When I was in my 20s I was working for LloydsTSB, a large UK based financial services firm.  The company was expanding at a fast pace and I had risen through the ranks very quickly, I was young and immature but very good at my job. 

At the time I was running a large operational group and had a lot of responsibility, this left me running at a million miles an hour, never stopping to recognise the impact I might be having on the people around me.

A few years later and I'd achieved a lot for someone my age and I was ready to take on a new challenge - I was pregnant with my second child Cassie and decided to take some proper time off to catch my breath as I'd had no maternity leave at all with my first child Amy. 

In a conversation with a colleague at my leaving party I learned that I’d earned the nickname of ‘the Ice Maiden’ during my time at Lloyds.  

This came as a complete surprise, I was shocked and disappointed. 

This was certainly not how I had ever viewed myself and not how I would ever want someone else to perceive me.

I went home from the party feeling emotional and a bit deflated.  Despite the warm ‘send off’ I’d received from my team I couldn’t shake this surprise revelation of my nickname. ‘Ice Maiden' was just so far off how I viewed myself.  If anything I would have considered myself to be too emotional, too connected to my work and my team and I had always considered myself a genuinely warm and caring person.  The thought of people calling me the 'Ice Maiden' when I wasn't around, hurt.

A few days after my leaving party I got in touch with a couple of my close colleagues at the business and asked them what was behind the nickname.  They told me that the people who knew me well saw the ‘real me’.  They saw the Elise who cared, who put people first, who let them into my world and generously shared everything I had.  

This was a comfort, at least not everyone saw me as cold and wicked!

However, this wasn't the impression everyone had of me.  Those not in my close circle, who didn't know me well thought that I was cold, aloof and unapproachable. I was seen as relentlessly single minded in the pursuit of goals and obsessed with metrics of success.  I came across as super efficient, organised and ambitious.  

Given these descriptors the nickname ‘Ice Maiden’ suddenly seemed reasonable.

I’d been in this business for 10+ years, so this nickname had been brewing for sometime.

Being at home for the next 6 months whilst I had Cassie prompted some deeper thinking on what was driving my behaviour.

What I realised was that I'd created a persona to protect myself and to emulate what I thought a 'successful career woman' needed to act like, in order to be successful in a male dominated environment.

And I needed to be successful.

My career ambition had been triggered by fear and necessity years earlier.

As a young woman growing up I'd always viewed work as something I would do until I didn’t need to do it anymore.  I envisaged myself giving up work for a long time when I had children as I assumed my husband would be the breadwinner. I thought I would tread a similar path to my Mum, having a small business interest which contributed in a small financial way and kept me from getting bored.

This plan evaporated at 26 when my first marriage fell apart whilst I was pregnant with my first child Amy.  Suddenly I was alone, in debt and a single mother.  

Suddenly I found ambition!  I HAD to get financially stable and secure for the sake of my baby daughter and I HAD to find something to focus on so I didn’t descend into the quicksand of rejection and failure.  

So I went to work with a new found ambition, focus and determination.

For the next 8 years I climbed the corporate ladder in quick succession at LloydsTSB.  I was laser focused, results oriented and determined to help my team to be as successful as we could be.  I was efficient and organised, as a single mother doing a lot of travel for work I had to have my s**t together! 

By the time I was 34 I was Director level, responsible for a team of 600+ and part of the senior leadership team.

Beneath the surface though, I was still a naturally shy introvert.  I'd learnt what it took to be successful - laser focused, results oriented and determined and this meant I was able to hide my true self behind that mantel of efficiency.  It was a comfortable mode to fall into at work.

It was only the people who knew me well, who saw my real self - the Elise I was at home with Amy and my family and friends.  I had two distinct personas and I thought this was serving me well until I learned about my nickname at that leaving party.

I didn’t like the me some people saw at work.  She was cold, calculating and prepared to sacrifice others for her success. 

This just wasn’t me

So years later, when Maxine, my first business coach asked me ‘what do you want to be known for?’ I knew for certain that I didn’t want to be known as the Ice Maiden! I also knew myself well enough by then to recognise that I would need to be intentional in building a different approach, because the combination of my ambition, focus on results and shy introversion led me to behave in a certain way at work.

I knew I needed to get clear on my intentions.

I had to establish what I wanted to be known for. 

I had to address the question of what did I want people to say about me when I wasn’t in the room? 

It was from this series of real life experiences that I started to get really interested in the subject of personal branding.  Over time I developed a practical approach to curating a personal brand in a way that is authentic, that leans into your strengths and that depicts a true version of you, but you at your best.

If you’d like to hear more about this and to use my 3 step process to creating your own personal brand check out episode 6 of Her Career, Her Life podcast.  You can find it on any podcast app and also here on my website.