Are you protecting your brand?

Has any of the following ever happened to you at work, school, or elsewhere?

1. You are assigned to work for months on a cost-reduction initiative for your department. However, when the initiative is successfully implemented, the team’s leader receives most, if not all, of the credit.
2. You work tirelessly on a new proposal (customer conference calls, pricing, project management, etc). However, when the sale is made, your contributions are downplayed.
3. You are called in to participate in the planning for an event. The event is a success. However, your boss’ boss is not even aware that you participated in the planning.
4. You perform a literature review or data coding/analysis for your research advisor. Later, your advisor publishes a paper that uses the work you performed–however you are not included as a co-author or are even acknowledged in the footnotes.
5. Your organization’s PR department seems to play favorites by promoting the activities and accomplishments of some people and/or departments much more frequently than others.

The above scenarios are ones in which your brand is being threatened by outside forces. Attacks against your personal or professional brand occur when people discount, disregard, distort or all together dismiss your contributions or accomplishments. Sadly, I hear similar complaints far too frequently in my research, workshops and informal conversations with colleagues. Perhaps after reading this, you may recognize that you have been guilty of perpetrating, rather than being the victim of such offenses.

In my stratemy workshops, I teach participants that having an effective stratemy is about more than just building and promoting your personal or professional brand. To be successful, it’s equally important to protect your brand.  I liken professional development to military maneuvering or sports in which developing your brand requires offensive strategies, whereas protecting your brand requires defensive strategies. Moreover, the offensive or defensive strategies that you make can be characterized as proactive or reactive. While being proactive in your strategy making and executing is preferable, it’s not always realistic. There are times when unexpected attacks to your brand occur which require you to make appropriate and decisive reactive moves.

There are several reasons why such offenses occur:

1. Inattentiveness. Some people don’t threaten your brand unintentionally. They may be self-centered and/or aloof. As a result, beyond their own work, they have a poor understanding of who’s doing what and why.
2. Busyness. Some folks intend to properly acknowledge your efforts, but are just too darn busy. They just never got around to it.
3. Forgetfulness. Some folks just failed to remember to acknowledge your efforts. Although they may attempt to make it right after the fact (by adding a footnote with your name), the damage has likely been done already.
4. Spitefulness. There are haters everywhere. Some folks just don’t like you or what you stand for. They pray and pray for your downfall.
5. Unawareness. Some folks whom you assume are in the best position to know what you are and are capable of doing—well, they just don’t know. For example, your direct boss failed to tell his/her boss of your efforts. Your boss’ boss would certainly recognize and reward your efforts, if only he/she were aware of them.
6. Discomfort. Some folks may be socially awkward and/or uncomfortable interacting with others. As a result, they may not talk to you or observe you long enough to gain a proper understanding of the extent of your involvement.

Our brands are a strategically important resource and are perhaps one of the most valuable resources we possess. Our brands are intricately connected to who we are, where we are going and how we intend to get there. Our brands provide us with preferential access to other types of valuable resources such as new job opportunities, invitations, admissions, and customers.

However, brand threats that go unchecked may delay or altogether derail opportunities for professional advancement such as promotions, raises, or acquisition of new clients. Consequently, threats to our brands, and the resources that they provide access to, demand an appropriate response.

Threats to our brands and the resources associated with them can be extremely unpleasant. Some may feel their brands are under constant attack. Persistent brand challenges may be linked to many work-related health issues such as stress, absenteeism, presenteeism, burnout, emotional exhaustion, and job dissatisfaction. Research on conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) suggests that when faced with potential or actual resource threats, we are motivated to engage in strategic actions such as investing a portion of our available resources to:

1. Minimize any current threats
2. Discourage any future threats
3. Quickly recover from and replenish resources stemming from past attacks that resulted in a loss of resources.

(For more on conservation of resources research see the additional resources below)

Here are a few tips that you may consider when developing proactive investment strategies to protect your brand from resource threats:

1. Leverage technology. I use a system called Evernote to store all of my work in the cloud. Evernote has quickly become my favorite piece of technology. Evernote has app and desktop versions. By having my info in the cloud, on my phone, tablet or computer, it is always available to me just in case I need to “remind” someone of my efforts.
2. Draft a team contract. At the start of the project, take the liberty to write down who is responsible for what. Email a copy to the entire team and ask for feedback, corrections and acknowledgements. Review roles and open the floor for role reassignments in subsequent meetings.
3. Document everything. And I mean everything. Take photos of your work. Take selfies if you have to in order to preserve a record of your involvement. Keep detailed notes of meetings–who was there, dates and times, who’s doing what and when. Save programs, handouts and agendas.
4. Recap verbal conversations with a follow-up email. For example, “Hey John, great talking with you earlier about the ABC project. I just want to make sure I’m clear on what we’re doing. As we discussed, you are planning to do 123 while I will be responsible for 456. Is that right?”
5. Be paranoid–backup everything. I keep copies of all of my efforts in Evernote, Dropbox and on an external hard drive. You never know when you document something that someone else doesn’t want documented. That person may be “motivated” to go to great lengths to make that documentation go away. Nothing surprises me anymore.
6. Develop witnesses. Look for strategic opportunities to discuss your work with the right people–such as where you were, what you did and who you were with. It’s hard to “get away with a crime” when there are witnesses.
7. Leverage social media. Consistent with the prior point, strategically discuss your efforts via social media. Your boss’ boss may not be on Facebook or Instagram. If he/she is, you may not want to connect (for obvious reasons). However, LinkedIn has added some great functionality that allows you to develop portfolios and artifacts of your work. I’ve been playing around with my LinkedIn profile and see much potential.
8. Write your own press releases. If you have followed the points above, you should have amassed some great photos, notes and witnesses. At the conclusion of projects or events, take the liberty to write up your own press release of your work. That’s right, don’t depend on your organization’s PR staff to ask you for comment. Be proactive! Look at previous press releases on your organization’s social media pages, listserves or websites and use them as a guide. Be careful to acknowledge everyone’s contributions and not just your own (you don’t want to be guilty of the same offenses as others). Write it up and then send it to your PR staff and ask them to release it. In most cases, they will be elated that you did–you’ve made their job easier). However, if they fail to release it (due to any one of the reasons cited above), release it through your own channels.

The above tactics are proactive and defensive in nature. As people realize that you are making these types of strategic investments towards developing and protecting your brand, they are discouraged from intentionally or inadvertently harming your brand. In future posts we will discuss offensive and reactive strategies that help to build and defend our brands.

Discussion Questions

1. How have you tended to deal with situations such as those above?
2. Do you agree or disagree with the recommendations above?
3. What are you going to do now as a result of this information?

Stratemy Lessons Learned:

1. Our brands are strategic career resources that must be cultivated, conserved and vigorously defended.
2. Our brands are resources that provide access to other valuable resources.
3. Attacks against our personal or professional brands occur when people discount, disregard, distort or all together dismiss our contributions or accomplishments.
4. Persistent threats to our brands and personal resources may compromise our health and our career advancement.
5. Brand preservation requires the enactment of proactive strategies.
6. Let people know, subtly yet strategically, that you play about a lot of things, however your brand is not one of them.

Supplemental Reading

Halbesleben, J. R. B., & Bowler, W. M. 2007. Emotional Exhaustion and Job Performance: The Mediating Role of Motivation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(1): 93-106.

Halbesleben, J. R., Harvey, J., & Bolino, M. C. 2009. Too Engaged? A Conservation of Resources View of the Relationship between Work Engagement and Work Interference with Family. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(6): 1452-1456.

Hobfoll, S. F. (1989). Conservation of Resources: A New Attempt at Conceptualizing Stress. The American Psychologist, 44(3): 513.

Wheeler, A. R., Harris, K. J., & Sablynski, C. J. 2012. How Do Employees Invest Abundant Resources? The Mediating Role of Work Effort in the Job-Embeddedness/Job-Performance Relationship. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42: E244-E266.