https://neladunato.com/blog/personal-branding-neurodivergent-professionals/
How to overcome communication challenges and masking in order to create a genuine and appealing brand as a neurodivergent ADHD and/or autistic professional.
Hmm, I think that maybe there is a misunderstanding or clash of values here? That way I understand it, branding is a specific and required part of running a business. It helps create a separation between your work persona and personal persona. For example, unless they are directly related, I think it's generally important to not include your romantic relationship troubles in your business because customers are generally focused on the product/service. Like, I don't want to watch a YouTuber on physics that complains about their ex-partner in their videos. It's not that I don't want them to be a person, but I'm also not interested in relationship troubles when I'm trying to learn about physics. If we generalize this take, then whatever the YouTuber creates as their online persona on physics becomes their brand.
I think that this is also important for businesses that involve more that 1 employee. There has to be a unified personality that the customers will interact with. It tells the customers what to expect from the company, rather than having all sorts of different personalities and expectations that depend on the individual employee. That would be too chaotic, so a company that does provide a brand would likely succeed over one that doesn't. I prefer that a company treats me the same way every time, despite who I am interacting with in that moment. It also creates a sense of community, such as we do here. We have a unified set of values, rules, and expectations that help all of us come together on our commonalities, rather than the personal ambitions of each individual user in the moment. It's stable and only slightly impacted by our emotional state or difficulties we are experiencing day to day. And since we also have things that aren't common but still important to us, we could engage in other communities with those commonalities.
I can get the desire of wanting to be authentic and the repulsion of inauthenticity, but I think the article shares the same. It covers how to be more authentic as an ND in the current societal make up. I guess ideally, we could live in an federated anarchist society where people are seen as people and not businesses or means to a product and comfortable standard of living, but that's doesn't seem practically accessible at the moment since all of society would have to embrace it and we'd be fighting against the elite in power. Shoot, we couldn't even do it with the Reddit API fiasco. I think this article accepts the current societal situation we find ourselves in, and helps give guidance on how to achieve in it as a ND. How I find it applicable to me is that with the power I can achieve through the means covered in the article and by staying true to my values, I can help by contributing my little part to make an interdependent society that aims for mutuality and artistic expression, while limiting antagonism.
At least that's my take, but maybe I'm missing something?
branding is a specific and required part of running a business
I don't believe that this is true for every person and every business. I think I have a lot of trouble with the terms 'branding' and 'marketing' - this is something corporations do to make sure the red color of the logo and the font are always the same, and that the mascot matches the product range. Sure, you can do that, but there's enough professionals out there who cannot be arsed and are still in business.
For example, I work as a freelancer in an industry where branding efforts would just mean extra work. Agency clients find me over a portal, ask me 'Can you do x number of task y in such time?' and I'll just answer 'Yes' or 'No' with nothing but the utmost basics of 'Please', 'thank you', 'best regards' wrapped around. I send them the work when it's done, and an invoice, and they pay me. I don't even have an email signature. And I like it that way and wouldn't want to work anywhere where more effort is required.
Making sure you don't fail completely in your communication with clients is something every professional does, but that's not really 'branding' in my book, that's just acting professionally. The only difference I find is that as ND I have to be aware that 'acting professional' too much without having the freedom of making weird noises and wiggles brings me towards burnout quickly, and I have to organize my work life accordingly. And that's where her article can be quite useful I guess, to become aware that this can be a problem for NDs.
I dont stop being overwhelmed as a person when i get to my job. This reads like trained split personalities, no wonder so many sales and business people read as fake.
I found this article validating and insightful, as evidenced by my unhinged review of it in the chat lol. Thanks for sharing! Despite being diagnosed 9 months ago, I'm still in the process of self-discovery and unmasking 🎭->🤪. These articles that not only review common AuDHD behaviors and difficulties, but also give us permission to engage in them publicly are helpful and assuring. ❤️
The idea of creating a personal brand just sounds dystopian to me. I can't even stand social media. If I can't hold down a regular job, and I can't handle being self-employed, then where do I fit into society?
You‘re not alone. A lot of us have this problem. Some - like myself - can hold down a job for a year and reliably burn out after that. Being self employed is tough to no end but also a good alternative.
Talking about ND issues in society (and the need for countermeasures) doesnt „make them real“, they always were.
What this article does is pave the way for more discussion, research and a better tomorrow.
A few years ago I had a specialized photography hobby which turned into a small business. I enjoyed certain aspects of branding and really liked connecting with people who had similar interests, but the daily weight of interactions eventually bubbled to the point where I no longer enjoyed running things. I realized towards the end that I probably needed someone to handle all the interest and scheduling communications. This has happened with a few things in my life- the eagerness, excitement, and positivity of whatever I'm into gets snuffed out over time by the growing expectations to communicate with people interested in my work. It's made getting into new things difficult for me.