Note: This is the first of a three-part series on keys to building a personal brand, inspired by a blog post from Adii Pienaar titled “How to Build Your Personal Brand: The Next Step to Anything,” published August 18, 2013.
One of the challenges faced when developing your personal brand is determining strategies for the Message dimension of your brand. What communication channels should I use? What do I say? How often should I be communicating? These questions are valid and must be answered, but they also miss the mark. Questions pertaining to message channel, content, and frequency treat communication as a stand alone endeavor in branding. Such an approach is flawed because communication not based on your Meaning (values and purpose) and Makeup (mindset, skills, and competencies) is reduced to little more than words and noise.
Anything You Do is Everything You Do
The inspiration for this post and three-part series on building a personal brand comes from a story Adii Pienaar shares about a hiring manager who has an interesting way of evaluating job candidates. The hiring manager will place a piece of trash (e.g., a candy wrapper) on the floor and observe a candidate’s response (or lack of response) to the presence of the trash. Is it picked up, or does the person ignore it? The actions of the job candidate are observed and inferences made about such attributes as sensitivity to their surroundings and attention to detail.
The point made by the hiring manager is that “anything you do is everything you do.” Our actions are guided by values and beliefs. In general, we do not behave in a manner that is inconsistent with who we are. Of course, you may be able to “fake” who you really are when answering questions in a job interview. But, glimpses into your true character may be revealed by the simplest of actions such as picking up a candy wrapper off the floor.
Sending Signals
Like product brands, perceptions of personal brands are influenced by signals that the brand (you) sends. If you are skeptical, think about how these behaviors can influence your perceptions of other people:
- Being chronically late to meetings and appointments(or being consistently early)
- Volunteering to go beyond expected tasks or duties to help out others or the organization
- Using inappropriate language or humor when interacting with co-workers or classmates
- Being supportive of the pursuits and accomplishments of others.
A lengthy list could be presented, but you get the picture. The above behaviors may not be conscious efforts to communicate personal brand messages, but they can have the same impact as structured communications, if not greater. We send signals to the world around us, positive and negative, through our actions and interactions. Like a product brand, your personal brand is always “on.” People coming in contact with your brand will form perceptions about you- at work, church, school, restaurants- wherever you might be and whenever you are there.
I like the statement “anything you do is everything you do,” and I would add “anytime you do it.” The good news is that perceptions about your personal brand are not left to be determined entirely by the people you come in contact with daily. You are the brand manager- make the conscious choice to strive to have anything you do make a positive contribution to your brand.
