Management Perspectives

MYTH 1: Personal branding is only for celebrities
Almost daily, we hear about celebrities ‘managing the optics’ and ‘controlling the narrative’ of how they appear to their adoring fans. Online, in person, in media, and even in their personal lives, these individuals are often managed to control how others perceive them.

In reality, managing the way others see you is a practice that should not only be driven by those in high visibility, celebrity roles, but also by business leaders, politicians, professionals, educators, and everyone in between. They all should be mindful of the way they appear and behave around others, as behaviour drives perception.

Personal branding is for everyone, because we all have personal brands. By design or by default, the way people perceive you is driven by their involvement with you as well as the perspectives they bring from previous experience/s. Anyone who interacts with others should be focused and strategic about their personal brand and the resultant reputation.

From what you post online, to the professional relationships you build and nurture, to how you introduce yourself—and how others introduce you—to the image and body language you display to express yourself, all drive perception. So we all should deploy professional image handlers to manage how we are perceived.

MYTH 2: It doesn’t matter what others think of me; it just matters what I think of myself
I admit I was that mother who would conveyed this same sentiment to my children when they would be upset about a mean comment someone said to them on the playground. And I was halfright: It certainly matters that you see yourself as valuable, worthy, loved, and respected. But it also matters what other people think of you.

Their perception of you will drive their desire to afford you opportunities… or not. Consider this: Bob is confident, successful, and driven. He loves to be the life of the party and get the attention from the room. Bob is a star! But Bob is pursuing a new client who finds his ‘large and in charge’ personality off-putting and distracting. They worry he will not tend carefully to their needs or treat their account with the needed discretion.

Their perception of Bob’s personality leads them to choose another vendor.

Bob loves his confident, outgoing sense of self-worth. But he neglected to consider how that boldness could be perceived by a client he truly wanted to work with. It does matter what others think of us if we want them to refer, hire, endorse, and support us.

This does not mean we change who we are to meet the needs of everyone we come across, who we might want to work with. This strategy actually has an adverse effect—it turns us into a generic offer. When we try to please everyone, we end up looking just like everyone else and lose the opportunity to build a unique and compelling brand. Instead, being mindful of who our target audience is, and being clear on how they want to see us is the first step. Then, adjusting our behaviour to meet those goals, while retaining our style, brand, and authentic self, ensures we can build rapport, and then, trust.

MYTH 3: Repairing your reputation means changing your identity
I often hear the expression ‘reinventing oneself’, and honestly, it is a very misleading idea. Repairing reputation does not mean changing who you are. Repairing reputation means first taking inventory of what has happened, your individual level of accountability in what has happened, separating fact from emotion (in other words, how you feel about what has happened versus what has actually happened), the implications—positive and negative—going forward, and creating a plan to regain credibility. The second aspect of repairing reputation means staying the course of the plan. In some cases, a public apology is warranted. In others, a private conversation with those who are impacted by a mistake is more appropriate.

Social media adds an interesting twist to all of this, because if the mistake that is leading to the damaged reputation happened online, the variables are harder to manage. There is also the situation where someone's reputation is damaged through no fault of their own, and the impact to the individual's psyche and career can be equally devastating. Often, the remedies look very different than if someone's reputation is damaged because of a mistake they made themselves.

Completely changing one’s identity from their name to geographic location to career is a severe reaction to what could otherwise be managed more delicately to create a more positive outcome.

MYTH 4: Branding means logos and taglines
When you think of ‘branding’ did you immediately think of a swoosh or golden arches? Did you sing a company jingle in your mind or recite a clever tag line? Those are marketing extensions—designed to create familiarity and drive consumers to connect with a company brand. The brand, in fact, is not the logo, jingle, or tagline. The brand is the feeling.

I worked in corporate branding and marketing for 20 years before starting my own company.

Whenever we were launching a new product, company or service, the first place we started was the brand—what do we want our target consumer to feel when they encounter this product, company, or service? The emotional connection we could make with our consumer would drive them to buy, refer, and endorse what we were offering. Marketing was then how we communicated that feeling to the consumer.

Personal branding is how individuals set the intention of how they want their target audience to feel about them. What do you want people to believe is true about the experience they’d have if they engage with you? What will your legacy mean to those you serve? How do you want to be remembered?

MYTH 5: Personal branding means you are focused only on yourself
While personal branding does start with you, it is very much about the people you serve and want to engage with. Your clients, employer, strategic partners, allies, and employees, all become your target audience, and your job is to figure out what they need to know and feel in order to build reputation traction.

Each person has two fundamental sets of needs: functional and emotional. Functionally, we need to know certain things about you to consider hiring you or working with you. If you are a systems engineer, for example, we would need to know you have proper experience in the technology field, carry the right certifications and training, and can work on systems such as ours. Then, our emotional needs kick in; if we are considering hiring you, we would want to feel you are passionate about our company, feel the same commitment to quality and excellence as we do, and would be enjoyable to work alongside. If you neglect to meet our emotional needs, we may pass you over for the next systems engineer who can. And there are plenty to choose from.

Your target audience is not everyone you encounter. There will be people who will not get you—they will not understand your humour, align with your values, or share your passions.

That is okay. The people who will get you—who are looking for someone just like you—are poised and ready to work with you and the goal is to show up authentically and consistently to get their attention.