When Nonverbal Communication Impacts Your Personal Brand
The young professional’s world can be an exciting time, right? One minute you’re a post-grad at twenty-something sitting on the street curb with a backpack and a resume looking for a real job, and the next minute you’re sitting in a cubicle adjusting to your new corporate life. A life you’re not sure you can adjust to if the cubicle doesn’t grow a window in the next six months. And why is the desktop displaying a palm tree on a pristine island in paradise? Is this a mental strengths test? You change the display to a plant, that’s better.
Your first assignments begin stacking into your inbox like a Tetris game you never won. Spreadsheet after spreadsheet, formula after formula — as if the sales deadlines were playing laser tag against the planning deadlines. Multi-tasking is the name of the game. You got this.
Next up is the corporate meeting. This is where the game changes. This is where your natural and now refined (or unrefined) ability to communicate begins. But, you’re a junior associate — you’re not going to say anything.
You don’t have to say anything.
In fact, and most of us have heard the following before: “Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.”
And whether you’re in meeting one or one-hundred, whether you’re initiating first introductions or meeting a long-time colleague — we know that within those communications the human brain isn’t hearing everything. Instead, the brain is simultaneously processing cognitive, emotional and volitional levers all at once.
What’s your name again? When was that sales deadline? What’s the point?
The point is, we know what you say matters less than how you say it with your etiquette and presence.
The point is YOU. Your personal brand matters, because all that is your presentation is your brand; and thus, your business.
Next, let’s change the young professional’s backdrop from corporate to the entrepreneur bootstrapping at home (literally, at home where potentially her or his parent(s) live too).
This office isn’t too fancy, but there’s a window. Let’s say as a young professional entrepreneur you begin attending startup events around your city, and you begin noticing with some confidence two reoccurring personas:
Persona 1: The Experienced Startup Vet
The experienced, refined, educated startup vet with real insights and value to share. Yes, their egos can ooze; but from a birds-eye view, the conversations are smooth like coating wax effortlessly glazing over issues on fundraising, equity financing, traction-based success rates, “cutting through the fog,” and the list goes on.
When you follow-up with these experienced folks, you notice their emails carry parallels in tone, cadence, and mostly proper grammar. In other words, what you “see” from them in-person seamlessly carries into their concise emails. After all, success and generating revenue for your business takes MUCH more than engagement from Facebook ads, it requires refined communication skills.
Moreover, although we typically qualify the startup vet by their “value” and by their experience and “success,” and how they choose to illustrate those successes to us, we’re also qualifying their presentation by their own dress code. We make value judgements on the attire we assume they chose with their own volition for that occasion. Their presentation is holistic after all — and their own well-refined attire is as much their strategic communication as their story.
Persona 2: The Inexperienced Entrepreneur
Who are they? Like trying to sum up a classroom packed full of students from all backgrounds and races from all over the world, we also recognize it’s impossible and even absurd to sum up the inexperienced entrepreneur in a few sound bites.
However, we all know inexperience has a common, messy thread to it. Regardless of all that we are, our grandparents can spot “inexperience” when they see it, when they hear it, it’s there.
But inexperience can be okay, and even expected on the gritty and tough, technical stuff you simply haven’t learned yet. Understandable.
What hurts and even stains the inexperienced entrepreneur’s personal brand is the simple, easy stuff.
Such as…
~An unwillingness to simply show up, be generous, reliable, humble and display a willingness to lend a hand when needed — this can stain personal brand.
Instead: offer to help, it’s more fun being part of a team and a solution anyway.
~ Lacking proper tone, cadence, grammar, and overall dedication to drafting consistent communication via email — this can stain personal brand.
Instead, let critical messages bake overnight, or let a team member review before sending.
Putting those faded, tight, worn jeans into the drivers seat when they belong in the camping trunk — this can stain personal brand.
Instead, invest in and choose business professional attire as well as clean, proper fitted business casual attire.
After all, think back to a time when you spent thousands of hours preparing for a competition, a presentation, a test, or anything impactful in your life, and you lost. You lost because you missed a minor detail you ignored, a minor detail that wasn’t difficult. But at that time, it was an overlooked minor detail you felt was your great demise, and a great lesson learned in your youth.
Let your nonverbal communication skills be a strength and a reason you will win, because it’s a skill you won’t ignore.
Thanks for reading.
I would appreciate your applause 👏 if you enjoyed this story.
This article was written by Kristin Miller, Co-Founder of Colorado startup, InMotion Albums. InMotion was named a CES Innovation Awards Honoree in Digital Imaging in the same category as HP and Samsung, and was featured by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)™ hosted startup-themed broadcast media tour.
Want to learn more? Visit us at www.inmotionalbums.com.
Reach Kristin at kmiller@inmotionalbums.com
