Building Your Personal Brand Internally for Promotion

One of the major challenges when you are employed and not looking for a new position is that you feel if you start to take some action in raising your visibility your colleagues will see it as sign that you are unhappy and are starting to put out ‘the feelers’ to find a new role in the company or even be looking to leave. The water-cooler talk starts and rumours fly and before you know it you are sitting in front of your boss trying to convince them that you are perfectly happy and you are not looking to leave and that you do respect them. So what do you do? Settle for the status quo? Keep your head down, keep doing good work, deliver and hope that finally someone notices you? Or is it enough that you and a few close colleagues know that you are good at what you do? But just knowing that you are good is not enough – others, beyond your immediate circle, need to know it too. Two of the most critical factors in a strong personal brand are visibility and credibility and they both have to be present to have a brand that people recognize and respect. Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, talks of the time that he worked for Imperial Chemical Industries and started to learn as much as he could about Total Quality Management and as he did so he became one of the go to people in the organization on the subject and eventually became head of TQM for North America. He recognizes this promotion probably strongly bolstered his application to do his MBA at Harvard. So what are the challenges that face your company or department right now? Is there something like TQM that your company desperately needs but does not have the capacity or resources to take on right now? Can you become the champion for this? As you start to build your knowledge and expertise look to offer a presentation on the subject to inform your department. Then look to spread the message to other departments and before you know it you become the company wide expert in it. Also do not miss the opportunity to let others outside the company know what you are doing (keeping in mind proprietary information) – but look to associations and professional organizations and conferences to get recognized. That way you are building the company brand and reputation as well as your own externally – but in a very positive way. Then the water-cooler talk will be for a different reason, and you will not have to be looking so hard for that next promotion.