Why Personal Branding is the KEY to your Professional Development

What is personal branding, and why is it so crucial to your personal and professional development?

As an Etiquette Advisor and award-winning personal branding expert, people often ask me What’s so important about personal branding? Why so heavily on it? The answer in a professional context, especially if you are an entrepreneur, but really for anyone, truly is the key to personal development.

Jeff Bezos said you can think of personal branding as what people say about you when you are not in the room. So, personal branding is the way you appear to others and what they think about you.

If you want to curate a positive and professional personal brand in order to support your career goals, it is as simple as being intentional about how you present yourself and engage with others in a professional setting.

This intentional effort to 'care' what other people think about you may take you a long way professionally, as it may mean the difference between being hired or not hired for a job. LinkedIn reported that hiring managers often heavily weigh soft skills when choosing between two candidates for a job position or promotion. Soft skills are synonymous with your personal brand, however, I will get into that in another blog post.

It may seem surprising, however, these soft skills could also give you the edge over someone with more job-related experience than you if you have the reputation of a fast learner, reliable, and great to work with.

Individuals who make an intentional effort feel more confident and create more opportunities in life.

Use your personal brand as a way to communicate your professional identity and authority with grace and dignity. Ensure that when people work with you, they know what to expect and can rely on a specific (positive) outcome. This consistency shows people that you are reliable and that you care about not only your work product but the experience that they have working with you.

Take control of that narrative by outlining what you want the experience of working with you to be like and what you want people to say about your work product. Obviously you cannot control what other people say or think, but if your goal is that your colleagues find you are reliable and collaborative, try always showing up to meetings on time and prepared by reading the agenda and staying on topic and use engaging and positive body language during meetings so everyone knows you are paying attention and taking notes so you are ready when the project starts.

Enhance and develop your soft skills to strengthen your personal brand.

Whatever your personal and professional goals are, an intentional personal brand exercise is a valuable tool that can help you identify your goals and take control of opportunities as they come. Developing and strengthening your soft skills to enhance your personal brand will help you to be at the top of the list for positions and promotions in an increasingly competitive world. It may seem simple however, if you take the time to intentionally develop your personal brand with consistent and valiant effort, you will see positive results in your personal and professional life.