YOU: The Professional

In my last blog post, I wrote about all of us being a brand - the brand called: YOU. Now I'll like to touch upon the brand at the workforce - YOU: the worker.

As only the people close to us - children, siblings, parents, spouses and close friends - know the real YOU, what about the hundreds of people we meet every day, for example, in the workplace? This is a reality of human beings, which we learn from growning up: we share behave according to certan situations: in our homes, in the neighbor's house and in school. Not that we learn to have different personalities, but we are conditioned to behave in different versions of ourselves. It's something we do every day without realizing it.

For example, it is almost certain that your co-workers and superiors know only a part of you: the worker YOU. Only in the Christmas office party- and after a couple of wine glasses - is that we can at last! see our boss a little more like a normal "human" and not as our "intransigent and micro-managing boss."

So if the office we spent only a percentage of our week and we can filter out aspects of our personal life that does not really care to tell others, this means that we have the power to control how others think of us - more power than we think.

Imagine that next week you start a new job - you have a new boss and new colleagues. This means you get to start from scratch - these people haven't seen you before, or didn't know anything about you - just that you can do the job you have been recruited to do. This is the only piece of information they have on you - even before you come in to the office. Over the days, it is logical that you're giving more data with which these people can add to their perception of you. This is what is known as personal branding: The clear and powerful idea that comes to mind when other people think of you. As I mentioned in my last blog post, we are already a brand. The question is: Is the brand YOU want?