Worklife: Here’s why personal branding is important

One of the biggest lessons in worklife in recent times has, undoubtedly, been Covid. While the genesis was scary and the outcomes tragic, it played havoc with set patterns of working everywhere. One of the remnants of that crisis was the ability to embrace work from home and drive business continuity plans like never before. It forced archaic organisations away from their dinosauric slumber, and what was thought impossible without a remote, actually worked very well in remote.

Covid, whilst impacting health, also diluted wealth and fostered massive trust deficit in stealth. It also had ramifications for talents, especially those at the helm of comfort zones since time immemorial. I remember meeting a senior leader during those uncertain times at a café. He had just been laid off after more than a decade at his work. To my disbelief, the so-called self-assured, high-flying senior executive burst into tears in front of me. He remarked that though he was privileged and on the right side of advantage all this while, his sudden realisation that people outside didn’t know him affected him badly. That is the power of personal brand in today’s cut-throat segments.

These not-for-profit side hustles in the professional world define your journey of learning and thought leadership beyond the 9-5 routine. Not only does it help build quality networks, it opens doors for more distinguished company and conversations that matter. Surprisingly, it sometimes unleashes channels of creativity and self- discovery, which you never thought existed. This also has a compelling basis for new-age leaders now, who are seen as glocal — globally relevant and locally effective. The face of a business or function has become more significant than the face value of organisations nowadays and evolved management is able to acknowledge and empower such traits in their talents.

Having said that, there are still shackles in the name of bureaucratic corporate communication and branding that sometimes puts an unwanted lag on some initiatives in order to comply to protocol. Leaders should be alive to the fact that the more you create brand ambassadors for the external world, the better are the synergies for business, which also begins to be seen as a desired place to work.

There has been a poignant shift in how talents and business objectives are measured and recognised. A star is as good as he delivers for the team and using a football analogy, many a superstar has been benched by coaches for their ineffectiveness. In parallel, a business is only considered sustainable in the long run if it complies with the ESG goals and gives back to the community as it makes money from it. The discourse is slowly shifting from global footprints to carbon footprint, exclusivity of business transactions to inclusivity of talents, DIY formats to DEI, the list goes on. To give you a perspective, conventional functions like internal audit is moving away from a post-mortem function to a more proactive approach, widening the talent net to even ethical hackers for forensics and cybersecurity.

A journalist from the days of the yore is expected to operate now as a multimedia savvy content writer, juxtaposing multiple genres — curating concepts, reporting, shooting, editing and transcribing — to all touchpoints of dissemination, with a monetisation angle. HR is moving away from the archaic compliance-driven personnel management to people and culture, transforming careers and business outcomes. Finance has moved away from internal control to value creation, and IT & MARCOM has assumed critical seats at the board table than ever before. I have not even mentioned the glass ceiling for women, as that disparate boundary is pleasantly getting blurred by the day with more women leaders showing the world how change ought to be driven.

Such are the seas of change that the talents of tomorrow have to constantly work towards a differentiator or niche and the talents of today have to reskill and reimagine their relevance consistently, it’s not enough being nice anymore, mice are nice too!

wknd@khaleejtimes.com