Your actions are your personal brand.

In my twenties, I met two of my best friends at work. We remain very close friends to this day- having bonded over births, divorces, deaths, oddly shaped Cheetos, fun trips and for the past two years, Thursday night Zoom calls.?While the trips and monumental life events create deep connections- it's our shared experience working on a specific team that glued us together for life.?

This was in the BPB times. The era "before personal brand"?times.?

The?gestalt of personal brands has likely always existed as a human heuristic.?Unique traits defined individuals, narratives formed and personal brands were unintentionally forged. Although, I expect the caveman/woman experience did not include focused effort in locating the perfect adjectives for summarizing their professional value, as they were too busy staying alive.?

When I worked with my two close friends, our boss had a habit of picking dead skin from his perpetually sunburned forehead and, flicking it into the air, during our weekly staff meeting. He would first pause mid-flick to examine the dead skin- as though he had a?Sophie's Choice, DEFCON 1 level of serious decision unfolding. Depending on where I sat I could see the skin flakes flutter to the dirt-masking navy and grey patterned carpet. He always had spit bubbling up like trapped sea foam on the right side of his mouth. Between the skin flicking and the almost drooling, I hardly ever remembered what we discussed or debated at the staff meetings. He delayed and deflected decision-making, which meant I wasn't missing anything by mentally escaping the 90-minute, sitcom of a meeting.?

His "right-hand woman" was "Amy". Her face was consistently sweat-sheened, as she spoke in breathless upspeak like she was reclaiming?her tween persona?through osmosis.??As our staff meetings were from 11:30-1 PM every Tuesday, Amy brought her lunch- always a container of yogurt. As she didn't have any dead skin to flick, Amy increased the gross-out factor by aggressively licking her yogurt lid.?Her mouth moved slowly and then fast like she was auditioning for lead goldfish in the school play.?She laughed a bit too?fast and too loud?whenever the boss ("Allen") told a story about his weekend.

In 2022 parlance Amy was a meme for "extra".?

My two colleagues and I were young, single, and did not find Allen and Amy's weekend activities intriguing. They somehow made it depressing to consider our future 30s and 40s if?it only included?errand running, grocery shopping, and children's birthday parties with jumpy house injuries and talk about childcare and preschools.

It made marriage and a family sound like the last stop on the life is over tour.

Years later when I think about Amy and Allen- they are codified by memories of that time into unfair and too narrow descriptors. Without realizing it I had distilled the essence of their personal brands into one-dimensional, naive soundbites.?At that time I subconsciously labeled Allen's brand as "old and uncouth". Amy's brand was less well defined within my Gen X patina, eventually landing on "weak and weary".?

Looking back I realize that Allen and Amy had more dimension and richness to their personal brands. My twentysomething worldview?lacked the depth of life experience to contextualize their likely hard-earned positions of pseudo power. I didn't consider their lengthy "to-do" lists outside of work, involving child rearing, marriage, elderly relative care, home ownership, and mid-career adult ennui...not to mention the likely political jockeying required for them to?thrive?within a large, dispersed consumer products company.?

Instead, I?reveled in my brash self-possession--as found in (many) twentysomethings, from all generations, everywhere.?

Of course, personal reputations in the workplace mattered then as now. However, minus easy forms of espionage and connection- we only knew the aspect of coworkers they chose to share or include us in. Without social media ( whether FB, Insta, Tiktok, or the evolving Linked In usage for personal updates and commentary) we had to spend (IRL) time with colleagues outside of the office to begin understanding who they were-- and why.??There?weren't easy ways to sanitize the ugly (e.g. dreaded double chin photo altered to appear more flattering)?or hide the embarrassing parts of our lives (posts?decimating our?self-esteem, with no easy recourse in the social media vortex of anonymity). We developed our view of someone through being allowed in deeper and further into their lives beyond work. We couldn't just "check out their social channels" and form our own, uncontextualized opinion of others. We had to show up and do the hard work of teasing out biases, opinions of others, and situational context.?

Much has been written deriding social media for creating a less civilized and lonelier society. The combination of increased remote or hybrid work structures reduces the opportunity to "size up" colleagues in different contexts- beyond the traditional virtual meeting, meetup, or webinar. Virtual cocktail hours and Halloween costume contests over Zoom may be better than nothing for cementing bonds across functions, but much like my young self creating an image of my two "superiors" strictly from their weekend commentary- it's only a?proxy?of the original source, the real person.?

The best brands are defined by maintaining a redemptive belief or tenacious idea---in something. They foster a universal appeal?while also achieving individual attachment. Society-defining?brands manage to be both thematically broad AND highly detailed. Everyone relates to the core brand truth AND each brand fan sees their unique authenticity spotlit by that brand. Strong brands-- those with a?clear and cohesive?ethos command consistently higher prices---the ultimate in capitalistic valuation.?

Have we lost our way in creating our personal brand?

Should we be applying?the same rubric of universal appeal and individual attachment to ourselves,?as a product manager would when launching a??pair of jeans, burger, or phone into the market? While my view of Allen and Amy was shaped by the stories they chose to tell about their children's birthday party-heavy weekends, would it have been more accurate if they posted on social media? Or, would I create just another, differently skewed narrative about who they were, how they felt, and what they thought??

Unlike brands creating products and services for others to buy and sell, individuals rarely achieve the perfect combination of universal relatability and individual resonance. The pressure to "define your personal brand" focuses so much on a vague "likeability" measure, that the defining characteristics making us unique and distinctive are sidelined. Bold is replaced with "collaborative" (lest someone appear too aggressive and not a team player). We supplant "courageous" when describing ourselves as "problem-solver" emphasizing strictly analytical skills over the strength of character required to drive and scale real change and transformation. When hiring I want the person with the personal mettle and emotional resilience to take on an unpopular stance when doing the right thing AND I view that as the most honorable problem solving required. Yes, I want both. Don't we all??

We have decided courage scares people, so we look away when we see it--- when it's the idea that courage is scary that we must overcome.

As I evaluate new professional opportunities and consider company cultures, I reflect on prior experiences when I knew my courageous stance?would be both?lonely and risk riddled, but I did it anyway. Once when I led a largely female team for a global women's business I sent an email with the following direct excerpt to a colleague "let's remove the full frontal female nudity from the film. I don't believe this enhances the story and in fact distracts from the potential mood, direction, and intention.....I feel strongly about this change and trust you will address it as needed."?

The recipient agreed to make the change, which was all I wanted- to remove embarrassment and risk to the company and my team. Rather than focusing on the inappropriateness of the image, when I time travel back to that moment- I am again struck by how lazy, predictable and uncreative the choice was. As my reward for challenging this breach of corporate ethics, I received feedback I was not a "team player". If challenging showing full frontal nudity in a completely gratuitous and irrelevant manner ( i.e. we were not plastic surgeons, Onlyfans, or prosthetics makers) in the workplace brands me "not a team player", so be it, and let's do better. I chose to leave the company shortly after. I felt a gaslighting erosion and resentment toward my self-proclaimed personal brand and values (courage, intelligence, integrity, drive, curiosity). That was the only option, leaving with my personal brand/integrity intact because by then I knew we are the only ones who can decide how and why we show up.

Our actions are our personal brand.