This weekend I engaged in a discussion at LinkedIn Answers about Personal Branding & Corporate Branding, discussing the different aspects of how personal brands and corporate brands can work together and against each other. Since this is a complex question which you may not have given much thought to, I thought that I’d share my ideas with you.

How corporate and personal brands empower or diminished each other

Competence

For the corporation, strong personal brands among the staff show the competences and strengths of the employees as well as the fact that they are interested and engaged in their line of work. For the personal brand it is great to have a network of strong brands around yourself and also to be connected to a strong corporate brand in your line of work.

On the other hand, if the company has weak competence, that brand will be hurt by the fact that the employees are not as sharp as expected. Also if some event (think Enron) happens, that will also have an impact on the personal brand of the staff, whether they have anything to do with what destroyed the corporate brand or not.

Inventory of resources in the company – working with your passion

If you are working in a place where the company cares about its brand and about the personal brands of the employees, it will be easier to find the right competence within the organization instead of using consultants for unnecessary tasks. (I believe in consultants, but they should be used in the proper manner.) This will give the employee a better chance of doing the things they are passionate about (as they have branded themselves) and will in the long run strengthen the corporate brand since it will be a better place to work at and hence attract better employees.

If there are weak personal brands in the organization, it will attract weak and unmotivated co-workers, which will have a negative impact on both brands.

Customer care / receptionist / salespeople

These are areas within the company where every client (hopefully) meets an actual human being. The way this person communicates will have a immense impact on whether or not the client feels happy. The brand of the person interacting with the client is carrying two brands, that of the company and that of himself. Both brands will be affected in either a positive or a negative direction depending on the associations that the client gets.

Conclusion

Both the company and the employees have everything to gain from working with their brands, and also thinking of how they can empower each other’s brands and the brands they are associated with in different networks or contexts. I believe that an increased brand awareness throughout the corporation will also benefit the corporate brand as well as make the employees more motivated to add to the corporate brand as well as start working on their own brands.

Have any of you faced situations in which the corporate brand and the personal brand have empowered or worked against each other?  How did you benefit from it (if positive), or deal with it (if negative)?

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Your personal brand is divided into two parts, your Personal Brand Image and your Personal Brand Identity, where the Personal Brand Image is how your peers perceive you and your identity, personality, values, skills, and abilities. Your Personal Brand Identity is who you really are (identity, personality, values, skills, and abilities) and what you want to communicate to others.

There are a lot of ways in which you can align the two, but today we will focus on networking and events.

When you see someone at a restaurant, in a meeting room, or at a networking event, you will automatically add definitions to your image of that person. If she is having lunch with a head hunter that you recognize, it will probably empower certain areas of her brand image such as skill level and professionalism, while having dinner with her daughter will add to her image of being a good mother, emotional skills etc. The bottom line is, your brand image is affected by the company you keep.

Using Facebook and LinkedIn to meet with the right people

Let’s say you want to meet with a certain type of person, to pick their brain, to hang out or to make inquiries about if their office is a good place to be looking for work. The first thing I normally do is to find out if there is anyone in my network that fits the profile, or if there is anyone that knows someone with the profile I am looking for. So how do I do this?

First I go to my LinkedIn account, looking around for certain skills, positions and interests of the people that I know personally. If somene fits the profile, then I just contact them. I do the same on Facebook, but the search possibilities are much more limited. OftenI find that I do not know the right person directly but that my connections know someone, which is almost as good. Let your connection help you get connected.  Ask for an introduction.

Finding the events where you want to be seen

You have now met with the connections in your network and also with some of their connections, but you still wants more. Maybe you are looking at the local chamber of commerce and other traditional networks for the right events to practice your networking skills. If you do that, it is a great start, but I have found that looking at which events my connections go to is much more efficient as far as find the best ones. The good thing is that Facebook and LinkedIn lets you do that easily.

LinkedIn lets you list the events that your connections are visiting by going to the events section. Here you can see them ordered by date or popularity. You can also recommend events to your connections.

On Facebook, you cannot actually list the events of others, but you can keep track of the one you are invited to and who else is attending. Go to the events page where you will see upcoming events and also the upcoming birthdays of your connections.

How do you use the social media networks to network offline?  Share your tips and success stories in the comments section.

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Understanding what is important in your life is one of the fundamental parts of buliding your personal brand. Once you do, you will find it a lot easier to make decisions, set goals and create your personal brand strategy. One of the tools that I use when defining what is important to me is my personal mission statement.

The personal mission statement is not something you create once and then forget about.  Rather, it is a doctrine you can consult, review, and revise on a continuous basis. I review mine every 3-6 months, or whenever I feel the need to do it. My process is based on ideas from organizational management literature, books about creating mission statements in businesses.  I then apply these ideas to the situation of an individual within the context of personal branding theories.

As an individual I have values and virtues, just as organizations do. The difference is that while a conflict of values is not uncommon in a large, complex corporation, they seldom occur within an individual. This does not mean that there are no conflicts in personal values, but rather that the conflicts are most often in the form of prioritizing between values which are generally compatible. The problem is that this is a dynamic process, and that one value cannot always be prioritized in front of the other. For example, professional ambition cannot necessarily be placed ahead of love for one’s family.

In my personal mission statment I have grouped my core values and virtues in five areas:

1. Integrity
2. Success
3. Freedom
4. Health
5. Relations

Your core values are yours and not mine, therefore your groups most likely will differ. This is a good thing, because it is a sign of differentiation. The important thing when defining your values and virtues and then crafting your personal mission statement is to make sure that the values are yours and not something that has been imposed upon you by your friends, your parents, society or any other external party. Look deep into yourself and explore what really motivates you and what really matters to you. Only then can you define what success is for you.

Once I have defined my mission, it is time to start thinking about what specific goals and milestones I will be using to fulfill the mission. Not everything I do can be in line with the mission, as conflicts will naturally arise, but the mission statement will guide me in the quest for happiness and fulfillment of what I value most.

Next week  I will write more about goal setting for personal success.

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Do you know what you are passionate about? Even if you do, maybe there are some things to add to the list, or maybe you need to find out what you are most passionate about. Last week, I wrote about why passion is important, and now it is time to talk about how you can reach your potential by identifying and working with your passion portfolio.

1. Identify passion areas
   There are a number of great posts on how to find your passions and I would like to share two that I find very useful: The Short but Powerful Guide to Finding Your Passion by Leo Babauta and How to Find Your Passion for Anything by Scott Young. Find a place where you are at ease, light some candles, make sure you will not be interrupted and read the printout of the two posts. Take an hour or two to read and reflect, it’s important not to rush.
2. Ask “Why?”

“Why” is an extremely powerful word. When working with your personal development, always ask yourself the question “why?” at least three times. Let me give you an example: I am passionate about personal branding.
Why personal branding? I love to help people to reach their potential.
Why do I want people to reach their potential? Because I have seen so much waste of great talent and hard work, where the problem really is in the person’s self beliefs and inability to communicate their value clearly.
Why is this my responsibility? Because one of my most powerful core values is to “Be a support and help my fellow humans.”
Answering levels of “why” questions will hopefully give you a purpose for what you are doing.  If not, maybe you have not accurately identified your true passions.  In this case, I found the trigger value for my passion for Personal Branding. I am a strong believer in the power of choice, and I think that you can choose to be passionate about an area. But even if you can choose to be passionate about something, for that choice to be empowered, it has to be aligned with your core values.

3.  Build and work on your Passion Portfolio
Write down the passion areas you have identified and the purpose for why you are passionate about those specific areas. Put it where you will see it every day, and add to each passion what your next action is for that passion area. It could look something like this:
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Passion: Business networking
Purpose: I am a strong believer in helping others, and that my generosity will be reciprocated
Next action: Form a small business network with a clear structure for business value
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Do this for every passion area, or at least your top 10. Work with your action items every week. Personally, I like to add “Next Desired Outcome” before defining the next action point and writing it down as well. It is important to link actions to outcomes, both for future planning and retrospective evaluation.

What to do after identifying the areas which excite you the most?  Follow these steps to turn thoughts into actions, and eventually tangible results.

1. Connect you work description to your passions
   In your current job, take a look at the work description and identify what areas are aligned with your passion portfolio. If you do not have a job, look for alignment with job ads. Take a moment to brainstorm around projects, tasks and outcomes that you can initiate or suggest to the management within your passion areas. When you work with these areas, you will most likely do a great job and over time you can steer your work to be more and more within your passion areas.
2. Help your team
   Include your team in your projects, show that you are passionate about it and spread the increased energy to them as well. You will be more appreciated and you will build a brand where your team will know you for delivering excellence in the area of your passion. Teach them how to tap into their passion and they will look at you as a natural leader.
3. Promote the results
   When doing evaluations, talking about what you do, writing reports, your resume, etc., promote the job you have been doing in your passion areas. Over time you will see that your manager, co-worker, family and friends will change the way they perceive you. They will see a more passionate person with a clearer purpose and direction.
4. Find ways to develop your passions (and yourself)
   Review your passions, find new areas of passion and work with your purpose, desired outcomes and tasks. Do this every week or every two weeks to keep this way of thinking fresh in mind at all times. When reviewing, spend equal amounts of time focusing on the future as well as on the past. I usually take half an hour for each task after breakfast on Sundays since that is a time I can have for myself without interruptions.

How do you work with your passions?

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