Personal Brand — How to Build One?

Brand and Branding are one of the biggest assets for all of us, in every circumstance. We need this in our personal, professional, and social life. We need it to be heard, to be accepted, to be trusted, to get things done, to build teams, to lead, to achieve. The value of a personal brand cannot be overstated.

Take us take an example from the business area, and see how even for a large corporation the personal brand of the leader is crucial.

Let me ask, will you be comfortable using the Microsoft products, however good they are, if you do not trust Satya Nadela? Maybe for some time yes, if you have no option. But after a while, I am sure you will be seeking alternatives unless the situation improves.

Or take Raymonds. I am sure you are aware of the current family dispute of the Raymonds group, between the current owner Gautam Singhania, his father Vijaypath Singhania, and his wife & daughter. Though this does not affect the operations of the company directly, it is expected that if the issue is not resolved amicably soon the shareholders may step in.

How do we vote in elections? We trust a leader to deliver the goods, and that trust comes from the personal brand — am I correct? Or say how we make friends? Don’t we assess what the persona represents before we cede space?

What is your brand? That is a question you can answer best. But I will leave you with some thoughts on possible brand identities:

1. Empathetic — always treat everyone with respect, whether students, parents, staff

2. Honest — not oversell, delivers what is promised

3. Approachable — easy to reach at any time and any place

4. Responsive — takes my calls, answers my messages, ready to listen

5. Knowledgeable — knows the product, knows about my kids, knows what is happening in the education space

6. Passionate — always energetic, enthusiastic, ready to engage, ready to respond

These are some of the ideas, and I believe they capture most of what the parents will expect.

Now you can be very good in all of them, or can very very good in at least three and good in others. And of course, as an entrepreneur who faces customers every day, you can’t be bad in any of them.

What are your strengths? Where are you doing very well? Where would you like to improve?

Let us discuss each of the six one by one. I am adding some traits which I have seen in my experience, I am sure you will have more to add to this, please do that.

Empathetic

Let me start with being Empathetic, because if there is no empathy, none of the other five will be world-class.

Empathy is one of the most used (or rather abused) terms in everyday life, but also one of the most misunderstood.

To begin with, Empathy is NOT Apathy (where we do not care) or Sympathy (where we care about the symptoms and try to address the immediate issues, but the root cause).

Empathy has been variously explained with analogies. If you give food to a hungry person I’d you have sympathy, but teach them how to fish if you have empathy.

Or when you help someone sick, you just don’t give some advice, but give money, time, connections, and references to see to it that the person receives the right treatment.

We say empathy is getting into someone else’s shoes. But is it easy?

Next time you meet someone, and discuss some issues, please check:

1. Are you accepting the person as someone with real things to say, and not starting with biases?

2. Are you focused on listening completely before even thinking about the possible solutions?

3. Are you actively listening, and not just heading? That means, are not interrupting, not sharing your thoughts upfront, and trying to understand rather than being understood.

4. Are you slow in the interaction, like not slowing impatience and urgency about the next thing you have to do?

5. Are you genuinely interested in the person, and not doing all these because it is the right thing to do?

If you are doing all of the above, you are demonstrating empathy. And when we have genuine empathy, and not faking it, people understand.

Now one question may be there in your mind, what happens if the person wastes my time?

If he/ she just goes on speaking never comes to the point, or tells something irrelevant?

Yes, that is possible. The way to handle this is the practice of active listening.

If you are listening with prodding and not countering or giving your views, you will almost always find the person will finish quite what is to be told.

And then you have to think through, have follow-up questions, and look at possible solutions.

Remember every situation may not have a solution, but if you listen with empathy, 90% of the problems will be solved there itself.

Start today if you are not practicing empathy. You will soon see great results.

Honest

Like everything this is part of morals or values or ethics, Honesty is a complex word, though we use it every day. We call people honest or dishonest, We say, that is an “honest opinion”. But do we fully understand what honesty is?

If you ask me whether I am honest, I will most probably say — Yes. And that will be the answer for almost all of us. At best, someone might say — Yes, I am honest most of the time. But I don’t think even the most crooked will say that they are dishonest.

So what is honesty?

To me, it is the true representation of what we know and what we don’t know. And the ability to say what we don’t know, and communicate what we know, however unpleasant it may be.

So is being honest the same as being brutally honest? Telling the truth all the time, whatever is the impact on the person in front of us?

Of course not. Then we will be ChatGPT, not humans. There is always a place and time, to tell the truth, and a way of telling it even when we tell it.

I remember an example I read about this. Say you are invited to a dance performance by a friend and you felt he or she could have done better. As you meet your friend at the end of the show, you are asked — How was it?

Will you say it is not good? I don’t think so. This is not so urgent that it has to be blurted out then and there, and not the occasion, and it is also the time when your friend is on an emotional high. So maybe you can speak about how good it is to meet after a while, and how good the environment is. And on a later date, when emotions are down, you can tell what you felt. And of course add your constructive suggestions, on how it can be better.

Have you seen how say armed forces bring bad news to the family? It is the most devastating of the truth that is to be told, but it is never just a phone call or an email. A team visit, led by a senior officer, in full uniform, and communicate the news to the family with compassion and dignity.

That brings me to what I wrote before. While we want to be truthful and may think it is easy, it is not. Apart from knowing what is truth, we also need to have deep empathy to know the right “truth” from the “wrong” truth colored by our emotions, and then communicate the same.

So how do we know that we are honest? Let us ask ourselves the following questions, and possibly we will know:

1. Do I try to find the truth in all circumstances, using my critical and creative thinking, and minimizing my biases?

2. Do I communicate what I know as truth, and not what I think is true, and worse still, what I know to be false?

3. Do I keep the communication relevant to the occasion and need, and do not communicate when it is not necessary?

4. Is my communication independent of how pleasant or unpleasant the truth is, and who I am communicating it with?

5. Do I understand and communicate truth with empathy?

If the answer to all of these is yes, we are absolutely on the right path. Now many of us, including myself, are still not there, and it is a journey. But a journey is worth so long we are moving forward.

And remember, people understand when we are honest. They all watch what we do, and not what we say. So practicing rather than preaching is the only way forward.

Approachable

Being approachable always paints a picture in our mind of someone who welcomes us enthusiastically, listens to us passionately, and ends the interactions cordially.

But is that all? Suppose I do all these, but nothing else? Will I still be seen as approachable? I don’t think so. Very soon you will all understand that I am not sincere in being approachable.

So who is approachable? Of course one has to be all that I mentioned above, but much more than that. Let us frame this as five questions and ask ourselves whether we do that:

1. When someone meets us, do I welcome him/ her enthusiastically, listen passionately, and end the interactions cordially?

2. Do I display genuine empathy during the interactions?

3. Am I truthful in the interactions, clearly state what is possible or not possible, and think deeply before making any commitments?

4. Do I fulfill whatever promises I make, in the agreed time, and in case I fail to do that do I communicate that honestly?

5. Am I approachable in the same way to all and not only to a few?

If the answer to all the above is yes, we are ahead in our journey.

If not, let us work on it.

Responsive

I will ask myself the following questions to check whether I am responsive:
1. When I am reached out by someone (directly/ indirectly, physically/ digitally), do I respond in a reasonable time frame? Now this response may not be an elaborate one, but at least an acknowledgment and a promise to respond in a specific time frame.
2. Once I respond to a situation, do I do it with sincerity and not just to be compliant, and dedicate my intellectual and physical efforts to respond to the situation?
3. If I make promises of action, do I make the promises after proper consideration and fulfill them as expected?

4. In case I am unable to act on the situation, do I communicate that unambiguously and explain the same?

If you find the answers as yes, I am doing well on responsiveness.

Knowledgeable

This is a critical element, and it takes time and effort to achieve this. There is no shortcut.

As a professional, we are expected to know our field of work well. For example, if I am responsible for selling a product, I will be expected to be very good in a few areas that are crucial for my key customers. They are understanding the product and delivery methods, how it impacts the users, how to measure the impacts, and how to deal with the customers. Other areas also are important, but these will be crucial.

Also, the other important area is to know what you don’t know, and having the humility to admit that you don’t know. Being unaware is no crime, but spreading untruth to cover it up is criminal.

Passionate

Let us discuss being Passionate, the holy grail of the difference between Good and Great. Or so we were told.

To discuss what it means to be passionate, we need to first understand what is Passion.

In everyday conversation, we hear — follow your passion. The question is — what is passion, how do I find my passion, and should I follow it without questioning?

The first answer is easy — passion is something which, in the most evolved state, consumes our entire being. If we are passionate about something, we will spend all our time energy, and every other resource to achieve it. We see this in display with elite sportspersons, politicians, industry leaders, and social reformers and understand it.

The tougher question is, what is our passion? Many times we feel excited about something and feel that is our passion. But unfortunately, we can’t sustain it beyond a few days, even in the best of cases.

I once read one astronomer saying that he meets many people who become very excited about planets and stars, and feel they can master astronomy. But as soon as they are faced with the mathematics involved, they feel disheartened.

And that is the truth. Passion is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Think of a world-class musician, who performs in front of a stadium full of fawning fans. But for that one performance of two hours, there are 2,000 hours of sadhana.

So having a passion for something is a lot of hard work, almost all of it is lonely, and may even feel boring at times. And yes, there is no guarantee that it will work after all this.

So passion can never be about things like “I will be rich”, “I will be powerful”, or “I will be famous”. It has to be something much more than that, and fame/ wealth/ power will be a byproduct.

Ask yourself, what is that you want to make a difference to — in yourself and the world around you? A better you, a better family, a better community, a better humanity — but how?

As a professional, I think the following questions will be a good beginning:
1. Do I want to be an independent and competent professional?

2. Do I want to create career opportunities for others?

3. Do I want to make my customers happy and successful?

If you are not having any of these, and just hoping that the business will expand — it will happen. But if you have at least one of them, you can work on the other two. And be the very best.

That brings me back to the last question — do you follow any passion?

My suggestion is — first ask, is this what you are doing going to make you and the world around you better tomorrow? If not, it is not a passion — it is just a feel-good.

So here we are, with some questions to find out whether we are passionate about what we are doing at SIP Academy.

If you are, you will succeed, no one or nothing can stop you.

If you are not, find out why you are not. Discuss with people around you, and think hard.

Because if you want to be GREAT in what you are doing, and not just Good “enough”, you need to be passionate.