Everyone has a personal brand. Jeff Bezos famously said that “your brand is what people say about you when you aren’t in the room”.
Your brand is simply the way that you are perceived by others. We don’t tend to talk about it using this terminology when talking about ourselves. But perhaps we should be.
These days your personal brand is more important than ever, as people already tend to have an impression of you before they meet you, thanks to your online presence (who doesn’t Google perspective employees and perspective dates?). Also, there is more pressure on us to sell ourselves today as the market moves towards frequent job changes and entrepreneurship.
But how exactly do you take control of what other people think of you? Doing it right is about so much more than just deleting embarrassing images from your social media accounts (though you should definitely do that too!).
What is Your Personal Brand?
When it comes to the professional sphere, your personal brand can probably best be described as how other people would answer the following questions about you.
- Who are you?
- What are you known for?
- Why should people listen to you?
- What are your strengths?
- How do you help others?
While you should have a clear vision of how you would like people to answer these questions – of what your personal brand is – whether you are successfully communicating your personal brand is another question.
Johari Window
The Johari window can be a useful tool for understanding where your personal branding currently sits, and what you can do to change it. Psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham created the tool to facilitate self-awareness.
The window features two axes, one which represents our self-knowledge, extending from what we know about ourselves to what we don’t know about ourselves. The other one represents what others know about us, extending from what others easily perceive to what is hidden.
These two axes create four sections:
- The Open Area – This is the area for the part of us that is known to us and is known to others.
- The Blind Spot – This is the aspect of us that is unknown to us, but which others see.
- The Hidden Area – This is the area of things that we know about ourselves but that others don’t know about us.
- The Unknown Area – This area contains the things in our subconscious that we are unaware of and is also unknown to others.
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Using Johari Window
To use the Johari Window to understand your personal brand, you will need to start by speaking to different people and understanding how they perceive you. It is best to choose people who you trust on a personal level, and you trust to be honest with you.
Ask them the question listed above in the personal brand section.
Once you have done this, you should distil what they have said about you down into a list of keywords, characteristics, or phrases. It is then a matter of placing these in the window.
The Open Area
You can put the things they say about you, that you know about yourself in the Open Area (top left). These are the parts of your brand that you are successfully communicating.
There may be things here that you don’t like, but their location here suggests that removing them will require a fundamental change in your actions, rather than just better communication.
SEE ALSO: How to Change Your Life by Changing Your Beliefs
The Blind Spot
Next put the things that they said about you that you wouldn’t have said about yourself in the Blind Spot section (top right).
You will probably find that some of these things are highly positive and represents strengths that you can foster and grow.
There will be other things that you don’t like that you are inadvertently communicating and will want to change. For example, others might say that you always seem to be in a hurry to get through conversations. You will want to identify what signals you are sending out that makes others think this.
The Hidden Area
Here you should place things that you know about yourself, but no one mentioned (bottom left). These are often skills and aspirations that it would be beneficial to share, but you have not yet shared successfully for some reason.
You may decide to start speaking more about these aspects and look for opportunities to develop them and show them off.
The Unknown Area
This section would include details that both you and others are unaware of, including feelings, capabilities, talents, etc. By definition, this box will be empty, since as soon as you learn of things that belong here, you will need to move them into another window. But that’s OK. This box completes the window, but will remain empty.
Next Steps
Completing this exercise gives you a baseline for developing a strategy of action, self-development, and communications strategies for taking control of your personal brand.
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