11
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Self-Branding Is No Longer a Choice
Strategies to Make Your Personal Brand Stand Out
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WE LIVE IN a society that defines itself through branding. We rarely describe our favorite jeans by color or style; we identify them—and their place in the social pecking order—by their brand. We do the same thing with our preferred coffee shops, cars, bars, computers, ketchup, peanut butter, phones, golf balls, restaurants, and even hospitals. Our grandfathers divided themselves into “Ford men” and “Chevy men,” which is nothing more than branding manifesting itself as a middle-class colloquialism. Such groups still exist: You’re into Macs or PCs, and rarely will the twain meet.
This reliance on branding to fuel our self-image—and thus our buying decisions—is so pervasive that we cease to think of it as such. We don’t use tissues; we wipe our noses with Kleenex. We move the earth with Caterpillars, and we Google new acquaintances. Despite the protests by marketing pros that using brand names generically is trademark infringement, the practice signals a status to which virtually all companies aspire. The brand name becomes synonymous with the product category, and thus, rightly or wrongly, those products define the standard. Any other product in that niche, no matter how well reviewed or how large its share of the market, is an also-ran.
Certain brands may not be quite at that level but nonetheless, rightly or wrongly, have an anointed status. Harvard, Stanford, and MIT are branded as institutions of unreproachable quality, even if other universities deliver the same level of education. Virtually every product niche has a branded front-runner in terms of prestige and reputation; beyond quality and value, a major contributor to that leading status is that the brand name has been nurtured and developed.
However, branding is no longer confined to just corporate names and product positioning. The phenomenon has now become personal. And because of the powerful technologies at our disposal, this trend presents a crucial opportunity for managers. Our Ford- or Chevy-loyal forebears would be mystified by this development, but there it is: Branding is now a potent tool for business professionals who are looking to create their own unique style of executive presence.
Brand Yourself Before Others Brand You
What exactly is a brand? People think of a brand as something that has a locked file cabinet full of design trademarks and copyrights and a suite of lawyers on call to protect and defend them. Brands appear to be something that takes hordes of specialists years to develop, and at a cost often in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That perception is not completely wrong: Brands don’t just happen; they are the sum of everything that goes into the delivery of quality, the positioning and marketing of products and services, and over time the achieving of a tipping point in terms of word-of-mouth, on-the-street reputation.
Brands and reputation are often confused or used interchangeably. They are certainly linked—taking control and burnishing your brand will undoubtedly affect your reputation—but they aren’t the same. Your personal brand is under your control: You decide what story you want to tell about yourself and how you go about telling it. Your words, your actions, what you emphasize, and the goals of the branding process are all in your hands. Reputation, though, is all about others and how they perceive and respond to you. The two concepts are linked, because through your brand you can influence that perception of you. Create a strong brand, and you get a jump on building a strong reputation.
The strength of your brand is especially important because it’s durable. Deborah Maue, an administrator at Columbia College Chicago, argues: “A brand is enduring. Reputation is more temporary, yet it can bolster or diminish the brand over time.” Even the best performers will suffer from down moments and dented reputations, but having a good foundation will give you the basis for staging a comeback. Your brand is like a house with “good bones”: Even if bad weather damages the exterior, a sturdy structure will remain standing.
We’re all familiar with the importance of brand in advertising. If you watch the Super Bowl, you will see the most expensive advertisements imaginable in terms of media buys (not necessarily in terms of production budget), and these costly spots strive not so much to pitch us product features and benefits as to increase our awareness of a brand. Famous musicians, top athletes, and television and movie stars say little in these ads about how a product stacks up, but they speak volumes about the essence of the brand.
Without a brand, a product must fend for itself, and research shows that that is usually not enough. Without a brand, good products, great ideas, and talented people sink usually into a crowded sea of mediocrity.
Although we don’t tend to think of it this way, the phenomenon of branding has become pervasive for individuals. Celebrities and politicians are well known for employing professionals to mold, spin, and propel their brand into the marketplace, but they are now being joined by anyone who seeks to build a career, a social network, a business, or other entity. No matter how narrow a segment they are targeting, they want to show that they are worthy, talented, or downright cool.
For example, such famed business tycoons as Warren Buffett, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson owe their ascent to instant recognition as much to successful branding as to the viability of their products and the weight of their experience. These superstars of business and the media managed to make their names and likenesses inseparable in the public mind from the services and products their businesses provide. Each one’s brand is unique, and their executive presence is palpable. They command respect globally not only because their products are superior but because they understand how to create a strong presence that connects emotionally and intellectually with their constituents. When you hear their names and see their faces, you instantly know what they stand for. This instant recognition of one’s strengths and character should be your goal as you strive to create your own executive presence.
The notion that everyone already has constructed a personal brand may be surprising, but it is indisputable. People manifest and shape their personal brands in ways big and small, from the kind of car they leave in the office parking lot, to the type of suit they wear, to the way they carry themselves, to the manner in which they do their work. For better or worse, many people build their brand randomly, without the slightest awareness of its power. If you show up late for meetings, if your presentations lack substance, if you’re generally unpleasant, then by default you’re creating a personal brand. If you bring baked goods to the office to share, if you know the names of your coworkers’ children and ask about them, you’re also creating a personal brand—one that stays with you when the social niceties give way to doing business.
Personal brands often determine others’ behavior. If it’s you that everybody turns to when the computer goes down, you’ve created your own brand. Whether that particular bit of branding serves you, however, is another issue altogether. It’s easy to create a random brand; in fact, as we’ve seen above, it’s almost inevitable. However, to ensure that your brand earns the respect of your peers and bosses, and furthers your career and personal goals, you want to use a controlled approach to the art and craft of branding—one that can be every bit as effective and rewarding as the strategies employed on Madison Avenue.
Consider respected athletes who happen to play for less than stellar teams. Although attendance dwindles as their teams sink to the bottom of the standings, these athletes’ personal brands are insulated by their standout performance. Here we’re talking about not only on-the-field results but also their presence, character, integrity, and energy. Just ask Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods what happens to a personal brand when a person’s off-field comportment is not congruent with his or her athletic ability. The same is true for all of us: Job performance, as you’ll learn in the next section, is only one component of a brand. Your brand is not just what you can do; it is a sum that includes how you do it and who you are in that process. It is the power of that sum total, its ability to influence choices and consequences, that can make you stand out. If you do it right, people will notice. You’ll have developed a brand and a charismatic executive presence that will serve you going forward.
The Role of Status in Personal Branding
Critical to the success of your personal brand is your perceived status. Status is about your place in the social pecking order. It’s about your social value in comparison with that of others. It’s about the respect and deference others accord to you—or not. We’ve all known colleagues to whom others seem to swarm to seek advice, to socialize, to confide in, and to get approval. And we know others who are virtually invisible. No one seeks their advice. No one confides in them. No one is looking to bask in their dim light.
Needless to say, high status is better than low status. There’s at least one exception, though. If you are a high-status individual, with all the interpersonal and reputational perks that status brings, you’d benefit from occasionally stepping down from Mount Olympus to empathize and gain the trust and favor of those who may respect you but find you distant and aloof. That quality of empathy that characterizes the lowering of one’s status is also called humility, which, incidentally, further enhances your status rather than diminishes it.
But how can we elevate our status in the first place? Are we in the clear if we occupy a leadership role on the organizational flowchart? Not according to scientific research, which shows that status isn’t always commensurate with one’s position in the hierarchy. Rice University professor Rick Wilson studied low- and high-status leaders and observed, “In teams with high-status leaders, followers are more likely to go along with them, even though the leader does not necessarily set a good example.” Low-status leaders, the researchers found, had more difficulty getting their teams to follow their direction, which in turn led them to punish team members more. Team members responded by punishing their leaders in return—creating something of a vicious circle.
Other studies have confirmed that low status combined with power can generate bad outcomes: University of Southern California professor Nathanael Fast and his colleagues found that executives with power but low status were more likely to assign demeaning tasks to subordinates, leading the researchers to conclude that “having power without status . . . may be a catalyst for producing demeaning behaviors that can destroy relationships and impede goodwill.”
Studies of “status syndrome” demonstrate that the desire for status is universal among humans. “Everyone cares about status whether they’re aware of it or not,” argues Professor Cameron Anderson of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, noting further that “status differences can be demoralizing. Whenever you don’t feel valued by others it hurts, and the lack of status hurts more people than we think.”
In a study of farming villages in Bolivia, for example, UC Santa Barbara anthropology professor Michael Gurven concluded that differences in the villagers’ social status “impacts their perceptions, their level of stress and their health.” Interestingly, these villages had relatively egalitarian social structures—but that did not mean there was no variety in social status. “We’re able to show that there are measurable differences in recognized social status even within the egalitarian context, and that these differences matter,” Gurven reported. “They’re all equal, and yet social status is important.”
It isn’t just humans with higher status who live longer and healthier lives; some similarly situated animals do, too. A zoology doctoral student, Nora Lewin of Michigan State University, has observed, “High-ranking members in hyena clans reproduce more, they live longer and appear to be in better overall health.”
If it isn’t power that automatically confers higher status in an organization, is it perhaps the value we contribute to others? Well, performance does matter—that study of Bolivian farmers showed that those who contributed more to the group were held in greater esteem—but as we’ve often witnessed, or even experienced ourselves, good performance in a complex and competitive business environment doesn’t always translate to higher status. Plenty of managers who are subject-matter experts and highly capable individual contributors seem to get stuck in the middle rungs of the corporate ladder. Their abilities make them valued employees, but in letting their “performance speak for itself,” they may end up being defined by their jobs rather than defining themselves.
What does consistently elevate one’s status in the workplace is speaking up. Studies from the Haas School of Business discovered that people who speak up and appear confident are perceived to be more competent to lead.
The main findings of the studies were that assertive behavior can help people attain influence, at least in small groups. And while hundreds of previous studies had shown that dominant people take charge, what wasn’t clear until now is why others so willingly followed them. The new research found that assertive people attained such influence because the rest of the group saw them as more competent than everybody else. They were seen as more creative, dedicated, and harder working than the others—even when they actually weren’t. In the studies, small groups performed various tasks, and even when the dominant personalities didn’t perform well in the group math and creativity tasks, they were still seen as the most competent, both by other group members and by the judges who viewed the recorded sessions afterward.
The big—and surprising—lesson, according to the Haas researchers, is that being assertive and dominant, not skill itself, is the strongest predictor of your reputation for being skilled. Assertiveness and dominance also induce others to follow your lead due to that perception.
When you understand how your status at work impacts your personal brand, you’ll be able to make choices that contribute to favorable perceptions of your overall executive presence.
The Six Pillars of Branding
A successful commercial brand favorably influences the perceptions and behaviors of those who encounter it. A personal brand is no different; and by understanding some of the attributes that both types of branding share, you’ll be better equipped to lay the foundation for your own personalized branding strategy. Below I share my “Six Pillars of Powerful Personal Branding”—essential strategies you can implement to build an executive presence that can’t be ignored.
1. Appeals to Values
If a brand doesn’t appeal to what’s important to others and connect deeply to those values, it’s not working. Think, for example, of Subaru and Volvo and their appeal to the value of safety. Safety is the first association that people make when considering either brand. Nelson Mandela’s personal brand appealed to values of forgiveness, healing, and working together. He put these values into action by forgiving his former jailers, even inviting several of them to highly visible events marking the changes in the new South Africa. He invited one of them, Christo Brand, to a dinner celebrating the anniversary of his release from prison, stating that his relationship with Brand “reinforced my belief in the essential humanity of even those who had kept me behind bars.” He invited a second warder, Paul Gregory, to his inauguration, and he even had lunch with the man—State Prosecutor Percy Yutar—who had called for Mandela’s execution following his 1963 conviction for sabotage. Most famously, Mandela sought to unite his country behind the Springbok rugby team, long a symbol of white supremacy and apartheid, during the 1995 World Cup final, even donning a Springbok jersey himself.
Think about the values that people care about. They are what guide virtually all their decisions. Decide which of those values you want to appeal to and how you can embody them so they resonate with others.
2. Conveys Authenticity
Do others see you as the real deal? A brand must feel genuine, showing that it walks the walk. Zappos, Harley-Davidson, and The Honest Company are examples of companies that are aligned in word and action on what they stand for and provide to consumers. And consumers trust them. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was shot for her advocacy of educating girls in her native Pakistan, matches that description. She had been airlifted to the United Kingdom for lifesaving treatment, and as a victim, she could have chosen to withdraw and live in safety and relative comfort. But many months and surgeries later, it was clear that wasn’t her path: “It was then I knew I had a choice: I could live a quiet life, or I could make the most of this new life I had been given. I determined to continue my fight until every girl could go to school.” She created the Malala Fund to push to educate girls around the world; in other words, at great risk to herself, she has continued to walk the walk.
Authenticity is a standout quality that becomes an even more powerful brand attribute when we consider the glaring lies and hollow promises we’re subjected to daily by corrupt politicians, spokespersons, and others in whom many had placed their trust. Consider disgraced bicyclist Lance Armstrong, who repeatedly and forcefully denied that he had ever used performance-enhancing drugs during his long dominance of the sport—to the point of legally pursuing those who said otherwise.
Unlike Armstrong, tell the truth, keep your word, and follow through on promises and commitments. That is a good way to project authenticity.
3. Provides Benefits
A successful brand must deliver results. Apple delivers innovative products that make our lives easier with their constantly updated features, and the brand additionally confers a certain status on its customers. Tylenol is the most trusted brand in the headache relief category in 2018; if it didn’t quickly and reliably alleviate headaches, it would lose that distinction. Jack Welch increased the value of GE by 4,000 percent during his two-decade tenure. Revenues grew from $25 billion to $130 billion, with profits increasing 10-fold, from $1.5 billion to $15 billion. Those impressive numbers explain why, even today, with Welch in his eighties, he is sought out for leadership advice. A contrary example is Tim Tebow, who was hailed as the second coming of Christ when he was drafted to the NFL but washed out when he couldn’t land the ball in his receivers’ hands. He’s currently working out in the minor leagues, trying to rebrand himself as a baseball player.
If you consistently deliver on promises, meet people’s expectations, and provide clear value, your personal brand will increase in value as a matter of course.
4. Inspires Others
Successful brands—through word and deed—set examples that others want to follow. Such a brand makes us feel something. Apple, again, according to annual surveys, is one of the top inspirational companies; it’s become part of people’s identity. People say it makes them feel more creative, more entrepreneurial. Nike just hired quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick as a spokesman for its brand because he inspires people by speaking truth to power. Nike took a risk by associating itself with the controversial Kaepernick, but so far, in the campaign’s first few months, the move has paid off with increased sales. Malala, too, is an inspirational figure, as is J. K. Rowling, whose modest background made her literary accomplishments and her influential advocacy of women’s and girls’ rights even more uplifting.
Finally, Elon Musk, despite his idiosyncrasies, has excited motorists with Tesla cars and space enthusiasts with SpaceX’s rockets—and combined them with the launch of a Tesla into orbit between earth and Mars. As Guardian journalist Bonnie Malkin wrote of a photo of the audacious venture, “It takes a beat or two for the brain to compute. The image is startling, incongruous, barmy. A car floats in space. At the wheel is a spacesuit, seatbelt on. Earth hangs behind it. . . . The photograph was beamed down to Earth courtesy of Elon Musk’s ego, bravado and taste for the absurd. It is human folly and genius rolled into one, a picture that sums up 2018 so far. Life on Earth feels precarious, so we look to the stars.”
If you can get others to dream and reach for the stars, your personal brand and executive presence will inspire long after you’ve left the room.
5. Stays Consistent
FedEx built a reputation around delivering packages consistently on time. Starbucks—love it or hate it—consistently provides the same brew and its copious variations at over 28,000 locations worldwide. A Grande Hazelnut Frappuccino tastes the same in Singapore as it does in Seattle. A brand must be consistent to be trusted—and just like we’ve come to trust Google with our online searches, Google’s leaders have found that consistency is also what makes for successful managers inside the company. Annual surveys of employees on their leaders’ effectiveness have found that the quality that employees value most in their managers is predictability. In other words, if workers can count on their managers to provide the information they need, and then stay out of their way, they can do their best work without having to worry about managers meddling, criticizing, or taking over.
The secret to managing your personal brand is to monitor your words and actions to ensure they are what people have come to expect.
6. Manages Visibility
A brand that is tucked away on some out-of-view display or shoved onto a shelf several feet below eye level is a dud. The same goes for brands whose packaging is bland and forgettable. Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson personifies Virgin—speaks for it and creates attention for it with all kinds of stunts and appearances. As reputation strategist Leslie Gaines-Ross notes of a study her company conducted, “While it’s important to be humble, a successful CEO can’t be a wallflower.” The vast majority of executives worldwide believe that their companies’ reputations depend on a high-profile CEO. Furthermore, CEOs who are held in high esteem are far more likely to have created a profile so compelling that it draws the public to them. As Gaines-Ross summarizes, to rise above all the noise and competing narratives, the CEO herself has to “attend to the clarion call, standing up and standing out so as to tell the company’s story.”
To translate this for the rest of us whose executive presence is still under construction: You have to be proactive and speak up for your brand; i.e., let people see who you are, make some noise, share your discoveries and fresh ideas, show how you can contribute value. And do it in a socially intelligent way that attracts rather than repels people. As colorful as Richard Branson is, he’s also an extremely warm and humble person who connects easily with people from all walks of life. Something to which we should all aspire.
You can’t go wrong making these six pillars part of your effort to establish a strong personal brand and boost your executive presence. And if it all seems a bit overwhelming, start with one and work your way through the others. The next section provides some ideas on how to implement a step-by-step plan for your personal brand that you can easily apply to any of your development goals.
The Steps to Personal Branding
It’s easy to perceive the process of personal branding as a theory, a set of social and psychological principles that quickly blur around the edges. It’s sort of like dieting and fitness—we have a general concept of how it works, but to get anywhere with it, we have to break it down into actionable steps. By charting a sequence of steps and checklists onto the concepts of personal branding and executive presence, a road map emerges that will lead you to quicker results in your quest to reach those destinations.
To get started:
• Assess the nature and status of your existing personal brand, however randomly you may have created it. Do you have a concrete understanding of how you are perceived by your colleagues, peers, bosses, and other stakeholders in your organization? What is your current reputation? What behaviors, results, or energies have you manifested that have resulted in this perception of you? Get feedback from trusted sources and be open to hearing things you may not expect or like.
• Identify specific changes in attitude, behavior, character, and general energy that will strengthen your brand and reinforce your executive presence. Consider your role in the organizational system—what competencies should you develop to succeed in that role? What about future roles? What skills, behaviors, and attributes do you need to develop to prepare yourself for the next step in your career? Commit to a plan to get you there. Forgive yourself for missteps as you move forward one day at a time, always doing the best you can to live your new brand.
• Continue the feedback-gathering and self-assessment process by enlisting trusted colleagues, mentors, and sponsors to provide input on adjusting your development plan. Create your own scorecard and give yourself regular performance reviews, highlighting the areas in which you know you need to improve.
A personal branding exercise that I do in my workshops may help you form ideas for your aspirational brand and an action plan that gets you there:
I start by showing pictures of well-known personalities for a few seconds each. I ask people to write down the first five things that come to mind. For instance, when I show Steve Jobs, people write ‘innovator,” “genius,” “tyrant,” “impatient,” “visionary,” etc. They do this for each personality. Then I show them a silhouette with an indistinct face and say “That’s you! What would you want people to say in just a few seconds about you if they saw your face up there or heard your name? Not what you think they’d say right now, which is your reputation, but what you’d want them to say in the future once you’ve had a chance to decide on and work on your most aspirational brand.”
They usually write down things like “generous,” “compassionate,” “innovative leader,” “intelligent,” “problem solver,” “strategic thinker,” etc. I ask each person to pick one or two of those qualities, the ones the person would most want to be known for as a personal brand. One person might decide that she wants to be seen as someone who is “honest and has high integrity.” Then I ask her to ask seven of her fellow workshop participants in the room to give her two ideas each in brief three-minute conversations on how she can accomplish this goal of being seen as “honest and a person of high integrity.” The colleagues will then give (and get) two ideas each that the person can incorporate into an action plan. For the person seeking the attributes of honesty and integrity, the list might include:
• Follow through on commitments and keep promises.
• Don’t betray anyone’s trust.
• Be transparent in your communications and keep others in the loop.
• Be ethical even if it would be easier to cut corners and no one would know.
• Don’t abuse your power.
• Be consistent in words and actions.
• Give credit where it’s due.
• Be honest in all interactions.
• Give honest feedback when asked.
• Don’t gossip about others or speak badly about them.
• Always tell the truth even if it’s uncomfortable.
• Don’t manipulate people.
• Don’t cheat (fudge numbers, results, etc.).
• Don’t let someone else take the blame for your mistake.
• Disclose conflicts of interest and remove yourself if necessary.
This is one example of how you can decide on and create an action plan to achieve your desired personal brand. You could also pick someone you admire and think about the qualities he espouses (such as honesty and high integrity), and then ask people you trust for their ideas on what observable actions you can take to get there.
You also need to network. Some people are naturals at this; others dread even hearing the word. But networking is about more than “glad-handing” and “backslapping”; it’s about building the relationships that will sustain your career and help propel your brand. INSEAD professors Herminia Ibarra and Mark Lee Hunter observe that “networking is not a talent; nor does it require a gregarious, extroverted personality. It is a skill, one that takes practice.” They define three types of networks: operational, personal, and strategic. The first, operational, is the most straightforward to cultivate, largely because this network consists of the people who are necessary for you to do your job. Mapping out and tending to work relationships can help you see who is integral to the work you do, as well as identify those outside your immediate area to whom you need to pay attention. The second type of networking—personal—may require a bit of legwork off the clock, as you cultivate relationships with others outside your workplace. As the professors put it, “Through professional associations, alumni groups, clubs, and personal-interest communities, managers gain new perspectives that allow them to advance in their careers.” Personal networks also provide information, contacts, and opportunities for professional development. Finally, with strategic networking, you get “the ability to marshal information, support, and resources from one sector of a network to achieve results in another.” Think of strategic networking as the kind of relationship building that benefits not only you, but your entire organization.
Broadly speaking, effective networking means you are building relationships with people inside and outside your company who can potentially help you to the next level in your career and become advocates for the personal brand you’ve created.
Finally, a word about branding for people who dislike putting themselves out there: namely, introverts. Introversion is often conflated with shyness, but they are distinct traits. Introverts aren’t necessarily shy, but instead they have hard limits on how much social stimulation they can tolerate. Dorie Clark, professional speaker (and introvert), observes that many of the strategies suggested for building a brand require socializing of some form or another and are therefore daunting to those who can take only so much schmoozing. She recommends that these people rely heavily on social media to build a brand; it gives you time to think through what you want to present and allows you to reach a lot of people without being overwhelmed by them. Another strategy for the introverted is to go micro, reaching out to people one at a time in different areas of your organization. Make it a habit to take a new colleague for coffee, or suggest lunch. Introduce new colleagues to others. You can make a name for yourself by becoming a “connector,” someone that others value based on your savvy in navigating both the social and bureaucratic barriers within the organization. By bringing others together, you elevate your personal brand without having to become the center of attention yourself. A third way to make yourself known is to simply display your credentials or awards as an indirect way to inform others about you. Just put your college diploma on the wall behind your desk and your Ironman medal on the bookshelf. People will take notice. These strategic ways of increasing your visibility can also be used by extroverts, of course, but are critical for those who dread the more socially forward path to branding.
What to Do When Your Personal Brand Takes a Hit
There is a big difference between rebuilding a personal brand and starting from scratch. The headlines are buzzing with familiar names who are taking hits to their personal brands, from a tech icon melting down on Twitter, to a popular comedian tossed off her television show, to a married member of Congress caught sexting minors. Whether such personal brands will be permanently affected by their protagonists’ poor judgment depends on the nature of the offense and the fickleness of the public. Like the howling mob in a gladiator flick whose thumbs up or thumbs down decide the fate of the guy on the ground, people today love to sit in judgment—and will use their thumbs on Twitter and other social media to issue their verdict. For public figures, the go-to remedies for a damaged brand run the gamut, from teary-eyed apologies, to aggressive counterattacks, to acknowledgment of a personal problem—sex, drugs, and alcohol top the list—and the subsequent checking into some sort of rehab program.
For those of us without an army of PR flacks and crisis management consultants, however, the remedies are different. Consider the person who has cultivated the personal brand of “innovator” but who’s no longer contributing smart, creative, successful solutions to problems. Or imagine an executive known as a “rainmaker” who suddenly stops attracting new clients for her firm. To fix their unraveling brands, both of these individuals need to swiftly figure out the cause of their faltering—or else watch their brands fade into oblivion. We often see this scenario play out in sports and entertainment, when a champion golfer no longer wins or an eminent director produces one flop after another. Unless you can fix whatever is keeping you from performing at your former best, your brand will no longer work for you.
Other challenges to your personal brand may focus on a loss of trust rather than a decline in performance. Maybe, for example, you are seen as a person whose integrity is beyond reproach, but you have now taken some ethical shortcuts in adverse situations. The only way to restore your reputation as a “paragon of virtue” is to take ownership of those ethical failings, explain your thinking, show contrition, and vow to return to the right track. Will you get the thumbs-up or thumbs-down? That depends on how egregious your errors were perceived to be and the context in which they were committed.
If you are a leader, though, personal ethical correctness is not enough. You are still on the hook if wrongdoing is rampant among the people you are supposed to lead. Wells Fargo leaders learned that lesson when thousands of their employees were found to have defrauded customers by charging them fees for fake accounts that they never knew were opened in their name. Only by “cleaning house”—being completely transparent about what happened, how you are going to fix it, and how you will prevent it from ever happening again—can you hope to regain your good name.
In the worst case, you may have damaged your personal brand so gravely that you’ve become “toxic” even to former supporters. People will not want to associate with you lest their own brand is tainted by yours. Examples of this abound in entertainment, where the #MeToo movement has sent high-flying stars and executives crashing down to earth. The highfliers’ lunch calendars likely have been freed up as a result; few of their former friends and associates would take the risk of basking in their radioactive glow.
If damage you caused to your personal brand has similarly ostracized you from your peers, it’s time to move on. You’re not going to regain your former status in the same environment, or maybe even in the same industry. Take some time off to reinvent yourself and start afresh. And while a cloud may follow you to your other endeavors, by setting aspirational goals and consistently achieving them with the right skills and behaviors, and with lots of time and patience, you may find yourself once again the owner of a personal brand that others can trust.
In Chapter 12 we’ll explore how you can expand your brand on the Internet as you continue to hone a compelling executive presence that tells others instantly who you are and what you stand for.