Smith’s Personal Branding Workshop for Women MBAs Offers Advice

The Center for Leadership, Innovation, and Change (CLIC) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business recently hosted a personal branding workshop tailored for women in the Smith alumni network and MBA programs. “The Business of You” featured speakers Carolyn Covey Morris, Founder and CEO of QMobius Inc., a brand marketing and public relations firm, and Halina Caravello, VP of environmental, health, and safety at Tyco International.

The speakers explained the importance of developing a personal brand in order to build relationships, leadership skills, seek promotions and new positions, and starting a business. Other leadership tips Covey Morris and Caravello shared to the group included:

• Actively manage their brand vision
• Adjust their personal leadership styles to fit within the brand vision
• Look for cues about how others perceive their brand
• Understand that brands are not static
• Focus on strengths, not weaknesses when developing a brand vision
• Obtain feedback from others to make sure behaviors match the brand

The speakers also shared their top 10 tips for personal branding to those in attendance:

1. Everything you do creates an image and winning people do everything they can to manage the images and perceptions being developed about them. This is branding.
2. Branding is not about where you are today but where you want to go…your strategic decisions should always be a stretch toward your vision.
3. People buy on emotion, not just facts. Your brand strategy decisions need to reinforce the emotional quotient.
4. Branding is a top strategic imperative, not just a marketing and communications issue. Your branding decisions should guide you every day.
5. Impediments must be identified and addressed to execute brand strategies fully.
6. Your goals should be clarity, consistency and comprehensiveness in your brand strategies and subsequent communications about your brand.
7. Your behavior is the most powerful influencer on branding success.
8. You are your best branding tool and “brand ambassador” – living and promoting your strategic brand values enables your brand to thrive.
9. Successful branding isn’t just about making decisions that feel right, it is about making decisions that people will perceive as believable, achievable and differentiating by you.
10. Branding is in the minds of others and their perceptions are real. If your brand concepts don’t ring true to your audiences, your efforts will fail. The most important thing you can do in branding is listen.

Click here for more information about the Center for Leadership, Innovation, and Change (CLIC) at the Smith School. 

regions: Baltimore / Washington, DC

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