General, Personal Branding
4 Steps to Building A Powerful Personal Brand At Work
May 01 2019
I just did a training for a group of professionals on personal branding and there was one theme that rang true throughout the entire training – everyone needs a personal brand at work.
At first, when you think of personal branding, you might think about how that is executed only online. With all of the strong online personal brands these days, we tend to forget the original appearance of the personal brand – in real life! For this reason, I sometimes hear professionals say “I don’t need a personal brand, I’m not online”. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Your personal brand is not who you are, but it’s about how you help people in your own unique way. At work, you are performing a task and you are helping people in some way. Your personal brand is your unique way of performing your job. How you bring that to life – or don’t – can have a significant impact on your job performance.
That was the big ah-ha moment that this group of professionals had in my training. Until that day, many of them had not realized how important it was to take a step back and really evaluate how you present yourself at work. And many of them realized that they were actually part of the problem.
So in our training, we put them to work and walked through the steps of defining, designing and delivering a personal brand to get the results you want. Here’s a peek at what that looks like:
First they set goals for what they wanted to achieve from their brand. Mainly the goals were to improve the overall perception of them, so they could be more efficient and effective at getting their job done. Ultimately, this results in job security, recognition, and even career advancement. When you set a goal for your personal brand, your actions for bringing your brand to life will be more focused and results-driven.
Next they defined their personal brand by exploring who they are, what they do, and how they add value in their own unique way. The key to this exercise was to uncover attributes about themselves that will actually help achieve the goal, and identifying which character traits they should be leading with in their interactions at work.
Then, we worked through the process of designing a personal brand by building a personal brand statement and practicing this statement in the form of an elevator pitch. A personal brand statement is a summary of who you are, what you do, who you help, and how you serve your audience in your own unique way. Once you’ve built a personal brand statement, you will be more mindful about how you introduce yourself to people, and your interactions around the office.
Finally, we explored how to deliver a personal brand in real life. Results start to happen when you put an action plan into motion. Identify the actions that will best get you the results you want, and align with your personal brand.
One person’s plan was to take in-person meetings more often, vs. always doing them on the phone. He realized that by isolating himself, he’s not seen as part of the team, and not approachable. Switching just this one thing can make a big impact with his team.
Another person’s plan was to adjust his communication style. He discovered in this workshop that he was probably coming across the wrong way to his team, which was why there were certain issues. But by changing his tone of voice, this can completely change how people react to his directions as a manager.
Everyone has a personal brand. And personal brands aren’t just for social media. Your personality is your brand. Who you are at work is your brand. If you’re not getting the results you want out of your job or your career, maybe it’s time to assess your personal brand.
Ask someone you work with to introduce you to yourself. What was their perception of you? Within just a few minutes, you should be able to uncover if you have work to do on your personal brand.
Chances are, the answer is yes, you have work to do. That’s because we all have work to do. Building a personal brand is a journey. By walking through the steps of defining, designing, and delivering a personal brand, you can build towards the results you want.
Get close and just keep improving! When you’re ready to get serious and start building a powerful personal brand that gets you the career success you want, check out our amazing course on personal branding, or reach out for a personal consultation! We can even train your entire team to elevate the corporate brand by building their own personal brands.
This program is part of Launch Yourself, an online personal branding course developed to help you define, design, and deliver your personal brand. Ready to get started on yours? Learn more here!
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