Why your personal brand and authentic voice are frenemies

Now that we've discussed how to develop your online personality, let's tie in the concept of authentic voice through an article by CV Harquail, an organizational consultant and part-time professor at Stevens Institute of Technology.

What does she have to say about the recent push for personal branding?

"Back off, because too much attention to personal branding will stifle authentic voice."

What does this mean? Your personal brand and authentic voice are frenemies.

Personal branding applies the same marketing concepts of branding a product to a person, which means you are choosing which parts of yourself to feature and also which parts to sweep under the rug. To contrast this, here's how Harquail define authentic voice.

"Authentic voice is the expression of self that is created: when you speak your truth, when you tell what you know about yourself, when you argue for what you care about, when you tell the world how you see things from your unique perspective, when you argue for your own wisdom, in your own unique way."

This means that your authentic voice shows the best and worst parts of you. Notice the contradiction?

Here's where it gets interesting. Your personal brand needs your authentic voice, otherwise you'll come across as stiff and unrelatable. You need your personal brand thanks to today's constantly-online society that blurs the line between personal and professional. Your personal brand can save your authentic voice from making a fool of yourself since everything that goes online, stays online even after you delete it.

So can personal branding stifle your authentic voice? Yes. However, there is a healthy balance between developing your personal brand and having authentic voice. It's just up to you to find it.