What is Your Personal Brand?

What is your brand? Are you aware of yours? Is it what you want? How do you go about managing it?

Whether you are a business owner, or professional working in a large organization we all have our own personal brand or image. For business owners our personal brand/image is often lost in the brand of our business and we forget to focus on it. As professionals we often establish a brand or image but don’t evolve it as our careers advance.

It can be simple and yet we rarely think about it. There are a number of things that contribute to your brand for example:

• How you dress – does it suit your role? Is it professional? Does it suit the position you want to move into?
• How you address people – Do you project openness, friendliness or closed and unwelcoming?
• How you interact with clients/co-works – Do you share your knowledge? Do you listen to them?
• How you manage your time and workload – Do you always seem rushed? Are you inflexible? Do you seem in control? On top of you schedule?

To advance in your career or to grow your business it is important to understand how you are perceived and to periodically ask yourself if it still is what you want. For example if you’d like to move to the next level of management are you starting to dress to that position? Are you taking ownership of issues?

I was recently working with a client who needs to change their image/brand, currently they are perceived as hands off and not carrying about all aspects of organization. It is limiting their ability to advance. They’ve come to realize that they need to change that perception. They need to been seen as at least aware and interested in what is going on. For them this can be achieved by have more frequent conversations with peers and employees. Asking how things are going and being interesting in other aspects of the business. For my client it is a small change and they are already seeing people reacting differently to them.

Take a few minutes and ask yourself what is your brand? More importantly ask yourself what do want it to be and what do you need to change it?

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