7 Habits of Highly Effective Personal Brands

Posted at June 18, 2009

Personal Branding Series

We all have personal brands by default. However, to get an effective personal brand, one that gets results, we need to do more. Today’s post looks at 7 habits that will propel your brand to effectiveness.

1 – Right Direction

People with effective personal brands decide in advance what direction they want to take. They do not just let things happen. They have well written, clear goals of what they want to achieve.

There is no point investing time, money and energy in personal branding efforts if you are not clear on where you are headed. Setting a clear path enables one to know when they are falling behind or going off track.

2 – Continuous Improvement

Rome was not built in a day and neither are effective personal brands. The best way to build your personal brand is to continuously improve one aspect at a time.

You can focus on improving your wardrobe for example, one shoe or shirt at a time. You can also choose to improve your career, one course or certification at a time. The trick is to start early and stay at it. Get the power of compounding working for your personal brand through continuous improvement.

3 – Emotional Mastery

A little talked about habit of successful people is emotional mastery. Did you know every personal brand disaster can be traced back to an emotion that went unchecked? Many become alcoholics not for the pure love of the taste but because of emotional problems.

Do emotions rule your life? What does the word “delayed gratification” mean to you? How do you deal with the emotions of anger, fear, jealousy, love or betrayal?

4 – Listening and Learning

Personal branding means creating, maintaining, correcting and leveraging perceptions. How do people perceive you? You have to listen to what people tell you and what they do not dare put in words. Listen to both verbal and non verbal communication.

Seek to learn how to improve your personal brand. Listen to your peers, mentors, coaches and people you admire. Learn from them. If you are not natural when it comes to fashion, listen and learn from those that are better than you in that area.

5 – Patterns and Systems

Effective personal brands require good patterns. We all have patterns; good and bad. You need to recognize the patterns in your life. Do you always miss deadlines? Do people keep breaking your heart? Do you find it hard holding on to a goal for more than a day? Those are all patterns. Get rid of bad patterns in your life.

You also need to have a systematic way of doing things. For example, do you get a haircut every Saturday? Schedule that in your diary. Do you have a blog that you post to once a week? Do you give 10% of your pay to charity? Find all the things you do (or should do) and group them in to “systems”. Understand what each system is about, its objectives and how it affects and relates to other systems.

6 – Smart Networking

No man is an island. You need to continuously meet and develop quality contacts to succeed in life. Learn to know who should be in your address book. Group your contacts in a way that is meaningful to you, and develop each relationship, or one group of relationships at a time.

Let us say for a moment that you are a football player. You would need to develop a contacts strategy that brings in contacts from the following areas: other footballers (peers), coachers, sponsors, journalists, trainers etc. Don’t treat your contacts as though they came from the same production line.

People do business with those they trust. Networking is not just a numbers game. You have to develop quality and gain trust. There is no magic pill in gaining trust. It takes time and effort. You can however speed up trust building by becoming more useful, by being more of the giver than the receiver.

7 – Articulate Communication

Effective personal branding calls for articulate communication. The words that come from your mouth or keyboard, your actions, your dressing etc all form the message that you send out.  Are you sending out the right message? Are you sending out a strong message? Are you sending out mixed signals?

Speak confidently, be a good listener and send out a unified message with all forms of communication. Articulate communication is more than mere words. It is the total picture you send out to others through your actions, looks, words, smell, posture, habits and grooming.

Summary

We are creatures of habits. Add the above habits to your life to develop an effective personal brand. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions about other habits that lead to a successful personal brand.

Series Navigation«How to Ruin Your Personal BrandPersonal Branding Outside your Comfort zone»

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