[MUSIC] Hi everyone. Welcome back. So we've been discussing the importance of establishing a unique brand and that many different perspectives from organizational psychology to industry and career experts. Suggest each of you has the ability to create your brand, one that's unique to you, one that captures a specific portrait of your talents, resources and capabilities and most of all your personality. So, having a personal brand though doesn't automatically mean success. You actually have to do something with it. And as Kaputa and other researchers suggest, if you do not actively manage your brand others will do it for you. And given the inaccuracies of human perception, let's not leave that to chance. When you own your story, you get to write the ending. But, what about how others see you? How do you work to manage the impressions they might get? So impression management is the topic and to help guide this study concept again, in sociology, social psychology, organizational psychology and so forth, and it's generally defined as the way you control and regulate information, to regulate the impressions of an audience. Or those behaviors individuals employ to protect their self-images to influence the ways you're seen by others or both. Also, it's sort of simply the strategies you use to actively shape how you're perceived by others. We really all do this everyday. But it's important to be aware of that and be cognizant of it. And again going back to the concept of reflection, think about how you're doing this in the world. So in other words, how do you at once stand out and fit in? And that kind of sounds contradictory but it might also make some sense to you and then we're going to think too about how you maintain the balance within that contradiction, manage how you're perceived by others, and all of that takes some very planned and thoughtful responses. So as Shepard notes, around 2005. In the process of managing your brand you might actually find some tensions between representing an organization and selling yourself. And Tom Peters, we discussed him earlier. He suggests that an employee might actually benefit from having some connections between their personal brand and the brand of the organization. And in fact organizations often endeavor to reach at this alignment through their own hiring processes. So you recall on earlier courses or on your earlier lessons, we spent some time on expert evaluations. This is just another example of that process. So I wanted to use myself as an example here, because its something that's actually really easy for me to talk about. So, I work for and was educated by universities in the State University of New York System or acronym is SUNY, S-U-N-Y. And if you were to, let's use it "Google" my social presence, my LinkedIn profiles and so forth. My expertise, my professional interests, my values, my private and public brands really all align with this system. I happen to deeply value access to a public education system and I think that it shows that I am very proud of both my employment and my education within this system. So that's an example. It's an easy example for me to talk about. It's an example of a little bit of an alignment between public and in my public brand. So how do you manage impressions. Remember that while you're managing those impressions, other people are actually forming impressions. So, the general strategies fall in to three general buckets. We have a non-verbal. Your verbal and your behavioral. So let's think about some answers to these questions. What is your body language like? You can see I speak with my hands all the time and that might mean something to some of you. How do you express yourself in spoken or written communication? Is your demeanor calm? Do you exude confidence? How does your behavior impact those around you? And then how do you interact with others? So again, reflection comes into play here. In 2015, so a very recent article, Kettler built on some of these strategies and suggested that impression management actually extends to, among others things, a display of your artifacts. So back to that idea, how are your skills displayed, how are they demonstrated? What do your online portfolios look like, your social networking, again, blogs, posts, professional websites, samples of your work, all of this increases your visibility and demonstrates your expertise and your unique brand potential. Another category is your personal appearance. And this can include conventions of dress appropriate for your desired position. We know that that can change depending on the position. And really sort of being attentive to workplace image, a neat appearance, and so forth. You should also think about your manner. What attitudes do you convey when you're speaking, when you're standing, when you're in a conversation with others? Do you look engaged? Do you look bored? Are you too casual in maybe more formal settings? Do you take opportunities for people to get to know you in slightly less formal settings? What are your facial expressions? How do cue that you do or do not understand a point? And do you have a good sense of cross cultural. Manner, cross cultural communication. Then there's verbal impression management behavior. And so Jones and Pitman suggest that these tactics can be assertive. So when you deliberately use tactics to promote desirable qualities. But they also can be defensive, and they're either used to protect or repair an image. So for example, if you were to engage in a bit of self promotion during in a staff meeting or in an interview, that's an assertive verbal impression management, right? And we would expect that in that context. So before we close these lessons, a few more things. Be careful of using flattery or overly aligning with an employer or an evaluator, for example, during an interview. That kind of impression management can really be obvious and a little disingenuous. And I think in the end does not exactly serve you well. So you want to be open, but not overly solicitous, I guess we could say. And then lastly, if you want how to assess how you might look to others, make a video. I have certainly learned a lot making these videos for all of you and the play back can be quite startling. For example, who knew I had these expressions on my face all the time? So what have we learned? We discussed that it's important to manage your brand and the impressions that brand might leave and we concluded with some strategies and concrete tips for effective impression management. So next up we'll discuss trait effective presence. See you then.
