If you’ve spent any amount of time reading career advice, the topic of building a personal brand has surely come up. Exactly what the term “personal brand” means seems to vary, but in large part, it is often positioned as the way you present yourself to the world, specifically to prospective employers. Not surprisingly, the concept has risen to prominence in the social media era when the focus on the individual has skyrocketed. Within this context, the development of one’s personal brand has been deemed vital as a way to stand out from the crowd because of the alleged increase in competition for jobs. But when it comes to building a personal brand, the emphasis that is often placed on impressing a prospective employer masks a more obvious opportunity for career growth: one’s current employer. This is what I’d like to talk about today.
Why is a personal brand valuable?
Let's accept the assumption that a strong (also good) personal brand can increase your chance of landing a new job. You might reasonably ask, how many times could one realistically leverage a personal brand in that way during your lifetime? Maybe only a handful of times, say, every two to five years. But when you realize that the value of a particular activity is so rarely utilized, it becomes more difficult to justify continuously investing energy in that activity. This is precisely why so many designers, marketers, and developers only periodically beef up their online presence, showcasing their portfolios and publishing thought leadership articles in the few months leading up to a search for new employment. Once that new job is secured, however, these personal branding efforts cease, portfolios go stale, and domain hosting expires. This could be a fine strategy to move your career along, but I would argue that a personal brand needs to be continuously built because it is what opens doors—not just when you need or want a new job, but every day while you are working at your current job. With many declaring the “Great Resignation” to be over and with job markets tightening up, more emphasis needs to be put on success in one’s present role. A strong personal brand at your current company can not only accelerate your career growth but make your work more meaningful and fulfilling on a day-to-day basis.
Misconceptions about a personal brand
Often people think (my past self include) that one’s personal brand and social media presence are one and the same. So, to build their personal brand, they simply go to social media and start posting content. But this is a short-sighted view of what a personal brand is and how it can be built. A better way to think of a personal brand is in terms of one’s reputation. And given that we are considering a personal brand in the context of one’s current job, the absolute best place to start developing your brand or reputation is with the people you work with. The reputation you build will be based largely on the relationships you form with your colleagues, and you’ll carry this reputation throughout your entire career.
Building your personal brand
By virtue of being “personal,” every individual’s brand is unique. There is no fail-proof formula to building a personal brand, and every person needs to go through their own process of discovery to find what works for them. However, I believe there are universal attributes that are integral to building a strong personal brand. These are by no means exhaustive.
1. Acquire unique knowledge.
This is the foundation of everything that follows in building a personal brand: you must possess unique knowledge. There are a number of ways to go about acquiring it. You could have unique knowledge by virtue of being a “veteran,” for example, and having seen the company grow over a long period of time. Note, however, that simply being around for a long time does not guarantee you’ll acquire such knowledge. You must actively work on acquiring new information, connecting the dots, and deriving insights.
If you haven’t been around for a long time, you can accelerate knowledge acquisition by putting more effort than the average person does into understanding and mastering a subject. Often people interpret this as a call-to-action to go get more formal education. I would, instead, set a target of simply becoming an expert in the business of the company through active learning of how it all comes together into a business. Ask lots of questions and focus on continuously seeking and absorbing new information.
An important consideration here is that the knowledge you are acquiring must be specific enough that it can be tangibly linked to the success of the organization, but broad enough that it gives you room for growth. Suppose you were a copywriter, for example. You wouldn’t want to be one simply in the traditional sense (even if your title and your job description say so); you would want to be a data-driven master of how words drive action across every function of your organization. This understanding of your role could then expand your contribution into new areas of the company.
Mastery of a skill alone is not enough. You need to actively apply this mastery towards the core themes that are relevant to any organization: growing the top and bottom lines, acquiring new and growing existing customers, making products more competitive, winning new and developing existing talent, etc.
2. Get it done.
However your brand is defined, whichever flavour it takes, and whatever fields of knowledge it involves, there is one foundational dimension that a strong personal brand should always have: the ability to be an excellent executor. Almost nothing builds more confidence than a person’s ability to pick up a project, run with it, and get it across the finish line. Senior leaders in every company look for people whom they can trust with important initiatives. Show that you can be relentless in getting things done for them. Traits like this don’t go unnoticed and for that reason are the surest way to build a strong personal brand.
3. Learn to work with anyone.
Your ability to make a broad impact within your organization depends on your knowing lots of people. In a larger organization, this is especially important because uncovering and solving challenging problems requires navigating the organization to understand its complex processes, its owners, and its decision makers. Equally important is that in addition to you knowing many people, many people need to know you. There aren’t any shortcuts here except for methodically building relationships within the company. To do that you’ll need to show a lot of initiative: buy people a coffee to connect with them, help put together (or at least show up to) events, and help new folks integrate.
As well as knowing many people, a crucial aspect of your success will be your ability to effectively work with them. I would go as far as to say that you should set a goal of being able to work with anyone in your organization A word that doesn’t seem to appear enough in business literature is diplomacy: as your network grows larger and your relationships more complex, at all times you’ll need to exercise the highest degree of professionalism and practice the ability to navigate difficult situations in ways that don’t close doors on opportunities for future work together.
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Many online articles recommend that when building a personal brand you make the approach structured and write down your values and positioning statements, develop social posting schedules, etc. This is certainly something that can be done, but for purposes of building a strong personal brand within a company, this structured approach may be secondary to becoming an expert in your role, gaining full clarity as to how your actions impact the business of the company, becoming great at execution, and learning to be a master communicator/diplomat who is able to work with anyone.
Good luck!