Corporate Brands vs. Personal Brands

The human body is a complex set of inter-operable systems. Not unlike your team. And, like in the body, we often think that one symptom is tied to specifically one thing. But when we go deeper, we almost always see that’s not the case. PLUS, it’s not like recovering from a broken leg just takes a minute. I’ll use my ACL reconstruction surgery as a benchmark…that was an 8 MONTH recovery that involved rehabilitating multiple muscle groups.

Whether you’re working in a huge corporation, a consultant who is responsible to come in and fix “a problem”, an entrepreneur building client relationships, or a job seeker who’s looking for that next move, our human experiences do NOT operate in a silo. Every action we take impacts another human in some way, just like the muscle groups in my ACL recovery. And unless we REALIZE the impact, and ACCEPT the impact, even if that wasn’t our intention, we’ll never be able to “heal” these relationships.

On a LinkedIn post I wrote the other day, I asked about The Golden Rule:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

And a couple of very intelligent leaders came back with The Platinum Rule:

“Do unto others as they would do unto themselves”.

But even here there are so many complexities!

If someone doesn’t have any self-awareness about their personal brand, they don’t know how they would do unto themselves. And perhaps what you see in practice isn’t even what they truly would “do unto themselves” if they felt like they had the permission to do so.

We are all living with some degree of what I like to call “corporate trauma” when it comes to being ourselves at work. And the symptoms in the workplace are many:

- Poor team communication

- Delays in project launches

- Team members feeling like they’ve been thrown under the proverbial bus

- High employee turnover

- Information silos

- Processes that prioritize corporate safety over human safety

Just to name a few that I’ve experienced personally in the last 2 days.

How much money do these things cost your organization?

It’s not pennies, I guarantee you that.

But when it comes to fixing the problem, we want to spend pennies (more on that another time).

The point I’m trying to make it that, when it comes to people being able to bring their personal brands to work, the solution is NOT one dimensional. It hits at all the departments in your business. It hits on all the people, from the topmost leader to the newest hire. It touches on business processes, KPI’s, reporting methods. Legitimately, the ENTIRE gamut of your business.

But just because it’s complex, doesn’t mean it can’t be simple.

There are 3 steps to get going in creating harmony between corporate and personal brands. Check it out.

Step One = Know Your Corporate Brand

That’s easy right? We have the brand guidelines, so we should be good…right?

Well, that COULD be a yes, if your brand guidelines actually include the information on your LIVED BRAND VALUES.

Unfortunately, most brand guidelines DON’T include this information.

People get sucked into focusing on logos and colors and formats and templates, and pretty soon your brand guidelines turn into a document that tells you WHAT to use, with no information on HOW to use it.

And even if your “Brand Values” are listed in the document, if you were to measure to what extent the business actions throughout your company were truly based on those values first and foremost, would be be impressed? Or disappointed?

So while I name this step “KNOW Your Corporate Brand”, it’s a lot more about BEING HONEST about your corporate brand.

List a value of “Cares About People” but then constantly expect people to work overtime?

How about a value of “Long-Term Thinking” but then most staff spend their days reactively putting out fires?

These are the places where our so-called Brand Values lose steam. We might be saying them. But we aren’t living them. And TRUE brand values are the values your team lives every day.

So figure out what THOSE values are. And be HONEST with yourself and your team about them.

If you’re interested in seeing how your brand values are currently living within your organization, check out a Brand Experience Audit.

Step Two = Encourage Personal Brands

We can’t force our employees to bring their personal brands to work. That “corporate trauma” I mentioned earlier can impact the comfort level of your team. But this doesn’t mean we can’t ENCOURAGE people to bring their personal brands to work.

The easiest way to do that as a leader?

For YOU to bring your personal brand to work.

But what does that look like? You may be experiencing some degree of “corporate trauma” yourself based on what you think being a leader means, what it looked like in past companies, or what YOUR current leader does.

Personal branding is all about leaving others with an authentic experience of you.

So, find out who YOU are.

And find the ways you can bring that to work that encourage your team to believe it’s safe for them as well.

If you’re not sure about how to get started in this stage, check out our Curate Your Experience for Leaders coaching package :)

Step Three = Build Processes Rooted in Steps 1 & 2

Often in business, we create processes with the wrong intentions.

Our processes often do a great, if not perfect job of getting us from Point A to Point B.

And while that is an important feature of a process, if we don’t take into consideration the values of the brand and the feelings of the people in the process, we are missing a HUGELY important piece that make them sustainable.

Same with KPI’s. This is something that drives me completely nuts.

I’ll use an example from my past corporate career:

Each sales team member had a personal KPI of 125 calls per week. However, if you measure this stat against the company core value of “Cares About People”, it breaks in multiple places.

Let’s assume the sales person works a regular “full-time” corporate 40-hour work week. 40 hours = 2,400 minutes. If we need to make 125 calls, that means I get approximately 19 minutes per call. First, I have to figure out who to call. Then I have to find their phone number. Then I have to make the call. That’s got to take at least 5 minutes, even IF you have a solid plan (which we haven’t built in time to build). That leaves you 12 minutes for a call. Leaving a message probably takes another 2 minutes (for the call to ring through and to leave a not totally useless message). So, best case scenario, someone doesn’t answers the phone, which means I have 10 bonus minutes to PLAN the next call. 10 minutes for planning really doesn’t allow for that much knowledge building that might actually HELP build a relationship with a prospect.

To stay on track, I have to work to be a robot. Is that “care about people”?

And what happens if someone DOES answer the phone? I panic once I’ve been on the phone for 10 minutes because if I don’t get off, I won’t hit my quota? Who feels “cared about” in that scenario? Probably neither party.

The metric just doesn’t make sense when you compare it to the values. So, why does it exist?

Because someone else said it was a good metric. Because our data says “good salespeople” close one deal off 125 cold calls, and I want to close a deal a week. Sure, the intention is to close sales, but if the sales person joined your organization because their values aligned with their values, then does the KPI actually meet the intention?

In this specific example, that was a hard NO.

And as of when I left, it was still the required KPI. And it definitely didn’t turn into a sale a week.

In order for processes to work for PEOPLE, they have to take the people into consideration.

For more on this, check out Sonita Reese on LinkedIn :)

The Moral of the Story

The moral of the story, is simple but it’s true,

If your business forgets about people,

Your people forget about you.

(A moral is always better when recited in verse, IMHO)

Stop creating human experiences that are built to make your employees NOT care about your business.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s chat.