Protecting Your Personal Brand

I heard a very good panel discussion the other day. It was focused on crisis management for companies. What does a restaurant chain do when there’s an e-Coli outbreak at their restaurants? How does an oil company control the damage to their reputation when there is an oil spill? What about leaks of legal action by the FBI? The suggestions of the experts and the stories of good and bad examples were fascinating.

But, I got to thinking about personal reputation, personal brand. We all have one, whether we have cultivated it or not. It’s our character, our integrity. And it is invaluable. In this day of social media and instantaneous communication – especially of bad news! – we should probably consider protecting our individual brand just as much as Coca Cola or Target are protecting theirs. This is especially true when potential employers check us out online.

Let’s see if the recommendations of these business crisis experts can apply to our personal crises:

• Preventing damage to your reputation is much easier and less costly than cleaning up after a disaster. Be careful what you share online or in emails. Depending on your exposure, some of those things could come back to haunt you. (This is something we Baby Boomers say to our kids all the time!) You can’t put the genie back into the bottle.

• Plan ahead: consider the possible risks to your brand and do what you can to identify, mitigate, or even eliminate risks in advance.      Wise companies spend time and money listing risks (financial, reputation, compliance, strategic, etc.) and creating a plan to control and respond to things that could hurt them in these areas. Individuals don’t have the same list of risks, but we have one in common: reputation. What could happen to your reputation in your line of work, your personal life, your relationships? How can you head off a problem in one of these areas? What would you do if someone publicly accused you of cheating them or stole your identity? Would you be ready to respond?

• Being proactive and acting on a crisis is always better than waiting or staying silent.
  Being able to respond, calmly and respectfully, to the crisis is important. And doing it quickly is essential. As I said, news really travels fast these days.

• You can’t communicate your way out of a crisis.
  Of course, communicating is important. But having a plan for rectifying the problem is critical. Do you need to apologize? Meet with someone? Change your behavior and show that you have? We know from history that stonewalling and trying to cover up do not work.

So, it looks like the corporate crisis managers do have something to teach us about our individual brand. Consider what you might want to do to prepare.