“You need to have a personal brand. If you want to get ahead, you’ve got to profile yourself!”

Brilliant or baloney? Credible or cringe-worthy?

Thinking of myself as a brand does not come naturally to me. In fact, over the years, I found myself inadvertently having a natural resistance to the concept whenever I encountered it – either from a well-meaning manager, or one of those glossy magazine articles that shout at you, “Personal branding is the only way to stand out in today’s cut-throat, crowded environment of elbow-jabbing professionals!”

I eventually decided to face my resistance, because I’d rather be proven wrong than live my life in blinkers. So I steeled myself and attended a Personal Branding masterclass conducted by a very established company that makes their living creating extremely successful brands. They also branched out from branding products to branding people – teaching their employees from Day 0 to apply their magic branding fundamentals to themselves in the game of personal branding. Perfect. Who else better to learn from?

They used a framework which I now recognise as Harvey Coleman’s PIE framework from his book “Empowering Yourself: The Organisational Game Revealed“. Simply put, they assert that a personal brand consists of:

Performance – Are you delivering exceptionally well on your tasks?

Image – How do other people think of you? Are you a “mountain-mover” and “earth-shaker”? Are you relentless in driving outcomes?

Exposure – Who knows about you and what you do? Does your boss’s boss’s boss know? What about the boss from the other team? What about your mother-in-law? (Just kidding about the last one, but not really.)

All well and good. I don’t think you can refute that nailing these factors might give you the points you need to – ding ding ding! – create that personal brand.

Yet I felt a dissonance. The masterclass did not inspire me. It was actually even stressful.

Why?

I spent the next hour reflecting why I felt the way I did.

Then it hit me.

It was because the PIE framework was all about The Other. How were you being assessed by others on your performance? How are others viewing you? Are you the hero? How visible are you to others? How can you get even more face time with them?

For something as personal as personal branding, this was pretty ironic.

I then thought about what could make personal branding actually meaningful to the person at its core. This was so that we won’t be caught up in mono-directionally doing stuff to appeal to others’ perspectives (absolutely delightful – if you’re a Kardashian.), but that it could – most importantly – stem authentically from the source, the person (you!).

Understanding and conveying the person is key. Branding is the positive externality – just gravy on the side.

(For lack of imagination on acronyms and just because I’m on a low-carb diet, I’m going to throw my own PIE framework out there.)

1. PURPOSE

Purpose is a propeller. To quote Red Bull, it gives you wings. If you know why you’re even doing what you’re doing, it can cut through the clutter and doubt. And that Sunday night dread.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Why are you doing what you’re doing?
• What part of this journey gets you most excited?
• How are you purposed for your work? What gifts and strengths do you bring to the table?
• How important is this cause to me and / or the organisation?

2. IMPACT

We are all too familiar with the giddiness and over-glorification of busyness in our society. We can fill up a whole day dotting i’s and crossing t’s if we want to. Parkinson’s Law hinted at one aspect of it, where “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. But how much of our lives and effort actually go toward creating actual impact? Have we measured that?

Questions to ask yourself:

• Is my time and effort helping to effect change in the right direction? What is the right direction?
• Who am I helping? What am I helping?
• How lasting is the change?
• Is this progress meaningful to my next 1 / 3 / 5 years? In what ways?

3. EXPRESSION

This is the part about how you show up. For yourself. Are you able to bring your authentic self to situations – with your purpose, passions and pains – and convey them to others in a manner that is productive and candid? Are you able to express cogently and clearly your Purpose and Impact? Not for show or performance, fear or favour, but because you truly believe in what you’re doing?

Questions to ask yourself:

• Am I clear about my Purpose and Impact?
• How authentic and real am I in various situations (work / home / social groups)? For instances or groups, where I’m showing up less, why is that? Am I consistent in how I show up across situations?
• If I am clear about my purpose and impact, how is sharing it and being known for it going to serve others? How can I share my knowledge and skills, which are in alignment with my purpose? How can I bring others along with me in the conversation?
• If I am not clear about my purpose and impact, why is it so? What is lacking? Do I need to explore more, or introspect more? When was the last time I felt energised by the work at hand and why? What is the change I need to make, so that I can bring myself into alignment?

Personal branding isn’t as unpalatable or fabricated as I thought it’d be, once I sat down and approached it from these new lenses, where you focus on understanding yourself (most importantly), instead of how others perceive you (a rarely authentic beginning).

The meaningfulness of personal branding stems from within you. So find what gives you that fire in your belly, and only then figure out how it can help light someone else’s torch through your authentic expression of it in the world.