Building a Personal Brand That Communicates Your Value

In “A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand,” Harvard Business Review authors Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald make the case that personal branding is no longer optional for professionals. Whether someone is pursuing a promotion, applying for a role, building influence, or expanding their network, success increasingly depends on whether others clearly understand the value they bring. The article appeared in the May–June 2023 issue of Harvard Business Review under the subtitle “How to Communicate Your Value to the World.”

Executive Summary

Avery and Greenwald define personal branding as an intentional, strategic practice for crafting and expressing your own value proposition. Their approach moves beyond surface-level self-promotion and instead frames personal branding as a disciplined process of clarifying purpose, understanding reputation, shaping a narrative, communicating consistently, and refining the brand over time.

For business leaders, the article is especially relevant because personal brand is closely tied to executive presence, credibility, influence, and opportunity creation. Leaders who know how to communicate their value are better positioned to earn trust, attract sponsors, mobilize teams, and shape how they are perceived inside and outside the organization.

Major Takeaways

1. Everyone has a brand, whether they manage it or not.
The article emphasizes that a personal brand is the set of associations, expectations, and beliefs others hold about you. Ignoring it does not make it disappear; it simply leaves the narrative to chance.

2. Personal branding starts with purpose.
Avery and Greenwald recommend beginning with mission, passion, strengths, and the people you want to impact. A strong brand should reflect what you care about and the difference you want to make.

3. Reputation must be audited, not assumed.
The authors advise professionals to assess their personal brand equity by cataloging credentials, evaluating strengths, and researching how others currently perceive them. This gap between self-perception and external perception is often where the most useful insight emerges.

4. Stories make the brand memorable.
A personal brand becomes more powerful when it is expressed through clear, resonant stories. Leaders should be able to explain not only what they do, but why it matters and how their work creates value.

5. Consistency matters across every interaction.
The article’s framework includes embodying, communicating, and socializing the brand. That means a leader’s personal brand is shaped not only by LinkedIn posts or public presentations, but also by meetings, emails, introductions, feedback conversations, and informal interactions.

6. A personal brand should evolve.
The authors recommend reevaluating and adjusting the brand through periodic audits, including identifying deficits to address and strengths to build on.

Talking Points for Business Leaders

Personal branding is not vanity; it is a leadership tool. Executives and managers often depend on influence more than authority, and influence requires clarity about what they stand for, how they create value, and why others should trust them.

This article can also be used in leadership development programs. It encourages professionals to think more deliberately about visibility, narrative, credibility, and stakeholder perception. Those skills are especially important for high-potential employees, new executives, founders, consultants, board candidates, and leaders moving into broader enterprise roles.

Reflection Questions

1. What do people currently associate with your name when you are not in the room?
2. Is that perception accurate, compelling, and differentiated?
3. What strengths or contributions are under-recognized by your stakeholders?
4. Which stories best demonstrate the value you bring?
5. Are your communication channels reinforcing the same leadership message?
6. Who are the influential people who can help socialize your brand?
7. What part of your brand needs to evolve for your next career chapter?

Potential Action Items

Begin with a personal brand audit. List your credentials, accomplishments, strengths, values, and recurring themes in your work. Then ask a small group of trusted colleagues, mentors, direct reports, or clients how they would describe your distinctive value.

Next, develop a concise personal value proposition. It should answer three questions: Who do you help? What value do you create? Why are you credible or different?

Then identify three to five stories that make that value tangible. These could include a business challenge you solved, a team you developed, a transformation you led, or a moment that shaped your leadership philosophy.

Finally, align your brand expression across channels: executive bio, LinkedIn profile, internal presentations, speaking opportunities, networking conversations, and leadership meetings. Revisit the brand annually to ensure it reflects your current goals and the impact you want to have.

Recommended Similar Articles

“How to Build Your Personal Brand at Work” — Nahia Orduña, HBR
A practical companion article on making personal brand part of professional development and workplace growth. It appears in HBR’s personal brand topic collection alongside Avery and Greenwald’s article.

“How to Find, Define, and Use Your Values” — Irina Cozma, HBR
Useful for professionals who want to ground their personal brand in values rather than image management.

“The Brand Called You” — Tom Peters, Fast Company
A classic personal-branding article that helped popularize the idea that professionals need to think strategically about their reputation and differentiation.

“Building Your Personal Brand with Harvard Business School Professor Jill Avery” — Talk About Talk
A related podcast conversation with coauthor Jill Avery on why personal branding matters and how professionals can begin developing theirs.