Month: May 2020

What is Personal Branding?
Your Personal Branding is a Combination of Your:

• Strengths
• Passions
• Talents, Gifts &
• Established Purpose of Life

The above is what I concluded a discussion regards Personal Branding in a previous blog. Soft skills Training Companies have assumed the importance of Personal Branding at large. Leadership Training Programs currently address a variety of aspects like Emotional Intelligence, Situational Leadership, Conflict Management, Influencing Skills so on. Personal Branding would be great, to be added into this gamut for people in managerial positions, as well as individual contributors to benefit from it.

However, I am concerned regards the approach some of them are taking to highlights its importance among working people. The essence of Personal Branding, is diluted in its understanding sometimes. One approach I disagree with is reducing Personal Branding primarily to one’s presence of visibility in social media. Another approach that’s quite shocking is misinterpreting it for ‘Image Consulting’. In my suggestion, trainers must not do this mistake. One’s Branding concerns with what light are you seen by your co-workers or business associates? Are you aware of, whether you are generally remembered by people known to you in positive or negative ways?

Authentically, Personal Branding can be approached in 2 ways:

• Personal Impact
• Personal Value-Lization
  Personal Impact:
  Impact concerns with developing one’s ability to generate a great First Impression, Improved Communication, Presenting Skills, Grooming & Attire, Improving Visibility etc.,
  Personal Value-Lization:
  Value-Lization concerns with whether you are looked upon by your associates, co-workers as someone who adds value to them and the organization. An individual who is recognized as a value
  adder can’t be ignored easily. Both Impact and Value-Lization are achieved only through sincere, earnest hard work and authentic behaviour. Real-time Branding takes time & proper training. However, it’s worth it.
  What are the benefits of Personal Branding?
  This is simple to answer. If you have great Branding, you are taken ‘Seriously’ by people. You will be:
• Respected
• Looked Upon
• Listened to
• Acknowledged Constantly
• Considered Important
• Considered a Role Model
• Followed
• A great Influencer
• Experiencing a sense of fulfilment
• Experiencing a sense of satisfaction
  In your career and outside too. From experience, even though I don’t like saying this, I have to admit, Personal Branding Training is not for everyone. It is very important for those who are willing to:
• Compromise affirming Success for Adding Value
• Compromise Security for Significance
• Compromise Immediate Victory for Long Term Sustainability
  Your Personal Branding is what people say about you behind your back. I am aware, an immediate response to this by some people will be, “I really don’t care”. I can understand that. But, we got to care about what some people say about us, if we have to remain in our jobs and business. For example, I will not be in the training business, if I didn’t care about what my clients said about me. There’s the beginning to understand the importance of Branding………….
  As Gandhi said when he was asked by an American journalist, what his message was to the world, “My Life Is My Message”. Think he took is Branding quite seriously!!!!

How Businesses can benefit by investing in Corporate Training?
Id like to discuss this specifically from Behavioural Training perspective, however, the aspects I mention will benefit technical training initiatives too.
Current Trends:
What is the training function responsible for?
Is it to ensure better profits or savings to the organization? These are responsibilities shared among all functions within corporate organizations, as every function contributes towards the company’s overall objectives in its own specific way.

Significance of training function anytime, before Corona or after Corona remains the same. It is to enhance and build required levels of Competencies in a workforce, so that they dispense capabilities matching requirements to achieve organization’s goals. Currently, training is reduced to identifying workshops scheduled in a calendar, in response to which individuals from various functions are expected to nominate for. Nothing wrong with it. However, there’s nothing more to it barring a peek given to the overall feedback of the participants and then filing away required docs for reference. It is left to the participant to determine if the workshop was of any particular benefit that could render useful at work or outside. Maybe discontinuing an external training vendor if the overall feedback was poor.

How training can make a contribution?
We must identify that the ultimate responsibility of training is ‘Behavioural Change’. Behavioural change contributes to change in Results. If we consider a focus group who is to be trained, it becomes important to understand competencies that will enable the focus group to contribute willingly & effectively towards organizational goals in the long run. The competencies must be further identified with relevant behaviours that need inculcation during the workshop
For example:
1 Competency: Communication Skills
Relevant Behaviours:
Delivers Messages in a structure
Paraphrases conversations before responding
Writes specific and descriptive subject lines
Expresses self clearly during disagreements

1. Competency: Time Management
   Relevant Behaviours:
   Maintains To-Do List
   Prioritizes Actions using Action Program
   Is gracious with people and Asserts Objectives
   Reviews progress at least 3 times a day
   The above serves as examples for what I mean a competency and relevant behaviours. If concerned stakeholders like reporting
   managers, HR Manager, L&D executives can also collaborate in arriving at competencies and behaviours with the training
   community, it becomes easy to assess the extent of application by learners after workshop, provide feedback and encouragement to
   team members to do so. As I say, if there is noticeable positive Behavioural Change after the session, it will certainly contribute to
   positive change is results, profits and savings for the company in longer run.

Steps to Benefit optimally from training program:

1. Identify the objective of the training session: For example: if it is Personal Branding, be clear how a training session on
   Personal Branding contributes to the overall organizational objectives
2. Identify the various competencies relevant to training topic that relate well with the company objectives
3. Identify at least 3 clear behaviours that relate well with the identified competency
4. Restrict a session only to 3 or 4 competencies maximum. Behavioural Change takes time & hard work
5. Identify the focus group: Who needs training? Is the focus group from one function or multifarious functions? Ensure the
   focus group don’t exceed the limit as prescribed by the training faculty
6. Ensure the training workshop is designed effectively to focus only the identified competencies and behaviours. Eliminate
   any unnecessary information or insight from the content that is not relevant
7. Provide a list of competencies & behaviours addressed during the session to all concerned stakeholders
8. Provide a 30 day plan after workshop to learners, to guide them on how to start and master the learning gained during
   session
9. Concerned stakeholders and training fraternity could assess the extent of application and be in touch with the focus group
   whenever possible to encourage them in their application
10. Conduct one 2 ones with every participant from the focus group to discuss and understand extent of practice and benefit
    concerning the competencies and behaviours after 30 days from completion of training session
11. If the above 10 aspects are observed within corporate organizations, I am sure training will be a worthwhile investment for every
    corporate organization. Positive changes will begin to appear in the approach of a workforce that will eventually deliver positive
    results.

What is Personal Branding?

There’s a saying “If You’re Not a Brand, you’re a Commodity”!!!

The statement is worthwhile of contemplation. It can be interpreted that if people do not consciously stand for who they want to be, they end up being used by other people for who others want to be. Personal Branding is about making conscious choices pertaining to thoughts, actions and values that further define the answer to the impending question

‘Who Am I’?

Why is Personal Branding relevant today?
If you are someone who experiences a sense of dissatisfaction at workplace even if there’s little to complain in terms of pay, relationships, culture etc., branding is becoming more important to you. Since recently, some stakeholders I work within an American multinational in Bangalore are vouching well for the way their teams function overall. The team is technically competent and tries best to keep customers happy. However, team members still feel that something is amiss & sense dissatisfaction due to lack of elements like Visibility, Sense of being a Contributor or being a Differentiator and a Value Adder. The manager’s dilemma is that he/she is held responsible by the team for a lack of visibility and branding in the company.
One needs to realize, a common misunderstanding working people have is that Credibility leads to Visibility, which is not true in the real world. Being good at work doesn’t automatically fetch visibility and branding. Its one’s responsibility to work at both. Quiet & hardworking people is quite common place.

What is Personal Branding then?
For some people, branding means the presence in social media. For others, it’s visibility at workplace or somewhere else and unfortunately, many people I come across do not have any comprehension of the term. Your Personal Branding is more than the sum of all these aspects.
Your Branding is all about possessing a clear sense of your Unique Identity. Your Branding is dynamic and not static. You can always better it by ensuring you add value to people like colleagues, friends, family, superiors, clients and stakeholders by being your unique self.

Your Personal Branding is the Combination of Your:

• Strengths
• Passions
• Gifts &
• Established Purpose of Life

“Your Personal Branding is what People Say About You When You are not in the Room”

• Jeff Bezos

Be aware, branding needn’t be positive always. Some people carry negative branding too. We can’t stop other people from making their impressions of us. But we certainly have control over whether we make a positive or a negative impression Working on your Personal Branding begins with working on the question “Who Am I”?
This is one of the trickiest question that can be answered from a variety of perspectives. But we can direct the question in a way that begins to provide clarity regarding our potential to contribute to our community and society. We will try finding answers to the above question by adding another two progressive questions along. It goes by the below way:
Who Am I?
What Do I Do?
How do I Contribute?
Let’s begin understanding the questions with examples:
1 st Question: Who am I?
For Example, I am a Behavioral Training Professional wouldn’t like to address myself as just that. It’s just a professional tag I carry to introduce myself but would go on to think and believe that I am essentially a ‘Change Agent’. That’s what I believe I am. No one needs to agree with my answer here. This is not to impress anyone or seek an agreement but to assert my unique identity to me. That means that I really train to establish a certain degree of change among my training audience and would conclude I
wasn’t effective if I received feedback from my clients that my sessions didn’t result in any evident change. I would go on to seek more information in order to know what further I could do to ensure there is a positive change. Therefore, my answer to the question Who Am I, is that I am a Change Agent.
What would you seriously like to consider calling yourself? It must be a term that you can deeply resonate with and you
also, feel worthy of yourself thinking that is what you are.
2 nd Question: What Do I Do? (Being who I am)
Taking my example again, I build Competencies in people. That’s what I do. Therefore I just don’t train an audience for the sake of conducting a session as per the calendar. I am a Competency Enhancer. I enhance and build relevant levels of
knowledge, skills and attitudes among my audience.
3 rd Question: How does it make a Contribution? Or How do people benefit from what I do?
My clients benefit from a trained workforce. My audience gain clarity to face their work challenges better. My audience part with me after gaining adequate insights to be more effective to deal with work situations in the future.
Now is your turn. Take your time and answer the 3 questions
Who Am I?
What Do I do?

How do I benefit People?