To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
–George MacDonald
Have you ever wondered how far your the trust of your personal brand goes? Or how many degrees of separation it can transcend?
Imagine that you’re pretty good at what you do and that you’ve even made a bit of a name for yourself in some circles. Then imagine that one day, one of your connections reaches out to you with a job offer — a good offer to do interesting work.
Now what do you think will happen when you start work and many of your colleagues don’t know who you are? Will they trust their colleague’s judgement in hiring you and give you the benefit fo the doubt? Or will your presence make them feel uneasy and threatened?
They’ll probably Google you to find out what you’re all about? What will they find? How do you think they’ll react to it? How do you think it’ll affect the way you do your job?
Do you think it’ll make them want to reach out to and engage you? Or do you think it’ll make them want to challenge you and find the chink in your armor?
After all, there’s so much more to your personal brand than just your credentials. There’s also your personality and all the pieces of it you leave online can end up coming together to make up the lion’s share of your first impression.
Your personal brand can do a lot to build trust, but how transferable is that trust? Will it follow you through the doors that it opens for you, or wil it get bogged down in office politics?
And how would you react to a new guy with a strong personal bran? Would you be cynical about all the smoke and mirrors they used to build it? Or would you be curious about who they really are and try to engage them?
