Not sure how I missed this post by Dana Leavy-Detrick from the end of March. She writes about the difference between expressing your brand as what you do — and breaking that brand into smaller stories that enable your audience to connect with you on an emotional level.
That’s essentially what I advise in my book Tell Me About Yourself: Developing one or more stories that supports your personal brand, that exemplifies it and captures your brand in a nutshell. The brainstorming device I offer in the book is a list of story types that could support a personal brand.
Leavy-Detrick offers a list of questions/prompts to accomplish the same purpose.
- Talk about what drove or inspired you to become involved in your field. Did you have any mentors, or people that you looked up to, or perhaps an event that really inspired you to do this type of work? What was it that really pushed you over the edge and inspired you to take action?
- What do you think are the most beneficial tools, skills, and resources that you picked up along the way?
- What challenges did you encounter along the way, and more importantly, how did you work through those challenges to grow and learn?
- How have you used the lessons you’ve learned by tackling those challenges to get you to this point of knowing you’d like to work for this company, or be in this role?
- What aspects of your professional journey do you consider particularly unique and why?
- How will your past experiences make you successful in this particular role, and contribute to the goals of the organization?
I say the more tools the better for thinking about the stories that best illustrate our personal brands.