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Dear friends,
Hope this message finds you thriving! This month’s message is inspired by a meeting with a wonderful colleague who was invited to one of our department’s visiting professorships. (I hope I’ve already suggested to all of you that you should always try to get onto the schedule for visiting professors.) He asked me, “What is your brand?” According to my colleague, a brand should capture who you are as a professional, not just what you are doing now. This seemed particularly daunting for me since I have varied research and professional interests. However, advice is only good if you act on it, so I started looking into it.
I came across this article in Forbes about how to define your personal brand through self-reflection. For academia, I believe it can be narrowed to these questions:
What in your daily work are you most passionate about?
What are your strengths?
What is the larger purpose/ goal/ mission behind your work?
What distinguishes you from your colleagues?
Give yourself some time and space to think about these answers, and then they will almost tie themselves together for you.
Myself as an example: In my daily work, I love coming up with new research directions and proposing them in grants. I consider my many “wild ideas” to be my strength. My mission is to address the unsolved problems that drive health disparities, and compared to colleagues I am definitely much more interested in looking outside of usual professional circles for collaborations and solutions. Taking this together, I came up with the following phrases as my brand: “New approaches to old problems” and “Innovating for health equity.” I know that seems very general, but it tells you a lot, and I can always elaborate on this for my audience.
After you’ve defined your brand you have to share it. This HBR piece about personal branding for women is a great primer for everyone. Here are some of the basics.
Network inside and outside your institution. Sounds like the ninth circle of hell, right? I think having a substantive conversation when you run into peers and senior colleagues is much better than rattling off a summary of what you do. I often ask people what they think are the challenges in the field, or in academic life, or what they’re most excited to work on next. An interesting exchange makes the best impression.
Social media. Even occasional blogs and strategic Twitter use can make a big difference in how people see you. Start simple- get an account on Twitter and follow some journals and some famous people in your field. You don’t have to post anything at first. Blogging is also much easier than you would think. Check out some of the blog posts on journal or professional society websites and think through what you could add. A medical blog that has a wide variety of content is KevinMD, if you need a place to start. I will have a future message with lots more tips!
I hope this is useful. As always, please share your successes with me so I can find ways to amplify your voice and message. Thank you for reading!
Warmly,
Urmimala