3 Ways to Maintain Your Personal Brand in a Crisis

We’ve talked before about how to build a powerful personal brand…

And how establishing a consistent positioning in the minds of key stakeholders is so important in building trust.

When you consistently show up…

Sharing your expertise…

Being competent and delivering results…

Defending what you stand for…

And demonstrating how you ‘do business’…

You set people’s expectations and create a sense of safety for them: people feel like they know you and know too where they stand with you.

This in turn builds trust.

 

 

Effective Personal Branding Builds & Maintains Trust

Creating trust – and that feeling of safety – are important in any relationship…

And achieving that is far easier to do during times of plenty…

And when things are going well in the business.

What’s harder…

Is maintaining that same perception when you’re under fire…

When the s*** has hit the fan…

When you’re operating under great stress…

Or having to make quick leadership decisions under pressure.

 

 

How Can a Crisis Compromise Your Personal Brand?

Let’s explore 3 patterns that you could fall into when you’re under pressure…

And identify some solutions too.

Being consciously aware if you’re falling into any of these patterns during a crisis is always your first step to creating some new behaviours (and outcomes).

Pattern #1 Flying Into Solution Mode

When under pressure, many leaders instinctively fly into solution-mode and try to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

On the face of it, that may seem like a good idea…

But that rush to ‘fix’ and ‘solve’ can leave team members feeling unheard and trampled upon.

Solving the problem fast is only half of the outcome needed – including others on that journey is the other half.

So, continue to listen to your team and clients…

Respect and invite others’ views…

And seek a collective solution (which may even end up being a better solution than yours was). 😉

 

Pattern #2 Compromising Your Own (& Others’) Values

Any personal brand is built on a set of values.

A value is what’s important to you.

So, say some of your values are connection, collaboration and learning.

Those values all need an investment of your time for them to get the ‘air time’ they need and for you to flourish.

During times of plenty, it’s easier to make that time investment and to do it consistently.

When under time pressure however, you might find that you aren’t proud of some of your behaviours…

And the chances are, that’s because those behaviours are not aligned with what you value.

For example: maybe you’re snapping at others (behaviour) – so you’re compromising your value of connection…

Or perhaps you’ve suddenly started making unilateral decisions (behaviour), which isn’t in-keeping with your own value of collaboration…

Perhaps through preventing that discussion of how others might solve the challenge (behaviour), you’re cutting out the learning value too.

Can you see how important behaving in a way that respects your values really is?

 

Pattern #3 Closing Up

When you’re in a crisis, you might not have clarity of the road ahead.

You might clam up, adopt avoidance tactics or become vague in your communication.

However, to continue to build that trust, transparency is really important (even if you don’t have certainty yourself).

Your team needs you to lead and consistently show up for them (remember this is about making them feel safe)…

So, communicate. Be vulnerable. Accept you might not have all the answers.

Offer options of potential paths you might now follow and continue to steer the ship.

Early on during the Covid-19 pandemic, one CEO laid out 3 potential scenarios to investors and to employees as to how the pandemic might impact the business: worst case, best case and somewhere in the middle.

He wasn’t certain of any of it but he based his reasoning on his best guess.

And that reassured investors, analysts and employees that he was still in-control and taking the lead.

And as a result, he continued to build tremendous trust during a very difficult period.

 

Winning The Hearts And Minds

We talk a lot thesedays about the importance of winning the hearts and minds of people.

Essentially, this expression is about branding.

Effective branding has both emotional (hearts) and rational (minds) elements included.

Emotional is:

“Do I like this person?” / “Do I want to spend time with this person?” / “Do I connect with them?”

Rational is:

“Is this person competent?” / “Do they have the skill to do their job well?”

 

Your clients, colleagues and bosses are constantly weighing up (subconsciously) both how they feel about you emotionally and rationally…

When they put those two judgments together it either creates trust… or distrust.

And the perception they have of you is their reality.

So… is that perception consistent, both when things are going well and during times of crisis?

And if not, what behaviour do you need to change?

Rebecca

Rebecca Allen is Career Success Coach for corporate women who want to get promoted fast. She is an expert in personal branding and strategic career management.