Georgetown

Who are you?

The first week of my Personal Branding class at Georgetown, I ask my students:  Who are you?

To begin the real work of personal branding, and get to the core of who we are, I tell them:

  • You are not your job title
  • You are not your affiliation with an employer
  • You are not your passion
  • You are not all the things you've failed at.

Your personal brand isn't "I'm a PR manager" or "Wine and cheese is my passion".  (barf)  Your personal brand isn't "I'm divorced."  It's also not, "I'm a government wonk."

Your personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.

When we think about what that means, we need to reframe how we think about and talk about ourselves.

When I'm not in the room, I wouldn't want someone to describe me as "oh, she does marketing for a tech company."  Why?  Because tens of thousands of other people do that.  That's not memorable.  That doesn't set me apart.

So, I work with my students to identify their functions, attributes, strengths, emotional appeal, and differentiators.

  • Functions: What do I do? What services do I offer?
  • Attributes: What are the characteristics or qualities that describe me?
  • Strengths: What am I good at? What am I known for being good at?
  • Emotional Appeal: How do I make people feel?
  • Differentiators: What sets me apart and makes me memorable?

Every semester I have taught this class -- EVERY SEMESTER -- at least one student says, "there's nothing memorable about me" or "I have no idea what sets me apart".  At least 5 other students nod in the affirmative.  I used to want to just hug them and tell them it will be okay ... but now, hearing that makes me excited.  Why?  Because I know that person is going to have a pretty damn remarkable semester in my class digging deep and finding out what sets them apart from others.  Because it's there.  They just don't know it yet.  When we find it (and we always do), it's magic.  I wish you could see it.  The energy and momentum that comes from it is infectious.

I don't use the word "unique" in my class.  I think it's unnecessary in personal branding.  When I see personal branding presentations or articles with the words "unique value proposition" I automatically know two things: 1) that person's personal brand is Boring King of Finger-Guns City and 2) they are not in my tribe.  Using "unique value proposition" is the kind of marketing gobbledygook that turns people off from the whole exercise of figuring out what they're great at doing, how they can pursue those talents in myriad ways, and how they talk about themselves and interact with the world around them.  Our DNA makes us unique.  But in terms of talents, skills, values, and experiences, "unique" is not what we're going after.  We're going after what makes us memorable ... what makes people want to engage with you when they meet you or have heard about you.  What makes you magnetic.  What helps you find your tribe.

For one student, her memorable moment was that she had her pilot's license before she could drive a car.  For another student, it was having written and submitted a spec script for "How I Met Your Mother" (which never got used, but the very action of doing it is a fun story and shows part of that student's personality and gumption that might not have shown up in a regular networking conversation).  Yet another student had done more than 100 drops out of a helicopter in the military ... didn't seem interesting to her, but in conversation with others it made her memorable and also kind of a badass.

So, who are you?

  

 

 

 

 

On Being a Teacher

Yesterday I wrote about my desire to, in some way, feel like a student ... to find something new I wanted to learn, and feel excited and challenged about discovering new things I'm capable of doing, or might fail miserably at.

Today, I want to write about what it feels like to teach.  Teaching is one of the many things I do in my career, and I am grateful for the opportunity to walk the hallowed halls of Georgetown University, working with graduate students in PR and Journalism.

My first experience in teaching was in 2006 in Johns Hopkins' grad school, after which I moved over to teach at Georgetown in 2007.  I taught PR writing for a few years, as well as a class called The Power of Opinion, where my students wrote and submitted op-eds and letters to the editor each week, and they all got published in major media outlets.  My PR practice went BOOM, so I took a break from teaching for a bit, returning in 2014 to teach a class called Personal Branding.

Yeah I rolled my eyes, too, the first time I heard those words.  It sounds so ::pew-pew:: winky-finger-guns, doesn't it?  Barf.  I made it my personal mission to make the class NOT barfy and, instead, work with students on their personal brands, and understand what that really means.  

Personal branding is not a logo, a tagline, or an elevator speech (the ultimate in barf).  

Your personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.  If 10 people in a room have 10 different perceptions of you, then there's something going on in the authenticity department.  It's my job, as a teacher, to help my students peel off all those layers and be who they are and teach them how to build meaningful relationships that make our communities and our world a better place.

Here's the thing: PR people are good at what they do because they love molding, shaping, and promoting others.  We are great behind the scenes, making shit happen, and keeping our clients in the spotlight.  Same goes for journalists.  Great reporters are good at what they do because they're telling other people's stories.  Ask them to tell their own, and they will self-deprecate beyond belief and deftly turn the tables and begin asking more questions so as to not talk about themselves.

The reason we're good at doing PR or being a journalist is because we spend very little time on ourselves, and all our time on our clients, products, employers, and interview subjects.  We're great at shaping others' stories, but have no idea what our own story is.

So, for two hours each week, my students come into a cocoon where they think only about themselves.  In my classroom, we are not our work titles.  We are not what others tell us we should be.  We are not the children of our parents.  We strip all that away and think about who we are, how we're perceived, what our skills and talents are, what we are best at doing (at our core), and what we ultimately want to achieve.  We talk, we write, we figure it out, and we get it done.

It's a tough class.  It's frustrating and deep and introspective (if done right).  On the flip side, it's surprising and rewarding to find out what we love to do and what we're good at when we finally stop "should-ing" all over ourselves.  It makes us better communicators overall, and helps us move forward in our careers and in life in sometimes unexpected ways.