The power of Professional Identity

If you are a working professional, self-employed person or an entrepreneur in any field of business, your identity can become a valuable asset for you. However, currently, you might not be untouched by the challenges that you face while creating or managing an identity for yourself in the professional space. The most common problems that you might be dealing with include –

1.     Products, services, solutions, and even your personal skills are becoming similar with others and thus, differentiation becomes a challenge. How does an employer see you as a better candidate or how does a potential customer see you as a person who is unique or more effective as a service provider or seller? How do you develop trust in them for you?

2.     The local boundaries are now offset by the global expansion so you are not just fighting for your identity in the domestic space but you are now playing in the global arena. In the digital space especially, your identity can get mixed or side-lined by not just people living in your city, state or country, but also by people living miles across but using the same digital space as you are.

3.     With the changes in technologies, digital landscape, and globalization, the nature of business is also changing and uncertainty is looming everywhere. How to manage such uncertainties that are unforeseen is another big challenge before you. You can get your identity lost in the horde of content produced on the digital media every single hour.

Personal brand that reflects on your professional or personal identity can provide you a bedrock for the value you serve and create intangible but wealthy resources for you such as respect and goodwill that can bring you loyalty from customers or followers.

What is your identity?

You perform a large number of activities daily as a part of your work and even outside of it in the professional arena when communicating with the world such as when networking. These activities are nothing but the manifestations of your personal identity as they project who you are. People observe what you do and how you do which shapes their perceptions about you.  This happens primarily through communication, selling, skills or services, your behaviour in the professional setting, and the environment in which you operate.

Each of these elements transmit INFORMATION ABOUT YOU THAT CREATE AN IDENTITY of your professional brand in the minds of your audience that can include your partners, consumers, business stakeholders, suppliers, customers, and other people who could be bring out their opinion about you in ways that can affect.

How should identity be formed?

Your identity should be uniform across multiple areas in your professional life; whether it is your organization, the professional platform where you are connecting with people or other individuals who you are connecting with or addressing in some ways. If you are not sure of what unique and consistent identity you want to form then your identity is formed through endorsements from other people. So, whatever they say about you become your identify whether they are your colleagues, acquaintances, customers, employers, or followers on social media.

You have seen corporate brands and could have found it easy to understand and identify specific attributes that you associate with them. Their names stand for their styles and the reputation they have created. However, when it comes to looking at yourself as a brand, you may not have much clarity on what you stand for. However, if you understand the specific elements that create a personal brand identity that you carry, you might be able to solve this conundrum.

How do we create an identity?

If you are not already aware of what identity you carry, the best way to know is to either observe other people when they are talking about you or even better, be upfront in asking people who they think you are. If your identity does not connect things that are desired by you, it is time, you change it, modify it and perhaps create a new one. And you must take action in the case because until you decide to control your identity, others will keep endorsing you for who they think you are. But how do we form an identity?

Here are a few steps that have been effective for corporate brands and they can easily be moulded to the needs of your personal branding so that you can get benefitted.

Step 1: Analyse your current identity strategically and not just as an emotional and social being living and working on this earth. Ask yourself how you are perceived by the world. What do they think you are? Are you innovative, old-fashioned, learnable, or more? Are you professional, unprofessional, lazy, dependable? Are you fast, learnable, driven, qualified? Do you offer quality, creativity, speed, comfort?

Step 2: Once you know what you already stand for in public, decide if you want to change your identity and form a new one. Do not for a moment think that it is not possible for you to bring a change. Even big brands make a change in their identity sometimes in simple ways such as through changes in logos, slogans, and messages they float as marketers. You can use the same strategy, especially when you are in the digital space. A change of profile picture, modification of your profile description, and change in the posts or articles that you share can all make a difference. It is not as tough as you think in the digital space.

In the physical space, however, you may have to work a little harder and not just depend on your appearance or message but also on your delivery of communication and your behaviour with other people. In this step, all you have to do is identify possibilities and create a plan for making a change.

Step 3: Implementation of your plan is the next obvious step. Whatever it needs – research, new connections, creations, etc. – do it.

Step 4: After you have implemented your plan, your personal identity will start to reshape and this could serve you like a re-launch of your professional identity. And an opportunity for your to change your life. What you need to be clear about at this step is that the change you desire must happen and you also must know why it is needed.

A few words of caution while you follow this –

·       Identity formation is a result of consistency in delivery messages so just a few days of change exercise would not do the job but you need to be persistent because you start to see the results.

·       Your plan is only as effective as your execution so make your plan feasible so that you can do what you desire.

·       Correct identification of the desired entity is necessary for this approach to settle you. You must consider your professional goals, desires, and the sources of happiness when identifying.

If you found the insights provided in this article useful, do comment for my happiness.