Disciples: These are your employees if you manage others. It can also include people you need to motivate to achieve your goals—even if you aren’t their line manager. The people who follow you and those you mentor are also in this category.

Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, explains the connection between your story and authenticity brilliantly, “We are our stories. We compress years of experience, thought, and emotion into a few compact narratives that we convey to others and tell ourselves. That has always been true. But personal narrative has become more prevalent, and perhaps

It’s your business developer. Replete with the right keywords, your LinkedIn profile attracts and connects you with people who need what you have to offer. You may not know who might be looking for you, but a profile packed with the right search terms will help you get found. It’s called “planned serendipity.”

“Be yourself, because everyone else is already taken.” —often attributed to Oscar Wilde

What makes you you? • What are your top values—your operating principles or your nonnegotiables? • What’s your superpower—the thing you do better than anyone else? • What energizes or ignites you? What are your true passions? • Why do you do what you do? What’s your motivation?

Vacuum it up. That means either take down the undesirable content if you’re the one who put it up, or speak to the owners of the sites where it appears and ask them to remove it.

It’s your agent. Often delivering the first impression to a prospect, your LinkedIn profile is you when you aren’t there.

Look up your colleagues. Search LinkedIn for people who have your job title and people who have the job title you would like to hold next. Record the keywords you see that are common to these profiles.

People with strong personal brands are explicit about who they are and who they’re not.