Branding is for marketers, right? Yes. But do you know that you also have a personal brand? If you’ve never stopped to think about your “brand,” you’re certainly not alone. One way to think about your “brand,” is to take a step back and figure out what you might be saying to your co-workers without uttering a single word. You may have avoided analyzing what you might be subtly telling your co-workers for the reasons Deepak Chopra gives in his quote above. We’re not suggesting that you come up with a sentence that you think describes your personal brand to put on a splashy web site. Rather, we’d encourage you to think about what your colleagues might say about you if they were tapped to give a reference for you.
Would your colleagues say you’re the “peacekeeper?”
Are you the one on the team that understands what’s happening on the team and works to get everyone to communicate? Does your boss often tell you that he or she wouldn’t know what was going on with the team if you weren’t around? Because you’re able to take the temperature of how your team is feeling about a number of topics, and you can communicate with your boss about what they need. It might feel like from time to time that you’re the team representative and in charge of the well-being of your team. If this feels like this could be you, it’s likely that you take the definition of being a “people person” to a whole new level, and can work with just about anyone.
Would your colleagues say you’re the catalyst for change?
Are you constantly wondering if a new process, software or tool could make your team more efficient and successful? Do you take time outside of work to research potential options? Do you communicate this with your boss/ manager, and figure out how to implement it on your team? If you have a passion for figuring out how to make your life and the lives of your colleagues easier through changing up the standard operating procedure, you might be the catalyst for change on your team. This likely means you’re not afraid of change, you embrace it, and you’re getting better at selling your ideas in a way that even the colleague that is most “set in their ways” will support. This is extremely valuable to organizations that are undergoing even the most minor changes in their operations.
Would your colleagues say you’re a rule follower?
No, this is not the “adult” way to say tattletale. Rather, are you the person who knows the policies and procedures that the company runs on? Do you understand how company policies limit or help how your team functions within your organization? Do your colleagues come to you with questions about how to work with HR, or to understand what they need to do for their performance review? This doesn’t just happen because you might be more senior on your team, it’s because you have established your credibility as someone who knows how to navigate the red tape and internal politics successfully. You are extremely valuable to bosses/ managers who don’t like to follow the rules, and can help be an important source for new hires. If you move to a new organization, you’ll be poised to quickly absorb what makes the organization run, and bring valuable new ideas based on your previous experience in understanding how to develop procedures and effective ways to communicate how employees should follow them.
Would colleagues say you excel at seeing the big picture?
Are you able to connect the day to day activities of the people on your team to how they drive success for the company? Do you understand how your team contributes to revenue and other driving forces behind why the company exists? Do you understand the competitive landscape and where your company fits? Do you spend time thinking about where your company has opportunities to win? You’ve likely got a natural knack for strategy, and thrive on driving initiatives tied to big picture growth and success. It’s unlikely that you love the details and would rather come up with the “next big thing.” This kind of mindset can be really valuable on the leadership level and can help influence the mission and vision of how to structure an organization for growth and development. You’re likely to need someone who loves the details to take your plan from the thought stage to reality, but you can trust your colleagues who have proven themselves to understand the day to day things that don’t interest you.
Would your colleagues say you’re dependable?
Please do not read the word dependable and think, boring. Those two things are not synonymous. If you’re the one that your colleagues ask to cover for them while they’re on vacation, or are the first one volunteered to take the lead on the special project, you’ve proven that you can be trusted. Trust is such a difficult thing to quantify or place an actual value on, but having it means you’re practically an irreplaceable member on the team.
You may not “fit” into one of these categories, and may take pieces of each “brand.” That’s okay, no one likely is a perfect personification of any one “brand.” If you can understand how your colleagues see you, you’ll likely start to understand why your team values you, and in turn, can understand how to best position yourself to a potential employer during your next job search.At the very least, it should give you an idea of how to answer the dreaded, “What are your biggest strengths” question.
Determining how your colleagues view your personality and performance can provide you with a powerful roadmap that can lead you to grow, develop and become more self-aware. While it might be a little uncomfortable to go down the road of self-analysis, especially if you haven’t embarked on this kind of path before, not only will you likely learn something about where you’ve been, but you could end up with an idea of what it will take for you to get where you want to go in your career.