Building a brand for self

Employees who can brand and market themselves well carry an image that gets associated with not only their brand name but also the organization’s. Self branding always helps. But the employee should not resort to bragging or pretense. It is a careful study of oneself in a quest to understand what one excels in and then leveraging on those attributes to create a brand called ‘me’. A great communicator for instance, brands himself /herself likewise. Whereas a silent performer carries this very attitude as his/her brand identity.

Personal branding is not all about self promotion and marketing tactics, it is more fundamental than that. It is a clear, deep and profound understanding of who you are and what you stand for. Every organization should believe in playing with the strengths of the individual.

This is not a new phenomenon. It happens in all relationship; people always wish to establish their identify (brand). Branding is a positive and an essential long term process in one’s career as long as it is based on and backed by one’s competencies and achievements. Branding oneself stems from a simple fundamental of how human beings co-exist in a given environment. Humans can exist only in two forms of relationships. Either, they compete or collaborate. Taking advantage of natural opportunities to promote your accomplishments and letting others know what you have done is a good thing and needs to be encouraged. One of the ways to stand out, shine through is to wisely promote your accomplishments and use effective self marketing and self branding tools.

Is it a fair deal for the silent worker whose effort go unnoticed and some other employee who is good at branding himself/herself walk away with all the applause? Branding is neither about making noise nor is it a popularity contest. Hence it does not matter whether you are silent or outspoken. Branding is about what image/brand one wants to build for oneself and how he/she goes about doing it. Building a brand for oneself is a highly individualistic process and what works for one may not work for the other. So, being an introvert or an extrovert does not matter.

Talking about whether it is an unfair for the silent workers. There are many successful introverts. An extrovert or a good orator need not be successful compared to an introvert or poor speaker. Networking and blogging are domains where introverts can beat their more talkative rivals in their own game of self promotion. It would be wrong to say that these silent or the introvert employees miss out on a lot as they do not get the appreciation or recognition as they tend to maintain a low profile. If they are good at what they do their ‘silent’ attitude towards work may even add to their performance and productivity. In fact, at Endeavor, every Project Lead has a special knack of identifying and rewarding the silent performers. Extrovert employees are more suited for the client-oriented roles, where their ability to speak out and good presentation and persuasion skills may do wonders. On the other hand, an introvert employee may be suitable for the back end delivery kind of roles where a dedicated and focused effort is required.

Fairness in this entire process is only about an opportunity being provided to all to showcase his/her success. Leveraging the opportunity is only a function of his/her ability to communicate with confidence. Introversion could be referred to someone who lacks confidence in articulating his/her success openly. Such an employee would expect his/her supervisor to point out his/her success to the rest of the team.

It is imperative for any organization to make sure that their employees gets the right kind of appreciation and does not feel side lined and disappointed. How do organizations make sure that they keep employees who blow their own trumpet at bay and identify the deserving talent? Differentiating a deserving employee from a hypocrite is only about an organization being knowledgeable about human behavior and work performance standards. With so many skilled self-marketers around, leaders need to develop tools and skills to evaluate and reward real performers.

It is very important for organizations to weigh the claims of individuals against time; It is easy to form opinions about employees as professed by them in the short run and determine roles and responsibilities, accordingly. However, a real brand is created only when the opinions are vindicated time and again and the individual delivers consistently over a long period of time.

Hence the moot point remains that as much as self barding is highly recommended for every individual a short term image should not be confused with branding. It’s always in the long run that an individual’s brand gets established. If organizations are good at identifying the deserving talent then the practice of an employee branding oneself will certainly work wonders for both.