Personal Branding is Out. Reputation Building is In.

It’s a trendy way to think of “Reputation” – Your reputation has always been critical in your career as in your life. People get to know you and make judgments… are you honest, competent, inept, trendy, old-fashioned, high-maintenance, easy-going, a blowhard, humble, an expert in your field or industry, foolish, a techie, a technological troglodyte, a hard worker, reliable, loyal, political, or any number of other traits?

All of these traits and more form an impression in people’s minds about you… thus establishing a “Brand”.

7-UP is the Un-Cola… just as Bob Smith might be the Go-To Guy for any PC problems in his neighborhood. Both have a Brand.

Don’t get caught up in trendy language. I personally don’t care for the “Brand” label. However, your Reputation can precede you into any meeting or new introduction. Build your Reputation carefully!

I totally agree – but I go further. For me the notion of personal branding is a real problem. I know many talented and well-meaning people who work as personal branding coaches and I know they add value to their clients’ lives in many cases, but I think they also do unwitting damage on a larger scale.

I see three main problems with the personal branding trend.

Personal branding encourages us to think about ourselves too much

If you think about developing a brand, you are thinking about how you should package and present yourself. If you think about developing a reputation, you’re thinking about how you should act.

To me that’s a vial distinction. One is inward-looking and self-centered, the other is outward-facing and more likely to be focused on the needs of others.

No one seriously believes they can build a reputation for something without putting any work in, but I think many people see developing a personal brand as an exercise in packaging.

We are not products, we are people.

We are highly complex, highly contradictory beings and the idea that we can summarize ourselves in one or two “personal brand” sentences is nonsense. There are aspects of my life where I am very confident and take charge of situations (for example, when working with a client on his resume), and there are other aspects of my life where I am much less sure and act completely differently (when taking classes in a subject I find challenging for example). I am happy to have a reputation as a creative resume writer, author and industry thought leader. But I do not want that to be my “personal brand” because I don’t want to be pigeon-holed and defined as just that.

In this era of social media and web transparency, I simply don’t believe anyone should present themselves as though they were as simple and easy-to-understand as a packet of soap powder.

Personal branding can mess with our decision-making

I think having a “personal brand” can lead to inauthentic behavior when the “branded” person is faced with the need to take action. A client recently told me that he turned down an interesting promotion because he didn’t feel it aligned with his personal brand. He had been unhappy at work for some time and the promotion would have taken him in a new career direction. While it intrigued him, he felt that all the work he had been doing to “build his brand” would be lost when he made that sideways move. But he wasn’t happy! That makes no sense.

Personal branding is too open to misinterpretation

I know that well-meaning, talented personal branding coaches would say that my client misunderstood what personal branding was all about, and that he should have gone for the opportunity if it excited him.

That’s always the defense when criticisms like this are raised. Personal branding advocates say “that person just didn’t understand” and “if he had worked with a certified coach he would have been fine.”

But that’s my point. Most people never work with a certified coach. They simply read about personal branding online or in a book, and then try to apply those principles in their own lives. But personal branding is a concept that is way too open to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. It’s much less catchy and much less commercially viable to talk about building a strong reputation in your industry, field or area of expertise, but in the end I think it’s where we in the careers field need to be taking the discussion.

With many of our comments, thoughts and ideas documented online forever (and apparently reviewed by the government!) none of us can avoid thinking about the reputation we build both on-and offline. For me the unnecessary straight-jacket of “personal branding” just makes it much harder to do this while remaining true to the authentic, complex, contradictory, fascinating beings that we all are.

But this is just my opinion on a touchy subject. I’d love to know yours, whether you agree or disagree. So leave a comment below, or click here to shoot me an email.

photo credit: jakedobkin via photopin cc