India is currently under the world’s largest lockdown, with 1.3 billion people asked to stay home to combat the deadly Covid-19. These extraordinary, unprecedented and disruptive times call upon us to do different things, differently, thereby presenting us a unique opportunity to strengthen our personal brands.

How is a personal brand formed?

When people interact, they gather impressions about each other in terms of their expertise, creativity, communication skills and general demeanour. The collage that emerges from a combination of these impressions represents a person’s brand. A brand is the identity or the reputation that one enjoys in the minds of one’s stakeholders.

Think out of the box

The idea of making a short film with a strong ‘social distancing’ message had struck ad filmmaker Prasoon Pandey the day the lockdown was announced. Thinking out of the box, he came up with a novel approach for shooting the film without having anyone move out of their homes. Springing into action, he got his son to shoot a template of the film where he played all the characters himself. This template was then distributed to the actors — the who’s who of filmdom — to enable them to see each frame from close quarters and understand how to position themselves in a particular frame.

Taking cues from the template, the actors worked from their homes, getting a family member to shoot their piece. The director, the editor and the music director then collaborated virtually to stitch these pieces seamlessly together, to the tune of music. The film, thus made in the absence of any social contact, was a roaring success, receiving high acclaim. As for Pandey, his brand was further reinforced with the labels of creativity and quick action.

Stepping up to the challenge of engaging his team during the lockdown, Rahul, a talent management executive, implemented some creative and fun, virtual team engagement ideas. Starting with quick 15-minute, daily virtual huddles discussing themes like “your fitness mantra”, “engaging kids during lockdown”, “your greatest lockdown learning” and weekly dress-up coffee meets to “share funny pictures”, quizzes and online games, Rahul got the team thoroughly engaged, adding the element of “creativity” to his brand.

Be a go-getter

The lockout call spelt doom for the annual marketing strategy offsite that had been painstakingly planned at an FMCG company. The team was resigned to postponing the event to a more opportune time. But not Nandini! A senior marketing manager, Nandini was determined to make it happen as planned. Rallying the support of her IT team, she sat overnight exploring virtual meeting applications and presented a detailed, well-thought-out, virtual offsite plan to the marketing head, who, sceptical initially, gave his nod to the idea.

The marketing head kicked off the meeting by setting the context to the 35-member strong team that had congregated in a virtual meeting room. After a brief discussion, the group was divided into four cohorts, each tasked with brainstorming and action-planning around a specific issue. The four cohorts met in four virtual breakout rooms, getting together subsequently to present their stuff to the larger group. The meeting was a huge success. Nandini, with no prior experience in facilitating a meeting like this, augmented her personal brand with labels like ‘self-starter’, ‘go-getter’ and ‘willing to experiment’.

Be swift on your feet

With traditional sales channels severely curtailed as a result of the lockdown, a digital marketing executive, Mohini, at a manufacturing company, was tasked with getting an online sales platform up and running. The project entailed working with multiple partners and teams — an external technology team for designing and building the platform, logistics partners, the internal legal and finance teams and the teams at the depots and the factory on the supply side. The project, which would normally take 30 days, was in operation within 10 days. Mohini, along with her team members, had added swiftness, initiative and the ‘can do’ tag to her brand.

Keep your cool

Stretched to the brim and working on tight timelines, Aryan, an executive in the operations team, had erroneously sent the rate, instead of the pin-code file, to an external partner. Comprehending the magnitude of the error, his heart sank as he realised that he had committed professional hara-kiri. Steeling himself for repercussions, he wrote an apology email to his boss, Anubhav. But guess what? Anubhav responded saying, “No problem. Let’s move ahead.”

Job concerns, too much or too little work and constant use of technology for communication, coupled with domestic chores, can be frustrating and it is easy to lose one’s cool. But, by successfully managing his emotions, Anubhav demonstrated his emotional intelligence, not only catapulting a team member from being motivated to super-motivated, but adding the tag of “Mr Cool” to his brand.

So how are we conducting ourselves in these testing times? How are we contributing and how are our stakeholders experiencing us? The answers to these questions will have a bearing on how we shape our brands.

The author is an executive coach, an organisational development facilitator and founder director of Delta Learning

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