Personal brand - part 1

Don’t close the page just after reading the title, please :)

For many people I’m working or interacting with the phrase “personal brand” causes shivering, changing facial expression and dropping energy level.

For many of us, especially in European cultures, very often personal brand is associated with self-promotion, bragging rather than doing something meaningful, or maybe “black turtleneck + jeans” of Steve Jobs.

Would that be accurate representation though?

If we think deeper each one of us has our own brand. Ask a colleague/friend in a hallway “what are three words/characteristics that come to your mind about person X?” That would be a good representation of person X’s brand. So, no matter what we do, everything will somehow add to this “picture” which will be the brand. So in order to build that brand not necessarily we need to be busy with self-promotion. First of all we need to understand what we want to see on that “picture”, what values do we want to represent, what impact we want to have, and that would define the actions.

What do you think of a “personal brand”?