[MUSIC] Hi everyone, welcome back. So you'll recall we mentioned that personal branding it's not exclusively about self promotion. And in fact to limit it to self promotion might obscure ways to grow and develop your personal brand. And you'll also recall the importance of reflection. It's difficult to assess and reflect if you're always engaging in sort of rote self promotion. We noted, too, that personal branding implies building confidence to operate or perform in your area of expertise. To project confidence that you have the abilities and competencies to stretch into a new area. We discussed the importance of managing that impression as well. So when you're managing impressions, you're actually managing more than what others might think of you. In connection with the presentation of yourself, you're also connecting with others around you, or not connecting with them, as the case may be. Their impression of you, then, might be guided by fairly complex decisions made within professional and personal social interactions. So, as a way into this complex topic I would like you to know about trait affective presence. And this is a fairly new, and we think really exciting area of research. So an essential study around this area Eisenkraft and Elfenbein, suggest that everyone seems to have a tangible impact on those around them. And they can change other people's feelings in pretty consistent ways. And interestingly this parallels the Peters assertion that everyone has a unique brand. So the researchers all call this trait affective presence, that is how an individual, makes others feel in his or her's presence. And this is different, and this is really key, this is different then your own emotional state. So for sure human beings experience a range of emotions. But this concept is not about your inner world. It's about how you, make others feel when you're in their presence. And the study says that we can, independent of how we actually feel, impact those around us. And that the impact can be in fact be the opposite of how we feel. So in other words, generally happy people might actually have a negative impact on others. And those who might be more depressive in nature, maybe tend towards being a little more brooding or despondent can in fact nonetheless energize their colleagues. So let me give you an example to show you what I mean. Let's say you have a project that's due before the end of the day today and you budgeted time to finish it. So you're working away and suddenly you find yourself watching a silly video of a cat on the internet. And I'm pretty sure we've all seen these videos. So we have cats with hula hoops, cats chasing dog's tails. Cats sitting on tops of dog's heads. Cats and turtles, you get the picture. You can also know that I watch these videos all the time. So the video itself doesn't have any value for your project, and as a matter of fact it's stealing your time from the time you actually budgeted to complete the project. But you're still watching it, and you're still enjoying it, because they're cute. And it's usually easier to watch the cats than finish your project. So sometimes things appear to be positive, but they actually leave a negative consequence, and some things might appear to be negative, but they actually have a positive impact. The study also suggests that you might tend to consistently elicit the same emotions in people no matter your mood. Which is really an intriguing suggestion given our next discussion of forming and then managing brand impressions in a goal-oriented performance scenario, such as an interview. And then connected to this area, another researcher, Berrios, He's a PhD candidate and he's also studying sort of trait affective presence, only his research looked at speed dating, which for sure is an entirely different kind of performance. Speed dating, by the way is usually done in groups, where individuals have short conversations with each other on a rotating basis. And the idea is quick exposure to a maximum number of people with really quick impressions guiding any next steps or interest. So this research points to the idea that we're not the sum total, really, of what we think we are. Rather we might also be what we emotionally create in others. And again, this is a really, really important consideration when we're in a short performance phase, like an interview. So along of those lines, it might be worth it to ask trusted colleagues and friends what your trait affective presence is and then consider how that aligns with your personal brand. And how you might imagine the impression of that brand in an interview or another public setting. Do other people feel calm around you? Do you present with confidence? Do you feel like others have trust in your abilities? So we reviewed trait affective presence. The importance of really understanding how you make others feel in your presence. And how that knowledge connects to their impression of you as a colleague. Next, we'll look at how all of these concepts connect to performance, specifically in an interview setting, which for our purposes, might be the most important performance of all. See you then.
