• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Engineering Management Institute

  • About
    • Meet Anthony Fasano, P.E.
    • EMI’s Mission, Vision & Values
    • Meet Team EMI
  • Content
    • Blog
    • Podcasts
      • The Engineering Career Coach Podcast
      • The Civil Engineering Podcast
        • Women in Civil Engineering
        • Civil Engineering Entrepreneurs
        • The Civil Engineering CEO Podcast
      • The Structural Engineering Channel
      • The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast
      • The Engineering Quality Control Podcast
      • The Engineering Project Management Podcast
      • AEC Engineering and Technology Podcast
      • This Week in Civil Engineering
    • TV
    • Videos
    • Books
    • Recommended Reading
    • Sponsors
  • Services
    • Training
    • Hiring Solutions
  • FE-PE Exams
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • Training

  • About
    • Meet Anthony Fasano, P.E.
    • EMI’s Mission, Vision & Values
    • Meet Team EMI
  • Content
    • Blog
    • Podcasts
      • The Engineering Career Coach Podcast
      • The Civil Engineering Podcast
        • Women in Civil Engineering
        • Civil Engineering Entrepreneurs
        • The Civil Engineering CEO Podcast
      • The Structural Engineering Channel
      • The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast
      • The Engineering Quality Control Podcast
      • The Engineering Project Management Podcast
      • AEC Engineering and Technology Podcast
      • This Week in Civil Engineering
    • TV
    • Videos
    • Books
    • Recommended Reading
    • Sponsors
  • Services
    • Training
    • Hiring Solutions
  • FE-PE Exams
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • Training

Personal Brand: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

April 25, 2022 By EMI

This is a guest post by Gabe Lett, FSMPS, CPSM, LPC

A personal brand is the perception a person has of you. Rather than the overall perception of a company, a personal brand is specific to you as an employee of your company. The reason for the elevation of personal branding has to do with the digital capabilities of social media and the ease of building a personal business network that spans geographies. The better you establish your personal brand, the more opportunities you bring to your company.

What Ingredients Make a Personal Brand?

A brand is simply the total experience people have when interacting with a company. What people feel and experience when they interact with a product or service makes its brand. Therefore, a personal brand is made from:

  1. Interaction with you personally
  2. Experience of you personally
  3. The emotion elicited when interacting with you and experiencing you personally

Interaction

Your interactions with others in your professional life are what create your personal brand. Interactions have a specific manner, energy, and frequency. The manner, energy, and frequency of your interactions contribute to what others experience.

personal brand

Experience

As others interact with you, they take away an experience. That experience can range from inspiration to boredom, intimidation to warmth, energized to deflated. How others experience you elicits emotion.

Emotion

How people feel is a major factor in the decisions they make and how they orient their life. When you interact with others you give them an experience, and that experience contributes to their emotions. Those emotions are then connected to you and your personal branding.

To know your personal brand requires you to understand how your interactions are experienced by others and how those experiences make them feel.

Why Is a Personal Brand Important?

Brands build on each other. Professional engineering has a brand. Civil engineering has a brand. Civil engineering firms have a brand. And each professional engineer has a personal brand. Therefore, your personal interactions give clients an experience. Those clients attribute how that experience makes them feel to you, your company, and your profession. As you can imagine, how you craft your personal branding not only affects you, but also affects your firm and the entire profession.

Realize that every engineer has a personal brand. Ignoring a personal brand does not make it disappear. It does not become irrelevant because you simply do not care. What clients experience and feel when working with you matters. It matters greatly! A personal brand is important for many reasons. Chief among those reasons is the contribution or deficit you create for your firm and your profession.

personal brand

If you consider your personal branding and intentionally work on the impact you are making on your clients, your colleagues, and society, the greater personal benefit you will enjoy. Here are some questions upon which to reflect to help you establish a positive personal brand:

  1. Do others enjoy speaking with you and seek you out for advice and help?
  2. When you make a surprise visit to a client, are they annoyed or genuinely happy to see you?
  3. Have you worked on listening twice as much as you speak?
  4. Do you work hard at optimism when engineering solutions?
  5. Are you genuinely interested in your client’s organization and its success?

The answers to these questions are only the beginning of focusing on your personal brand. The entire journey of your career either improves or deteriorates your personal brand. Continue asking yourself these questions. Gauge how your clients and colleagues are receiving you. May your clients’ experience of you create a positive personal brand.

About the Author Gabe Lett, FSMPS, CPSM, LPC

The AEC Professional’s GuidebookGabe is a people person. Making friends and connecting with people for mutual benefit is what he loves. Being with people and learning about them energizes him. He uses marketing and business development to benefit his employer, his professional network, and his friends. Gabe has served three civil engineering firms, utilizing these traits in people skills to help build the business. He brings several key benefits to employers, clients, and his network. Gabe is a self-starter and likes to initiate new thinking about solving problems. He also loves working in teams and encouraging others to be their best.

We would love to hear any questions you might have or stories you might share on your personal brand and why it is important..

Please leave your comments, feedback, or questions in the section below.

  • If you enjoyed this post, please consider downloading our free list of 33 Productivity Routines of Top Engineering Executives. Click the button below to download.

    Download the Productivity Routines

To your success,

Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
Engineering Management Institute
Author of Engineer Your Own Success

Related Posts

  • Overcoming Resistance When Developing Your Personal Brand
  • Find Your Genius Zone: The Ultimate Personal Brand
  • Developing a Personal Brand as the Jack of All Trades
  • Why You Need a Coach
  • Why Communication for Engineers Is so Important

Filed Under: Blog, Networking/Client Relations Tagged With: a personal brand is specific, craft your personal brand, digital capabilities of social media, elevation of personal branding, emotion elicited when interacting with you, establish your personal brand, Experience of you personally, Gabe Lett, Interaction with you personally, interactions with others, perception a person has of you, personal brand, personal business network, What people feel and experience

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

And Get Custom Content Delivered To You Weekly

PM Training

engineering management lessons

career readiness

Categories

  • AECT – AEC Engineering and Technology Podcast
  • Blog
    • Business Development
    • Business/Entrepreneurship
    • Career Goals and Challenges
    • Communication/Public Speaking
    • COVID19
    • Credentials
    • Enlightenment
    • Ethics & Integrity
    • Job Search/Salary/Relocation
    • Leadership/Management
    • Mentoring
    • Networking/Client Relations
    • News and Events
    • Organization/Productivity/Time Management
    • Personal Development and Professionalism
    • Program Management
    • Project Management
    • Travel
    • Work Life Balance
  • Civil Engineering
  • Engineering Career TV
  • Engineering Technology
  • TCEP-The Civil Engineering Podcast
    • Business Development
    • Business/Entrepreneurship
    • Career Goals and Challenges
    • Civil Engineering Entrepreneurs
    • Communication & Public Speaking
    • Credentials
    • Ethics/Integrity
    • Infrastructure
    • Job Search/Salary/Relocation
    • Leadership/Management
    • Mentoring
    • Project Management
    • Women in Engineering
  • TECC Podcast-The Engineering Career Coach Podcast
    • Business/Entrepreneurship
    • Career Game Changers
    • Career Goals and Challenges
    • Communication/Public Speaking
    • Credentials
    • Enlightenment
    • Job Search/Salary/Relocation
    • Leadership/Management
    • Mentoring
    • Networking/Client Relations
    • News and Events
    • Organization/Productivity/Time Management
    • Personal Development and Professionalism
    • Project Management
    • Work Life Balance
  • TEPM – The Engineering Project Management Podcast
  • TEQC – The Engineering Quality Control Podcast
  • TGEP – The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast
    • Tunneling Series
  • TSEC-The Structural Engineering Channel
  • TWiCE
  • Uncategorized
  • Women in Engineering

TECC Sidebar Featured Final

ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE

We Can Help You:

  • Build solutions to attract talented professionals.
  • Develop your staff’s people skills.
  • Create career roadmaps for your staff.
  • Provide PM training for your professionals.
  • Build custom development programs.
  • Scale sustainably.

Location:

50 E. Ridgewood Avenue #129

Ridgewood NJ, 07450

800-920-4007

Copyright © 2023 • All Rights Reserved • Property of Engineering Management Institute • Terms of Service • Privacy Policy

SPECIAL DOWNLOAD

33 Productivity Routines of
Top Engineering Executives

x