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Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 18(3), pp 99-102
Managing your personal brand
Michelle Gander
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA
Abstract
Everyone has a personal brand. To ensure success at work you need to manage your personal
brand which is made up of your tangible and intangible attributes. This paper reviews the literature
around personal branding, looks at some of the attributes and discusses ways you can reflect and
begin to build your personal brand in a higher education context. The paper finishes with some five
ways to make sure your personal brand fails!
Keywords: personal branding; reputation; career development
Introduction
Ask yourself these questions in your work situation:
• What do people think of me?
• If I had to choose a word to describe myself at work what would it be?
• What skills differentiate me from my peers?
This is the basis of your personal brand. Everyone has a personal brand and it can be either
positive, negative or neutral, for example, you will know people whose name, when mentioned,
either gets an immediate ‘they’re great’ or a not so wanted ‘not really sure what I think of them’.
Your personal brand is made up of your biography, experience, skills, behaviours, appearance and
your name (James 2009). It is not just what is already known your personal brand can affect new
contacts. Think about when you meet someone for the first time. For better or worse, we take less
than a second (390 milliseconds to be precise) to form an impression of someone’s personality
based on their voice (Bar et al 2006, Thomson 2014) and other attributes. Of course, some people
have famously changed their voice - Margaret Thatcher for one, but this is a very difficult
undertaking. So, people make snap judgements of you when they first meet you and apart from
changing your voice (difficult) what else can you do to manage, to a certain degree, the decisions
other people are making of you; what can you do to manage your ‘personal brand’ and why should
you.
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Personal Brand
Personal branding as a term was first used in 1997 in Tom Peters’ FastCompany article, in which
he said: ‘We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important
job is to be head marketer for the brand called You’ (Peters 1997). Whether you accept quite that
level of evangelicalism on this topic or not, the key aspect of personal branding is that everyone
does have one, or what Peters (1999 from Shephard 2005) calls ‘a sign of distinction’ and we ei-
ther have to manage our own brand or someone else will manage it for us, giving other people in
your organisation power. It has been said that by ‘nurturing your brand … will ensure that you get
out in front of the pack’ (Arruda 2005 from Shephard 2005).
Your personal brand then will let people know what you offer above what your CV says – after all
many people have degrees and skills training, but you need that je ne sais quoi that will
differentiate you. You need a strategy to effectively manage your personal brand because this is
about how people perceive you and how you can influence that perception. The Personal Branding
Group say that ‘personal branding is also not an option.’ Montoya and Vandehey (2003) say that to
be effective, your personal brand must evoke three basic perceptions:
• You are different: differentiation, or the ability to be seen as new and original, is important;
• You are better: your brand must encourage the belief that you are among the best at what
you do in some way;
• You are authentic: great brands are ‘spin-free zones’.
This last point I was suggest is very important and especially in higher education. There is some-
thing about people that choose to work in a university that means they can sniff out spin at a hun-
dred paces; your brand must be built on the truth of who you are, what your strengths are, and
what you love about your work.
According to McNally and Speak (2002 p. 75) ‘every brand, including your personal brand, con-
tains an implicit promise … [it] should reflect the desire and ability to meet another specific per-
son’s needs and desires at a particular time.’ They elaborate (pp. 89–90): ‘the first time a personal
relationship provides value for someone else, brand equity starts to accrue … You may never have
thought of that as evidence of a strong personal brand before, but by now you should be beginning
to see patterns … You know what you can turn to them for, and you have a pretty good idea of how
they’ll respond. That’s a branded relationship’.
Jennifer Holloway (2013) says that personal brand consists of values, drivers, reputation,
behaviour, skills and image; basically everything we do affects our personal brand, including:
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• The way we talk, walk and dress,
• Our education and class,
• The way we negotiate and meet our obligations,
• Our customer service and presentation skills,
• How we follow through on our promises (adapted from Montoya and Vandehey 2003).
These various attributes can be split into two components − tangible and intangible. The tangible
parts are easier to manage, such as:
• Our image: what does our image convey about us?
• Our skills: what can we offer beyond our formal qualifications?
• Our behaviour: what aspects of this promotes us?
However, the other components are intangible and need more work. What is our current reputation
– what do people say or think about us when we’re not in the room? Are we consistent? Do we
always meet our promises? What are our drivers, what matters to us and motivates us? What are
our values?
The idea of managing our personal brand is the process of taking all of the above and packaging
these attributes into an identity that gives us that added extra above our competitors (for projects,
jobs etc.). Our personal brand then is the clear concept that comes to mind whenever people think
of us. Therefore, it should be positive and represent what we stand for as mentioned above:
• Who we are,
• What we do,
• What makes us different.
Reflection and Feedback
A starting point for managing your personal brand is to reflect on what messages your current
brand is sending. When we reflect we consider something, such as an activity, deeply which we
might not have otherwise given any thought to. We consciously look at and think about our
experiences, our actions, our feelings and responses - we term this reflective practice. Although
there are multiple and contradictory understandings of reflective practice there is some consensus
on a definition. In general reflective practice is the learning through and from your own experience
moving towards gaining new insights of practice (Finlay 2008). As this often involves examining
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assumptions about everyday practice it should be a valuable tool to use to reflect on our personal
brand. This is often referred to as ‘reflection-on-action’ which is when you reconsider what you did
do, how you judged how successful the outcomes were, and what changes could be made next
time to result in different outcomes. This develops a much greater self-awareness and allows you
to narrow the theory-practice gap (how you think you acted vs how you did act). Indeed this type of
reflection on practice is often an official benchmark for professional registration and practice.
Feedback from others is a good way to try and see yourself through another person’s eyes. It can
be difficult to hear messages that aren’t congruent with your own views but this can be very
powerful. Many universities Learning and Development Departments will have access to activities
such as 360 degree feedback mechanisms. You answer a set of questions about you and you;re
behaviour, likes and dislikes at work for example, and then you identify a number of colleagues to
do the same. The key here is to use both the obvious colleagues such as your line manager but
also the not so obvious ones – whose opinion do you really value? Who isn’t automatically going to
give you ‘excellent’ in each area? Who will really spend time thinking and being honest? To get the
best out of these activities you must choose people who will be honest, hard as that may be. You
can also just ask people to provide feedback for you especially around specific activities or projects
you undertook. Feedback just after the close of a project is really valuable as this is all fresh in
someone’s mind and being asked to provide feedback ons something specific is usually much
easier than a person’s attributes in general. If you undertake any Continuing Professional
Development events you may also get feedback as part of that, or will be asked to do something
similar to above; for example, the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education’s courses often
contain feedback as a component, becoming chartered in your area of expertise often includes this
as well.
Developing your personal brand
James (2009) suggests starting by writing a statement of purpose, determining your point of view
and ascertaining your principles – they act as guides to you but importantly they are hard for others
to replicate. Your statement of purpose guides you on how you conduct yourself and acts as a filter
for decisions that you’ll need to make to deliver your brand. For example, an HR Manager’s
statement might say ‘I’m in the business of providing senior management with the appropriate
human capital to ensure a successful university’. The second step is to create differentiation which
is when you determine your beliefs and unique take on the world by completing the sentence ‘I
believe the world would be a better place if…’. So, for our HR Manager this might look something
like ‘I believe the world would be a better place if organisations nurtured and developed their staff
to allow them to attain their ambitions’. Now you need to think about your principles, your
statement here should begin with ‘I always’, ‘I only’ or ‘I never’…So, our HR Manager might say ‘I
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will only work for organisations that truly value their staff’ (adapted from James 2009).
According to McNally and Speak (2002 p. 62) ‘defining your personal brand dimensions and refin-
ing them into a personal brand platform involves identifying the competencies, standards and style
that go into each relationship people have with you’. They then propose the following three steps
(2002: 63–7):
Step One: Identify the Areas Where Your Competencies Matter;
Step Two: Examine Your Standards and Values;
Step Three: Define Your Style.
Personal brands (like commercial brands) take time to develop. We can put all of the attributes into
place but it develops at its own pace; it is a long term strategy. Brands grow organically, the best
personal brands develop as a result of strong communication, a sense of purpose, and the person
behind the brand backing up the brand’s promise again and again. Brands demand consistency
and clarity, a strong brand can withstand some shocks to the system but too much inconsistency
or ‘failure’ leads to a rapid diminution of brand status. Now that we have our brand strategy how do
we go about developing it, what are the different tactics we can use?
Work hard
You need to get noticed and you need to know what skills to develop to get where you want to be.
Nothing says more about your reputation than achieving results, having the right attitude and help-
ing others at the same time.
Do work none else wants to
There are lots of opportunities to take on a bit extra here and there from project managing to taking
on committee servicing, to being involved with recruitment. The amount of times I’ve heard col-
leagues say ‘no ,I’m too busy to take on X’ but soon people stop asking. Taking on work gets you
noticed.
Learn one new skill
Choose one new skill that will benefit your ambitions and make a commitment to become an expert
in it.
Sharpen your narrative
When people ask you ‘what have you been up to lately?’ (this happens a lot before meetings or the
like begin), Clark (2014) says we should not waste the opportunity to promote ourselves. How
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many of us have said ‘oh, not much’. However, when developing and managing your personal
brand take the opportunity to tell people something, you’ve been to a school governor meeting,
you’ve written your latest blog post etc., or how your latest project is progressing.
Rekindle old ties
Professor Adam Grant (2013) has written about ‘dormant ties’, those people you used to know but
haven’t been in touch with for a good while. They’re still in your contact list and in the time you ha-
ven’t seen them they will have made new connections and networks and if you rekindle the link
they will share these with you; you can then return the favour.
Seize on an emerging trend
When you start to want to build a name for yourself, it’s hard if you’re a generalist. You want to be-
come the go to person, pick a topic you’re truly interested in (be authentic) and develop that, all the
better if the trend is emerging. This could be something from your masters, MBA, PhD work for ex-
ample, or something that you’ve been working on – think MOOCs.
Use social media
There are three main social media platforms used by HE professionals – LinkedIn, Twitter and
blogs (Gander et al 2014). They offer the ability to manage many more peripheral connections than
can be managed face-to-face and certainly help if you work across countries, they also help you to
share and promote your work to a wide audience.
Start creating content
If you start to think regularly about a subject, a way of building your brand is start blogging (free
sites like Wordpress.com are easy to use) as you automatically showcase your expertise in an ar-
ea. You could just start with Twitter or LinkedIn but getting started is the key and then deciding this
is going to be a regular activity, is important so put time for it in your diary (adapted from Clark
2014).
Why isn’t my branding working?
Ah, the 100 million dollar question! Five things to do ensure your brand fails:
1. Don’t reflect on your current brand:
It is hard to be self-critical, or accept criticism from others, but if you want to improve your brand,
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reflection and feedback is the only starting point. So, take a deep breath and ask your colleagues
(and not just the ones you know will be nice) to critically reflect on your strengths and weaknesses.
Now you’ve got a starting point.
2. Don’t define what you want to be known for:
You’re trying to build a specific brand and clarity is key – do not try to be all things to all people.
What are you building your brand for, your next job? Then what do those people embody and how
can you build towards that? You might be great at your current job but you could be promoting
exactly that. You need to be promoting that you’ll be good at your bosses job. Focus on the long-
term, what skills and attitudes do you need for the next step up the career ladder.
3. Over- or under-share:
Are you over-promoting yourself? People tend to hate that, it can’t all be about what you’ve just
done, who you’ve had lunch with etc. Are you under-promoting yourself? Do you tweet at all? Do
you keep LinkedIn up-to-date? Are you careless with what you share? Really, should that selfie
with you and six beers have gone out on your professional profiles?
4. Don’t ever get out from behind your PC:
If you’re an introvert social media is a boon. We can sit and share and blog and write to our hearts
content and none of that necessarily means interacting with people face to face. Sometimes
however the best thing though is to get out from behind your screen and go and talk to some
people. Have you been to the annual AUA or Guardian HE conference? Did you look at the
delegate list and who you might want to meet? At these big events planning is key. Look at the
delegate list, who would you like to meet? Find a strategy to ensure that happens.
5. Don’t update your profiles:
So you decided to start to manage your brand a while ago and set up your LinkedIn and Twitter
profiles for example. Have you updated them? Have you promoted yourself and your achievements
on these platforms (but see point 4 above). People really do Google you when you apply for jobs
etc. so make sure your profiles are up-to-date and give the right professional image. Have you
joined relevant groups e.g. AUA, loveHE, THE, the list could go on, and contributed to the
discussions? Have you followed individuals on Twitter and re-tweeted their stories, and tweeted
your own and debated ideas (in 140 characters of course! Adapted from Webber 2013).
You might not agree with the premise of taking concepts from marketing products and applying
them to marketing your self but arguably there is benefit in doing all of the activities above to
improve your reputation and visibility in your organisation.
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References
Bar, M., Neat, M. and Linz, H. (2006) 'Very first impressions', Emotion, 6(2) 269–278.
Clark, Dorie (2014) ‘Brand you 2014: five personal branding tips for the year ahead’,
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Finlay, L. (2008) ‘Reflecting on “Reflective Practice”’, open.ac.uk/cetl-
workspace/cetlcontent/documents/4bf2b48887459.pdf, date accessed 29 March 2014.
Gander, M., Moyes, H. and Sabzaleiva, E. (2014) Managing your Career in Higher Education
Administration. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
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