Adventures in Understanding My Brand
TL;DR: Brand isn't a role, it's what you bring.
Personal Brand - that’s my next challenge. On the surface it should be pretty straightforward - how do people view the value I bring, what’s the first thing that comes to their minds? It should be a nice tidy “Jeff is a ____ ____ of _____.”
Sure it’s a little bit complicated by the fact I’ve filled many different types of roles. There’s also certainly a modicum of constructively critical responses that would need to be factored in, but there must be a way to synthesize my value into a single crisp tagline.
Over the last few years I’ve spent a lot of cycles trying to decide whether I should position myself as a Senior IC, or as purely Management. I’ve enjoyed both types of roles, and I’ve received feedback that I’m successful in both types of role. It seems like I’ll need to pick one of these as my “highest value” proposition. Let’s see if I can break it down a bit.
On the IC (Staff/Principal/Distinguished) side of the scale I do have a strong technical background, I can dive deep where needed but tend to thrive in cross-cutting concerns. I really enjoy the problem solving aspects and will gladly argue the pros and cons of wire format A vs wire format B. However if you want someone who will obsess over the subtleties of event streaming implementations day in and day out, that’s not my bag. I like the problem end of engineering more than the operational side.
On the Management side I would argue that my strength is the ability to connect with, understand and motivate individuals. I can lean on my technical background for credibility with engineers, and use it to convey system concerns in business friendly terms to stakeholders. I find one-on-ones and skip levels to be far more useful than status reports, and by extension will tend towards excelling on the human side of management versus the bureaucratic.
Somewhere in those summaries has to be the seed of my Personal Brand - I just need to choose a role - pull out a strength and start expounding. Thankfully I was able to take a short bit of time off from being off of work. I traveled for a few days and had a few really interesting conversations. One thing kept poking up across each interaction.
One of the advantages of not being currently tied to a specific role is that I end up having wildly different types of conversations - and having them with the intensity I would bring into a quarterly planning meeting where I wanted to drive a specific outcome. These days I’m having conversations across books, aging, travel, place, experiences, music, AI, finding purpose, fiscal planning - all normal topics, but I have more time to focus on what I want to convey in these conversations.
When I was a child, my parents worried for a lot of reasons, but partly because I wouldn't talk very often. I could talk, but I didn’t. It took a lot of growing, living and learning for me to understand why. I tend to pull in as much information as I possibly can, process it and then when I’ve understood - respond. When I was younger that meant I wasn’t ready to respond in real time when someone tried to talk to me. By the time I was in my twenties I’d grown out of that delayed processing rut, but it had left me with a very useful skill. I knew how to listen, not just wait for my chance to speak, but pull in and think about what someone was saying to me. More than that, because I focused on trying to understand, I also became very comfortable speaking with others in their language. When you hear someone, and pay attention to what they want, you have a direct line to connect your skills to their needs.
In the end I think that might be the heart of my Personal Brand - it’s a blend of two interrelated skills. On the surface I’m a multi-tool, that’s where the technical expertise comes in - I can do ten things 90% as well as ten people can do one thing. That multi-tool is second fiddle to my primary skill which is Distiller. The reason I can fix broken things is not because of some masterful technical skill, it’s because I can listen to the things calling out the problem. The reason I can empower a team is not because I’m headstrong, it’s because I can understand the opportunity and meaningfully connect with the individuals who will deliver.
Across my career, when I’ve been at my best, regardless of role, I’ve leaned hard into using my voice to connect a group around a goal. Somewhere in that skill is my Brand. It really doesn’t matter whether I’m an IC or in Management, I’ll bring the same skill and create the same value. I still need to polish up a tidy tagline - but it’s been a relief to be unburdened by the weight of having to pick a path. It’s not that I don’t value expertise, rather that I am much more comfortable with my own.
Post Script: I'm always in search of feedback - especially the critical kind. I spend a lot of time in self-examination, but I've only got one set of eyes. If I've crossed your path and there’s something you think I could do better - definitely let me know.