Building Your Personal Brand for Success

How often do you hear executives, officers, and other leadership speak about your personal brand? What does your brand say about you? What value do you add to your team or organization? What comes to your mind when you think of a brand? Perhaps it's merchandise, restaurants, autos, places or big companies such as Nike,Victoria Secret, Coach, Wells Fargo, BMW or McDonald's to name a few. What do they all have in common? What's distinctive? What makes them great or not? The first thing that may come to mind is their popularity, consumer interest, and social awareness. Every place, item, organization, and person are a part of a brand. So, what's your personal brand? You can create your brand by continuous growth and development, relationship building, networking, taking risks, maturity, self-awareness, feedback, and self-expression. Additionally, you can build your brand by excelling in your career, possess quality character traits that are admired by others and be the prime example of an excellent leader within your organization. It's how you demonstrate good behaviors, emotional intelligence, communicate, and conduct business that will enhance your brand. Your peers are watching! And if you influence others, people will admire your knowledge, performance and most importantly respect you as a person, then you are on your way to establishing a distinctive personal brand. Being a leader that responds appropriately to any issue is just as important and builds trust among others. Never have an ego and miss obvious

signs potentially affecting your team. Abraham Cahan stated, "Be modest, humble, simple. Control your anger." Time and time again, I come across employees who want to be better, while a select few want more such as to be a leader in the organization or CEO. Taking it back a notch, some of you may recall a time when you were a child and out with your parents at a store. They asked you to behave in public because they knew everyone was watching and you're a representation of them. As an adult, I share the same thing with my employees...be aware of your perception it's your personal brand. You never know who is watching and who you are inspiring! Take Away The importance of establishing your brand is to help you be successful, earn respect, enhance your leadership ability and be on the competitive edge. Building your brand can be gratifying because it can contribute to the change of how others perceive you. So, if you want your hard work to be recognized, make your brand work for you! What are ways you created a positive personal brand in your profession? Are you self-aware of what others think of you? How do you ensure your brand stay recognizable?

#PersonalGrowth