Who Are You?

Kathy Ennis

(LIS Network event, 7th June 2012)

A small select group of us attended the June LIS Network meeting on Personal Branding – “Who are You?” – in which Kathy Ennis gave us a great introduction to the subject which is her passion. As Kathy herself admitted at the end of the meeting, “I could talk about this for hours!” It was certainly a fascinating tour of the subject.

Personal branding is about identifying your USP, and helping yourself to stand out from the crowd. This must be of particular relevance at the moment, especially for those looking to move jobs, or needing to find work, when the jobs market is so difficult.

Kathy started off by talking about branding in general – we looked at some well-known brand logos and considered what thoughts, feelings and emotions they engendered in us. The brand is not the logo itself, but what it represents and makes us feel. Personal branding should work in the same way.

According to Kathy, personal branding has four components (“The Four Vs”), which must be aligned to present a coherent whole:

Values

• Come up with five words which you think encapsulate your core values
• Ask others who know you to do the same – ideally finding people who know you in different contexts, such as family, friends, work colleagues etc
• The words which are common to your own and others’ lists are the ones to focus on!
• It can also be useful if one of your five is a value you aspire to, rather than one you feel you already have – this gives you something to work towards.

Visuals

• This relates both to you as a person, and to the things you have around you
• Need to reflect your values – if you see yourself as a successful businesswoman, you need to dress like one!
• Colours can be important, as they can alter people’s perceptions – eg blue is thought to be a “trustworthy” colour, and is often used by banks in their logos (!)

Vocals

• In other words, the things you say about yourself
• In a professional context, this means how you describe yourself. When people ask you what you do, don’t just give your job title, but tell people what you actually do, what services you provide, how you help people etc.

Verbals

• This includes all the other ways you express yourself, such as online and in print
• You should Google yourself regularly to see what others might see if they did the same thing! Social networking has an important role to play in professional life, but should be undertaken with care, bearing in mind who might be looking at your words of wisdom in the future

It’s very important that what you do in terms of visuals, vocals and verbals are aligned with your values. If you’ve stated that attention to detail is important to you, this will not ring true if you dress scruffily, or if your write carelessly and without checking for typos.

I was struck by the parallels between what Kathy was saying, and one of the principles of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), which I began to study last year. In her book “NLP at Work”, Sue Knight talks about aligning your levels of influence, these being Purpose, Identity, Beliefs and Values, Capabilities, Behaviour and Environment. Sue says: “The more familiar you become with what you want to be important for you at each of the levels and the more you remind yourself of this, the more likely you are to be able to regain your alignment (and hold on to it) in times of challenge and stress.”

A slight digression there, but I find it satisfying when I see links between the different elements of CPD which I follow.

Kathy’s final message was that it pays to invest in yourself, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. I’ll be talking a bit more about that in another post.

I enjoyed this meeting; I guess some of what we heard could be dismissed as “common sense”, but I think there is always value in hearing this kind of information presented in a coherent way, and backed up by anecdotal evidence, which Kathy does so well. I will be carrying out the "values" exercise above - if I can get over the embarrassment of asking other people to comment on what they think my core values are, it feels like "fishing"!

I’m looking forward to hearing what Kathy and Susie Kay have planned for the new season of LIS Network meetings!