Choosing your profile

In every relationship, we show a part of ourselves that is a curated selection of our identity. We act and talk with friends in a way that is different from the way we do in professional circles. And that is fine. The same logic applies with our personal branding. We must curate the profile we offer to our public, and that is an exercise in choice.

What profilicity means

Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D'Ambrosio have given this curated face a name. They argue that identity today works through profilicity. We construct who we are by presenting profiles to an audience, and those profiles are validated by what they call the general observer, the generalised sense of how we are being seen. In their account, profilicity is a historical stage that follows authenticity. Authenticity locates identity in a true inner self that we express, while profilicity locates it in the profile that others recognise and confirm. For them, the second has largely replaced the first.

Moeller and D'Ambrosio do not deny the need for authenticity. They show the dangers of a profilicity that becomes fully inauthentic, and Moeller suggests that a profile should be performed and lived with a sense of detachment, in line with eastern traditions. My reading follows this caution. Taken to its extreme, profilicity becomes a dangerous choice, because it departs from our authentic self. In personal branding that is not sustainable in the long run. The public will know, and we will become exhausted. So I read profilicity in a way that preserves a sense of authenticity. The profile we present is a selection from a real identity, and the selection has to meet two conditions.

The two conditions of a profile

The first is relevance. The angle of yourself that you show has to matter to the public you serve. A profile can be true and still build no relationship, because it speaks to nothing your public needs. Relevance is what makes the profile useful to the people on the other side of it.

The second is authenticity. The profile you present has to be a real angle of who you actually are, not a construction assembled to please an audience. This is what keeps the profile sustainable. A profile built far from your real self will be found out, because a public attends to you over time and notices the gap. It will also exhaust you, because performing a self that is not yours is work that never ends. You choose which part of a true identity to make visible. The part is partial, and it stays true.

These two conditions make choosing a profile an identity act. You are deciding which true face of yourself to bring into the relationship with your public, and that decision shapes who you become in their eyes and, over time, in your own.

The judgement it takes

Choosing well here takes a particular kind of judgement. Aristotle called it phronesis, practical wisdom: the capacity to judge well in situations that no rule can anticipate. Which angle of yourself to show, to which public, in which moment, is a question you answer by reading the situation and weighing relevance against authenticity. Phronesis is what lets you hold both conditions together when they pull apart, when the most relevant angle is the least comfortable to show, or when the most authentic expression is far from what the audience is asking for.

That judgement needs direction, and this is where purpose and principles do their work. Nicholas Ind and Oriol Iglesias, writing on conscientious brands, describe how purpose gives a brand its direction and principles translate that purpose into consistent conduct. Purpose tells you what the relationship with your public is for. Principles keep the profile coherent across the many small decisions that build it. Together they stop profile-choosing from drifting toward whatever attracts attention this week.

What a profile is made of

A profile includes more than what you publish. It lives in how you behave, the subjects you engage, the positions you take, and equally in what you leave out. Everything you say, do, withhold or decline communicates, and your public reads all of it to form a sense of who you are. This is why a profile cannot be left to chance.

Built with care, your profile is how your public comes to know you as someone specific, relevant and real.