PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Branding yourself
H
AVE YOU ever thought about yourself as a brand before? Maybe this is a new concept to you, but being able to market yourself is an essential component of managing your CPD whatever stage of your career you are at.
When you think of a brand in the high street,
like Marks and Spencer, you probably think about their logo, but if you were to examine how you feel about them, you might say things like reliable, good quality and reasonably priced. The best brands are appealing, easy to find, easy to understand, and people recommend them. To start the process of managing your brand I would
recommend two things – first find a way of describing what your brand is and then find some ways of getting yourself known.
Defining your brand
Knowing yourself is the key to building your identity and creating a demand for yourself as a brand. Here are six questions which may help you to define what your personal brand looks like. • How does your environment influence your image? How do you fit in and how are you influenced by your environment – i.e. the way you dress, the tone and pitch of your voice, the way you walk, and the house and area you live in. For example, I might describe myself as professional, passionate, on a mission, sporty, modern, upmarket, sought after. Can you describe your image?
• How do you behave in most situations? Your general attitude, approach or mood towards most things. For example, I might say that I am upbeat, positive and generally open to new ideas and concepts. How would others describe you?
•What skills do you have? Your strengths and the things you find easy to do. What people call on you for. For example, I might say I am good at getting the best out of others, planning, being creative and negotiating. What are you good at? What are your natural talents and gifts?
•What are your values and beliefs? The things that are really important to you. For example, I might say that equality, honesty, and teamwork are important to me. What do you believe in and stand for?
•What do you have a reputation for? What is your identity? What makes you stand out from the crowd
SecEd • May 6 2010
Whether you like it or not, your personal and professional image are crucial to a successful career. Dot Struthers offers some quick advice on how to sell yourself
and what makes you unique? For example, I could say that I have worked and lived in Africa and I now have a reputation for tolerance and valuing difference. How has your education and life experience influenced you?
•What is your purpose in life? It could just be your personal goals right now. For example, to help every child you teach find their voice. What is your personal motivation and reason for getting out of bed in the morning?
Whatever your personal brand looks and feels like,
ask yourself is it serving its purpose right now? If not, go through this exercise again but this time ask the questions in the future tense – what image would I like to have or what reputation would I like to have? If you find this process hard to do on your own, ask
a friend, partner or spouse to run through this from their perspective and see what comes up.
Getting yourself known
The ability to network and build relationships with complete strangers is an essential skill for any teacher wanting to develop their skills and create different career options for the future. Networking is a way of getting known by lots of people and it is your way of advertising your personal brand. But to get the most out of your networking activities
what you need to have is a networking strategy. I read a blog recently where the author, Bjorn Guldanger, suggested that there were five different types of people who network. Read through these and reflect on your own networking style and try to work out what your goals might be for networking. • Passive: Those who do not really believe in networking and prefer to live in their world of one even if they think that they may be missing out on something. They have not worked out that investing time in complete strangers can reap dividends.
• Conservative: They will network but only with
those they trust and have known for a long time and have a common story with – other teachers in their borough say. Their challenge is recognising that value can be gained from mingling with people from different walks of life.
• Reactive: They are open to new proposals and relationships but will be a bit selective and control who they mix with based on their perceived value. What they have yet to learn is that by taking the initiative and broadening their network they are creating more opportunities. When you are meeting a person you are also creating the opportunity to meet the people that they know too.
• Proactive: Those who develop wide networks but are selective about the projects and people that they get involved with. If they were slightly less blinkered they would realise that random exchanges often hold valuable knowledge and possibilities.
• Hyperactive: Those who will network with anyone and everyone and believe in quantity and that chance conversations may lead to something worthwhile. They do however need to learn to relax and enjoy the interactions.
Whatever approach you decide to adopt, the
important thing is to expand your thinking and stay open to new ideas, people and events and not feel the need to control or inhibit what you do. I know it takes effort to muster up the energy after a
long day at school to get out there and meet people, but what you put in is what you get out.
Networking is not about selling
Some of the reasons that people hate networking is that they think it is about “working the room”, or passing out as many business cards as you can. I learned a useful tip, which is that people start to
become interesting when you start to get interested in them. Focus on the other person and not on yourself. When you find out what their challenges and problems are you have something other than
Places to network and meet people
There are different ways to network and expand the number of contacts that you have but here are a few ideas to get you started. • Attend events organised by your local authority. • Participate in discussions on the National College website.
• Join specific groups on Linked in or Yahoo and groups of interest locally at Meetup.
• A charity like Career Spring Board offers good career support.
• Offering to write for educational newspapers or magazines or writing a blog or online columns.
• Register on Twitter and join in the random discussions.
The key thing is find groups that are discussing
things that you care and are passionate about whether it is teaching-related or not. The thing is to get known. Managing your brand is not an accidental thing and
requires a good understanding of yourself. Once you have established a wide network your next job is to build trust and depth in your relationships. What you want is people advocating and talking
about you when you are not in the room and actively seeking you out.
SecEd
• Dot Struthers runs workshops and coaching sessions for teachers. To get her monthly CPD newsletter, go to
www.merechats.co.uk
Further information
• National College:
www.nationalcollege.org.uk • Linked In:
www.Linkedin.com • Yahoo:
www.Yahoo.com • Meetup:
www.meetup.com • Career Spring Board:
www.careersspringboard.info • Twitter:
www.twitter.com and
www.twitter.com/ SecEd_Education (SecEd’s Twitter feed).
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yourself to concentrate on. By helping others to solve their problems you are demonstrating the skills and knowledge that you have. Your aim is to contribute by sharing your knowledge,
so it is more about delivering knowledge than selling yourself. It is about finding new ways to add value to others. In this way you create a reputation and a way of being known by others. Think of it in this way, you are helping others rather
than selling yourself which after all is what teachers are good at.
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