It’s ‘Personal Branding’, not ‘Self-Promotion’

The first value is the concept of ‘personal branding’. While modern-day management self-help books may lead you to think that ‘personal branding’ is a novel concept from the ‘80s, it actually made its first appearance in 1937 and resurfaced much later in the 1980s when Jack Trout and Al Ries popularized this with the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.

This is a tough one, especially in the Asian context where individuals are lauded for being self-effacing and labeled as ‘self-promoters’ for acknowledging their strengths.

But the concept of ‘personal branding’ is in fact not about ‘self-promotion’ but the idea of knowing one’s true value and thus being able to see the different ways they can put that value to use within any organization or towards any particular cause.

In an economy where we are dealing in the currency of ‘talent’, ‘personal branding’ helps executives and managers across all levels to think about their skill set more precisely. It also helps them find the second-skills and right opportunities not just within an organisation but across different sectors. This is all part of the game of staying relevant and being agile, especially when the job you have today might not exist in quite the same form a few years down the road.

Resilience. Resilience. Resilience.

This is an essential ingredient in any number of management and leadership books, but resilience, although much advocated, is going to be even more relevant in driving ‘future-ready leadership’. As the cycle of change becomes increasingly shorter in the work environment, and as the impact of these changes becomes even more acute, resilience is probably the only quality that guarantees success when the future is uncertain.

While many great leaders espouse resilience, it will become a pre-requisite in the new world order. It won’t be a matter of ‘who’s got it’ but rather, that the ones who ‘don't have it’ will struggle to stay relevant. The challenge with ‘resilience’ is that this quality manifests itself in different forms. There is no formula for it but only a steep learning curve that can be aided by learning from others or by volunteering to contribute to projects beyond one's comfort zone.

Bring on the ‘Challenger Mindset’ 

The entrepreneurial spirit has always been associated with the rare few who walk to the beat of their own drum, break the mould and dare to try something different. For now, they are, more often than not, the outliers who are celebrated for being different. They are known to be the product of the ‘new economy’.

However, the tide is turning and the new reality of the future is that every PME needs this ‘challenger mindset’ to be able to stay ahead of the change curve. Looking for novel ways of doing things, challenging the tried and proven, and asking the ‘what if’ will, in the future, be part and parcel of the everyday and will be required of everyone in an organisation – not just those who are looking to lead and certainly not just restricted to the entrepreneurs.

The ‘challenger mindset’ is critical because it is the one ‘human app’ that automatically ‘codes’ innovation into the workforce. It makes evolution and change a part of the process of everyday work, so innovation from the workforce happens in tandem with the drumbeat of technological innovation.

To put things in sharper context, while there are new innovations, technologies and different advancements coming online every day, the competition for markets, investments & talent is getting tougher. This underscores the urgency for ‘future-ready leadership’, one of the few true ‘apps’ that will really enable PMEs to change the game personally and professionally, and shape a future economy that robust and sustainable.

This article was written by Vivek Kumar, Director, NTUC U Associate and Future Leaders Programme, and was originally published by the Business Times on 4 June 2015.