Mar

12

Personal Brand Management

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Not long ago, I was asked to speak to a group of fantastic women through NOWIB. I thought I’d share part of it with you. It’s a bit lengthy so we’ll do this in episodes! First, let me start with a question:

Who or what did you think you were when you were younger?

For me, I was the Bionic Woman.

I remember running through the neighborhood, jumping tall buildings and listening in on conversations taking place continents away. No really… I did!! Needless to say, I’m so excited about the new Bionic Woman TV series.

As I did some research, I discovered so many web sites and articles devoted to helping professionals keep professional images squeaky clean in the world of cyberspace. Online image management is personal brand management.

I read where a popular phrase – self-Google search – is also a popular activity. I confess: I, too, have Googled my own name. While it may be an innocuous act of vanity, it is, according to one communications professor at University at Buffalo , a shrewd form of personal brand management.

“Self-Googling is not simply narcissism, though that’s certainly part of it,” explains School
of Informatics professor Alexander Halavais. “People should Google themselves for the same reason corporations do—to help to manage their public face.”

And while all of that is certainly fascinating and incredibly important, I want to take personal brand management one step deeper. Together, I want us to understand the self.

My identity has changed so much in my 40 years of existence. And I don’t doubt that it will continue to change until I am called Home.

And we have so many sources engaging our senses, telling us what we should be. We know that society places tremendous value in the external. We know that media and marketing organizations encourage us to look a certain way, act a certain way, and do certain things, lest we be ostracized.

See if any of these sound familiar:

* We are a machine – Society often tells us that we are valued according to what we can do. But we’re not machine’s are we? This view abolishes the soul of man. We are indeed so much more than a machine.
* We are an animal – It has been suggested that there is no qualitative difference between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom.
* Likewise, we are simply sexual beings. That’s a subject for an entirely different meeting!
* Finally, we are a pawn of the universe. Imagine people being crushed by fate; that we are at the mercy of chance which has no concern for anyone or anything.

I submit to you that we are none of these things. In his book, Beyond Identity, Dick Keyes says there are two parts of identity: Integrated, which is the whole person. In other words, you know who you are. The other part of identity is value; you have value in your own identity because you know who you are.

Perhaps we are all dreamers when we start out. Perhaps we’re not dreamers… rather we struggle our way through the day being so many things to so many people. We are husbands and wives, siblings, friends, parents, mentors. In business, some of us are required to wear all the corporate hats of accountant, bill collector, sales guru, marketing genius, president, administrative assistant and have skin as thick as a rhinoceros.

We’re supposed to be politically, spiritually, emotionally and psychologically engaging and participate in making this world a better place.

But what if we’re not some of these things… or any of these things?

That’s why it is so important to know your identity – understand your gifts as well as your limitations. Without that knowledge or understanding, our worlds become a cluttered, chaotic mess and we become ineffective.

This is where we’ll stop for now. Check back soon for, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story!

And remember, it’s not just what you say, it’s the way you say it!