Personal branding expert Dan Schawbel has said: “You are the chief marketing officer for the brand called you, but what others say about your brand is more impactful than what you say about yourself.”
With many career successes, you may be well aware of your unique value, but your own assessment of yourself is just one opinion. Soliciting feedback from those around you will help you distinguish your top brand attributes and uncover your authentic personal brand.
What better indicator of your greatest strengths and assets than what those who work with you have to say about you? They are in a position to know how you use your strengths to make things happen and benefit the company. They’ve seen you in action many times, tackling impossible challenges, re-engineering failing operations, driving bottom line profitability, etc.
An extremely useful practice when developing your personal brand, the process is also a big confidence-booster as you move forward in a job search.
Here are a few questions I have my executive clients ask the people they work with:
- What do you feel are my greatest strengths that have most benefited the company?
- What was my most important contribution to the company?
- What things do you know you can always rely on me to deliver?
- What would you say are my top brand attributes?
- What did you learn from me that helped you do your job better?
As we go over their input, we start seeing consistencies. Often to a person, certain qualities and strengths shine through. Using that information, we’re able to validate and reinforce our own assessment and come up with an authentic brand statement that makes them come alive on the page and attracts hiring decision-makers reading about them.
You may be surprised by how willing the people around you are to tell you what a positive impact you’ve had on the company’s success and their own careers. You’ll get a deeper appreciation of what differentiates you from others doing the same work and your promise of value to your next employer.
Extend the value of this exercise:
- Create a high-impact job search document for your career portfolio – a reference dossier with accolades. More powerful than a typical list of professional associates and their contact information, this document includes a one or two paragraph encapsulation of their answers.
- Their answers can form the foundation for great LinkedIn recommendations for you. Ask them if they’ll use their answers to put a recommendation together, or save them the effort and do it yourself, then send it to them so they can approve it and post it.
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