Personal Brand Crisis

What’s a personal brand crisis? It can happen to you when you’ve been laid off. Or if you’ve made a big mistake. Or you’ve been publicly humiliated. Maybe you lost a fortune in the stock market or a business gamble. Or you failed to win something important, such as a crucial client account or an award you felt you deserved.

You can fall into crisis mode when your self-image has been shattered and it looks like you’ll never achieve your hopes and dreams. In personal terms, a crisis is an emotionally stressful event or a traumatic change in your life.

Sooner or later, everyone undergoes a personal brand crisis. Like any public relations crisis, it can be brought on by an accident, an omission, a scandal, a layoff, your own misbehavior or through no fault of your own whatsoever. Even if events are beyond your control, you may find yourself feeling depressed, fearful, confused, humiliated or desperate.

These are miserable emotions, but you may find you cannot stop yourself from feeling them. Life may seem pointless. You wonder whether you are a failure or one of life’s “losers.” Your reputation is in the ditch and you’ve lost your direction and sense of purpose.

It often takes a personal crisis of some sort to stimulate real change and growth in a person’s life. Knowing this fact intellectually, however, may not help you in the early stages of your crisis.

That’s why the first step you must take is to remind yourself that your personal brand is a self-created identity—not the real you. Your personal brand is a collection of images, competencies, experiences and values that others associate with you. It’s your reputation and your perceived value, not just in the minds of your public, but in your own mind. Because it is your personal brand that has been assaulted, humiliated, destroyed, overlooked or “harmed” in some way, the reality of the situation is that you are just fine.

Never identify too strongly with your personal brand. It’s not really you. It’s something you have crafted. And because you are the one who has crafted it, you can change that personal brand at any time. You are in charge.