careerwatch How do you measure your brand?
I am always astonished at how little formal feedback professionals receive on the effectiveness or otherwise of their communication skills. How you measure the success of your brand will depend entirely upon you and your role. But seeking out regular feedback, both positive and negative from colleagues, clients and other connections is critical. You don’t want to be that person who doesn’t get invited to networking events! Measurement could also be of less tangible benefits such as your importance in driving cultural change.
science to this but could be summarised as: 1 How you position yourself to your internal and external audience through face to face, written and online interactions. 2 Your image and/or aura 3 Your behaviour and/or reputation
I take this to mean how you actively differentiate yourself and how you demonstrate your value. If personal branding is all about intent, then building an effective personal brand requires detailed self-analysis, and comprehensive and continual measurement. It is also about considering those qualities that make up a ‘successful’ or effective personal brand and endeavouring to apply them. When I am training I ask delegates what are qualities that make up a successful personal brand. Here are some recurring examples: • Transparent • Charismatic • Likeable • Confident and positive • Trustworthy • Emotionally intelligent • Reliable • No pushover (tough) • Humble • Candid • Interesting What struck me immediately was how similar these are to John Adair’s famous 7 qualities of leadership: 1 Enthusiasm 2 Integrity 3 Toughness 4 Fairness 5 Warmth 6 Humility 7 Confidence
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Is it true therefore that leaders all have successful personal brands? Clearly not. There are plenty of leaders whose ‘brands’ we would not want to emulate. But the parallel does suggest that in building a compelling personal professional brand, leadership qualities are important.
Devising a personal branding strategy
Having painted a picture of what an effective personal brand looks like, how do we work towards defining our own current brand status? There are several personal professional branding workbooks online. They guide you through considering such matters as your differentiation, vision, core values, strengths, weaknesses, passions and purpose. The idea is then to analyse the results and seek feedback from trusted friends and colleagues. This works well for those at an early stage of their careers, but can also help those further along the career ladder to evaluate their standing.
Communicating your brand
As the key to personal branding is communicating with intent, keep your career vision and goals in mind, show that you are well informed, and get buyin for your ideas. The objective in many cases is become a ‘go-to’ person. Your communication includes every touchpoint – your emails, how you answer the phone, giving presentations... And remember if you work in professional services business development and marketing, lawyers and accountants tend to be ‘detail’ people. They like to see evidence, especially of your value.
Some important considerations
Look for lessons as to what doesn’t work. Examples could be describing yourself as a guru or ‘the best’. Personally, I like the example given by Liz Ryan in her article on ‘6 worst possible branding choices’: “Bottom-line-focused Business Professional skilled at leading cross-functional teams, developing end-to-end solutions and adding value through game-changing strategic initiatives.” Your personal brand and your employer. Be conscious of aligning your brand with that of your employer. It’s all very well to be a free-thinking spirit, but does that fit in with the Leadership’s vision of the organisation as cautious and conservative? And if it proves impossible, are you in the right job? This is also important for your digital footprint – things like your LinkedIn profile. And finally, an action plan: • Write down your career goals and aspirations • Understand your internal and external audience • Know your job description • Align yourself with your organisation • Clearly communicate the benefits of what you bring • Be visible and memorable • Get appraised... as much as possible Whether or not you believe in the concept of personal branding, what is important is to be your unique self. But do you have a choice about which qualities you actively choose to demonstrate to the outside world that go to make up your brand? Absolutely. David Bittiner is a Solicitor (non-practicing) and a Director at The BD Consultancy. He now regularly advises professional services firms on wide range of strategic business issues.