Chapter 5
What's your personal brand?
‘At the centre of your being you have the answer: you know who you are and you know what you want.'
Lao Tzu
Whether we like it or not we all have a brand. Our brand differentiates us from all others. Fortunes are often shaped by perceptions of our brand, whether those perceptions are accurate or inaccurate.
Social media can play a big role in creating perceptions of our personal and professional lives, and in painting a true or misleading picture of who we are. Our many and varied personal interactions also create impressions of our persona.
Useful questions to consider are:
- Who are you?
- What do others think of you, and are they right?
- How would you describe yourself and how would others describe you?
- If your brand could talk, what would it say?
- How do you connect with people's emotions, hopes and dreams?
Your personal brand is powerful and can play an important role in your career opportunities and pathways. What may seem like happenstance (discussed in chapter 10) could be your personal brand at work. And your brand often precedes you. Most people will only ever experience a perception of you through your brand, rather than experiencing you personally. Similarly, communities, such as your workplace or industry, will form a collective (and often lasting) view of your brand that can influence people's perception of you. This may impact what career opportunities are available to you.
Building and nurturing our personal brand is essential for career development. Leaders, as well as mentors and trusted advisers, can play a key role in helping their employees establish, protect and promote their personal brand, and moving them towards their career objectives.
Networking — a powerful tool
Networking is a powerful tool when establishing, protecting and promoting your personal brand. Connecting with your network may be by phone, email, social media or face to face, or most likely a combination of all of these. The tipping point, an idea popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his book of the same name, refers to the point at which a series of incremental changes reaches critical mass so that an idea, trend or social behaviour really takes off. We see this phenomenon at work in networking: you can work your network relentlessly for no apparent gain until suddenly, as if by magic, your efforts hit a tipping point and opportunities abound. Networks need to be constantly fed and nourished, though. This means proactively, regularly and persistently reaching out in a way that adds value for both you and your contacts.
First, however, you need to establish who is in your network. Writing a list of all your professional and personal network connections is a good place to start. You may be surprised by how extensive your network is already! Arguably, face-to-face meetings are the most powerful way of building your brand, though social media tools such as LinkedIn are extremely valuable too. Social media is like a ‘silent army' working on your behalf, 24/7.
A global survey conducted by LinkedIn in 2017 found that almost 80 per cent of professionals believe networking to be important to career success. As with any networking activity, your social media profile and brand need constant nourishment. Start with a solid LinkedIn profile and headline. A quick web search will reveal a number of excellent sites showcasing the key ingredients of a good LinkedIn profile and headline with plenty of examples.
LinkedIn also provides real-time online feedback on the strength of your profile. A strong profile and a carefully targeted headline will not only support your brand but determine how you will be discovered via online searches. Don't fall into the trap of recycling your résumé in your LinkedIn profile. Your résumé outlines your career history, education and achievements; your LinkedIn profile is an opportunity to give readers a sense of you — what drives you, your passions and how these link to your vocation, past, present and future. It's an opportunity to open a window on your professional soul and establish a ‘connection' with the reader. Never write your LinkedIn profile in the third person!
With a personal, carefully crafted profile and headline, you might be surprised who reaches out to you, whether an old, lapsed connection or a new contact who might be helpful to your career. A word of warning, though. While social media can be your best friend, it can also be your worst enemy if you don't manage what you post carefully. Rightly or wrongly, others will form views of you based on what you post on social media. Think, before you hit the ‘post' button, will this support or hinder my brand? An unwise one-off post may come back to haunt you when you least expect (or afford) it, perhaps years later. A personal, seemingly harmless post may be dredged up long afterwards to sabotage, for example, an aspiring political career. Remember, post anything anywhere online and it remains in cyberspace forever!
The very subject of networking can cause anxiety when raised in a career discussion, yet it is fundamental to self-promotion and-development. Those wishing to promote their career through networking sometimes worry about imposing on those they approach, whether work associates or family and friends. In most cases, though, your connections will be pleased to hear from you and happy to help you if they can. It will work to your advantage and help nurture your network contacts if you stay in touch with them when you don't want or need anything.
Look for opportunities to share with your network information that may be of mutual interest — an article, blog post or book title, for example. Setting up a regular time in your diary each week or month for networking is a rewarding discipline.
Many people I have coached who were apprehensive about networking at first later shared how easy and enjoyable they found this activity once they took the plunge. Leaders can play a critical role in helping employees overcome their fear of networking by encouraging them to include it in their regular routine as part of their ongoing career development. We can do this by role modelling and sharing case studies of how others have used networking to advance their careers.
Mentors can help
Mentors can also help expand networks by introducing mentees to their networks and demonstrating, in practical terms, how they have used networking to promote and develop their own careers.
I am often asked, ‘Is there a difference between coaching and mentoring?' The answer is a resounding yes! A mentor may conjure up a mental image of an old man with a white beard in flowing robes, whereas a coach can evoke an image of someone in a tracksuit with a stopwatch in their hand observing a top athlete. In an organisational context, mentors focus on sharing their greater experience and depth of knowledge of the mentee's industry or employer. Coaching is a facilitative and collaborative process. The coach uses an ‘ask, not tell' approach to help the coachee identify and achieve their goals. Knowledge of the coachee's industry or organisation is not required, as the coach's skills lie in their ability to facilitate movement towards personal and professional development and goal attainment.
In my experience, the best mentors are also skilled coaches, though such individuals are hard to find! Usually, however, there is no shortage of executives who are only too happy to share their wisdom and experience with younger aspirants.
Mentors can be found internally, within the organisation, or externally. There are advantages and disadvantages in each case. Either way, confidentiality is paramount. Internal mentors may have a stronger understanding of the organisation. However, some find it more comfortable opening up to an external mentor who sits outside the politics of their organisation. In either scenario, since the mentor's only role is to help and support their mentee's success, few fail to benefit from the exchange! A number of organisations now offer formal mentoring programs. This is a great opportunity for leaders to play a supportive role in their employees' professional development. Alternatively, employees can source their own mentor independently.
While mentoring has been discussed here in the context of networking, it has the potential to propel an employee's overall career and should be prioritised in the suite of career development activities.
George's career story
George had been in the glass production industry for more than 20 years. Over that time he climbed from sales administrator to the most senior sales management position in his company and industry. He excelled in every role he had and took advantage of every opportunity that presented. George had only one interview in his 20-year tenure and that was for his first role. He now led the entire sales division.
George was a university dropout who, as he puts it, ‘fell into' his career. He had no time for studies as his career trajectory was steep and involved a constant whirlwind of activity and responsibilities. When he was 49 years old a new CEO arrived with different ideas from his predecessor about how to fix the company's flagging fortunes. The new man immediately sidelined George, along with a number of other long-serving executives who had built the company to where it was today. He believed a new executive team was needed, and George was fired soon after.
George's ego and self-esteem were hit hard. For the first time in his working life he found himself unemployed, and he was overcome by a sense of helplessness and inadequacy. The gravity of unemployment weighed on him like a tonne of bricks. On top of this, he had to contend with an employment market that was going through a tough patch and where age discrimination was rife. Old friends were silent, as was his phone. George was embarrassed by what had happened. He also felt isolated, abandoned and alone. Although historically the company's perception of him had been positive, the new CEO saw him as one of the ‘old guard', incapable of leading the sales team in a new direction.
Reaching out to his old contacts, George learned that the new CEO's perception of him had spread through the broader glass industry. As a result, the unsolicited offers of employment that he had been accustomed to receiving completely dried up. He applied for literally hundreds of jobs only to be met with rejection letters and indifference. He was ‘screened out' of contention, in many instances without so much as an interview, sometimes as a result of his lack of academic qualifications.
George became more and more despondent. His network, some of whom were fearful for their own positions, reaffirmed how tough things were for people at his age with experience but no formal qualifications. Finally, George came to recognise that he had to reinvent and rebrand himself. This was a pivotal moment in his career. With the local glass manufacturing industry in decline, it became increasingly clear that he would have to chart a different course and target a different industry sector. To do this, he concluded he needed to leverage and market his transferable skills to another industry, but first he had to figure out what his transferable skills were!
George asked a previous colleague with career management skills to help him identify and prioritise his transferable skills. He then set about approaching his network to glean information on growth industry sectors that were in need of his skills and that were consistent with his experience, capability and career objectives. When he actively put himself in the market, much to his surprise he found his contacts were happy to help him. They were genuinely interested in what he was doing.
The more George networked, the more he came to appreciate that his network connections, some of whom were concerned about their own career instability, were also interested in what they could learn about the market from his networking activity. He found the benefits of network meetings were mutual — a win–win situation!
George discovered that some connections were simply curious, even plain nosy, about his version of the events leading to his termination. He was smart enough to know the potential brand damage that could be caused by being drawn into a ‘company bagging session' so he deflected such questions by shifting the conversation to his forward career goals. If this line of questioning persisted, he made sure he didn't say anything that could be perceived as critical of his previous employer. He would say, for example, ‘The new CEO has a perfect right to pick his own executive team, and unfortunately that didn't include me.'
One of George's responses was, ‘I really enjoyed my 20 years with the firm and although I'm sorry to leave, I have made many friends. I was afforded excellent professional development along with a number of fabulous career opportunities in my time there. The company also looked after me with a generous termination package.' In all instances, he ensured that he spoke only positively about his time with the company, including around his departure.
George got a real confidence boost when his networking activity started paying dividends. This gave him the energy, especially on the tough days, to keep going. A major milestone was passed when he realised that the loss of his job was the catalyst to reinvent and rebrand himself. His new posture to the market projected a positive, progressive, relevant and talented executive with highly transferable skills such as leadership, strategic planning and building organisation capability.
Determined not to let his lack of formal qualifications be a limiting factor again, he enrolled in Master of Business Administration. George's revised personal brand and approach to the market made a powerful value proposition for organisations facing change. With this renewed vigour and vision, George found it easy to present to others with a positive outlook rather than allowing the negative aspects of his departure to define him. He took charge of defining how he wanted himself and his career achievements to be perceived.
Through persistence and application, George found his new career move eight months later. His network advocated for his repositioned brand proposition and redefined career goals, and helped him to find a senior leadership opportunity in the logistics industry. Armed with a positive career focus and a clear value proposition, George secured the role over a number of rivals with direct industry experience. The hiring company were quick to see how George's transferable skills, experience and capability could be adapted to help transform their troubled courier business.
George has never looked back. Five years on he continues to enjoy career success and satisfaction in his new company. However, he hasn't forgotten the lessons learned from taking direct control of his own career and the importance of continuing to actively and systematically nurture and manage his brand and network. George is now using the insights gained, particularly during this career transition, to mentor others — and he's enjoying every minute of it!
Key learnings
George's career story points to the importance of:
- taking direct control of your own career
- continuing to actively and systematically nurture and manage your personal brand and network
- recognising the value the insights a mentor with previous experience of career transitions can offer.