How do you make an impact in today’s very competitive job market? How do you survive redundancy? Have you noticed how some people have the ability to take command of a situation, successfully maintain their job, get promoted or when faced with setbacks, bounce right back with a new, bigger and better job?

What is it about these successful people? Certainly confidence, resilience and determination count, but they also understand how to integrate their look and non-verbal behaviours to compose and create a successful image. These people adapt beauty and fashion trends, and manage their body language to enhance their physique. They also develop a unique positioning strategy to enhance their career prospects by harnessing the power of colour, clothes, body language and posture. In short, they develop a unique personal brand.

If personal branding holds the answer, what is it? The brands that we purchase have visions, values, positioning and a personality. Brands succeed because they have real added values that are relevant to consumers and make them different from the competition. In essence, brands allow companies to build extra value into products and services and to differentiate them from competitors. Brands are a company’s most valuable assets. Personal branding takes the key branding principles and applies them to individuals. This gives an individual a genuine edge and can differentiate them from the competition for jobs, promotion or redundancy.

Your appearance, style and image, postures, gestures, facial expression and eye movement convey vital clues about your personal brand. So it is important to emphasise the right mix of physical attributes and attitudes to develop winning strategies which create the right impression. Overall, you need to create a consistent, visual experience that is pleasing to the eye. For a truly authentic look, you must examine your overall style, body language and behaviours. There are six key objectives which need to be addressed:

•    Identify and maximise your best physical qualities with your personality
•    Balance your look with colour and textures which complement your natural body shape
•    Create style and flair which emphasises your best physical and personality attributes
•    Live by your colour palette and choose complementary colours
•    Visually balance your look with appropriate body language
•    Deliver a believable and honest impression with behaviours that emphasis your brand image

Through personal branding, a positive self-image can lead to a cycle of confidence and success which can help you to avoid being clones or positioned in a neat restrictive category and to overcome stereotypes or prejudices. Personal branding instils confidence. The importance of personal branding is knowing that you can have the ability to control any situation with anybody in any place and time.

Lifexpression is a professional and fully accredited consultancy based in London’s Mayfair, which offers clients a one-stop service for life and image coaching, incorporating stress management and awareness in addition to personality awareness.

www.lifexpression.co.uk or tel: 020 7653 3635