Personal Branding
I’ve had an interesting two weeks. Interesting, insightful, eye-opening and lightbulb moments about branding, feedback and pride – they’ve all been a big part of my December.
I had a great opportunity to work with Zoë Cohen (another Executive Coach) from Shine – we were working together to understand more about our personal brands, sharing honest feedback to help us understand how what we see in ourselves is perceived by others.
I’d met Zoë before, and have a great deal of respect for her, however I had never had chance to get to know her better – in the exercise we had to trust each other to give honest constructive feedback. Zoë helped me distil some of my personal branding messages, really homing in on words that she thought described me more than all the padded out sentences. It was really helpful, exactly what I needed to hear, and suddenly all was becoming clear.
Positive Intent
Then Zoë asked permission to talk about something really personal – my profile photo – the one that I loved, the one all my friends said captured the real me, the photo that was all over every online profile I own, including all the social media platforms. In that one afternoon, Zoe felt that some honest personal feedback was valid and necessary, and absolutely it was given to me with positive intent.
Zoë’s feedback was along the lines of – “your profile photo doesn’t capture the real you, it doesn’t capture the words that represent you, it doesn’t capture the energy, warmth and determination that you demonstrate in real life, and it’s nowhere near as pretty as the real you”.
Boom. Honest. Personal. Constructive. Timely. Welcome.
When someone tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
Your photograph captures something about you, but not always the things that you need to portray. I want people to know the real me, and in an on-line world our photograph is a powerful canvas.
Comfort Zone
Problem being, I hate having my photo taken, I’m not photogenic, it’s uncomfortable, squeamish and generally the lowest on my list of things I’d like to do on a Saturday, but I took the feedback, and 2 days later, I had arranged a photoshoot with highly recommended photographer Matthew Lawson – a great experience, he really put me at ease, especially as he rattled off hundreds of shots to get at least one I’d be happy with. He made me laugh, he understood me, he was patient. He shared some early shots with me, and by Saturday night I was already changing my photo on social media to one of my new favourites.
Lessons Learned
My lessons learned from all this – what’s feedback without positive intent? How many times are we told what the giver thinks we want to hear? Not what we need to hear. And how easy is it to reject feedback because it’s not what we want to hear.
Being given constructive feedback with true positive intent is a skill in itself – receiving it is another skill – you have to be open to it, see it for what it is. And be willing to do something with it.
Thank You
Thank you Zoë for valuable and welcome feedback, thank you Matthew for the best photoshoot I’ve ever experienced.
Photography by Matthew Lawson
contact by email – contact@matthewlawsonphoto.co.uk
contact by text – 07789715767
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