Personal Branding for Everyone!!!

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?