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Ben Dattner and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic explain why the opinions of others shape our personal ‘brand’ and how to shape our digital personas for the best possible results in this article published in Harvard Business Review.

Who am I, really?’

Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists – not to mention poets and artists — have been trying to answer this question for centuries. The good news for business leaders is that they don’t need to turn into armchair psychotherapists, or get an advanced degree in metaphysics, to figure it out. Nor do average employees need to dig deep into their unconscious, or unleash their inner Freud.

In the business world, there is a far simpler way of working out who we are, at least when it comes to our professional personas: just pay attention to how others see us.

Social science research says that who we are at work is predominantly defined by what other people think of us: how they measure the success of our behaviors and actions, how they perceive our characters and motivations, and how they compare us to others. Whether we get informal advice from our peers, or partake in formal assessment-related exercises, there is no better way to pinpoint who we are at work than to crowdsource evaluations of our reputations and personal ‘brands.’

Points covered in this article include:

• Understanding the algorithm
• Social media posts
• Manipulating the algorithm

Read the full article and access interesting links in, How to Curate Your Digital Persona, on the Harvard Business Review website.