You know that you’re good at your job: you’re achieving your objectives, and you’re well regarded. But somehow, you still feel like you’re blending in, rather than standing out.
It sounds like your personal brand could do with some attention.
“My personal brand? I work in finance, not marketing!”
Everyone has a personal brand, whether you know it or not, or even if you like it or not. Your personal brand is what people think/say about you when you’re not in the room. It’s your reputation, and putting it simply, you own it. In this blog post, we’ll explore why you should build your personal brand and how it can drive your career growth.
How Personal Branding Connects to Career Growth
OK, so there are many things in life outside of your control. You cannot control how others perceive you (what they see and think about you), but you can certainly influence it. Everything you do – from the contributions you make during team meetings to the quality of your task reports and how you craft your email responses – strengthens or dilutes your personal brand.
Learn how your personal brand impacts your career in one of our blog posts here.
Because your personal brand is essentially your professional reputation, it strongly connects to your career growth, in the short and medium-term. Being intentional about building a strong personal brand shows that you don’t just care about looking good, but more importantly about building trust and demonstrating your expertise. And this in particular can affect your career growth.
The Risk of Not Building Your Personal Brand Today
As a professional, if you’re not intentionally building your personal brand now, you could be doing your future self a disservice. Since every professional has a personal brand, if you don’t define your personal brand, your peers, managers and recruiters will interpret whatever they see for you. And this may be quite different from what you’d like.
You may be risking your professional visibility, the loss of your ability to attract great opportunities and severely putting a limit on your career growth, when you don’t intentionally build your personal brand. The solution? Take intentional steps towards building your personal brand, if not, you could be relinquishing control of your career growth, and any misinterpretations could affect the future of your career.
The Value of Building Your Personal Brand
Personal brand is not a fancy marketing term but a strategic professional asset that can have a compounding effect on your career. See it as a reputation investment, where everything you do affects opportunities in the short, medium or long term. If you ignore it, then you could be inadvertently risking future growth opportunities.
Instead of leaving it to chance, be intentional about how you want to show up in the world. By reflecting on your personal brand, you have a great advantage in how you are seen, whether as a solution provider, a leader or an expert. At whatever point you are in your career, the cumulative impact of building your personal brand intentionally ensures opportunities will always locate you.
In conclusion, you must have agreed by now that building your personal brand is not vanity but rather an essential career growth strategy.
If you want to take the intentional step towards building your personal brand today and impact your career success positively, then sign up for our popular Manage Your Personal Brand online course, or get in touch for a Career Discussion to discuss how we could work together on this.
