What is your personal brand?
What is your personal brand?
What is your favourite brand?
My son likes Mercedes-Benz. He only turns 15 next week and can’t drive yet, but he has decided that he wants a Merc for his first car. He plans to buy it himself (using savings he doesn’t have) and sends me links to Autotrader offers more than once a week. As far as he is concerned, no other car is a worthy option.
I support the Blue Bulls and have done so my entire life. The Bulls were the best team in the world 15-20 years ago, but nowadays they are not, and just seem to make me mad. Still, I cannot see myself going out and buying a Stormers jersey. It just feels wrong.
For a long time, Matthew McConaughey was the romantic comedy guy. He and Kate Hudson seemed to be in every second movie, and you could be sure that the recipe would lead to success. Life was seemingly good, but what McConaughey realised was that always playing the same character was not working for him anymore. He wanted to challenge himself, to explore new options, to get out of the box he had been placed in. The rom-com offers were still coming in, but he rejected them all. He made no movies at all for almost two years, because people did not associate him with playing the more serious characters. He had the wrong brand. Eventually, somebody took the chance of offering him a role in a small-scale movie that would allow him to showcase his acting range. One thing led to another, and three years later, he won an Oscar for his role in Dallas Buyers Club (which is not a romantic comedy at all).
These days, Matthew is regarded as a serious actor with exceptional adaptability and range. But first, he had to go through a period he refers to as “unbranding”. He had to stop doing something completely to make room for the new potential to develop. Before adding something new, he had to subtract a significant part first.
What does this have to do with you?
Whether you think about it or not, you also have a brand. You are known for certain things. You might like some of these characteristics and others not. Just as being known as the rom-com guy might not be a bad thing, there might be some things associated with you that you have outgrown. Maybe you feel like there has to be more to you than being:
– the nice guy who nods and smiles to keep everyone else happy, while on the inside, you are not, or,
– the very unfriendly colleague whom everyone steers clear of,
– the busy mom who is always in a hurry and 15 minutes late,
– the competitive athlete who wants to change direction, slow down and try something else,
– the person who reacts in an overly emotional way every time somebody disagrees with you,
– the life of the party who regrets what they got up to the morning after.
These are all examples from discussions we’ve had in the past couple of weeks. The point is, we get to choose to unbrand ourselves if we are willing to say no to the things we too easily say yes to. If your brand is no longer working for you, you can change it. But it might require that you subtract something to make room for the new.
Thank you for reading. Have a lekker weekend!
If you would like help re-branding yourself, get in touch. You can reach us at info@purposeworks.co.za.
At PurposeWorks we are all about Making You and Your Work Rock. Our focus is on Organisational Health and Design, Employee Centered Culture, Leadership Development and Performance Coaching. For more information on how we can help you create a work environment that rocks, develop a great team, become an inspiring leader or unlock your personal excellence talk to us at info@purposeworks.co.za.
