A few summer tips to come back to business with intact reputation

So basically we don’t have to do anything for our personal brand, as long as we are in holidays, right? We took a vacation off our duties, our competent profiles and our connections that we always wanted to impress. Let them wait till autumn! We took a vacation off ourselves.

Cool, you might be right for the moment being. The problem is that you’ll still come back in business sometime…

Your personal statement is basically who you are so it’s not rocket science to imagine that your personal brand should not be far from your reality as a human being: your way of behaving, your temperament, your personality, your education and degrees, your body language, your field(s)of competence, your hierarchical position and even the significant other of yours, they all speak on your behalf when you expect the least. And they speak especially when the defending walls of your personality are down, when you’re relaxed and having fun. Your true nature might catch you off guard at any moment. How to be prepared for such unprepared situations?

Here are a few little summer tips for those who want to let go and still be in control of their reputation. All these tips refer not to what you have to do, but rather to what you have to refrain from doing. If you can, of course:

1. Resist the temptation to fill daily your FB profile with shots of yourself no matter how proud you are of your rightly tanned complexion. You might need a more professional look when you are back and people have this strange habit to remember what’s fresher in their minds.

2. Resist the temptation to bad mouth your employer over a drink or two. Your job and the company you work for define you after all and unless you are actively and overtly searching to change it, you should not hit the fan with anything …inappropriate.

3. Resist the temptation to fill your social media walls with transitory moods or small happenings, unless they are really noteworthy or charmingly framed. Chitchat of any kind fragments representations about a person and it does not fuel coherence. Use the time off to recharge rather than discharge small emissions on everything.

4. Resist the temptation to remain connected to the job. I personally might have a bias on that but whenever I see people that intervene in conversation threads from vacation I believe that they are bored with their significant other or not having fun at all. Except for exceptions, of course. There is difference between the vacations of a self-employed or entrepreneur and that of an employee, I know, but still. Etymologically, “vacation” means “empty, free or at leisure”. Why ruining such a blessing?

5. Resist the temptation to counterbalance in excess: I worked a lot, now I let go insanely or I sleep all day; I refrained from doing this or that, now I indulge; I had enough of this, now I totally forget. Our extremes create unreliability; they instill insecurity in others and de-balance us. Vacations are for refreshment not for total reboot. Unless sabbatical, of course.

What has reputation and personal branding to do with all these? Everything, if we admit that what we leave behind us is an authentic trace of ourselves in our journey through this world no matter where we are. Personal reputation is about knowing well who you are and behaving according to conscious goals in life, not about projecting temporary images here and there.  Vacations are for replenishment of self not for losing of self.  Vacations are not exceptions but an integrated part of our same long lasting personal reputations.