic process of creating, positioning, and maintaining a positive impression of oneself, based in a unique combination of individual characteristics, which signal a certain promise to the target audience through a differentiated narrative and imagery” (p.6)
Here are the seven steps I get clients to work through when they want to develop or update their personal brand:
Step 1: Identify your values and strengths
Conduct a SWOT analysis. I have a series of specific questions I get my clients to work through when we’re conducting a SWOT on their personal brand. Key is to reflect on the Strengths and Weaknesses of your personal brand. Then think about the Opportunities and Threats that could positively or negatively impact your brand. Write everything down under these four headings.
Look at the “market research” you get in your annual performance review, or feedback from clients if you work for yourself. What qualities and abilities make you different, even better, than others in your field or industry?
Step 2: Connect your values and strengths to your organisation’s goals
For example, if your organisation’s goal is to be number one in the industry, and one of your core values is delivering excellence – then you can tie the two together. Likewise, if people always come to you because of your attention to detail, this is something you can talk about in performance appraisals, and any other time you have the opportunity to talk about yourself.
If you work for yourself, being clear on your business goals is critical. Particularly if, like me, you’re a one-person business. Your personal brand is your business brand and vice versa. One of my main goals is to help public sector managers and leaders be more confident, competent and self-sufficient in handling a range of seemingly insurmountable workplace problems. My personal brand – being a ‘pracademic’ – is about making the often inaccessible and unreadable academic research accessible to leaders and managers, helping them learn important concepts and ideas to help them handle an array of gnarly workplace issues. Educate, inform, and entertain are the watchwords of my personal brand.
Step 3: Develop your personal brand statement. Keep it concise.
- What you’re best at and your personal qualities
- Who your audience is – customers, colleagues, clients
- What makes you unique
These things together form your personal brand statement. Let’s break it down with an example based on a client I worked with years ago:
What are you best at? My client said they were strong at building good relationships with ‘problem clients’. Delivering high quality work – their attention to detail being particularly good.
Who do you serve/work primarily with? My client explained their company worked with large organisations who buy services from the company. It is an intensely demanding sector. Once the contract is signed, my client is their go-to.
What makes you unique? After some reflection, my client described their ability to keep calm in the face of pressure and other people’s emotions, such as anger. In fact, the angrier or more frustrated someone is, the calmer my client would become. Someone once described my client as a soothing balm.
My client’s personal brand statement*:
Hi. I’m X, an expert in client relationship management. My attention to detail and love of building meaningful, high-trust relationships, are the reasons clients say they value working with me. My ability to always remain calm under pressure has been a defining strategy in my career, and why my expertise in managing client relationships in tough environments is highly sought after.
*Slightly adapted to protect anonymity.
Keys to a positive personal brand statement
- Clarity – keep your message simple and clear. Your personal brand message should be succinct, not a shopping list. People should know who you are (your name and what you bring to the table) and what you do (the specific value you provide).
- Speciality – what sets you apart from others in your domain?
- Consistency – keep your message the same (verbal and visual identity) in every interaction and exposure.
Step 4: Map your key stakeholders
This step is incredibly important. In fact, it’s so important and has come up so often in coaching sessions over the years, that I created a tool just for my clients! These are the things to think about:
Who is important to your career progression. Who are they? What are their roles?
This isn’t just about people inside your organisation (if you’re a corporate employee). Think about people outside your organisation, in your wider profession or sector.
If you work for yourself, you might want to think about people in your key audience. For example, my key stakeholders are directors in the UK public sector (local government, NHS, fire, and police).
Once you’ve created your list, think about how visible you are to them. How impactful is your brand where each of these stakeholders concerned?
Step 5: Conduct a personal brand audit
Key questions to consider as part of your audit?
- How am I currently perceived by my key stakeholders?
- How do I want to be perceived by my key stakeholders?
- What’s the gap between the two?
One way you can find out what your gap is, is by asking for feedback. Here are some good questions to ask:
- What do you like most about working with me?
- What do you like least?
- What three words do you think describe me best?
- How do I provide value for you?
- What do you think my strengths are?
- What do you think I do?
- What do you think others say about me?
Step 6: Develop your annual plan
Once you know your personal brand gap, you can develop your plan for the year. This is about being intentional. Two things should underpin your plan:
Verbal identity – your communications ability. The way you define yourself verbally – the words, phrases and ideas that reinforce your personal brand. If we use the example I gave of a former client – they are intentional in using words that reiterates their calmness under pressure, their expertise and enjoyment of working in high-pressure, intense environments, their focus on quality and attention to detail.
Visual identity – your distinct look, style and demeanour – all the visual messages that communicate your brand nonverbally. Again, my former client referenced earlier ensures their personal brand on places like LinkedIn depicts attention to detail, calmness, and quality, along with their love of working with people. This is also the same for how they show up in person.
Step 7: Review plan every 12 months
Reviewing your personal brand plan is important. This helps you identify what’s working, what’s not, and pivoting accordingly. It also helps you if things have changed.
For example, before I left my last leadership role in UK local government – my personal brand was had evolved so that I was positioned as an expert in marketing and communications. People either didn’t know or had forgotten I started my career as an organisational psychologist, at the BBC.
When I left local government to set up HALO Psychology, I had to develop a new personal brand statement and plan. I often refer to this as the ‘Madonna effect’. Love her or hate her, there’s no doubt that Madonna is the expert on reinvention and personal rebranding. She’s done it many times over the past 40 years. What we learn from her is the importance of intention, focus, and having a strategy.
So whether you’re just starting out, or you’re having your own ‘Madonna moment’ – getting clear on what your personal brand is, developing a plan, and acting on that plan are the best things you can do for your long-term success.
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References
I thoroughly enjoyed this insightful piece. It got me thinking about how much a website can truly impact someone’s life, sometimes even more so than a large inheritance. It’s a powerful message