How Do You Define Who You Are?

December 2023

Much like businesses diligently craft and protect their brands, each of us builds a reputation—for better or worse—based on our predominant character traits.

I once had a CEO who labelled me as fearless. Others have branded me as having infectious energy and a tremendous passion for everything I do. A public relations consultant once recommended my personal tagline should be Deb makes big things happen fast.

Do you have a personal brand or tagline?

I was recently invited to lead a career mentoring session for business students nominated by their deans or department chairs to attend a CEO Summit at Liberty University. Anxious to discover the issues undergrads are grappling with these days, I gladly accepted the opportunity.  

I found the young men and women in my mentoring session to be articulate, professionally focused, well-dressed, and eager to discover what employers and hiring managers look for when interviewing potential interns and new grads. I allowed the students to lead the discussion to ensure we addressed the topics of foremost importance to them. At the end of the session, I encouraged each mentee to take any one of my four leadership books as my gift to guide them along on their career journey. 

Several times over the next three days, I happened to run into one of these mentees, a sophomore strategic marketing major I’ll call Faith (not her real name). Whether she deliberately sought me out, I don’t know, but I gladly took the opportunity to continue our mentoring discussions over lunch or coffee each ensuing day of the conference.

Following each perchance encounter, Faith sent me a brief email thanking me for our time together. In each note, she provided an additional anecdote or two, highlighting her professional interests and outlining what she found most valuable from the guidance I had offered. 

Her bold yet polite eagerness and prompt follow-up impressed me. She was certainly someone I would consider hiring.  So, I offered to connect her to a few executives in the industries and functional areas she was interested in exploring for a summer internship. 

A few days after the conference, I noticed her name on my book sales report from this website. Faith had ordered the second of my two Women on Top books, to complement the first one she had selected as her gift at our initial mentoring session. She was clearly interested in learning more about what it takes to succeed in business and in life, which impressed me yet again.

A week or two later, Faith reported back that she had attended an in-person interview with one of the Virginia-based enterprises I had referred her to. She had also conducted a telephone interview with the Executive Director of an organization I referred her to in Florida. While each internship was quite different from the other, she was excited about both. Now she had the following quandary:

As I interview with the amazing people in these different companies, I’m eager to learn so much more, yet I feel so naïve about how I can actually make an impact.  I can speak about my future goals, aspirations, and passions, yet I feel lost in the plethora of routes I could take to kickstart my career. How can I narrow down my interests to determine the best internship for me? 

I’ve been reading your book, Strong Suit in which you talk about defining your personal brand. How can I define who I am and my brand without having any work experience related to my major?

When you were my age, working in the fashion industry, how did you define your brand and market yourself? 

Thank you for sharing your insights.

Undoubtedly, while Faith is eager to succeed in the business world, she is struggling with the same important questions many collegians grapple with. I realized that while each of my books can be as helpful to students charting career paths as they are for leaders at mid-career and seasoned executives still on the journey of pursuing their callings, nowhere do they address the most basic who am I issues that puzzle those just entering the starting gate. 

I responded with something like this:

Internships are about discovering the kind of responsibilities and work environments that make you happy, energize you, and give you fulfilment. Internships are a wonderful chance to practice your skills and talents in the workplace and learn more about yourself. While some positions and organizations may sound interesting and exciting, you may find that certain roles don’t leverage your strong suits, and some workplace cultures may not align with your personal values.

 Perhaps you could try out each opportunity over time. Accept one of them for this summer and then arrange to work the other one part-time during the school year, or next summer. That way, you’ll have two completely different work experiences before you graduate. With both experiences, you’ll be better positioned to assess the types of jobs and workplace cultures that could be the best fit for you when you graduate.  

 In my own case—working as a fashion designer in my early years—I defined myself as creative, harmonious, and goal-oriented. I discovered that while the creative design work enabled me to leverage some of my strong suits, neither the workplace cultures nor the nature of the industry aligned with my personal values. There was no way I could have known those things until I experienced it. Looking back now, I can easily see what I could have done differently, but that wisdom came only because of workplace experience.

 Discovering what clicks for you (or doesn’t) enables you to define (and later refine) your personal brand. Your personal brand may encompass your strong suits, your values, the kind of responsibilities and environments that energize you, your communications style, and more. Your definition of who you are should reflect your authentic best self.  

 If you need help to determine your strong suits or how others see your brand at this stage of your life, ask some of the adults who you respect and know well—like family members, your friends’ parents, your favorite professors. How would they define you? Then assess which aspects of those viewpoints most resonate with you.

 You have amazing potential. Whenever you look in the mirror, remember that God’s love resides within you. Let that love shine. And above all, to thine own self be true.