In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we begin The Power of Your Personal Brand Series! Today, we’re talking about the difference between a persona and a personal brand – and why it is so critical in framing the way you lead. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!
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The Power of Your Personal Brand Series: Are You Leading with a Persona or a Personal Brand?
We just launched our new book! You can grab The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things on Amazon or at ForthRight-People.com
We thought it would be appropriate to do a series that contextualizes the content in the book. Welcome to The Power of Your Personal Brand Series! Today, we’re talking about the difference between a persona and a personal brand – and why it is so critical in framing the way you lead. You’ll hear 4 probing questions to help you become more self-aware and determine if you are leading with a persona or a personal brand. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- Should you really “fake it till you make it”?
- Transactional vs. experiential leadership
- Do people feel like they can’t quite trust you?
- The moving target problem: inconsistency destroys credibility
- Why celebrity “personal branding” is usually just persona-building
And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.
Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:
Show Notes
- The Power of Your Personal Brand Series: Are You Leading with a Persona or a Personal Brand?
- [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [0:56] Persona vs. personal brand, what’s the real difference?
- [3:17] How to fix it: modulate your behaviors from your core characteristics
- [4:17] April’s story: being a “hard charger” and the early career wake-up call
- [6:58] Ann’s story: being told to be more like someone else and why it backfired
- [9:36] The danger of “playing small” when feedback is misdelivered
- [11:54] Question 2: Do people feel like they can’t quite trust you?
- [13:46] How inauthenticity shows up and why people can spot it immediately
- [16:09] The moving target problem: inconsistency destroys credibility
- [18:03] Question 3: Are you trying to create your personal brand from scratch?
- [19:51] Stop manufacturing and start recognizing the patterns already in you
- [22:10] Why celebrity “personal branding” is usually just persona-building
- [25:51] Introverts, extroverts & modulation, how to grow without losing yourself
- [26:21] Question 4: Is your communication rooted in experience or transaction?
- [27:13] The personal mission statement: “I want to be known as a person who…”
- [30:06] Transactional vs. experiential leadership
- [33:50] Building a feedback practice that creates team consistency over time
- [34:18] Leading from your personal brand means leading from stability and groundedness
- [35:14] Should you really “fake it till you make it”?
- [47:33] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- [47:45] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
What is Strategic Counsel?
Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Prepare for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business. Referred to by some listeners as an “MBA in podcast form,” this show is dense with personal stories, proven strategies contextualized by practical steps, and tools to put what you learn into action now.
Your hosts Anne Candido and April Martini are Co-Founders of ForthRight People, a leadership performance company focused on developing leaders from the inside out. They are also Authors of the book: The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things. They thrive on engagement from listeners and welcome any show topics! So, reach out and connect!
Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Council by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.
00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Council podcast. I’m Anne Candido and I am April Martini. And if you haven’t heard, we just launched our new book, woo woo, right? The Power of Your Personal Brand, a playbook for struggling middle managers who want to do big things. So we thought it’d be appropriate to do a series that contextualizes the content and the book, give you a little bit of a sneak peek, a little teaser, if you will, and entice you to go buy the book. So welcome.
00:56
to the Power of Your Personal Brand series. And today we’re gonna talk about the difference between a persona and a personal brand and why it is so critical in framing the way you lead. Yes, and we’ll start by saying, and you may have heard us say this before, many confuse the two, but there is a very clear distinction. A persona is an adopted image that’s manufactured from what outside influencers say should be true about who we are in order to be successful.
01:26
On the other hand, a personal brand is an authentic image that is cultivated based on who we are at our core. It is what is true about us and can become our biggest competitive advantage leading to success. So it should be obvious, if not just by the title of the book, that there is a tremendous amount of power when you lead from your personal brand. And what drives one to live their personal brand versus a persona is self-awareness. Yes. So today we’re going to ask you some
01:56
probing questions to help you become more self-aware and determine for yourself if you are leading with a persona or a personal brand. All right, so question number one, do you try and model someone else’s appearance and behaviors and actions in order to overcome negative feedback? All right, so oftentimes we get the suggestion from well-meaning mentors and coaches, especially when we’re struggling and they’re like,
02:24
You you should be more like so-and-so. And that can be a problem for us because when we start adopting what so-and-so is doing, it can start to take us away from our personal brand. And when that happens, that is a persona. And when you act like them, the biggest issue that we can have is that you lose your competitive advantage because you aren’t them, you are you. And so…
02:52
Then what happens is a lot of times we get these feelings of inauthenticity. We start to struggle. We start to show up as being inconsistent because it’s not us at the end of the day. We’re trying to be against somebody else. And when you start showing up like that, then that starts to cause questions in a lot of people’s minds. Yes. So what do do about it? Well, to root in the power of your personal brand.
03:17
you really need to, again, look inside and analyze why you aren’t being successful and then modulate your behaviors and actions for the core of your characteristics. So those things that are inherent to you that we say are neither good nor bad, they just are who you are, and how they come to life through your behaviors and actions. So for me, I am a very direct person. That is one of my characteristics. But through my behaviors and actions, I have learned that I need to modulate that directness
03:47
in order to have other people hear what I am saying. And this is extremely important when it comes to our coaching clients, because I might be saying the smartest thing ever in the entire world, but if they can’t hear me, then it doesn’t matter what I’m saying, right? Now, the point here to make sure to really understand is I’m still direct in every instance and interaction. It just looks different based on that modulation. Yeah, I think that’s a really good one to start with. And maybe we’ll give some examples of how this has happened to us or
04:17
things that we’ve observed because I think that’ll help to really solidify this point. So April, do you want to build on your directness and where you’ve had to modulate it or do you want to pick something different? Ah, put me in the hot seat. Yeah, you get to go first. Yes, so I’ll build on the directness because as Ann knows, which is exactly why she did this to me, ah there was a time where I thought being direct, however that came out,
04:44
was perfectly fine because that was just quote unquote who I was. And so early on in my career, I was named a hard charger through that directness, right? So was kind of a combination of my directness and my achievement mentality. And that was all well and good when I was an individual contributor. But as I started to move up the ranks and I started to have teams of people around me and duh, I was in a creative environment. I can’t do all that work by myself. When I was to direct,
05:13
and too hard charging, what would happen is I would alienate the people around me and I started to get feedback that people didn’t want to work with me. Or they didn’t, they were intimidated by what I had to say. There’s that I couldn’t hear it, right? Or they really felt like why did they need to participate? Because what they were saying wasn’t going to be heard anyway. And so that was a really early indicator.
05:39
And actually talk about this in the book, this example of having two really great mentors who looked out for me and gave me this tough message of, hey, you’re a hard charger and achiever and okay, fine, you’re direct. But if you keep talking to people like that, you’re not going to have anyone following behind you. And so throughout my career, and I could give many more examples, but I won’t do my thing and just keep talking and talking. But that was one of the earliest ones that I remember.
06:03
And then just the many course corrections to get me where I am today. I think it’s ironic, but not lost on me. The fact that that feedback was given so early and now my favorite thing to do is coach other people. And so that goes to that point about directness and modulation. And I will actually go as far as when I’m speaking to a client and I can see either they’re not resonating, they’ve checked out, they’re not responding, they’re kind of looking away, they look like they’re not sure. I will stop and say,
06:31
Hey, remember when we first started working together, I said I was direct. Obviously something I’m saying is not resonating with you. Is there a better way I could say it or what did you just hear me say? And then that would be an example of where I worked to modulate that. Again, still being direct, people pay me to give them the feedback that others won’t. But if I don’t deliver the message in a way that they can take it in and do something with it, then they’re wasting their money. So there you go. That’s my directness journey in a nutshell. Yeah, I love that. And I love the fact that…
06:58
Unlike some of the mentors I’ve had and I’ll go into my story is that your mentors didn’t tell you that you had to be like somebody else. They gave you the very direct feedback that you needed to modulate your directness, but not to necessarily not be direct. Right. Right. And so I think that’s a really important distinction because I know in a lot of other companies too, but in P &G land, it was very common for
07:24
there to be a lot of comparisons made, right? And even if it wasn’t a direct comparison of somebody that was generally kind of in your area who has some, there’s always a person that you’re kind of pitted against, always, right? And for some reason, if that person isn’t appropriate, then they start picking just like random people.
07:45
whether they’re in PNG or out in the world or dead or whatever, you know, that you’re supposed to aspire to be like. It’s like, just pick somebody you admire and you aspire to be and be like them. Right. So that was always like a big one too. But um my story was of course, my person who was kind of who I was set up to, I hate to say like, it was like combative or anything because it wasn’t combative, but it was like, you knew who the person was that you were being measured against. Right.
08:13
Oh yeah. And so I mean, I definitely am direct, but what I’ve always been told is that I have a bit of an edge, right? I mean, I’m Italian for heaven’s sakes. mean, of course I have an edge. And you’re an eight on the Enneagram I’m an eight on the Enneagram. So those are all of the things that we tell you not to do, which is to justify your poor characteristic choices of how you’re showing up. But anyway, I digress.
08:38
So I was told, oh, you you need to be more like this person. She’s, you know, she’s softer and she, she has a way of being that she can be in a room and people, you know, really like her. And I was like, well, of course they do. She’s totally non-confrontational. Of course they like her. She’s the exact opposite of the way that I show up. Right. And so I’m like, okay, well, I’m supposed to go into a room and be non-confrontational. All right. Okay. I’m going to try that. That did not go well whatsoever.
09:07
It was like white-knuckling, like trying to figure out, what would like this person do in this situation and try to act like that person in this situation. And everybody would just like, look at me, like I had 20 heads. thought something was wrong. They’re like, are you okay? Is something going on? It just, it just showed up as super strange and super inauthentic because they all know I like to debate. I like to push the envelope. I like to explore opportunities. April knows all this stuff, you know.
09:36
firsthand. live it every day. That has not changed. That has not changed. But I mean, it was good feedback about having an edge. But what I wish the person would have told me is like, listen, like how your mentor told you is like, you need to pick and choose how that edge shows up in these conversations with people and whether or not they can hear you with that edge or not. I’m not telling you, you shouldn’t push the boundaries. I’m not telling you, you shouldn’t like want to
10:03
push the status quo or try to think big. not telling you, you know, I wish there was said, we’re not telling you any of that. But what I heard is that you need to play small. Right. And so that was hard. And that was something I took with me for multiple years. And even now it still astounds me that people pay me to have a bit of an edge. They do. I mean, it’s part of who I’ve become and that’s why people hire me because they like.
10:30
that element of my personality. And now again, I’ve become a whole lot smarter about how to use it and make sure that I can modulate it in the way that works. But the edge, man, it could have, it has a tremendous amount of impact when I use it wisely, right? So I think that just like, that was my story about epitomizing, being careful about trying to adopt a persona of somebody else because it can totally diminish your competitive advantage.
11:00
why people really are going to want to be in a relationship with you, whatever that relationship is, business-oriented, personal-oriented, whatever, we can’t mask who we are. And so it’s really important, though, to become self-aware of where our characteristics are leading us to a big thing or not, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, and mean, back to my example, too, right? The feedback can be hard to hear, too, but like you said, I…
11:27
once I got over my anger and indignation, let’s be honest, was able to turn that into the gift that it was and use it to my advantage instead of, like you said, trying to stop being direct, which would have led me down a similar path to you of like, I love that when you say the like, you look around and you’re like, well now who, cause I remember experiences that I would have too, or someone would be like, tone it down. And I’d be like, okay, now who should I be like?
11:54
Sally doesn’t say anything. Maybe I should sit on my hands. Tone it down how? don’t understand what you mean by tone it down. Tone it down what? And I say exactly like that, You’re hearing yourself right now? Yes. All right. Question number two. Do you get a sense that people don’t quite trust you? When you’re in persona mode, people can actually really, really feel it.
12:20
It stems from inconsistencies or incongruencies that they’re noticing and trust is based on consistency and congruency because it sets up a predictable cause and effect relationship and that is what’s needed in order to build trust. So some cues that can trigger persona is what you profess to be and how you show up don’t match or on a deeper level, your visual and verbal presence don’t match, which means like you’re saying one thing, but you’re
12:49
body language says something totally different. Yeah, and so to root in your personal brand, you need to establish integrity. And quite simply, that means you say what you mean and you do what you say. Truly, that’s what we’re talking about here. And then you align your presence based on your characteristics. And this generates a natural flow that doesn’t seem so hard to get it right. And then when you do mess up or there are inconsistencies or you have a rough day or whatever that looks like, you fix any mess ups.
13:18
In some cases, you might say, hey, this is a mess up. This isn’t how I meant to show up. Here’s why. And then you move along. Yeah. So maybe we’ll go give some examples of that too, to make it really, really tangible. April, you can start. Oh, geez. Okay. But well, actually I was going to give one though that isn’t necessarily about me specifically, but I’ve noticed that it actually contextualizes or proves out this point. So.
13:46
And I actually had a coaching client say it to me the other day that it’s a skill of mine. But I think for a long time, I was just like, what’s wrong with these people? And that is when people are trying to posture in a certain way. And for whatever reason, it hits me square in the chest and I become like irate. And it’ll be because either what they’re saying doesn’t sound like my experience of them.
14:15
or they’re putting on a happy front, but they’re delivering a hard message, or they’re clearly performing is what I call it in front of the group of people, whereas maybe one-on-one, I’ve had a very different experience with this person or these people. And professionally speaking for me, it was always when someone would be trying to deliver feedback and this goes back, this is about me, my directness, right?
14:42
and they would give like the shit sandwich. So it would be like, big smile, like, wow, thanks so much for coming today. And this was so great. But what we’re to want to see is blah, like barely say it. And so does anyone have any questions? Otherwise, great. Let’s all get back to our day. And I’ve never done that. Never. I know. Never. But it’s it speaks to that. And the message here, right, is like I automatically on a visceral level know that I can’t trust people that do that.
15:12
And so therefore I have to, in a lot of cases, center my reaction. But I just realized it’s a hot button. And the thing that the client said to me just yesterday was she was like, it’s because there’s this contingency of us in the world that see people acting that way and spend time thinking about like, am I the only one experiencing this? Is something weird? Did somebody like, does anyone else looking around like, why is this person acting like this? And she’s like, you just know right away like, oh, one of those I’m out.
15:42
I mean, that’s a really good example. I mean, think we talked about this in the book too is like, when you get to this point, there’s a lot of things that people will call you. A lot of times it’s a moving target. They’re not quite sure how you’re going to act or what you’re going to do in certain situations or which version you’re going to show up that day. uh
16:09
lot of incongruency with people who like express the leadership principles of, know, I’m for my people and I’m a big supporter of my people, but then every chance they get, they throw their people underneath the bus, right? Or they don’t want to listen to their people, you know? So these incongruencies and these inconsistencies then show up in ways that people just can’t nail you down, right? And
16:36
You know, people sometimes think that’s that’s really like, I just remember it was a Grey’s Anatomy. like, what does she call herself? Like, I’m. Oh, what does she call herself? She’s just like she’s like talking about the fact like she was like mysterious and like an enigma and enigma, right? You know, and people think that that’s kind of cool that people can’t nail them down, but that doesn’t help you become a better leader. When people when you can’t proactively figure out how you’re going to address.
17:06
a certain situation or going to react to a certain situation or what’s important to you or what’s not important to you. They’re spending a lot of time in a bunch of swirl trying to figure out then, am I going to be in trouble? Am I not going to be in trouble? How much am I going to share? Maybe I shouldn’t share. it my, is this going to be career limiting? They say it’s not going to be career limiting that we’re allowed to bring up issues. Every time somebody brings up an issue, they tend to get in trouble. So this is where, you know, I’m talking about
17:34
with regards to the consistencies. And it can show up in a macro level like that, but it also shows up in ways like you say you’re open, but your arms are folded, right? We talk about that folding your arms. talk about in the book being a big closed off posture. And so when people see that closed off posture, it doesn’t express openness or warmth or willingness to have a conversation or engage. It says that you’re closed off. So sometimes it’s just those cues that even you don’t intend.
18:03
to show up that way that can tend to disrupt the type of communication you’re trying to have. Yeah, absolutely. Question number three, are you trying to create your personal brand from scratch? And this is a super critical one because if you are, you are likely donning a persona because simply you can’t create a personal brand from scratch because again, a personal brand is rooted in who you are at your core.
18:32
And since you already exist, you can’t just make it up. So that’s why a personal brand starts from the inside and goes out. Percentage that we talked earlier are external facades we hope people believe, and we try to manufacture them from the outside and then hope we can figure out a way to make them true about us in the inside. Yeah, and before Ann and I wrote the book, we did a lot of auditing, 20 some books, I think.
18:59
um And one of the interesting things that led us to this point about creating your personal brand from scratch is there is advice out there that you can create a personal brand just like you can create any brand. And I remember us having this conversation of like, well, that’s the dumbest thing ever because all right, you wanna introduce a new beverage, you create the beverage from scratch and then you create the brand. But if you’re already a person, how in the world does that work? And so that’s just always.
19:26
Sticks in my head and is a constant reminder that I give people when we talk about the difference between the two in addition to the conversation about persona. So to root in the power of your personal brand, you really have to start by embracing who you are. And I think too often we undervalue the true value that we actually bring. So our experiences, our expertise, our characteristics. This is the unique recipe that only you have.
19:51
And this is actually your competitive advantage. So the best thing you can do is stop wasting your time trying to create what you think you are or who you wanna be on your best day or any of those crazy things and do the work to figure out what are the patterns of how you show up and how is that rooted in the characteristics that just are you. Yeah, I think this is such an important one and I hope everybody really, really listens to this one because.
20:15
There’s a lot of undoing having to be done because this is where personal brand gets that little bit of jargony, kind cliche, kind of nomenclature when people just use it as a catchphrase, right? And I think we have some celebrities that blame a lot for this because when you, I don’t know how many celebrity interviews I’ve, I’ve listened to, and I’m going to talk about one that I just listened to recently where the title of it is how so-and-so is monetizing their personal brand.
20:45
And the first thing I want to say is they’re not monetizing their personal brand because a personal brand is all about the experience of you, not something that you manufacture and you tangibly make, kind of similar to what you just said. It’s like, you can’t make a perfume and say, oh, this is the essence of my personal brand. I’m like, no, that’s not the case. It’s the essence of your persona. So I was listening to the Paris Hilton podcast episode and uh she talks about this.
21:11
And a lot of times if you listen really carefully, they talk about both sides of her mouth because at one side of her mouth, she’s like, oh yeah, I love pink and I love, you know, sense that make me happy. And so therefore these perfumes represent my personal brand. I’m like, okay, so pink and you like to feel happy as your personal brand. I’m like, that’s not a personal brand. And then, you you rewind it a couple of minutes and she talks about how that her whole life has been built on the success she had with her reality show.
21:41
And she said, well, they gave me this character to play. I played the character. It’s popular. So I monetized that. That is a persona. She’s like, I’m not like that in real life. I’m like, it’s such a persona. And so, yes, she took that, the power to her, monetized the shit out of it. Great. Go for it, girlfriend. But don’t tell people then it’s not your personal brand. Right? It just isn’t. So I think a lot of people then say, oh, well then of course, like I can go on LinkedIn.
22:10
I can create whatever I want it to look like. I can show up in oh these impressive suits and I’m always gonna wear a red suit or just to stand out. that’s my personal brand. No, it’s not. It’s your persona. You’re building a persona, right? And so eventually it only works for so long because there’s no substance there. You have to bring yourself to the conversation and you have to be able to express thoughts
22:40
and points of view and thought leadership that goes deeper into who you are as a person. you off your tide box now? Oh, probably not. I guess for the time being. I’m going get in, I mean, in 2026, I’m getting myself a massive tide box this year.
22:59
It’s funny because whenever you bring that up, I picture like the Olympic podium of medals and it being a tide box. Like that’s what pops into my, I’ve never told you that, but that’s what pops into my head would have been such a great idea for a sponsorship. I know, right? Look at me. Yeah, I like that April. For years I have had that image whenever you say that. That’s pretty funny. I like that actually. Am I standing on the top with a gold medal around my neck? Yes. Okay. This is what I want make sure. But the other thing that I want to say here that
23:28
can help people because I think, right, people come by some of this honestly, and I said before how we audited all these books and it was like the surface level stuff, right, which leads to a persona. And so I think people have good intentions or have a misconception of what it means. But one of the things I think can be really helpful back to what I said about looking for your patterns of behavior is think about things that you do.
23:55
really well as part of who you are. So like Ann said, like not the sunsets and the pink and the hair, right? But when we truly think about behaviors and actions, a lot of the diagnosing that I help with in coaching is it’ll be like these blind spots where people are really inherently good at certain things. Like one of the things that gets fed back to me as a coach is you say the things to me that no one else will say. Well, what does that come from? That comes from my directness. Okay, I’ve done the work on my personal brand. I know that I’m direct.
24:25
But a lot of times what we uncover are these things that are inherent characteristics that people just think, quote unquote, everybody has. And so they push them to the side. And then I think that’s where people end up in this like, well, who am I? And so then they look out at other people and they’re like, well, of course I would want to be more outgoing or of course I want to be the, so I’m just going to go be that instead of doing the homework to think like, what have people reinforced about me all these years or what are these things that like,
24:55
are just part of what comes easily to me and, you know, or where have I gotten in trouble even sometimes, right? But you look for those patterns of behavior instead of just trying it on and doing that introspection. And I think that can help get people over the hump so that they don’t go down this path of the persona in the way you described it. love that. I love the whole aspect of figuring out what people appreciate you for. Like, where do they find value? That is
25:23
at the root of your personal brand and that’s what you build from. Why would you want to build something from scratch? maybe it seems cool to be able to then, like you said, be more outgoing if I’m not, being something that you’re not. I get it, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t variations within your personal brand that can make you more outgoing without having to adopt the persona of being outgoing. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the modulation we talk about, right?
25:51
If you’re naturally an introvert, but you want to get better about interacting with people, you can totally do that. You just have to think about how do I do that that’s authentic to me instead of modeling someone else’s behavior, which then goes back to the previous point about like making people feel uncomfortable and they don’t trust you and you’re moving target and they’re like, which version am I going to get today? Exactly. The fourth question, when you communicate, is it rooted in trying to evoke an experience or a transaction?
26:21
So too often we hold who we really are very, very, very close to the vest, right? We don’t like being vulnerable because we worry what people are gonna think. We worry what their reactions are gonna be. So we play small, we play closed off, we share on a needed to know basis, which means that people aren’t really getting to know who we are really at our core in all of our dimensions. Like we talked about, it’s like a recipe.
26:45
Because there isn’t just one thing that defines us. And if we don’t let people see those dimensions, that they don’t get to know who we really, really are, they’re going to start filling in the blanks and they’re going to fill in the blanks with persona based characteristics and traits. And then they’re going to assume that that’s your personal brand and they’re going to define that for you. And instead of it being something that reflects who you are at your core, it’s going to be this persona.
27:13
Yeah, so to root it in your personal brand, you want to be intentional in how you want people to experience you. In the book, we ask that you define yourself through your personal mission statement. So this is little teaser of something you’ll do once you get the book. But it is framed as I want to be known as a person who. And that really helps ground in something that’s much more meaningful and, like I said, intentional than just showing up.
27:41
However, you’re going to show up on any given day or trying to live into a persona that that’s not truly who you are. Yeah. And I think this could be a super powerful way of helping you make good choices with regards to how you’re going to show up and to address all of these questions that we’ve talked about with regards to incongruencies and consistencies, trying to create something from scratch and the impact that that can have. This keeps you rooted.
28:09
Right. And so if you’re thinking about it, I’m gonna ask April to give hers in a second. for me, my personal misgestedment, and it can flex depending on who I am with or what my goals are. So it doesn’t have to be something that is like stagnant and doesn’t flex at all. But right now, my personal misgestedment, I want to be known as a person who helps people find the best in themselves. Right. So.
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Every time I show up in a situation, I ask myself like, okay, how can I help this person that I’m with or this team that I’m with find the best in themselves? And then the, usually the subsequent part of that is like, okay, then how can I help them grow as a result? Right? So it helps take me grounded because then it allows me then to root back into my personal brand and say, okay, what kind of characteristics do I need to draw upon in order to show up like this? Right? So it just keeps everything connected and extremely authentic.
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Yeah. And so I’ll give mine, and this is typically through the lens of when I’m coaching, but it’s, want to be known as a person who helps grow leaders to lead teams better than any of them could operate separately from each other. And so most of the people that we coach or that I coach come at some inflection point in where they are in their journey. And pretty much without fail, there’s something about the way that either they’re learning to lead
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or trying to lead better, or leading teams for the first time, something where they’re trying to elevate, which was a critical point for me in my journey, right? Where I was trying to bring people together and bring them along. And so back to Anne’s point about connecting with your own personal brand, I think that’s something that, luckily I had people that helped me do really well on my journey, and that’s what I’m trying to pour back into those people to help them be that best version that can then go and lead in their organizations. Yeah, I love that.
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And I think, you know, when you, when you position it like that, you are thinking about the experience of what it’s like to be with you, not just in a transaction of, okay, I’m supposed to coach, I’ll tell them what they need to know. And then they’re going to go off and do it. And they’re going to be good little like coaches and they’re going to do their homework and then we’re going to come back and we’re to talk about, like, that’s a transactional way of coaching. Actually, a lot of people do coach like that, right? And people make good money and then leave bad reputation behind. mean, thousand percent.
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And so, but at every experience we have with somebody, it doesn’t have to be an elaborate way of having to draw upon, okay, it has to be a big to do, I think is like what a lot of people say is like, I just need to get something done. I just need to say it. They just need to go do it. I don’t want to have like a 10 minute conversation asking him how they are. like, we’re not talking about the fact that you have to have an elaborate conversation, but you can ask what you need.
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with a smile on your face. You can ask what you need with a little bit of context. You can ask with what you need with sharing, hey, I know this is very short timing and I appreciate that. Can you take one for the team this time? So just think about what your personal mission statement is. Draw upon how you want the person to feel in that interaction so that you can appropriately address what is important from your appearance in order for it to.
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show up and for you to show up in a way that is going to convey your message in the way that you need it to be conveyed so that people can relate to you and help you down your path to your big thing. Yeah, I mean, I just gave similar advice the other day about it not having to be a big deal, right? Because I have one of these leaders who’s in a big role, new job, kicking ass, if I do say so myself and on her behalf. But a lot, a lot, a lot of direct reports with a missing layer of leadership in between.
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And so we had a pretty in-depth conversation about how do I support these people, but also I have this job up here I’m supposed to be doing, right? And so a very granular example, someone showed up to a team meeting, disrupted the whole meeting, really odd behavior for this person, not super professional, just complaining, no solutions. And I was like, well, ideally you would have pulled her aside right after and had a 10 minute conversation about that.
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that time has passed, let’s reset that that’s gonna be the expectation moving forward when people act that way. But in this instance, schedule a 15 minute catch up and just deliver the feedback. And then it’s up to her management of her personal brand and her career, how she takes that and what she goes and does with it. You don’t need to take it on as a project, but she’s gonna go show up authentically through her personal brand in this role and honor that person in a way that respects them but gives the feedback directly. And I think then,
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when you continue to do that, that’s where the consistency happens. And so then your team starts to understand the intent by which the feedback is given. They can start expecting the feedback and they know you’re not trying to tell them that they’re wrong or you’re not trying to get them, which a lot of times feedback comes off as feeling that way, especially if it’s inconsistently given. So if I was going to take that one step further and I’m sure you did, it’s like, okay, now make this a practice. a hundred percent. Right.
33:20
That was the reframe that I mentioned of ideally we would have done it right after. But the other part of her homework was to reset that as an expectation within the entire team. So this was one individual within this one team meeting of 10 people. There’s three teams of 10, right? But I was like, it’s your onus as the leader to build the leadership practice you want to say, hey, we’re gonna give feedback in a timely manner immediately after any good or not so good feedback. It doesn’t have to always be feedback of something that went wrong.
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But we’re going to get in that loop with each other. And then the other part was, also then back to her to give her feedback as well. Yeah, I love that. I need to stop April now or she’s going to go on to her organization development rant. uh mean, we have plenty of podcast episodes on that too. All right. So when you lead through your personal brand, you lead from a place of stability, knowing and groundedness. Hopefully you guys have gotten that through this conversation about how important in the
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your personal brand is to create that power because it’s what powers your appearance, your behaviors and actions. And it helps make sure your leadership is consistent, authentic and confident. And a persona is really frankly a house of cards just waiting for it to be blown over, which ironically, and this is again, episode for another day is rooted in imposter syndrome. So when we’re living highly in a persona and we believe that people are going to find us out at any moment.
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That is death posture syndrome, Hopefully that helps. I’m going to just review the four questions. Then I’m going to see if April has anything to close us out with. But so if you’re going back and you need to really weigh your processes and ponder this and feed and take your notes, the questions are, do you try and model someone else’s appearance and behaviors and actions in order to overcome negative feedback? Do you get a sense that people don’t quite trust you?
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Are you trying to create your personal brand from scratch? And when you communicate, is it rooted in trying to evoke an experience or a transaction? April, anything else to close us out with? Yes, I’m cognizant of not just going down a path here, but my one closing piece of advice is based on what you said at the end there, Anne, about imposter syndrome is we hate the expression, fake it till you make it. And I think a lot of what we talked about today around a persona.
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versus doing the hard work and the introspection. That’s what we’re talking about there. So just another plug to do the work for yourself. I think people shy away because it’s uncomfortable. It feels like a lot of work. I don’t want to look behind those corners, all those things. But we just can’t stress enough that once you really get a handle on your characteristics and then how your behaviors and actions influence your appearance, it’s a total game changer. A thousand percent, thousand percent. And if you want to know more about that.
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Grab our book, The Power of Your Personal Brand, a playbook for struggling middle managers who want to do big things. It’s available on Amazon. You can also click directly to it from our website. And with that, we encourage you to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put into practice. Because remember, strategic counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, forthright-people.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business.
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and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Council on your favorite podcast platform.