How do I balance my personal brand and my employer?
I’m considering being more active on LinkedIn, speaking up, sharing ideas, creating content for other higher ed marketers. But I worry my boss might not be comfortable with me sharing my expertise publicly. Not because he’s against external visibility, but because of internal politics. How do I balance building a personal brand with respecting internal dynamics?
First things first: Just go for it.
If faculty can share their expertise, you can share yours. Whoever has a problem with that can @#$%&!
Also, it sounds like you’re not sure whether your boss would be uncomfortable. You could ask. I personally am not much of a permission-asker (Hi to my boss who reads this 👋). Sometimes asking invites rules that don’t really need to exist.
But honestly, in today’s labor market, a good boss won’t stop you from building your network and adding value to it, as long as you follow this one simple rule:
Share your expertise, not your institution’s.
If you moved jobs tomorrow, what would you take with you? That’s your boundary.
You can take your knowledge, instinct, approaches, opinions, and lessons learned.
You can’t take anything confidential, proprietary, or otherwise not publicly available.
Try these areas to start:
1. Share what you’ve learned over time.
I’ve been talking about email for over a decade. I’ve learned everything I know from testing, trying, failing, iterating at my past jobs. But I have never shared any of my employer’s actual comms plans or email copy beyond a few examples. And those examples are public, because they were sent to tens of thousands of people.
2. Share your perspective.
You can share your reaction to trends. Your thoughts about a particular topic. Your approach to a particular challenge. If you don’t want to rock boats, just don’t share something that contradicts what your institution does. 😇
3. Share tips about how you work.
One of my most popular talks (and a Red Stapler winner!) was about how to be more productive at work. It had nothing to do with the actual work — it was about how I managed my tasks and time. AI prompts and tools could fall into this category. Leadership lessons can fall into this category.
4. Combine two unexpected topics.
Bring in a part of you from outside work into your personal brand. Some of my higher ed faves do this in a way that’s so them:
Brian Piper’s newsletter always starts with a skydiving story that inspires his approach to his work.
Alix Nozzolillo often shares her learnings as master gardener applied to creativity.
Chris Rapozo has been sharing Proverbs translated to leadership reflections.
In short:
You owe your workplace integrity, not invisibility.
Start publishing! I can’t wait to see what you put out there.
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