How People Actually Become Known: The Psychology of Association
I want people to remember me and I would guess you want the same, there’s nothing wrong with wanting this but we have to understand why we want it before it eats away at us. For me being remembered is what turns a good conversation into a stronger relationship, the type of relationship which means I get considered for opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise know about. The difficulty is that people rarely remember us in full, so instead of storing our career history, our range of interests and everything we are proud of, they hold a few simple associations that connect our name to an idea. Those associations do most of the work in rooms we are not in, which makes it worth deciding what we want them to be, since becoming known is less about how much people learn about us and more about what they connect to our name.
Familiarity, recognition and reputation
These three words are often used as if they mean the same thing, yet they describe very different stages of being known, and mixing them up leads many professionals to invest in the wrong activity. Familiarity is the lightest of the three and simply means that someone has seen your name or face before and finds it vaguely comfortable, which is what you get from a scroll past a post or a brief introduction at an event. Recognition goes further, because the person can place you and would say something like "I know who she is, she works in leadership development and personal branding", which means they’ve actually attached something substantial to your name. Reputation is the deepest stage and the one that carries commercial value, because it includes a judgement about quality and trust. People ware able to say what you do as well as why you are good at it and when they would turn to you. Most people who feel invisible are stuck at familiarity, since they have been present in many places without ever giving anyone a clear reason to move from "I have seen them around" to "I would recommend them for this."
Why repetition matters more than most people want it to Admit
The uncomfortable truth about becoming known is that a single brilliant piece of content or one great comment at a meeting rarely changes how people think about you, because memory is built through repeated exposure and the same idea has to reach someone several times, in several settings, before it settles into their mind as something they associate with you. Psychologists have described this for decades through what is often called the mere-exposure effect, which shows that people tend to develop a preference for things they have encountered repeatedly and that principle applies to professionals in exactly the same way it applies to brands. I try to explain this to my clients and actually didn’t realise that they was a term for it beyond me giving them frameworks and strategies to work with. The reality is that most professionals give up long before repetition has had a chance to work and they do so at the very moment that they are becoming tired of their own message, which is usually the point at which their audience is only just beginning to notice it. Discipline is key but it’s boring and it’s hard! Look, you’ll grow bored of saying what you stand for well before the people you want to reach remember the message but you have to stay focused.
If I were to ask you what you do how would you describe your work? Can you bring your work to life for me and make it memorable or is it vague? If someone were asked what you are known for and had to answer in a single sentence, what would they say, and would it be what you want them to say? For most people the honest answer is that it would be inaccurate, vague or borrowed from a job title, which means the association is being formed by accident rather than by design.
The one thing does not have to be the only thing you do, and it is better understood as the front door to your expertise, the clear and simple idea that gets people through the entrance so that they can then discover the depth behind it. A leadership coach might be known for helping first-time managers gain confidence whilst a personal branding trainer (like me!) might be known for building visibility in people who dislike self-promotion, and in each case the narrow idea earns attention that the broader body of work can then convert into trust.
Consistency without becoming repetitive
Many people resist the idea of consistency because they fear they will bore their audience and themselves! I get it but consistency is the foundation for which you will reap great rewards. We want people to develop an association in their minds about you that stays stable while the way you express it keeps changing. You can share a story in different ways on the same platform for instance or you might change the tone and style of your newsletter. You are allowed to adapt and evolve without staying stagnant. The audience experiences variety because the examples and formats change, while the underlying message quietly strengthens each time it appears, and this is how strong reputations are built without the professional ever sounding like they are reading from a script. Think of it as a single theme with many variations, where the theme is what people eventually remember and the variations are what keep them paying attention.
How ideas become attached to people
Ideas attach to people through the accumulation of stories, language, values and opinions that are recognisably theirs and each of these does a different job in the memory of the listener. Stories make an idea vivid and emotionally sticky whilst they way it is told through language makes it the story land. I also think that having distinctive values and opinions are probably the most underused because everyone is so afraid of shaking up the status quo. Holding a clear point of view, and being willing to explain the reasoning behind it, signals confidence and independent thinking and it gives people something to agree or disagree with or talk about but at least they remember you which is better than being forgettable.
I need you to remember that being visible without a clear focus makes no sense. You have to have a pattern and consistent flow that directly ties to your goals. This is why volume alone is such a poor strategy and why some people with modest audiences or social media followings for example can hold far more influence than others with large ones. Every piece of visibility is either building the association you want or diluting it, and it is worth asking of each thing you publish or say whether it helps someone understand more clearly what you are known for.
Marginalised groups, Black women and the association problem
The psychology of association does not operate neutrally, because the mental shortcuts people use to categorise professionals are shaped by stereotypes and assumptions that were built by years of maintaining a status quo rooted in prejudices. For people from marginalised groups, this often means that the association forms around those prejudices and not on seeing the individual as who they are. Women may be conditioned to be “nice” rather than authoritative because otherwise they’re penalised for going for what they want, a disabled professional may be seen first through their disability and not given stretch assignments because they’re infantilised whilst someone from a working class background may be assumed to be less polished than their peers from middle class backgrounds.
Black women face a particularly sharp version of this, sitting at the intersection of racial and gender stereotypes. Moya Bailey coined the term misogynoir to describe the specific forms of bias that Black women encounter in the shape of anti-Black racism. In a professional context for instance this can mean being seen as intimidating when displaying the same directness that is read as leadership in others or being asked to prove competence repeatedly in situations where a peer's competence is taken for granted. It can also mean that the same quality of work simply travels less far, because the informal networks that carry names from one senior room to another have historically not included many Black women, and so the introductions and recommendations that build reputations happen less often. I want to highlight that this makes deliberate association-building and personal branding especially important, and also more complicated, because a Black woman building authority often has to think about two things at once, the expertise she wants to be known for and the assumptions she may need to work against. Her visibility is important, in fact it is essential if we are to pushback from the status quo but I understand that it comes with risks and it would be remiss of me to overlook those risks.
The responsibility for change cannot sit with the individuals who are being overlooked, because it is unfair to ask people who already face greater scrutiny to do extra work to be seen. Those who hold influence have a practical role to play by recommending Black women for the expertise they actually have, crediting their ideas by name, commissioning them beyond diversity topics and using their own platforms to repeat the specific associations that these professionals are trying to build, since an association strengthens far faster when other trusted voices reinforce it.
Everything above leads to a simple but powerful outcome, which is becoming the person people think of when a particular need arises and that is the real definition of authority in a commercial sense - that is why visibility matters. To truly own your authority I want you to choose the subjects you want to own, express them through stories, language and opinions that are distinctly yours, repeat it patiently across every place you show up and allow enough time for the association to settle in the minds of the right people. The process takes longer than most people expect and it is rarely glamorous, yet it is one of the few forms of professional investment that keeps paying off. A strong association through a more visible personal brand works on your behalf and it is one of the strongest “muscles” you can build in professional spaces. Don’t lose track of its importance because that “muscle” can open doors that you’re not opening today but will hopefully open tomorrow.
If you’d like to work with me on your personal brand or visibility get in touch.