What People Decide About You When You Are Not in the Room

It’s the last night of a week-long public speaking training, and I’m just sitting down to dinner with the team of six individuals I’d worked with all week. It’s a posh place, fully decked out for the holiday season, and as I look at the menu prices, I’m grateful their company is buying dinner.

Small talk carries us through to the main course, and as our food begins to arrive, a young lady named Anna, who was mentoring the team that week, says, “Jason, I’m glad we got to spend this week together, because before this, I hated you.”

I lean back, my eyes wide in surprise. I immediately rack my brain, trying to think of all the interactions I’d even had with this individual, and how one could have led to her hating me.

Seeing me struggle to rationalize her prior hatred, she laughs and lets me off the hook by telling me exactly what happened. “Do you remember Arkansas’s convention? You were giving the keynote and then had that workshop in the ballroom. Well, my workshop was right next door, and you came into my room and stole the few students I had attending. It was pretty rude.”

“What?! That is NOT what happened,” I retort. “My microphone wasn’t working, so I was looking for the sound guy. Your workshop had just ended, and I thought they were finished and looking for something to do.”

She looks down, exhales, and lets me dig myself further into the hole I’m in. “Actually, my workshop was about to start, and when it did, there were zero students in attendance.”

Realization struck me. How could I be so ignorant? I can’t believe I’d done that, and even worse, if she hadn’t just told me, I would have never known. I apologized profusely and vowed to be more cognizant of how my actions impacted others, and aware of how my actions were shaping what they thought of me.

While we shouldn’t spend hours a day dwelling on what others think about us, how we are perceived is a core part of our personal brand.

Harvard Business Review defines personal branding as “the intentional, strategic practice of defining and expressing your value.”

When we break it down, it has five core elements:

Why, the purpose, cause, or belief that drives us.

Values, what we protect and prioritize.

Strengths, how we naturally create value.

Reputation, what others experience from us and how we are perceived.

Actions, the prompts we give consistently.

You’ll notice that four of these elements are internal, and one, our reputation, is external. Most people will tell you that you need to define your personal brand. They’re close, but I’d make one slight amendment. Our personal brands already exist, our stories are the evidence.

The simplest way to clarify your personal brand is to answer these two questions:

-What stories do you tell about yourself?

-What stories do others tell about you?

For about a year, Anna was telling others that I was a self-centered, attention-seeking speaker who steals participants from other workshops. And she had every right to do so. The issue is that it completely misaligned with the stories I was telling about myself. My brand was fuzzy at best.

In an effort to serve others to the best of my ability and provide the most value in every situation, I needed a quick way to clarify my personal brand. Here are three things I did, and that you can do too.

Trusted Text Messages

Text 5–10 people with varying relationships to you, friends, family members, colleagues, mentors, and leaders, and ask them, “What’s one word you’d use to describe me at my best?”

Wait for replies, and have follow-up conversations where you deem it helpful.

Create Your Care Sentence

You should be able to say what you care about most in one sentence. Spend five minutes thinking through this sentence and fill in the blanks when you’re ready.

“What I care about is ___, because ___.”

Identify Core Moments

Stories are simply 5-second moments from our life that shaped who we are today. If your brand is a combination of your values, why, strengths, and actions, then what moments helped you define those things?

Identify a few core moments that you can call upon as evidence when explaining who you are, or as a compass when you need to find direction.

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By clarifying our personal brand, we create consistency between who we believe we are and who others say we are.

We do this not in an effort to promote ourselves, but to add more value to the world and the lives of those around us.

Fact

Your personal brand forms whether you shape it or not.

Action

Practice explaining what you do without using your job title or the title "student."

Question

How do you hope people finish this sentence: "(Your name) is _____."

Quote

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” - Albert Einstein