April 14, 2025
Curating an beautiful private model isn’t about you.
Written By L. Michelle Smith, MS, ACC, CPEC
After wrapping up up my session on the BLACK ENTERPRISE Girls of Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, in March, I shared a bit one thing with the tons of of girls who attended the Branding Boot Camp. This strengthened my hourlong speak concerning the mechanics and techniques behind making a memorable expertise for the individuals they wish to impression.
Some individuals name that intentional expertise private branding, however there’s way more to it than that for leaders who wish to set up belief, loyalty, and advocacy within the individuals they work with and past–-especially for many who expertise life and work within the margins. These leaders wish to create lasting connections past first, second, or third impressions. They wish to be humanized and personalised, and that makes any grand gesture they make all of the extra genuine. That is the best way to create rabid followers.
Earlier than the assaults on affirmative motion and even the more moderen ones on variety, fairness, and inclusion, Black girls leaders, typically the “onlies” within the halls and boardrooms of company America, struggled with being seen or heard and so curating a private model that pulls the precise alternatives inside a corporation or externally can really feel extremely daunting.
A one-size-fits-all method to private branding usually leaves Black girls leaders, who’re already stretched past capability, struggling to publish extra on social media, trying to remain up on the algorithm shifts on enterprise networking websites or different extra tactical approaches. A few of these leaders–admitted introverts–squirm on the thought of mounting anybody’s stage to talk or may even query their potential or want to take action.
However what if the best way to face out in an area that usually others Black girls leaders or feels in any other case minimizing requires much less effort to be seen or heard on-line or off and extra effort specializing in one-to-one connections a pacesetter could make every day with small gestures? This may be one thing that feels private and way more significant than any talking engagement or humble-brag publish ever may. In spite of everything, the objective is model loyalty, not merely model consciousness.
It’s a aid to lots of the leaders I work with to listen to that a rare model actually solely takes two issues:
Emotional intelligence quotient (EQ)
The power to determine, articulate, and ship your worth excellently.
To place it plainly, it’s essential to be self-aware, capable of learn a room, empathize, and provides the individuals what they want persistently, unselfishly, and outstandingly.
In shopper branding, you could hear advertising and marketing professionals name this “shock and delight,” however for this reason one of the best and most beloved shopper manufacturers have devoted groups that take into consideration, dissect, and tweak their buyer experiences every day. It takes that sort of thought, even for particular person leaders.
Interrogating two ideas needs to be on the coronary heart of your efforts:
How do I would like individuals to really feel with every interplay they’ve with me?
What’s in it for them?
Emotional literacy, the flexibility to acknowledge and title one’s personal emotions in addition to these of others, is crucial on this course of and is a key part of EQ.
Creator and psychologist Daniel Goleman has stated, “The best leaders are all alike in a single essential approach: All of them have a excessive diploma of what has come to be often called emotional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technical abilities are irrelevant. They do matter, however…they’re the entry-level necessities for govt positions.”
So, not solely is integrating emotional intelligence into your private branding technique necessary for loyalty and belief, but it surely’s additionally a boss transfer that may catapult you to the chief ranks and maintain your time there.
So, what small gesture did I lengthen to the tons of of girls within the room on the Branding Boot Camp at BEWPS? How did I shock and delight them? How did I “put them of their emotions” to ascertain connection? I demonstrated thoughtfulness by in search of out a sponsor for my books for the guide signing after the session in order that they wouldn’t must pay for them. That sponsor was a beloved model with which a lot of the girls linked. They set free an audible gasp once I shared that former Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall of Marshalling Sources paid for the books. This freed us as much as merely give attention to connecting with one another one-on-one as they stood in line for greater than an hour. For some, that was a handshake and some variety phrases. For others, it was a hug and sharing a studying or a breakthrough from the session. Nonetheless, for others, it was an enormous smile and a photograph collectively.
Neuroscience says our brains and beings crave this type of connection. It immediately demolishes emotions of isolation. It fires up the neurotransmitter oxytocin, “the love hormone,” which causes people to bond. It’s the sort of bond that motivates and pushes you ahead in life and management. Feelings assist create recollections, and that day, we every made a reminiscence collectively over methods, books, and instruments that may impression their management journeys for the foreseeable future.
Curating an beautiful private model isn’t about you. It’s about the kind of intentional private experiences you create for colleagues, bosses, and stakeholders. It’s time we obtained out of our heads about private branding and into our emotions to place the individuals who matter to our management trajectory in theirs.
L. Michelle Smith is the premier voice in management on the apex of science and tradition. She is a neuroscience- and optimistic psychology-informed licensed govt and private coach and the creator of Sure Please! 7 Methods to Say I’m Entitled to the C-Suite, the upcoming Name & Response: 10 Management Classes from the Black Church (Amistad-HarperCollins/JVL Media, 2026), and different award-winning management books.
