Personal Branding for Career Success

by Ng Boon Hwang

How people perceive you is a reflection of your personal brand image, so make sure you send the right signals.

A. PERSONAL BRAND BASICS

A great Personal Brand evokes three basic perceptions in the minds of your target group:

1. You are different, distinctive and authentic.
2. You are relevant.
3. You are consistent.

Your target group (boss, peers, subordinates, customers) connects to your brand through three inter-related dimensions: Roles, Standards and Style.

This dimensional model is as shown below:

B. THE PERSONAL BRAND MANIFESTO (PBM) MODEL

For personal branding, the model works like this:

1. It identifies your brand roles

This brand dimension refers to the basic nature of the relationship and the things you need to do capably to meet someone’s basic expectations e.g. your boss, peer, subordinate, customer. It is governed by your values and generic competencies.

1. It establishes your brand standards

This dimension moves you from a generic role relationship meeting basic expectations to a brand image that is much more specific by focusing on the way you deliver your roles. Your brand standard is the level of performance you are willing to set and adhere to consistently. It is governed by your values and core competencies.

1. It displays your brand style

This third dimension in the model is the manner in which you communicate and interact with others. This is where you personalise your roles within the context of your performance standards by developing your ‘emotional image’, not just through first impressions, but from repeated contacts as you interact with others. It is governed by your values and personality traits. The model also shows two other elements necessary to complete your Personal Brand Manifesto.

They are:

1. Personal Brand Platform.
2. Personal Brand Promise.

Your Personal Brand Platform is the single dominant characteristic of your personal brand dimensions. Your Personal Brand Promise is a concise, meaningful and inspiring statement, developed from your brand platform and sums up the impact a relationship with you will have on someone else in your target group.

B1.CASE STUDY

To illustrate what we have discussed so far let us look at the case of Dr David Dunn.

Dr David Dunn heads the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota, an internationally renowned hospital. As expected of surgeons,Dr Dunn is organised, meticulous and obsessed with details befitting his role as a transplant surgeon. A level of conscientiousness bordering on perfectionism characterises everything he does, from surgeries that can last more than eight hours at a time, to even an hour spent as a committee representative on a task-force in a boardroom setting.

Karl, a friend of his, was giving a presentation using storyboards (slides mounted on chipboard) for visual reinforcement. The room that day was cramped, so Karl made his presentation sitting down without the benefit of the usual easel to hold the storyboards.

As it happened, Dr Dunn was in the next chair. Karl asked him to hold the boards as Karl went through them, one by one. The presentation proceeded uneventfully. When it was over, the eminent surgeon handed back the boards to Karl, saying, “Remember, now, they are in reverse order”. Such attention to detail in even the most simple non-work situation made a lasting impression. You’d expect that kind of concentrated focus from a nationally renowned surgeon, but not in handling someone else’s presentation slides instead of his own instruments.

Dr David Dunn’s personal brand standards and style of thoroughness, attention to details, perfectionism, humility and co-operation clearly showed through.

C. DEVELOPING YOUR PBM FOR YOUR CAREER

Step 1: Identify Your Role Which Matters.

In this case, it would be your work role. For Dr David Dunn, this role would be ‘Surgeon’.

Step2: Examine Your Standards and Values.

An important part of building a personal brand is identifying your values – what you believe and don’t believe ,what you hold to be true, what’s important, what you respect and don’t respect, and what you are willing and not willing to do to achieve your goals. These personal values are the inner rules or principles you use to make choices to manage your career.

Inner values can be determined using a Personal Brand Values Profile tool or the Disc Values System Profile. For Dr David Dunn, his set of values includes Friendship, Order, Quality and Co-operation.

Standards also imply that aspect of work performance. When your work performance was tip-top in the past, what were the attributes that contributed to them? Was it your responsiveness?

Your tenacity? Your clear thinking? Your high energy? Your innovativeness? Your specialised knowledge or expertise? Your willingness to lead or to be a team player or supportive resource?

The three to five attributes that consistently come to the fore when you review situations in which your performed well are your brand standards.Roles/Standards can be determined by using Career Profiling tools such as Harrison, DiSC, Emergenetics, Caliper, etc.

For Dr David Dunn, these standards are Thorough Acute Attention to Detail, Operates to Extremely High Standards, Extremely Disciplined Approach.

Step 3: Define Your Work Style.

Reflect on the unique parts of your personality that made an impact on other people when you are performing well. Was it your positive attitude? Your sociability? Your dominance? Your stubbornness? Styles can be determined using personality based tools such as DiSC,MBTI.

For David Dunn, he adopts a collaborative, humble and friendly style.

Step 4: Define Your Brand Platform.

To determine your brand platform, review your list of brand standards and style characteristics and decide which one of these you are most passionate about and have the courage to consistently and distinctly display with your target group.

For Dr David Dunn, his personal brand platform is the Disciplined approach – Brand Standard. This must correlate with his most prized personal value which, in this case, is stability.

Step 5: Define Your Brand Promise.

Start with your brand platform, then follow these guidelines:

1. It should be based on your most distinctive brand standard or brand style (your brand platform).
2. It should orient you directly or indirectly to how your brand pays off for your target group.

For Dr David Dunn, his brand promise is ‘The discipline to achieve world-class results’.

According to management guru Tom Peters’ ‘Brand You’ theory, if you manage your career as though you were a premium brand with unique PBM and not just another commodity in a corporate cubicle, you will get better work opportunities and higher pay in a job market where managers are scrambling to hire talents. To better manage your personal brand at work, consider:

1. What are the key relationships in your working life?

The ‘customers’ for your brand at work are those most affected by the quality of your work.

1. What do these customers expect of me?

Your actions and the outcomes that result from them are especially relevant in the context of these relationships

1. How can I apply my brand promise so that I am both distinctive and relevant in these relationships?

Think of situations where you can clearly demonstrate your brand promise to make a real impact.

D. YOUR PERSONAL BRAND AT WORK

Within you lie all the talents needed to succeed in your career and be a Force of One to compete and win. Your personal brand is the powerful, clear, positive idea that comes to mind whenever people think of you. It is what you stand for – your values, personality traits, behaviours, actions – that others associate with you.

E. MOVING BEYOND BRAND BASICS

Once you have identified and completed your personal brand manifesto and articulated your brand promise, you have established an excellent foundation for building and managing a strong personal brand.

Brands, like relationships, are experiential. They build their strength over time, through interactions. To build a strong personal brand at work, you need to make a conscious effort to manage relationships so that their interactions are memorable for the right reasons: because they are a distinctive reflection of you, because they are relevant to your target group and because they are consistent enough that both parties develop a sense of stability and predictability on which to build future interactions.

However, you must constantly measure your brand by asking around or using 360° feedback, perception research, referrals intensity, etc to ensure you are indeed making distinctive, relevant and consistent connections to the important people in your work life and delivering what is truly valued.