Thursday, August 26, 2010

Personal branding



If you squirmed when you read the title, you're exactly like me.


Doesn't it sound all "marketing" and "schmoozy"?


Well, I was pleasantly surprised when I went on a networking course last week and the first half of it was developing your personal brand.


Basically, we all have a brand. Whether we're consciously working on it or not is another matter altogether.


E.g. when you say to someone, "who's Marcia?" and they say, "oh, she's ________ ", that's your personal brand at work.


Of course we all know this is true because we do it all the time.

Even in the infertility support group.

"Oh, so and so is doing her 3rd IVF".

"who's so and so again?"

"The funny one" or "The nervous-looking one"

That's your personal brand.

A big takeaway for me was that I decided I'm not going to only let other people dictate my brand; I'm going to help shape it.

One of the homework assignments was to ask a diverse group of people you know in varying degrees to send you the ONE WORD they thought of that best describes you.

I did this with mostly work people (ex-colleagues, bosses, etc.) but also a couple of friends and got some very interesting words.

Some of the words really were quite surprising in a good way.

I'll share them with you but first - tell me which one word you'd use to describe me.

P.S. As always, if you don't want me to know who you are, no problem. Use the anonymous field so you can be brutally honest.

P.P.S. I know not all of you know me equally well - that is the point - to see how authentic I'm being :)

8 comments:

  1. open honest outspoken

    going out on a limb here, i am one of the ones that doesn't know you too well .. yet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Organized or confident... I can't decide.

    Speaking of which, I remember a post a long time ago about you asking people about organizing photos. What was the consensus? I already have a bazillion, and I've been doing it by month.

    Thanks for your comment on feedings. My sitter just told me that one of her daughters (she has three!), didn't sleep through the night until she was 10 months. So I'm not worried, but I AM hopeful that it's sometime soon! Especially since I'm going back to teaching next Monday. I'm wondering if the girls will be more "worn out" from the extra stimulation (2 30 min car rides, new house, etc...) and maybe will sleep longer. OR they could be super cranky, lol! We'll see.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm going to go with "open". I love flipping over to your blog to see what insight / challenges / experiences you have to share, and questions you have to pose. :)

    I love this idea. One of my former bosses did an exercise, where he had about 20 people in our work group fill out a questionnaire, describing everyone else. It was done anonymously (with him being the only one to see the answers). Then he assembled a sheet for each of us, with how others described us. That was 8 or 9 years ago, and I still have that piece of paper...I thought it was so neat. I got a lot of "hardworking", "organized"-type comments. One person said, "She appreciates the job others do so she in turn can do her job." I loved that one. And then one person said, "Is she an only child?" Seriously??? :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Without knowing you in real life, and just through your blog, I would say "Open, honest and funny". You tell it like it is, which is something most people appreciate!

    My brand is "she's the one with two sets of twins"...the minute anyone says that, they automatically know who I am. Not sure if that's a good thing or not!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous10:32 am

    Driven

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Confident; assertive; driven

    I'm terrible at this! : )

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for leaving a comment and filling my love tank. I appreciate it!

I'd love to answer your email so please make sure your email address is enabled. In Blogger, go to Edit Profile, and under Privacy, tick the 3rd block and then Save Profile :)

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails