How do people find you and engage with you? How do you interface with them and what experience do you leave them with? Take a minute to introspect and answer these questions. This is your User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) as a person – or to put it another way your personal brand.
“Actions speak louder than words” …. “People will not remember what you say, they remember how you made them feel…” and other one-liners are in different ways telling us the same thing. Building a life that is designed to give the people around you a good experience sounds like a good way to live life.
How do I build a personal brand and is it of any use? To answer these two questions, you need to answer a few more.
- Who am I? What do I do that is useful to others?
- What is my intention – do I stand for something?
- What is the experience of engaging with me like?
An inside out approach: At the core of me – who am I? And why am I here on this beautiful planet? Finding answers to this is the essence of personal brand work. This is deep work that a coach can help facilitate. Once this authentic self emerges on a page then adding the layers of a brand personality that will resonate with the audience is the next step.
- Who is my audience? What will interest them?
- What do I want them to do after they hear my story?
- What is unique or different about my life story?
- What is relevant to the current narrative and context?
From answering some of these questions honestly, will emerge a story. The story of your life. This inner core, is the place from which a personal brand can and will emerge. It will have three elements.
– a protagonist who is central to the story (you!)
– the protagonist’s goals
– the protagonist’s obstacles
Once you have had a chance to see your life through the lens of this story, then it’s simply a matter of staying in touch with the three R’s that are central to personal branding – Real. Relatable. Repeatable.
Keep it Real. Keep it Relatable. Keep it Repeatable: Real (is about being authentic); Relatable is about finding a way to stay relevant to your audience( and fit into the current context; and Repeatable (is what makes it sustainable). Interestingly one leads to the other. Only when you find what is real and really important, will you find the energy and enthusiasm to sustain the brand-building activities that all the experts tell you are important.
It is the difference between climbing a mountain that you want to Vs. climbing one that you have been told to. Both will be tough climbs. One you will climb with joy and enjoy the journey. The other you may begin but when the road gets tough and the incline too steep and water runs out, chances are you will stop climbing. This is what happens in the arena of personal branding. After an enthusiastic start, it often gets too hard and people stop. Finding the real you and the mountain you really want to climb (the inner work) is the answer.
The intersection of my two worlds, coaching a communication, breathes new energy into this kind of work. I have in the past talked about the power of bringing the fractal fringes of two different worlds together to create something new and useful. I recently saw that unfold in front of me as I delved into various sessions related to messaging and building the personal brand of people that is in alignment with their true selves and the brands they represent.
What is your UI and UX? How do you touch the world?
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A trusted coaching and communications professional, Nikhil Dey is a certified life and leadership coach (International Coach Federation - ICF). Nurturing talent and helping clients achieve their goals is what makes him happy. He loves learning from students of communication, teaching courses and guest lecturing at various educational institutions. When he is not working you will find him on the tennis court or out for long walks with his family and four legged friends.
Previously he has held senior leadership positions at Weber Shandwick and Genesis BCW.
He can be reached on twitter @deydreaming
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