Tell the world the way you want to be seen
How do you tell the world who you really are? How do you get others to see you the way you want to be seen?
If you want people to see you and understand you, then you have to show them your true professional identity.
The accurate translation of how you see yourself [via text, image, video or in person] into something others understand is the ultimate aim of discovering your authentic professional identity.
Then, the act of translation is where personal branding begins.
The right words in online profiles are helpful, but never enough.
When people ask me how their LinkedIn profile looks, I take it seriously, but I also yearn to see the colors, images, and sounds they surround themselves with to appreciate how their word choices come to life.
How To Tell The World Who You Really Are
A video post, a webinar, or a well-edited story about your professional identity can be a powerful statement.
When have you ever created something where you explicitly talk about how YOU SEE yourself and thereby make your identity more visceral and explicit to the world?
When have you ever made a recording about WHO you are in your career or work?
I've rounded up a few examples so you can listen, watch, witness, and study how others are conveying their professional identity with authenticity, clarity, uniqueness, and their special personality.
I chose diverse examples, one for each of the three types of professional identity: singularity, multiplicity and hybridity. This way, you can compare them for yourself.
NOTE: Each video has a “suggested start time” so you press play at the moment that is most related to where they speak about their professional identity.
How Singularity Sounds
SEBASTIAN VETTEL: F1 Race Car Driver
[Suggested Video Start Time: 0:25]
"Being a racing driver has never been my sole identity," Vettel begins. Although, it has been his sole professional identity.
He uses his retirement video to help his fans see the bigger picture of who he really is outside of racing and what matters to him.
At the 40 second mark, Vettel directly answers, "Who am I?" and goes on to list multiple "I am" statements.
Overall, this is a beautiful portrait, a simple black & white image against a stark background--nothing fancy or fussy. It places the emphasis fully on his identity through his words and delivery.
How Multiplicity Sounds
STEPH MANTIS: Photographer, Artist, Pizza-maker, Teacher, Entrepreneur, Product Designer, and Restauranteur
[Suggested Video Start time: 0:11]
My favorite part is when the narrator says at 12 seconds, "Am I missing anything here?" and the video cuts to a table of her photo equipment and pizza making tools, and you hear her listing six different professional identities.
This is an actual commercial, so it's 1:30min of fast-paced, well-edited storytelling. However, it does an excellent job of showing the many sides of Mantis.
Now, you may want to argue that Mantis seems to be more in hybridity than multiplicity because of how she blends together her different identities, but let's go along with this as multiplicity.
The video showcases her professional identities as discreet (and this time no personal or social identities are listed unlike Vettel). While it alludes to the significance of Mantis' photos of pizza, it doesn't go into the intersectionality of it.
Overall, you get a great snapshot of who Mantis is, and why she has so many amazing professional identities.
How Hybrid Professional Identity Sounds
NERI OXMAN: Artist + Designer + Scientist + Engineer
[Suggested Video Start Time: 1:46]
"Not only interdisciplinary work and researcher, but interdisciplinary person as well...she grew up between nature and culture." (min 1:46 in video)
[NOTE: Fast forward to 6:30min to see how Oxman takes four discrete disciplines and turns them into a circle to explain how she communicates her style of creativity. She calls it a new "occupation in the world...where art informs science, not just inspiring it."]
Oxman is a quintessential hybrid. Her identity is a convergence of existing forms into something new.
Oxman went to medical school before attending an architecture program, and then went into technology. Today, she's known for inventing "material ecology" a new field that transects science, art, design, and engineering.
Even the New York Times featured her in an article titled, "Who is Neri Oxman?" an appropriate way of conveying that her category-defying identity is the crux of what makes her intriguing.
This is a keynote talk turned video interview where Oxman has a conversation with the host about who she is. It's a loose, hour-long video, but it shines light on how she sees herself and how she's arrived at who she is in her work.
JOHN MAEDA: Technologist + Designer + Artist + Leader
[Suggested Video Start Time: 3:12]
"I've been curious about technology, design, art and leadership and how they intersection/overlap, and [I'll talk about] how I've come to combine these four areas into a kind of synthesis, an experiment." (min 3:15 in video)
Maeda is the former President of Rhode Island School of Design, so he knows about leadership. He also has a PhD in design, an MBA, and his undergrad is in computer science.
In this TED talk, Maeda explains that designers talk about form and content, content and form. At 11:25min he says, "It isn't about old + new, it's about 'something in between.' It's about what is good--a combination is where the action is at. You see this in all interesting art and business today."
At 14:33, he shares the latest computer sketch he wrote as his way of explaining how leadership can use design systems to bring critical perspective to an organization.
This is important: This demo is his way of showing his hybridity in action. The demo is what happens when he blends his professional identities together.
FINAL THOUGHT
Both Oxman and Maeda have tons of examples of their work available online, for good reason. This is where you can sense and comprehend what their hybrid professional identity is able to do, and it helps you see them better.
This tip is important for singularity and multiplicity too.
Portfolios, work samples, and stories of things you've created are the outcomes of what happens when you use your authentic professional identity.
Professional identity is an amalgam of your actions, behaviors, skills, beliefs, experience, and expertise all wrapped together.
If you want the world to see you and know you for who you are, you have to stop telling them. Instead, start showing them.
Make your professional identity visible, tangible and memorable. Pictures, videos, and work samples are critical to helping the world see you the way you want to be seen.
Go ahead, make a video and show the world yourself.