The five things every project manager needs to know about personal brand:
1. It is your unique promise of value delivery
The keyword in this statement is unique. It is our uniqueness that powers our unique selling point, commonly referred to as a “USP.” Project managers need build around what they bring to the environment or situation that is uniquely theirs as a point of differentiation. The reality is that sometimes, in order to make a difference, we have to be willing to be different.
The word promise is powerful but can be misinterpreted. In the context of personal brand, it means your commitment to consistently delivering value in everything you undertake. Your commitment to constantly striving to improve yourself and what you bring to the table is sometimes referred to as you offer. A strong promise opens up doors of opportunity. A weak promise will close them. The bottom line is that all of us have a promise.
The value word is the “soft” part of the sentence. In a dictionary, value is often defined as the desirability of a thing, often in respect of some property, such as usefulness or exchangeability: worth, merit, or importance. Project managers often measure their value in terms of how well they and their team are doing in regards to the triple constraint - time, cost and scope. Personal branding is more about a broader definition of value, especially in situations where time, cost, and scope targets have been missed. Project managers with a strong personal brand are constantly on the lookout for how they can deliver value to their stakeholders over and above simply through baseline management. This value delivery can take the form of how people feel after they interact with us.
The delivery word is really meant for project managers. Project managers deliver solutions to problems and opportunities. Implicit in this expectation, is that the solution has value to all or some of the project stakeholders.
2. It is an asset
Think of your “promise” as a tangible asset that has some numerate value. Like any asset, over time it will appreciate, stay neutral, or depreciate in value unless you upgrade or improve it in some way. Many individuals currently in a mid-career situation have not consistently invested in further developing their capability in terms of resetting disabling mindsets, developing keystone skills, such as facilitation and achieving increased leverage with key tools, such as Microsoft project. The net result can at best be career stagnation and at worst being let go by your company. The good news is that it is never too late to begin reversing this situation. While some situations will simply require brand strengthening, some situations will require re-branding. This can involve resetting career direction and purpose and can be highly rewarding. Project managers need to aggressively invest in their promise or brand by taking courses, reading books, and writing articles in order to avoid this mid-career experience.
3. Unique is good
While many of us in our teenage years went to great pains to fit in and be like everyone else, personal brand requires a completely different approach — identification and promotion of your uniqueness or difference. Ironically, interviewers constantly probe, using various forms of behavioral interview techniques, for unique characteristics that will differentiate a potential candidate. Personal brand is really about leading with your uniqueness, passion, and deep desire to make a difference as opposed to your technical competence. Project managers need to face the reality that there are many people practicing the “religion” of project management, many of whom proudly flashing their Project Management Professional (PMP)® or Program Management Professional (PgMP)® credentials. In today's environment, it is not the left brained oriented skills that make the difference. It is the right brained oriented skills, such as empathy, meaning, and design that make the difference.
4. There are three ingredients
Your personal brand is made up of three parts or ingredients: capability, character, and commitment. Capability is a function of the mindsets, skill sets, and tool sets we use to get things done. The harsh reality is that many people have well developed tool sets, well developed skill sets that are held back or constrained by disabling mindsets that affect attitude and overall behavioral approaches to conflict and resistance.
Character, is a function of the beliefs, values, and traits that shape how we behave while getting things done. For example, if we believe that micromanagement is a valid leadership approach, we will persist in continually demoralizing our direct reports and stakeholders by constantly “jumping in to save the day,” so to speak. Another example would be a set of values that place minimal value on work-life balance. This value set will shine through in our personal brand like a flashlight inside a tent late at night. Unfortunately, it will define us in the eyes of our stakeholders and compromise our promise.
Commitment is a function of our willingness to strive continuously to learn and grow, focus on optimized outcomes for everyone involved and most important, keep things simple and understandable for others to get things done. People will be more likely to believe in the quality of your promise when you demonstrate and model self-discipline and support for the greater good — locally or globally.
5. There are four questions
Personal brand is about communicating to the world what you are known for, what you stand for, what you care about and most importantly what you are capable of becoming.
What Are You Known For?
While being aware of what you are known for is a very valuable self-insight, not knowing what you are known for, is its mirror image. A big part of understanding your personal brand is confronting the reality of what you are really known for. For example, you may believe that you are known for your intellect and attention to detail. In addition, you believe these two traits to be positive brand attributes. However, it could be that you are generally known by your team, your colleagues, and perhaps even your clients, as an academic who gets lost in the details of data points and statistics. Personal branding is about first determining what you want to be known for, second initiating action to determine the truth, and third, making sustainable adjustments.
What Do You Stand For?
Your character is the mainstay of this question. Are you willing to put yourself out there as a standard bearer for some special cause or approach? As a project management practitioner, are you willing to be the standard bearer or advocate for using project management approaches to effectively implement change? More importantly, are you willing to stand up and be counted when senior executive and sponsors begin to short circuit conventional wisdom around planning for and implementing change? Do you stand for doing the right thing regarding aggressive sponsor requests for increases in scope without adjusting baselines for cost and time?
What Do You Care About?
In my leadership coaching practice, I promote the principle that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. People will tend to trust you more when they sense or observe that you genuinely care about them and more importantly their well-being. Your promise is strong when people believe you care about what is in the best interest of your team and the organization, as opposed to just yourself. Essentially, what you care about reflects your value set, which of course is one of the foundational legs of character.
What Are You Capable of Becoming?
I believe individuals get promoted based on their brand more than their performance. While performance does indicate proficiency in some area or endeavor, your promise or brand looks forward into what you can do. Project managers with a strong brand are more promotable because they have demonstrated the capability, character, and commitment ingredients. The commitment is perhaps the most telling, because what you are capable of becoming is a factor of your consistent willingness to strive, focus on outcomes, and keep things simple. Essentially people will believe in your potential, sometimes to a greater extent than you do.
What Does All This Mean?
Today's business, multi-cultural, globalized environment, expects relationships to be built while getting results. It is no longer permissible to focus exclusively on getting results, rationalizing poor relationship skills as a nice to have. Similarly, just building relationships and not delivering results will not work either. A project manager's ability to influence others and build relationships depends as much on the “brand recognition” element as it does on the face-to-face or voice-to-voice communication in the moment. A large part of the communications we have in the project environment is with people who know us and have experienced an interaction with us in some way in the past. If that interaction has been positive and is perceived to be likely to continue, our ability to facilitate dialogue, get to the truth and move people to support ideas or processes improves significantly. Project managers are really in the moving business — selling and moving people to align, support, and contribute to achieving the end goal of the project. A strong brand where one of the things you are known for is a persistent devotion to connecting rather than confronting will be a key differentiator for your career and your personal life. Bottom line — your personal brand matters!