Your Story is Your Brand

We were halfway to my daughter's piano lesson one freezing night when she asked me "Don't you wonder about people who tell you what to think of them?"

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said. It was three degrees out. I was stuck in traffic, and focused more on the icy road than my daughter's question. "Can you give me an example?"

"Well," she said, "there are kids in my choir at school who say 'I like the way you sing,' and other kids who say 'You are almost as good a singer as me, and I'm the best singer in this choir.'"

"You mean, kids who brag about themselves?"

"Yes," said my daughter, "but I'm talking about a certain kind of bragging. If a girl says 'I made the dance team, isn't that awesome!?' we all scream and we're happy for her. She's allowed to brag, because it's good news and she's happy and we're happy for her too. I'm talking about kids who can't just tell you something good happened to them. They tell you what to think, instead of letting you decide for yourself."

"Aha," I said. "What made you think about that just now?"

"When I was getting your car keys from your office," she said, "I saw a letter on your desk. A guy wrote to you to say 'I'm the best software salesperson in Chicago.' I mean really, Mom. A grownup has to know how silly that sounds, right? Who could call themselves the best software salesperson in Chicago, or anywhere? How would anyone know that? It's juvenile. But the guy had a long resume. He must be forty-five years old."

"What do you think makes people talk about themselves that way?" I wanted to know.

"I guess if they don't tell you they're fantastic, they won't believe it themselves."

Wow, I thought. Not bad for fourteen years old. That's good training - she'll need these lessons later in life. "About the best sales guy in Chicago," I asked my daughter, "what do you think he really thinks about himself?"

"He probably hopes he's a good salesperson," she answered. "He probably wants to be one. I think he throws out that Best Salesperson in Chicago thing hoping that if he says it himself, it might come true. I feel sorry for that man. How is he different from a kid who says 'I'm the best singer in this choir?'

When someone says that, everyone else in choir rolls her eyes. Don't grownups roll their eyes when they hear someone say 'I'm the best salesperson in Chicago?"'

"You would think so," I said, "but grownups have drunk a lot of Kool-Aid that tells them it's perfectly fine to brand yourself that way, as silly as it sounds."

Just then the light turned yellow in front of me, and I rolled to a stop. The car pulling through the intersection in front of me, beating the light, had a bumper sticker that read STEP OUT OF FEAR. Isn't that the truth? I asked the universe.

We've been taught to brand ourselves with fearful zombie branding that screams "Look at me! I'm awesome!" when the human subtext of our branding choices says otherwise. No self-styled Dynamic Recruiting Professional or Results-Based Marketing Leader can convince us that he or she is a thoughtful, self-assured adult, because the fearful/boast-y branding tells us all we need to know.

Personal brands stuffed with praising adjectives like Savvy, Seasoned and Strategic tell us "I don't know you, but I have to let you know that I'm awesome, right off the bat." Robot language like "Bottom-line-focused professional" tells us that a person doesn't know what to say about himself, and so reverts to the done-to-death standard script.

Trophy-based branding like "A Stanford MBA and ten years at Google made me the branding expert I am today" says "I don't know who I am, beneath the degrees and titles." Superlatives like "I'm the best software salesperson in Chicago" make me want to hug a person and say "You are fine, whole and worthy whether you ever sell another piece of software or not."

We can brand ourselves like humans, just by telling our stories. We can do it in our LinkedIn profiles, in our resumes and verbally at job interviews and networking dates.

One of the strangest aspects of the Godzilla branding mindset is the mantra "People brand themselves using zombie language because that's what recruiters want to see." Really? That is not my experience - not by a mile. People who sound like humans rather than machines in their self-descriptions attract other self-assured and eyes-open people, including hiring managers, HR folks and third-party recruiters. What I get out of the argument "I don't like to sound so robotic, but it's necessary" is less "I don't think a human voice in my profile would help me" and more "I'm afraid to sound like myself. It feels very exposed to take off the Full Metal Business Jacket and tell my authentic human story."

Yet who wouldn't find it easier to say "I wasn't sure what to do after college, but my buddy knew a guy in software sales, I fell into and realized I love it" than to make up imaginary Chicago's-best-salesperson awards and confer them on ourselves? Isn't it more honest, and more humble?

Most of us have read the Personals ads at some point, out of curiosity if for no other reason. We wince at the men-seeking-women ads from guys who say "I'm so hip and sexy, chicks really dig me" and from women who write "I'm 40, but I look twenty." Ouch!, we think - is that the only way these people know to present themselves to the world?

It's no different in business branding. We've been told for years to lead with the good stuff in our self-descriptions, begging the question "What is the good stuff?" The good stuff, of course, is the real stuff - the human stuff. We can tell our stories, stay in our bodies, and relax.

The people who get us, deserve us. The people who don't like our stories are welcome to keep looking. We don't need them, and we'll get stronger when we glide right past them on our paths.

If you're wondering what a simple Story Branding paragraph might look like in a LinkedIn profile, here are two examples:

I grew up in big-company Sales management before launching my consulting business, Top Dog Consulting, in 2004. I help Sales leaders get the right people onto their teams and design sales-territory and sales-comp plans that let salespeople focus on customers instead of obscure sales metrics.

I just graduated from Loyola University with my BA in Sociology. I was a Resident Advisor for three years, playing mother hen to twenty-six undergrads, so I know something about human problem-solving in the clinch. I want to help a Chicago company as an inside salesperson or entry-level marketer. Tell me how I can help you!

We don't have to blather on about Strategic Initiatives, bottom-line results, cross-functional teams, multi-skilled self-starters and the rest of the Godzilla lexicon. We can just say "Here's me."

Does your LinkedIn profile bring across your human story, or is it obscured behind layers of corporatespeak robot language that sucks the human juice out of it? If you've got a Darth Vader-type LinkedIn profile and resume, I don't blame you, because countless articles and books have told us to describe ourselves that way. We are entering the age of the Human Workplace, and the Zombie Branding Paradigm is falling away. We can step into our own voices now, and sound like human beings everywhere we go

- even at work.

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Below is a poster to remind you of the kinds of stories you'll want to recall and have ready for your next job interview. You can use these Dragon-Slaying Stories on your resume, too! Have a wonderful week.