While words like ‘agility’ and ‘flexing’ sound agreeable when it comes to coping with emerging digital (and business) ecosystem, it is rather more definitive when you are ‘you’.
Why? We’re more than ever on our smartphones, swanky laptops, sipping our aromatic coffee, connecting with people from different cultures, sensibilities, locales, and diverse set of opinionators. So why should you not be ‘you’ than what you’re trying to ‘be’ to fit into the frames of people’s expectations and whims?
Agree: there are times when you have to ‘custom think’ and calibrate based on who you are in conversation with. But you will find more satiation when you speak your raw truth with the most befitting words laced with emotions that best communicate who you are.
Be it a job interview or a new business pitch, or even a funding pitch to your coveted investors, ‘personal brand’ essentially connotes your authenticity, moment of truth, your interpretation of feelings that reflect in your emotions, character – and your ‘why’.
By being you, you free the other people to also be themselves. And then the conversation takes a different turn – of possible (healthy) tension that brings forth greater possibilities of collaboration and connectedness.
Naturally, when you evolve with your own set of values, beliefs and principles, you will deeply understand others’ state of evolution, as you have been there yourself. Result? More compassion, kindness (yes, I used it separately), and empathy.
Business brands would increasingly hire you when they can sense your core value system and drive is in alignment with their brand(s). This is why Burberry hired Angela Ahrendts as their CEO: an initial conversation that transpired to be a win-win for both this leading British fashion brand and Angela Ahrendts. And the rest, as they say, is history!
So when you show who you truly are, you will connect with the right opportunities that will be rewarding for your in the long-term – financially, emotionally, and physically.
So go ahead and let the world ‘know’ and ‘learn’ who you are. Life has its own subtle way of designing a path for your greatness. You do your part, the rest follows.
