You are Always Branding

I had a few questions about why to brand, or if branding really helps or hurts in your career. My main response is that you are always branding yourself, but not always in an active way. Often you're creating a passive brand that you don't exploit well, or even at all. Instead, you let your brand sit there passively and hope that it helps and doesn't hurt.

What's Passive Branding?

I used the phrase passive branding recently, and then had to explain it. Passive branding is the effect of your everyday actions. You solve a problem at work, and some people get a more positive opinion of you. You make a mistake and cost the organization money, and people think a little less of you. You oversleep and someone else has to do your work, and they think of you negatively.

These actions are really your reputation, the impression you've left on others. Only those that directly know of the action change their opinion, or those that they tell. There are certainly second level effects here.

These aren't make or break impressions for your career, but just slight positive or negative opinions. What's bad is that the impressions can be blown out of proportion if they occur at a certain time. Imagine that you have a new child and you're up a lot at night. You are late for work 2-3 times a week for a couple of weeks as your adjust.

Now imagine a new manager is looking for you to help with some task, and you're not at work. They might think, maybe this individual is just caught in traffic, but what if they happen to look for you every one of the 4 or 5 times you're late in a few weeks. They might start to think you're not dedicated or some other negative view. They might even remember this as the impression of you the next year when they're picking someone to promote, or someone to lay off. Those might have been the only 5 times you were late in 4 years, but they happened to be at the wrong time.

What's Active Branding?

In active branding, you are making choices to do things that showcase your positive traits, and de-emphasize your negative ones. You also document and talk about these items in a blog, an interview, and more.

What if you're late with a new manager because of a child. There's a reason the manager picked you. I'd hope someone told you that you'd been missed, and if so, you go repair your reputation (brand). You apologize, explain the struggle and that it's short term. You let them know that you want to help them and you'd like to set a time, as you'll make the meeting. You've been there on time most of the time, and this is just an adjustment period.

If you didn't know, and the manager didn't let anyone know, then having an active brand, where you let your manager know other things you've done, how you're helpful, what you've learned, and more, means that at some point those positive items will hopefully get back to the manager. They might then re-evaluate what they think of you.

If you're a positive influence on the company, and you make sure people know it, maybe you'll get the promotion, or not get laid off.

Will it work? There are no guarantees, but if you've done some networking, some blogging, some volunteer work, shown leadership, and kept your profile up to date, you have a good chance at other opportunities.