Assignment #3 - Self Brand

To start, the two readings (Forbes and Fast Company) were by far the most interesting and impactful readings for me thus far. I say this because they were simple, very accurate with what I relate to great leaders and they simply make a lot of sense. Part of this for me personally is reflecting the fact that my wife is the VP for two small businesses which were created and owned by a young entrepreneur who really has mastered this area of not only business branding but self-branding as well. Much of this is brought home to me through daily business related conversations which I often relate to both myself as an educator, myself as a future administrator, and my career in education as a “business”.

With this being said, the main thing that stuck out to me from the Fast Company article was that when you take on a new leadership role and are relying heavily on self-branding, you have to start thinking differently about yourself than you have before. You need to see yourself as an asset, a leader, as someone who is no longer following others, but as someone who needs to get others to buy into you in order for them to start following you. This article talks about how you can stand out, why this is important and where this will take you should you do this successfully.

Thinking about my career and myself differently, is definitely what I can do in the immediate future in order to start building and growing my professional brand. As an educator, I can start looking at things I experience professionally every single day with a different lens which will allow me to start to start improving myself, start standing out from everyone else, and to start building my brand.

The second article, Forbes, presented some very clear and simple steps you can take in order to start thinking about how to build your own personal brand. The thing I really liked about these steps is that they so easily carry over to such a wide range of careers, situations, and types of people. These steps were created in a way that anybody can utilize them in order to accomplish the goal they have set forth for themselves which was mentioned in the first article; thinking about yourself differently in order to stand out. Several of the five steps relate to you staying true to who you are and being honest with yourself. I feel that this is vital in order for presenting yourself to others in a way that will force them to have no choice but to follow you.

I want others to view me as an honest and straightforward leader. I feel that by utilizing the five steps presented in Forbes, and focusing specifically on staying true to who you are while building your brand will allow others to not only trust you, but to be inspired and willing to buy into you.

Lastly, in order to build your brand, you have to utilize tools to not only build your brand, but to maintain your brand. I will definitely start to learn more about social media and utilize those in a manner which will meet the needs of my brand, but will focus on utilizing the tools that are true to me and natural to who I am. The number one tool I have in my professional tool belt that is my go to tool, is being personable and building a “quick” and natural rapport with people. As a leader, I need to do all the “other stuff” that helps build my brand, but my number one tool is interacting and caring about people and this is how I will best be able to build and advance my school’s brand.