Someone once said we are all an 'Organization of One.' In terms of their product could you describe Safaricom, Equity Bank, Coca Cola or Toyota? But if I asked you to describe yourself in three words or less what you say – more importantly what would others say about you? Just like the well known companies I’ve just mentioned, we all have a personal brand. Did you know the quickest way of finding out your personal brand is to find out what people say about you behind your back! Did you also know that whether you’re a doctor, a designer, a DJ or a delivery guy – you’re all in sales and the product you selling is you. Yes – you’re the product, the message and the billboard all wrapped in one. Organizations will spend buckets of cash on company branding but personal branding of staff usually get short thrift. It’s not until you lose that contract or fail to get the promotion and when that failure is examined in the 20-20 vision that is hindsight that people come to grips with the fact that there may be something to this personal branding business after all. So what goes into developing your personal brand? It’s all the things I’ve been banging on about all year – your image, style, online presence, body language, non-verbal communication, the clothes you wear, manners, handshake, etc. Once you have built that powerful personal brand please do your utmost to protect it by being consistent. You can’t be a paragon of excellent business etiquette between 9-5 and then be crawling on your hands and knees at 11pm at night completely soused. Also be consistent in your communication of your personal brand to the world whether it’s through regular networking or meaningful tweets or blog posts. In a hyper competitive world going into 2011 it is incumbent to do an objective personal branding assessment of ourselves and see whether we seriously reflect on the outside the image we have of ourselves on the inside. Remember you can control the image other people have of you.
Talking of branding, Kenya took another hit yesterday as we made the headlines of virtually all the major international media outlets for all the wrong reasons. Someone somewhere needs to do some serious damage limitation and our successes as a nation MUST be communicated. On the other hand, we recently did get some positive international exposure through CNN Hero Evans Wadongo. Even I can’t quibble about the do’s and don’ts of smothering a celebrity (Halle Berry) in front of millions of people – suffice it to say good for you my man!
