Personal Branding On Conflict
In the recently attended seminar: “The 7 Keys To Unleashing Your Genius” I had a pleasure to experience live personal branding and differentiation in seminar facilitation that I have not yet seen before. The facilitator was building his personal brand on conflict. Starting with the introduction and opening messages in the seminar and following it through with personal life examples of both older or more recent disagreement and argument situations. It’ s a really different way of branding yourself as facilitator which I admit, have never seen before in my long facilitator and development events attender career.
The key takeaways of that workshop facilitation from facilitator’s personal branding perspective:
1. You get what you give
Its about positioning the audience at the very start of the presentation. If the facilitator says – “I expect you to be sceptical and to not accept what I am saying”, then he is most probably going to get it from the audience. The underlying message might have been – “Do not just take my words, try and test it out yourself”, and that said would be a better positioned opening to manage the scepticism in the room. But as the facilitator was building his brand on conflict with the audience, the intro positioning did it’s job.
Later in the seminar he experienced it himself as a play back in the exercise on the stage. He invited a lady from the audience to participate in a simple mind positioning exercise, and she made it difficult for him on the stage by being openly sceptical.
2. Brand on your talents
I think the facilitator has had personal branding coaching sessions with a good coach to develop his facilitation style. It was the purpose of the facilitator to be in a conflict with the audience in this event, as by character I could see he can easy get into arguments with people. So he was congruent with his nature and building his brand on his true talent. I think his sarcasm and scepticism might be well received in the British audience. My observation is that British people enjoy edgy humour. So he has well tailored his personal brand for the potential audience. The only thing – in London one should expect different nationalities in the audience with different expectations and appreciation to presentation style, so one may want to tailor their style accordingly.
3. Humour adds the value
Humour definitely helps to keep the audience awake on Saturday morning and get the insights through fun. The facilitator was an analytical sarcastic introvert himself, usually these kind of people pick up really good insights for an edgy humour. Adding the edgy humour to his evoking conflict facilitation style gave an opportunity to ease some conflict situations. Although, as seen, when not managed well, this edgy humour can facilitate further conflict opportunities.
As said in my previous blog post, there were quite a few good insights to take away from this weekend event. I took a learning for mindset development, coaching practice development and also learning of a different facilitation style. I love attending this kind of events for some inspiration and ideas, but also for constantly developing and enhancing my facilitation style.