Lesson Ten: The Five Essential Tasks for keeping your brand fresh

Personal branding is not a one-time thing. You can’t just rebrand yourself and then stop. For your personal brand to grow you need to manage your brand on an ongoing basis. Here are five essential tasks for keeping your brand fresh:

1. Review regularly

Your personal brand is no different in many respects from a product or company brand. Corporate brand managers are employed to ensure that the value of the brands they manage increase year on year. To ensure this they undertake regular reviews of their brand’s equity.

Your job as your personal brand strategist is to review the equity of your personal brand and make adjustments as necessary. I’d recommend that you undertake a review of your personal brand equity every six months.

Ask yourself:

• Are more of my target audience aware of my brand now than this time six months ago?
• How is my brand more readily distinguishable from others who do what I do now than it was six months ago?
• What evidence is there that my brand’s reputation has improved in the last six months?
• What evidence is there that the quality of what I deliver has improved over the past six months?
• What evidence is there that my target audience will remain loyal to my brand?

Answering these questions for yourself can help you determine what you need to work on to grow you brand in the coming six months.

2. Stay relevant

Nothing is static. Personal brands, like everything else, need to evolve if they are to stay relevant. This means you need to spot and respond to unmet needs in your field of expertise ahead of everyone else.

You can do this by up to date with latest thinking in your field, hanging out with mavericks who are fascinated by pushing the edges and offer different ways to look at things, or borrowing successful ideas from other industries or fields and applying them to what you do. Staying relevant doesn’t mean you always have to be the source of original ideas – it does mean that you need to be able to put a new spin on things to keep your brand fresh.

3. Have a plan.

Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there”. The same is true for your personal brand. You need to have a vision for where you want to get to and a plan for how you’re going to get there.

Having a plan and reviewing and updating it regularly will help you keep your brand top of mind and as a consequence keep it fresh. Your personal brand plan doesn’t need to be complicated, or long – simply an outline of your vision, the goals you want to achieve in working towards it for the next six or twelve months and the actions you will take to achieve them.

4. Manage your business

Your personal brand might look impressive on the surface but if you brand is only skin deep it won’t hold up for very long. For example, if your personal presentation and linked in profile look great but in reality you can’t organise yourself to turn up on time your glossy image will soon become tarnished.

Managing the business aspects of your personal brand means taking care of not only the marketing but also your ability to deliver on your brand promise. This means taking care of the backroom work of staying relevant and having a plan.

In practice it might involve, staying up to date with your industry reading, maintaining your networks, developing and writing articles or presentations, and reponsibly managing your personal finances, (including insurance) information (read files) and your time.

While these aspects may not be the most glamorous aspects of keeping your brand fresh they are nevertheless critical to your success.

5. Invest in yourself

Tom Peters quotes a colleague of his Molly Sargent who is known for asking people whether they have invested as much this year in their career as they have in their car. This strikes me as a great rule of thumb. I’m not just talking about the investment your company may have made in you but time and money you have consciously expended to up-skill yourself.

In these tough times there may not be as much money available for discretionary spending on work related courses or resources but there are plenty of other ways to ensure you keep growing:

• learn from your existing role or identify or volunteer for new projects
• ask for feedback on what you do well and what you could do better from colleagues and mentors whose opinions you trust (and then act on what they tell you)
• check out books in your field available from your local library
• establish a mentoring relationship with someone in your field you can learn from
• set up a mastermind group for similar level professionals in your field and use this learning group to hold each other accountable for getting better at what you do
• set up your own Personal Rebranding Group and work through the Personal Branding @ Work Program™ with others – you’ll find instructions for doing so in the Bonus workbook that comes with the program.

The message from all this – be accountable for your brand and its ongoing development – no-one else is going to do it for you and you owe it to yourself to be the best you can be.

Lesson Nine: The #1 secret of being world class

Lesson Eight was about managing your relationships with others. This lesson is all about what it takes to be world class.

The secret? World class performers dedicate themselves to being the best in the world at what they do. This means:

1. Understand what class you‘re in

World class performers don’t compare themselves to everyone else who does what they do. They compare themselves to others in their particular niche who are the very best in the world at what they do.

For an amateur golfer committed to being world class, aiming to be as good as Tiger Woods may be unrealistic. However, if the same golfer compares himself to others of a similar age and fitness level, with similar constraints on their time, who play in similar environmental conditions, then the picture changes. To be world class in this group becomes a possibility.

2. Figure out what it takes to be best in class

Once you are clear on the class you’re in identify those who are currently at the top of that class. What have they done to get this good? What habits and routines have they adopted? What do they know that you don’t? What can they do that you can’t? How is their attitude different?

Start by benchmarking your performance against those who are currently best in class and then work tirelessly to bring yourself up to their level.

3. Adopt a professional mindset

World class performers think differently: they are obsessed about being the best; they are totally committed to mastering their craft; they are in it for the long haul, they assess set backs in a detached manner and then self correct and get back on track.

To be world class you need to think about yourself and your work differently, you need to start acting like a pro.

4. Innovate

World class performers are not just at the top of their class – they are best in class. This requires something extra – the capacity to be remarkable i.e. to do something so uncommon or extraordinary that others notice.

Being remarkable is the final step in being world class. Once you have put in the practice and mastered your craft you have a platform on which to innovate. Here you can be fitter, faster, more eloquent, or whatever it is that sets you apart from even the others who are best in your class.

Here you have earned your stripes and the world opens up. And the very best news is that who you will have become on your journey to being world class is a reward in itself.

Is self-deprecating humor working for your brand?

Self-deprecating humor is when you make jokes that put yourself down by minimizing or reflecting negatively on you and/or your achievements.

Sometimes this type of humor can be used to great effect as a leveling device to help others feel more at ease with you or to avoid seeming arrogant. Many comics use it to great effect to help their audiences identify with them by sharing stories or experiences that reflect badly on them – the “how dumb am I?” kind of routine.

If combined with self-assurance, self-deprecating humor can diffuse conflict, help you connect more quickly with people and increase your likeability. When used effectively it communicates that someone is sufficiently confident to risk making a fool of themselves. Using it well, however, requires you to be both conscious of what you are doing and why.

For many self-deprecating humor can have the opposite effect – signaling to others low self-esteem and making them feel as if they have a responsibility to build you up by reassuring you or paying you compliments.

Self-deprecating humor along with putting yourself down is really unattractive if it is an habitual practice and comes form a place of not feeling good enough. It can make your audience feel ill at ease and over the long term less attractive to be around. If you’re not sure whether you use self-deprecating humor too often or for the wrong reasons ask for some feedback from those you live and work closely with. They will soon tell you whether your use of this humor makes them feel uncomfortable.

Some suggestions on using self-deprecating humor effectively:

A little goes a long way – used consciously and deliberately a sprinkle of self-effacing humor can be a positive addition to your repertoire. Unfortunately if you make the same type of negative comment about your self too often people might start to believe you. Make sure it is part of your repertoire for connecting with others no the whole shebang.

Understand your motives – if you are a serial self-deprector ask yourself why you are doing this – is it to make others feel at ease or is it because you are looking for reassurance?

Choose your audience – self-deprecating humor tends to work best when you are with people who are at the same or a similar level to you. Be wary of using it with those more senior than you are, especially if you are trying to impress them with your knowledge as it can easily be read as deferential and lacking confidence if they don’t know you already.

Be especially careful if you’re a woman – unfortunately many of us women have a bad habit of putting ourselves down. As a result we need to be particularly thoughtful when using self-deprecating humor least it be interpreted as lack of self-belief.

Watch the cultural context – in my experience self-deprecating humor is generally more acceptable with Brits or New Zealanders where personal put downs are standard fare. Similarly self-deprecating humor is more acceptable in some organisational cultures than others. You will need to vary the frequency and use of this type of humor depending on the cultural context.

Used effectively self-deprecating humor can be a useful addition to your communication skills tool kit.  Over time you’ll become accomplished at choosing both the audience and the situation to use it to best effect and increase your likeability in the process.

Thoughts on this post or an example to share? Leave a comment.

Lesson Eight: Manage your relationships in all directions

Lesson Seven was about managing yourself. This lesson is about the importance of managing your relationships with others.

Regardless of how much you believe your results should speak for themselves the reality is your personal brand stands or fall as much on the quality and strength of your relationships as our results. The three steps below are key to strengthening your personal brand.

1. Build your network

The very idea of networking turns many people off. The prospect of turning up at large impersonal meetings, forcing ourselves to work the room so we can have superficial conversations and tell as many people as we can what we do and what we have to offer in the hope that the interaction might end up being mutually beneficial can be a real turn off.

This old style networking is a world away from the newer style networking which is taking its place. New networking is about being strategic about who you choose to connect with, networking with a purpose in mind and going for quality rather than quantity. It results in fewer, deeper and more varied connections. The emphasis is on what you can do for others and looking to build long-term relationships.

Identify those you want to build relationships with based on how you respond to them initially. For example, if you see an article, or read a blog post that makes you go wow! Then take the time to leave a comment, send them an email or invite them to lunch.

2. Cultivate your brand champions

Brand champions are your personal cheer leading squad. These are people who know you, know your work and ‘get’ your brand’. They are impressed by you and what you are capable of, believe in you and genuinely want you to succeed.

Brand champions can come from any level inside your organization and include professional colleagues or customers outside your organization. These people will represent you when you are not present and fight your corner if you make a mistake, helping others to see it for what it is and in the context of your track record of success.

You cultivate brand champions by doing great work and making them aware of your achievements and where you would like to go. It is also important to help your brand champions by giving them the information they need to tell your story in a way that reflects your brand.

You need to have sufficient brand champions to you continue to stay in favor and have your brand well represented even when power within your organization, industry or professional organization shifts from one group to another.

3. Build relationships in all directions

One of the common themes that emerge when leaders complete 360 assessments is that they have done a better job of managing their relationships in one direction than others. For example, they are highly rated by their direct reports but poorly rated by their manager or peers. Alternatively they may have focused on building relationships with people outside their organization but not invested time building relationships internally.

Part of your responsibility as your own brand strategist is to ensure you build effective relationships in all directions. This is important because all of these people have an impact on how your brand is perceived. Your manager may influence how those above them see your brand. Your peers may influence how your manager and those at the same level elsewhere in your organization see you. Your customers outside your organization may influence how others in your field view you.

Managing in all directions means paying attention to your relationships at all levels and in all directions. It means treating everyone with the same level of respect and behaving in ways that are consistent with your brand in every situation you find yourself in.

How effective are you being at building your network, cultivating your brand champions and managing your relationships in all directions?

In Lesson Eight we’ll look at how to up your game so you can truly claim to be world class.

In the meantime if you found this post useful and you’d like to get the future lessons delivered by email subscribe to the personal rebranding blog.

Do you have impostor syndrome?

Impostor syndrome is a feeling that perhaps you’re not as competent as others think you are and that possibly you don’t have what it takes to do the job you’re already in regardless of whether you have the skills or experience that qualifies you to do so.

Ridiculous right? Because:

a) you’ve been in your job/profession forever

b) you know, and other people tell you, you’re great at what you do

c) you have a track record of results you can point to if anybody asks

Then why do you sometimes catch yourself wondering why others seem to think you know what the hell you’re doing? Why do you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night worrying about whether you’ve done the right thing / are handling that tricky management issue the right way / have made the right call about X?

Impostor syndrome usually raises its ugly head when we’re faced with the unknown. It manifests as self-doubt and results in us questioning our competence and whether we really do have what it takes. Impostor syndrome is insidious and left without treatment it can lead to a real and lasting break down in confidence.

What can be done to combat an outbreak of impostor syndrome?

1. Marshall the evidence – and refer to it whenever you need to. Look back to examples where you have been in similar situations of having to do something new and been successful in doing so.

2. Accept it for what it is – a natural part of the human condition to doubt ourselves. Everyone does it. Some people are just better at hiding it accepting it for what it is. A New York Times article even made the point Impostor Syndrome has its uses – often helping us to not over-rate our abilities.

3. Feel the fear and do it anyway – we become stronger as we face up to and succeed at those things we’re unsure of. Each time we do something we don’t think we can we increase our self-belief.

Do you have any tips on handling impostor syndrome that have worked for you? Leave a comment.

Latest Newsletter available

If you haven’t signed up for the monthly Personal Rebranding “Best of Blog” Newsletter now is the time to do so. The February edition notes the best blog posts for the month as well as including an article on tips for making the most of your linkedin profile and the book of the month.

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lesson seven: how good are you at self-management?

Lesson Six focused on the Art of Getting Heard. This lesson changes gears from a focus on how to communicate your brand to how to manage your brand.

As a medieval catholic monk Thomas à Kempis put it so eloquently:

“If you can win complete mastery over self, you will easily master all else. To triumph over self is the perfect victory.”

In my executive coaching work I regularly come across clients who have issues with self-management. Their managers’ characterise them as having a reputation (read personal brand) associated with being hard to work with, “difficult” chaotic, undisciplined or unmotivated.

Effective self-management, in relation to brand includes:

• keeping your ego or negative self talk (whichever applies to you) in check so you maintain an accurate picture of yourself and your capabilities
• trusting and backing yourself and your ideas
• handling yourself gracefully under pressure
• managing your moods and the impact you have on others
• taking sustained and focused action to achieve your goals
• taking responsibility for your own self care so that you are able to perform at your best

At the core of effective self-management are the daily habits that enable you to be at your most calm and productive. These are different for everyone but may include: creating space in your day without interruptions so you can get important tasks completed, taking time out to do nothing for a few minutes every day to regroup and refocus, or counting to ten before responding in certain situations.

How effective are you at self-management? Better at some things than others? Need to develop some habits to better support you?

Different approaches to sorting out self-management work for different people. The three books below are a good place to start. All books are linked to Amazon with Affiliate links.

1. Hard Core Commitment

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loer an Tony Schwartz. The authors come from the perspective of performance psychology and the book is based on a sporting model. They believe that managing energy not time should be the focus and have some practically suggestions for developing the daily rituals that support high energy.

Best suited for those familiar and comfortable with sports approaches.

2. Been there done that

The Power of Less by Leo Babuta is based on the author’s own experience of experimenting and applying his six principles to improve his own results. In many ways the recommendations are not new but the emphasis on paring down to the essential and then focusing on it are helpful.

Best suited for those looking for a gentler approach more philosophical approach.

3. Burned out and overloaded

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer is a distillation of Maurer’s observations as a psychologist about why people do and don’t succeed at sustaining changes in their lives. The basic premise is that if you make the changes small enough you’ll fool yourself that you’re not changing and therefore be successful.

Best suited for those that just can’t handle anymore things to do.

If you’ve discovered a particularly effective approach to self-management leave a comment and share it with us so we might learn. ☺

How to ensure you’re employable

In 2001 the Australian government funded research to identify what employers considered the core skills a person needed to get and progress in a job.

The resulting report outlined eight skills and a series of personal attributes that were key to what were dubbed employability skills.

These generic skills and attitudes still provide a useful framework in considering what employers look for in prospective employees.

For those of us in professional careers these may seem pretty obvious but how many of us take our proficiency in these for granted?

Communication – the ability to listen and understand others and present your thoughts and ideas clearly and persuasively.

Teamwork – the capacity to work with a range of people in a variety of roles in a way that contributes to productive working relationships and outcomes.

Problem-solving – developing creative solutions to complex problems that are appropriate for the circumstances at hand.

Initiative and Enterprise – taking the lead and adapt and be resourceful in new situations.

Planning and Organising – setting goals and objectives and then manage time and resources to meet long and short-term organisational goals

Self-management – taking responsibility for your own development by setting and reviewing personal goals

Learning – being aware of your learning style and demonstrating enthusiasm for learning and applying this new knowledge at work

Technology – acquiring basic IT skills and having the capacity to use technology to assist you in completing work efficiently

Despite all the exhortations from personal branding professionals to specialize, find your niche and become an expert (all of which I agree with), we still need to keep in mind the basic skills that make us employable.

Now is the time to work on those skills on the list that you are least proficient in and gather evidence and examples to demonstrate how proficient you are at the rest.

how to know if you’re in the right profession

All of us like some aspects of our jobs more than others. For a job to be perfect it would mean it is entirely free of fault or defect. Thus, unless you are delusional or in denial, it’s unlikely you have the perfect job.

This only becomes a problem if you then generalise from your job to your profession or industry and then find fault with that.

In a bid to find the perfect job many talented career professionals come to the conclusion that the only solution is radical change. This is reinforced when you feel that you have drifted into your current occupation. Often the need to take charge of your career results in throwing the industry or profession out with the job.

A client of mine has been working as an insurance broker for many years. He is intelligent, personable, astute, warm and principled. His client’s work with him because they trust him to research the right solution not just push product. Recently he has been wondering if he is in the right industry.

Some of the feedback he’s received as he’s been working through the Personal Rebranding @ Work program has been hard to accept. In addition to highlighting his strengths some of his colleagues question whether he has the killer-instinct. Yet in reviewing his strengths and his motivations he’s realised that the things that drew him to the insurance industry – the opportunity to help people, to build relationships and create solutions that meet people’s needs are still the things that drive him. His perceived lack of a killer instinct in an industry characterised by this is what positively distinguishes his personal brand.

His conclusion? It’s not the industry that’s at fault but the environment he has been working in and the limitations he has placed on himself about how he “should” do business. Radical change is not required – refocusing his activities so he works mostly on those tasks he enjoys, finding opportunities to network with like-minded professionals who share his values and communicating his distinctive personal brand is.

Before you make a radical change consider the following:

• What was it that initially attracted you to your current profession or industry?
• Do you still enjoy these aspects of your profession/industry?
• What opportunities are there for you to spend more time on these aspects within your role?
• How does your current environment and those you work with support or undermine this?
• What incremental changes could you make that would make a significant difference in your enjoyment of your role?

Do you have a success story about redefining your work? Inspire us by leaving a comment below.

Lesson Six: The Art of Getting Heard

Lesson Five focused on how to promote your brand to those who don’t have the benefit of meeting you person. Choosing the right channels and having a plan to raise your profile are important. Equally important, however, is developing your communication skills so that your message gets heard.

For most of us communicating effectively is at the core of what we’re employed to do. Despite this, few of us actively invest time and effort to become as truly skilled communicator. This post focuses on two areas that are worthy of attention if you’re serious about getting heard.

1. Strengthen your personal presence

Personal presence is an elusive thing. It’s mostly a case of knowing it when you see it. Obama’s got it, Clinton has it, Bush not so much.

It’s that capacity to take hold of a room, forging quick personal connections and making the person you’re talking with feel like they are the most interesting person in the room. Those with strong personal presence communicate that they are knowledgeable and can be trusted to take charge.

Personal presence is a combination of sincerity, presence, self-assurance and skilful communication. It’s rooted in a keen self-awareness about how you come across. Personal presence cannot be faked but it can be strengthened over time. All of us have the same tools for communicating personal presence – facial expressions, body and voice. Some of us have just learned to use these tools more effectively than others.

Out-take: become aware of what your presence communicates to others and consider how you could be more effective at ensuring your personal presence reflects what your brand is about.

(Of course if you want to know how it’d pay to invest in Workbook 6 of Personal Rebranding @ Work!)

2. Craft your Message

Most of us, at some point in our careers, have been exposed to presentation skills training. The problem with much of this is that it adopts a “one-size fits all” approach – i.e. stand in this way, use gestures like this, project your voice etc. While this is all potentially good advice it can also make people so self-conscious that they lose themselves.

But people connect with people – not automated versions of people.

This focus also means that less emphasis gets placed on the really important part of your presentation – what you are trying to say. Crafting your message so that it is clear and easily understood is critical to being heard. If you then deliver your message with flair so much the better. But a strong message delivered authentically beats a weak message delivered slickly every time.

Out-take: next time you have a presentation to make put the bulk of your time into constructing your message so you have something really worth listening to.

Lesson Seven moves on to the final stage of Rebranding Yourself – managing your brand.