Petty Branding: Navigating Ego and Embracing Constructive Feedback
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Description
Having trusted mentors and colleagues can help you stay on point and aligned with your personal branding. By embracing their feedback, you can overcome petty branding behaviors and maintain a brand that is both authentic and credible, even amidst challenges and faltering moments.
In the conclusion of this series on the Branding Room Only podcast, you’ll learn about the transformative power of feedback and its crucial role in realigning your actions with your brand values. Drawing from personal experience, I’ll highlight how constructive criticism from a member of your personal board of directors can act as a mirror, reflecting blind spots and areas needing improvement.
Chapters
1:15 - How feedback serves as a growth catalyst and preventative measure against petty branding behavior
3:43 - The realignment process I went through for my brand after a trusted colleague gave me feedback about my behavior
9:07 - Tips to help you incorporate feedback as a regular practice and the importance of self-awareness and accountability
Mentioned In Petty Branding: Navigating Ego and Embracing Constructive Feedback
Petty Branding: What It Is and How It Impacts Your Leadership
Petty Branding: Lessons from a Leadership Misstep
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Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by PGE Consulting Group LLC.
PGE Consulting Group LLC is dedicated to providing a practical hybrid of professional development training and diversity solutions. From speaking to consulting to programming and more, all services and resources are carefully tailored for each partner. Paula Edgar’s distinct expertise helps engage attendees and create lasting change for her clients.
To learn more about Paula and her services, go to www.paulaedgar.com or contact her at info@paulaedgar.com, and follow Paula Edgar and the PGE Consulting Group LLC on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories,
strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their
personal brands. Now, let's get started with the show.
Hi, all, and welcome back to Branding Room Only. I am your host, Paula Edgar. Thank
you for joining me for the final part of our series on Petty Branding. In the last two
episodes—which many of you have reached out about—we explored what Petty
Branding is and I shared my personal story of a time when I didn't show up the way I
normally do in my brand triggered by the actions of a new leader who I was
collaborating with.
If you haven't had a chance to listen to the first two episodes of Petty Branding series,
do go back and listen to them. It will help you give you the context that you need for
this one.
Today, I want to discuss with you the critical law of feedback and support in navigating
petty branding and how it helps to realign actions with our brand values. Many of you
know that as a speaker and consultant, I often work with leaders and do training around
feedback. Feedback is, I think, one of the key things that helps individuals and
organizations to thrive when there's a feedback culture.
It's essential for growth and improvement, both personally and professionally, and it
can serve as a mirror reflecting back the aspects of ourselves that we may not readily
see. Constructive feedback helps us to see our blind spots and areas where we may not
be living up to our potential or what our brand goals are.
Because of that, trusted colleagues and mentors, they can play a vital role in providing
feedback. The folks who are stakeholders in your lives, their insights, and perspectives
can help to help us stay aligned with our goals and personal brand values.
Now, that being said, as I mentioned before, receiving feedback is not always easy, but
it's crucial for realigning our actions with our brand values and our brand goals. When
we receive feedback, we gain that external perspective that can help highlight
disconnect or discrepancies between how we perceive ourselves, how we want to show
up, and how we are actually showing up and how others might be perceiving us.
It's important to have that realignment. It's crucial for maintaining a brand that is
authentic and credible in our professional and personal lives. The impact of feedback on
personal and professional growth and development cannot be overstated.
By embracing feedback, which I know is not easy, we open ourselves up to continuous
learning and improvement and to really realign ourselves with where we want to be and
who we say we are.
Having that growth mindset, not that fixed mindset, that willingness to learn and adapt
is really what differentiates successful professionals and their brands from those who
remain in that stagnant and fixed mindset.
Also, feedback can serve as a preventative measure against petty branding behavior.
When we're open to receiving feedback, we're less likely to engage in actions that are
driven by our ego or personal motives.
Instead, we can focus on the strategy and the strategic decisions that we have made
and are continuing to make to align our actions with our long-term brand goals and
values.
With that as our background, let me go ahead and tell you the final part of the situation
that I described in the last episode. As you recall, I said I showed up a little bit tired,
combative, and frustrated in the situation.
Again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go back to the other two episodes,
which are short. When that happened, a trusted colleague who was in the meeting that
I described in the last podcast, basically said, “I want to talk to you about your
behavior.”
She had witnessed my behavior and she reached out and said, “I want to give you some
feedback.” Initially, I was defensive. I have to tell you, I am used to getting good
feedback. I tell people about feedback. I talked to them about how to do it. So I'm not
used to being in a situation where I'm getting feedback that is constructive, that is not
what I'm expecting to hear.
So I was initially defensive, which is I think a natural state of being when somebody
confronts us with something that we're not expecting and talks about some way we
didn't show up or shortcomings that we may have had.
However, because I know this person and I respect this person so much, I knew this
feedback came from a place of support and respect, but brand-wise, it also came from
a place of surprise, which really helped me to listen faster and to get over that
defensiveness.
I took some time to reflect on what she was saying to me and began to realize that
there was a lot of truth in what she said, and what her observations were. That
reflection was crucial in helping me to understand where I went wrong and what I
needed to change going forward.
But I'm going to just keep it real with y'all, which I try to always be, receiving this
feedback was a very humbling experience. It reminded me that no matter how
experienced we are or how great we think that we are, we all have moments where we
falter.
The key is to recognize these moments and to use them as opportunities for growth and
improvement. So realigning my brand and my actions required some humility and some
reflections and self awareness, and being open in having a growth mindset and being
willing to change.
Here are the steps that I took in order to do so. Acknowledgment. I acknowledg my
misstep and I took full responsibility for my actions. I did. Reflection. I reflected on the
feedback, which was given with love and concern, and understood the impact of the
behavior that I showed on my brand and those around me.
Then I developed an action plan to improve my behavior and ensure that I showed up in
a way that aligned with my values going forward. Most importantly for all of you to hear
is acknowledgment and accountability should always go hand in hand with an apology
when you have done things that were not the way you expected to show up.
In this case, I knew that regardless of my feelings, I still felt that what I wanted to say
and the reason why I was upset was correct, the way that I said it and the way that I
showed up was incorrect.
So I reached out to the new leader, and I apologize. I said, “Sincerely, please
understand that while I disagree with some of the things that you're doing, I did not
show up in a way that I should have, and I deeply, deeply apologize that I did so. And
moreover, did so in front of others.”
So, I had to do that. Then I also, my last piece is I am, and I am always, committed to
being continuously improved. I want to seek regular feedback. The person who gave me
the feedback is someone that I consider a mentor and somebody who is very fantastic.
Checking in with her as well as other members of my personal board of directors to just
make sure that if there's any feedback that they need to give me, I get it. Also, the way
that I'm showing up is aligned with the goals that I have set for both my brand and my
values.
I'll tell you, there were positive impacts from those steps. In case you're wondering,
that leader did not accept my apology, and I’m okay with that. Again, it’s my
responsibility to acknowledge and to be accountable for my actions and it is their
choice and their ability to decide that that was not okay with them, and I’m okay with
that.
That being said, I was able to mend relationships with both one of my mentors, the
other folks who were in the room, some of who reached out to me to say, “That's not
usually how you are. Clearly, we should be concerned.” I thought to myself, “This is a
good reflection of my brand in this sense and that folks trust my brand so much that
they were able to say, “If Paula feels like something's going on here, we need to pay
attention to that.”
Not to fully override anything, but to be able to at least use it as a point of information
that they can rely on going forward. That was a helpful thing. After that situation, I'd
have to say that I was grateful for it, even though it was challenging when it happened.
I do feel, and I did feel since then, much more secure in my personal brand and in how I
feel about my values. I want to just remind you that incorporating feedback into your
daily practice is essential for long-term success, and it helps you to build your brand.
Here are some tips. Be open and receptive. Approach feedback with an open mind and
a willingness to learn. Seek feedback proactively. Don't wait for feedback to come to
you. Actively seek it from colleagues, mentors, peers, and other people on your
personal board of directors.
When it comes, even if you don't want it, be reflective and not defensive, and
understand that for the most part, most people will give you feedback out of love and
concern about you and your brand as opposed to out of frustration.
Reflect regularly. Think about the feedback you've received both recently as well as in
the past. How have you been able to incorporate that? Here are the things that you
need to hear, incorporate the changes, and continue to get better.
Then implementing those changes. Make sure you always have an action plan to
implement and that the actions align with your brand and your values. In doing so,
making feedback a part of your regular professional practice helps to build your
personal brand so you can stay aligned with your values and continue to grow and
improve, which is branding. Your brand should never be stagnant.
Throughout this series, we discussed the impact of petty branding and the importance
of showing up authentically and professionally. Here are some key lessons that I hope
you've learned.
One, can't say it enough, self-awareness. Be aware of your emotions, be aware of your
capacity, be aware of your connection to things that you're passionate about and how
they influence your behavior.
Being accountable. Taking accountability for your actions and impact on your brand.
Having support systems, mentors, and trusted colleagues to give you feedback and
guidance even when you haven’t asked for it, and flexibility, staying open to change
and being willing to adopt for the greater good. All of those help your brand so that if
you show up as petty brander or if you show up as a result of someone else’s petty
branding in a way that you don’t want to, you have something that you can rely on,
those steps.
Remember, feedback is a powerful tool for preventing and addressing petty branding. It
helps us to stay aligned with our values and ensures that we continue to show up in the
best possible way. That's what branding is. It's always striving for excellence.
Remember, even those of us like myself who literally live, breathe, and think about
branding all the time can have slip-ups. We're human. The key is to learn, adapt, and
grow from these experiences, which I'm pleased to say that I have.
I want to thank you for joining me for part three of the Petty Branding series. I hope that
you have found these discussions insightful and helpful, but I want to know, a lot of
you've reached out after the last two, I want to hear from you, have you found yourself
in a similar situation? If so, how did you handle that? I want to hear your stories and
your feedback.
Feel free to reach out to me on any of the platforms that I am on. I love it when you
reach out on LinkedIn. Send me an email to info@paulaedgar.com. Send me something
on any other platform or go to my website and use the Ask Paula link. Any of those
things will help.
But as usual, please like, download, share, and rate this podcast with your friends,
colleagues, family, and anyone who needs to hear or is petty themselves, and stay
tuned for the next episode where we will continue to explore personal branding and
share more valuable insights from leaders and influencers. Remember, for now, y'all,
stand by your brand. Talk to you soon.
