It’s not just companies, these days branding is applicable on a personal level as never before, whether you are a rock star, a rock star CEO or a wannabe; a college student, new grad or a working stiff trying to improve your lot; everything is about “the brand.”

Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace has a good post on the value of first impressions, since research has shown that there may be a second chance.

Part of branding is the impression you make, so I thought I would share a multi-decade observation on the subject that applies to everything—interviewing, public speaking, personal relationships—the entire spectrum of human interaction. It is neither good nor bad, merely human.

First impressions are generally based on personal prejudices and chemistry.

I’ve found the former can change from negative to positive based on further interaction, but that chemistry only changes from positive to negative.

For example, years ago I spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco; afterwards a woman thanked me and told me that based on my appearance she almost left. (I am nearly six feet tall and although not model thin I wasn’t plus-size, either.) She assumed that I would have nothing intelligent to say on the subject based on my size, but instead found my material valuable and my presentation excellent. Obviously, I had crossed several of her visual prejudices.

Chemistry, however, is entirely different.

Chemistry is not grounded in anything rational, not even personal prejudices, nor is it irrational—it just is.

Think about it; you meet someone and have an instant positive reaction to the person for absolutely no reason you can figure out.

It isn’t sexual attraction, since the person can be of either gender; it’s a psychological reaction along the lines of I want to know that person better and then acting on the desire because the chemistry is so strong.

When the chemistry is mutual, you experience that heady feeling of instant connection, whereas with bad chemistry people can’t even hear each other. However, positive chemistry can change the minute the other person opens her mouth and every thought and word turns sours your initial reaction.

As your own brand manager, here are your three critical take-aways:

• First impressions do count and shouldn’t be neglected on the assumption that you can change them later because you suddenly decide it’s worth the effort;
• chemistry is chemistry and outside of your control; and, most important of all,
• don’t hide behind chemistry and use it as a rationalization for not putting out first impression effort.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

Last week I wrote about both the need and approaches for management to communicate bad news openly and honestly. Wes Ball commented on the need to keep employees involved, which is what I was planning to talk about today.

The language of employee involvement keeps changing, so if you want to do more research, “engage,” in its many forms, seems to be the term of choice for now.

There are five basic rules that must be followed when your focus is to create, enhance or increase engagement.

Rule One: Engagement is based on trust. If employees don’t trust their management then management can forget about engaging its employees.

Rule Two: Engagement requires involvement. Asking for employee input after the decision(s) are already made is a con and breaks trust.

Rule Three: Engagement is based on fairness. Treating a select minority as royalty and the rest like replaceable dirt disengages everyone (including the royalty) and breaks trust.

Rule Four: Engagement requires management to make its decisions first for the sake of the company, second for the sake of the group and third for the sake of themselves. Done in any other order break trust.

Rule Five: Engagement requires courage, authenticity and genuineness (see Notes). Any form of lie/cheat/steal/trash breaks trust.

And while Rule One is the primary rule it is also the corollary of the other four.

Engaging your people, whatever your level of management, starts in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

No matter how well taught, implementing the mechanics of engagement can proceed no further than your belief in, and adherence to, the five rules.

If your MAP acknowledges a need to break the rules don’t waste your time on engagement efforts, because they are doomed to fail. That energy would be better used on recruitment, since your attrition rate will be far higher than any layoff could account for.

NOTE: Two of the best sources on engagement mechanics are Steve Roseler and David Zinger.

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Image credit: flickr