There are a lot of people who know a lot more about personal branding than I do, so take this posting with a grain of salt. The general wisdom is that effective personal branding starts with a rigorous survey of how others (peers, coworkers, friends, family) see you.
I don't agree. This approach reminds me of a great metaphorical description I once heard, about someone looking into a mirror and thinking it's a window.
Here's why I don't think you should base your personal branding efforts on "the mirror" I'm referring to — on the perceptions of other people. First, unless you are pretty thick skinned, any remotely-negative feedback will hurt. Most likely, it will shake you and undermine your confidence — the last thing that should mar your personal branding efforts.
Second, it's too easy to let this external feedback define your playing field. To paraphrase Robert Browning, "ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's personal branding for?"
Finally, negative feedback makes it way too easy to focus on your "areas for improvement," when your real focus should be on leveraging your strengths.
If you have a reasonably accurate grasp of your strengths, and a good instinct for which ones you need to leverage, I believe you are much better off entirely devoting your energy to cultivating and reinforcing your brand. To being proactive rather than reactive.
From a traditional marketing perspective, cultivating your brand without analyzing your market is unreasonable. Well, to paraphrase another great cliché ...
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him. The unreasonable man bends the world to his will. Therefore, the most powerful personal branding is practiced by the unreasonable man!
I think the value of the "mirror" in your analogy above is to see how you have been branding yourself up to this point. I'd definitely look at that to compare how you *want* to be branded (or, how you want people to perceive you), and then figure out a game plan.
I totally agree that you should not take this mirror, or a 360 review and base who you are on that - because if you've done a bad job on how people perceive you right now you shouldn't be stuck with that brand.
Posted by: JibberJobber Guy | December 06, 2006 at 12:51 PM
George and Jason both have valid points. Here's the scoop, a survey of peers is only a teeny tiny portion of the entire branding process. There is so much more deep thinking, soul searching, goal setting, evaluating, communicating, and strategizing involved. You do need to know who you are and who you want to become.
In order to achieve those goals, any personal branding program has got to include some type of survey of peers, colleagues, etc. simply because every person has a personal brand. We don't live in a vaccuum.
If we don't manage our personal brand, our peers select it for us - whether we want them to or not.
Unfortunately, the personal brand others select for you will not always be the personal brand you would have selected for yourself.
That's why branding includes a survey as a portion of the process. You've got to know how you're coming across - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Personally, I prefer to focus on the positives during the branding process. Strengthen the good stuff, minimize the bad stuff.
George is right, sometimes negative feedback hurts - even if it's mild and people are trying to be helpful. Having a coach helps you handle this stuff. And yes, you don't want to base your whole brand on what others think. But you do need to be aware of what others think.
As Jason said, that way you can change it if you want to. :)
Wendy Terwelp,
Certified Personal Branding Strategist
Posted by: Wendy Terwelp | December 11, 2006 at 01:16 PM
Good post, check out personal branding on chimby.com
http://search.chimby.com/b/q?k=personal+branding
Posted by: cm russell | January 04, 2007 at 03:39 PM