Leadership: Personal branding VS Personality

Leadership: Personal branding VS Personality: "Instead of having a personal brand, why not just have a personality?” Welcome to the virtual life. Every day of our life we are becoming m..."

Personal branding VS Personality

Instead of having a personal brand, why not just have a personality?”

Welcome to the virtual life. Every day of our life we are becoming more and more digitalized and computerized. I wonder how many of us spend most of their time in front of computer rather than socializing with friends in the outer world. We have become the slaves of a virtual life that we can’t live without and now it is part of our routine. Our best friend has become a 12 inch screen that takes us through a world that is infinite and unlimited.

This virtual world where we find ourselves now makes almost impossible for the interaction between people. We spend 30% of our time in Facebook and other sites socializing with friends.

Most of the job search, purchasing, and servicing is becoming online that limits our physical interaction between people. The way we are recognized today is through online nickname. How much we are recognized by our personality? Most people use online characters to express feelings, emotions, and thoughts; and avoiding communication with real people to deal with their issues and matters.

 Unfortunately, I can state the following: very soon there will be invention such as “cybernetic sex” and there will be no more need for the two partners. Believe it or not.

Personal branding

“Personal Branding” is the process of marketing our self.

 ‘Branding’ is a critical component of purchasing decisions that provided to the customer by a professional in order to distinguish a product, company, and service that is easily recognized by the Brand itself.  When you say Google it means the Giant worldwide search web. When you say Ferrari means a fast and luxury car but also we see this brand recognition with particular people. Bill Gates, immediately associate with Microsoft brand or one of the biggest billionaire in our planet.

Usually people think that personal branding is only for VIP-s such as celebrities, politicians, business people, and etc, but I think that each of us is a brand itself. The globalism is running incredibly fast and breaking barriers through the internet.  As people start to become aware of brand recognition and how it is powerful as a tool in reaching our path of success, such as Internet have become a powerful help especially to the social media.

People start using the social media more and more not just as a tool to entertain and socialize, but as a way of marketing itself. Globalism is making the competition tougher; people are struggling to find the way to the success. This example might explain some of this theory. If we think for a moment between two graduate students, one is a Hult student and the other one is from Harvard. Who has the chances of getting hired faster and probably get a better job? Probably I would say a Harvard student, not just because he might be smarter but he get recognized by a Brand such as Harvard which is a top leader in education.

At this point social media is helping in surpassing such challenge.

 LinkedIn, the digital social media, which now is growing rapidly, is helping any professional and offering an amazing opportunity for each of us to build our personal brand through marketing ourselves in any community.

Smart marketing and good personal branding is a key success and digital media is offering this opportunity, we just need to use it.

Reflection....

Being a student at Hult International Business School is a remarkable and unique opportunity. Diversity of the student body that contains vast span of nationalities that represent their own culture and bringing their unique experience that I feel proud of being part of it. Working in different project and assignments creates the chance to experience each culture in its own way. In the six month period we had the chance to work in three different teams and each one had its uniqueness, but I will concentrate on describing my experience with the last team that I had chance to work with.

            Our team consistent of five members that had different backgrounds, mentalities, and coming from various countries such as Albania, China, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom. Such diversity of students tend to raise some questions such as:  How am I going to implement all this into helping my team to succeed in our set goal?  What is our goal and how we are going to align all together? What is the rationale that triggers the need for individual contribution to a group? Previous experiences have helped to answer these questions.

            Learning is a process and not a phenomenon that I have learned from previous experience in working with the team. It is a turning point to understand the importance of conflict and how to manage it. Such issue have occurred in our team and hindered its performance. After a careful overview of an issue we managed to establish the root of the problem and resolve it. As a group it is important to have a common goal and set priorities of the project that will help have a successful end result of the project (Contribution for a team, working and speaking up www.Ivythesis.com).

             We as a team have decided to have an informal conversation, which have helped us in analyzing various angles of our project. It was not an easy process but we as a team managed to overcome our indifferences and concentrate on our project.  There is an expression “A good start, half of the work done”, at our first meeting my Mediterranean temperament have showed. My aim was not to show who is going to lead a team, but  to break the ice and convey to an open conversation with a brief introduction of our backgrounds (identifying  who we are and what we have been doing) and identify  the fields where each of us feel confident and superior. Reflecting on this experience helped me to take under consideration such challenging barriers that consist of language, culture, and divers’ personalities; and applying it in business world to my best ability.

            Professor Keith Merron (at “Golden flame, pg.77) says: “Remarkable leaders have a clear sense of what they want to create. Their sense of outer authority comes from a sense of inner authority. Great leaders are both clear and open”.  As we went along with the project as a group we appointed individuals to their roles, who will be handling the following: trade-offs between personal and organizational behavior as well as identifying different conditions as the determinant of what will lead and dominate.

            I have established that leadership can aid in formalizing group processes and identify the topic of a certain undertaking. A formal structure within a group creates the atmosphere that helps interact in a professional manner that has helped to eliminate some barriers that have been mentioned above. Sometimes strong personalities derive to misalignment, conflicts, stress and inefficiencies. A guide lines were established in order to help us through this project that have eliminated uncertainties of roles of each individual and maintained our concentration on the project as well as any deadlines. 

            Going back to  the first class in “Team building and Leadership” and taking knowledge from that class I have suggested set up some ground rules knowing that  sometimes we hesitate  to give our personal ideas because not everyone is forthcoming due to new environment.

It is a crucial factor to build such frame as it will create confidence of sharing ideas and generating more options.  I worked very hard in building this frame and it appeared to be good start for the whole team. The effort and implementation have showed good results at our second meeting. The whole team got motivated and was ready to take on this new project.

            We all agreed that this project is not an individual competition where we have to compete against each other but we are a team that is competing against challenges in this business program and achieving a mutual goal by being the best team in “Angel Island” is our number one priority. I felt motivated and content that the first step that we took was successful one. Two months into our project was running smooth, most of the work has been done in efficient manner, and each member of the team has contributed persistently. We kept our focus on defined guidelines as well as established roles that helped us to maintain consistency within our project.    “Golden Flame” states:

“What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen”.

-       Henry David Thoreau

            Inspired by this phrase makes me belief that is not difficult to make the miracle happen. You must look beyond the words and see that it is just simple to be the person that makes this miracle happens. But is that so easy? In my opinion nothing is impossible, you just need to go through a self knowing process and draw in the board your goals. In this process you might need the help of your loved ones, friends, and coworkers. By being a better leader you find better solution and get closer to the miracle or your goal.

            In the last meeting we went through evaluation process and I heard two valuable points from my teammates that have made me to reflect on my Mediterranean temperament through the following points:

- Taking control of the excessive passion

-Listening more

            This helped me to evaluate myself, how to become a better team member, and how to get closer to the ‘miracle’ being the team number one.