Ask the KU Coach: Why should I develop a personal brand?

November 8th, 2019

Dr. Lee Stuart answers your business questions about developing workforce talent

Professional Development Tips & Techniques

Today’s employers want leaders with emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills and the ability to manage change. Whether you’re a business leader, manager or just want to work on your leadership skills, the new “Ask the KU Coach” series will have something for you.

[Video Transcript]

[Music] Hi. I'm Dr. Lee Stuart. I am the [leadership instructor] at the University of Kansas, Edwards Campus at Overland Park. And I'd like to welcome you to the first installment of Ask a KU Coach. No, we're not going to be interviewing Coach Bill Self with the men's basketball program or new football coach, Les Miles. You're stuck with me as the coach in this case. But I'm a very experienced coach when it comes to business organizational development and talent development matters.

In this series of programs, we're going to take on a lot of commonly-asked business questions. I'll give my best, most recent thinking on how you might do better in terms of employee management and business strategy.

And in this program, we're going to begin with a very commonly-asked question.

Why do I need to develop a personal brand?

Well, as I like to tell folks, you have a personal brand whether you're aware of it or not.

Even if you've done nothing to develop or cultivate your own brand, others have assigned a brand to you based on your appearance, your actions, and your day-to-day projection of your values. So we have a workshop that we run two or three times a year that's all about developing a personal brand statement. A personal brand is a little bit different from a resume, or a bio, or a CV in that it should very succinctly describe your value proposition. Why are you different from the next person in your industry?

Rather than inventorying your “whats,” which would include: here are the roles that I've held, the achievement of objectives that I've done. This is more about developing a why statement, which talks about your unique values, your characteristics, and why someone would choose to engage with you.

It's not easy and we're not very frequently asked to think about such things, but in our workshop and in one-on-one coaching that I do with a number of individuals as well, we spend whatever time is necessary to help you get a very, very good brand statement that you can articulate very clearly both in writing and in verbal discussion.

Well, that includes our installment of this episode of Ask a KU Coach.

If you have a question that you'd like some answers to, please email me at leestuart@ku.edu and perhaps your question will get responded to on the next installment of Ask a KU Coach. Thanks a lot. [Music]

[End Transcription]