by Thembe Khumalo

For ambitious executives, personal branding is like the stock exchange. Some stocks are valued higher than others, and the goal of every owner/investor is to see the price of his shares go up and stay up. Highly valued stocks mean more money and a better return on investment.

With personal branding, your reputation is your stock. It may be highly valued or not so highly valued — and, as with the stock exchange, your goal is to see the value of your stock go up and stay up. A highly valued reputation delivers better-paying jobs, more valuable connections, and easier navigation in society. More valuable personal brands can charge more for their services, they can demand higher salaries, fees, and allowances, and they can extract more value for their time and attention than others in the same market.

The value of a company’s shares can be affected by how it performs, negative or positive publicity, macro-economic settings, competitor activity, ability to adapt, and a host of other factors including political social and technological effects.

Some of the attributes that affect the value of a personal brand have to do with qualifications, skills, and experience. It’s common sense that a partner in an accounting firm is going to be billed to clients at a higher rate than a junior auditor in the same firm, regardless of who he is. Where it gets interesting is when you now have two partners with the same qualifications, skills, and experience. Perhaps they are coming from different firms. On what grounds will one charge more than his counterpart? The answer is reputation, or in brand speak, brand equity. Beyond your CV, there is perceived value, which influences whether people choose to work with you, play with you, marry you… or not!

The tricky thing about reputation is that so much of it is dependent on the lens the other person is using to view us. Sometimes, as in the case of unconscious bias, the person viewing does not even recognise that his lens is distorted. However, as with a company that operates in an environment that it can’t necessarily control, there are things you can do to try to safeguard your reputation, and in that way, protect or grow your brand equity. Here are five of them:

Revere your relationships with people

Managing relationships is perhaps the biggest challenge of human connection. You may find a brilliant executive unable to move forward because he can’t get the people who work with him to like him. Or a beautiful woman who can’t get a date because she is too needy. These are ways in which our competence in interacting with others can sabotage our goals and even affect our performance. To give your brand a boost, invest in tools to build your emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and communication skills. The internet has made these available at no cost via a simple google search.

Be clear about your value proposition

Clarity is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and others. When people are clear about what you stand for, what value you deliver, what makes you different from and therefore better than others, it makes choosing you an easy option. If however, you are sending a lot of mixed signals, or you blow hot and cold, or it’s not quite clear what you are about, then your audience will tend to shy away. No one wants to invest in a stock whose performance is unclear.

Act proactively

The best person for a job can easily be overlooked if no one knows how good he is. This is not an instruction to brag, but an invitation to use the opportunities available to make your skills and other competencies known. Keeping an up-to-date LinkedIn account is a minimum requirement if you expect to draw the attention of employers and industry colleagues. However, you have your sights set on an internal promotion or even an appointment to a special project team. Anything that relies on people choosing you makes it essential for them to know and like you. It’s not enough just to pitch for the assignment when it becomes available, you need to be consistently visible so that people think of you first when they are giving out opportunities.

When negativity strikes, say less

While it’s tempting to defend yourself vociferously when negative information is circulating about you, you would do well to say less rather than more. Whether it is office gossip or bad press, your ability to retain a calm and dignified outlook in the face of opposition makes you less likely to incriminate yourself and lends gravitas to your brand.

Mind the company you keep

They say you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. This affects, not just the content you consume, but also the perception people have of you. If you surround yourself with people who have different values and goals from you, then it will be assumed that you are like them. In the same way that a company’s reputation is heavily influenced by who its Ceo, management, and board members are, so it is with a personal brand. The people you surround yourself with can positively or negatively affect the value of your brand.

Remember, people buy and sell shares based on what they perceive the value of the stock to be. That value is communicated in numerous ways, including the share price itself. Similarly, people will choose you, based on how they perceive you to be. You can significantly influence that perception by following these simple guidelines.

Thembe Khumalo is one of Zimbabwe’s leading voices when it comes to brand-building, business growth and personal development. A winner of multiple awards both at home and in the region, she is the founder and Managing Director of Brandbuilder, a high-performance brand strategy firm that helps entrepreneurial leaders and SMEs achieve visibility and growth through comprehensive brand strategy, creative execution and social media content strategies. Known for her clarity and courage, Thembe Khumalo’s leadership track record includes board positions in listed, unlisted and not-for-profit entities. With more than 20 years in the media and communication industry, she delivers a network of high-level relationships across many industries in several African countries. | thembekhumalo.com | www.brandtobuild.co | askus@brandtobuild.co