PM Personal Branding - 5 Things to Know

 

I just stepped out of Bill Richardson's session at the PMI GC, called "The Power of Promise:What Every Project Manager Need to Know About Personal Branding". It was a great session because it was less about "why you should do it" and more about "how".

He began by describing what your personal brand looks like and walking you through each component. Here are the five things you need to know about your personal brand. For the sake of brevity I'm just listing the elements out here, but if you take a moment to think about each one - I think you'll get a lot out of it.

1. It all begins with a unique promise of value. What do you bring to the world that no one else does?

2. There are 3 aspects of your brand:

• Capability (Mindset, skill set and tool set)
• Character (beleifs, traits and values)
• Commitment (learning, mastery, and growth)

3. These imply questions that you should understand the answers to:

• What are you known for?
• What do you stand for?
• What are you capable of?

The answers here can be positive or negative, but you should know what they are.

4. These then map to your Conviction, Potential, and Reputation. These are the outer layer that people see most.

5. Your brand is a promise of value and it's an asset [that you must care for and cultivate].

So what do you do with that?

You begin by writing down your Brand Profile, which looks like this:

1. Vision
2. Mission
3. Needs
4. Values
5. Interests and passion
6. Strengths
7. Personality attributes
8. Goals
9. Unique Promise of value
10. Brand Statement

Then You Grow Your Brand

- Focus narrow and deep (making yourself more "special")

- No failure, just feedback (view your experiences this way)

And Protect Your Brand

- Confront Reality

- know Your KPIs

- Adapt or Die

Finally Promote Your Brand

- Share What You Know

- Pay Attention to What People Value and Need

- Express Yourself

- Deliver Change that Works

He closed the session with a really great statement, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." So once you've established a brand and are passionate about it - let people know how much you care and they will too.