Personal Branding and Interpersonal Skills with Lori Milner
On the 26th of August, The ORT SA Career Hub hosted a webinar by speaker, author, trainer and self-leadership expert Lori Milner. She shared some incredible insights on the subjects of personal branding and interpersonal skills. In this article, we summarize the highlights of this amazing webinar.
As Jeff Bezos once said, “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.” It is crucial for any modern company, and person, to consider the impact of branding on their life – both corporate and personal branding.
But what is a brand?
A brand is a promise of the value you know you’re going to receive for investing in something or someone. Whether you are starting your career in a company, or as an entrepreneur, people are investing in you. Your brand is a story that tells other people who you are, and everything we do forms part of that story.
Your brand is also formed by what people say about you, so you’ve got to position your brand, or others will do it for you. When speaking of personal brands, remember that developing emotional intelligence is essential. Your IQ can get you through the door, but your EQ is what gets you up the ladder.
Your EQ is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and their impact on other people. Your EQ is how you create a powerful brand.
When it comes to our interpersonal skills, using Daniel Goleman’s concept of emotional intelligence helps us to apply the following five components:
- Self-awareness – How in-tune are you with your strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots? When you know what needs improvement, you can start to work on it. Self-reflection is crucial.
- Empathy – Empathy is an “understanding logic” – the ability to step out of yourself. Understanding the people around you helps in building your brand and building relationships.
- Motivation is about three things: you need a compelling goal, know how to achieve that goal, and the confidence to believe you can do it. We want to align our goals with our intrinsic motivations.
- Self-regulation – has to do with keeping a calm disposition when facing a trying or provocative situation. It is crucial to set boundaries and to ensure that your intentions are good when interacting with others.
- Social skills – When building a powerful brand and meaningful relationships simultaneously, we need to network because conversations are the currency of change. Maintaining good rapport with people is an essential skill for personal brand building.
Remember – it takes a long time to build a good brand, but all it takes is one wrong move to ruin one. However, focus on applying the above advice and be deliberate with how you build and position your personal brand – and you’ll get there in no time.
To listen to the entire webinar, you can go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SXbOyGEIes. Or, to find out more about ORT SA, go to www.ortsa.org.za.
