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By:

Divyaa Advaani 

2 November 2024 at 8:58:38 am

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not....

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not. It begins at the first point of contact, and in any business of real size, that point is almost never the founder. It is the assistant who manages your calendar. The sales executive who sends the first proposal. The person who handles your WhatsApp, the receptionist, the coordinator who confirms the meeting. These people speak for you every day, in your name, using your reputation, and most of them have never been told what that reputation is supposed to feel like. Many are loyal, hardworking and capable. That is not the issue. The issue is that nobody ever showed them what a first impression of this founder should feel like. Here is what a prospective client experiences. They do not separate you from your team. They cannot. To them, the speed of a reply is how seriously you take them. The tone of the first email is the tone of your leadership. A proposal with a spelling error, a late response, a careless "will check and let you know" becomes evidence about the person at the top. If this is how the organisation presents itself while trying to win my business, they reason, this is how it will treat me once I have signed. And they never tell you. They simply go quiet. The deal that stalls after a promising first call. The partner who becomes "busy". The client who chooses a competitor and offers a reason that has nothing to do with the real one. Across a year, that is every enquiry that stalled, every proposal left unanswered, every introduction that never became a meeting. This is a personal brand problem, not a staffing one. A founder can spend years refining how they present in a room and still lose the room before they enter it, because the impression was formed by someone else, in a conversation the founder was never part of and never heard about. The founders who avoid this are not the ones with the most polished staff. They are the ones who have made their brand legible to the people around them. Their team knows how the founder speaks, what the business stands for, what warmth looks like in a reply, how a delay should be explained and how a client should feel in the first thirty seconds. The team is not following a script. They are carrying a standard, because someone took the time to define it. When did you last experience your own business the way a stranger does? Not a test call arranged with your team's knowledge. A real one. Send a first enquiry from a number nobody recognises. Notice how long it takes to be answered, what the tone is, and whether you would want to do business with whoever replied. Then ask yourself honestly whether that person sounds like you, and whether you would be proud to be represented that way. If the answer is uncomfortable, it is worth acting on now. Every week of that experience is a week someone forms a verdict about you without your knowledge. Your personal brand is not only what you say. It is everything said on your behalf. If you have a suspicion about how your business is being experienced before you ever walk in, that suspicion deserves a direct, focused brand consultation, not a casual chat. Book yours here: https://www.calendly.com/divyaaadvaani/founder-brand-audit — Divyaa Advaani, Personal Branding Strategist (The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries. Views personal.)

Some lessons from recent violence in Nagpur

Writer: Praveen Dixit
Praveen Dixit
Mar 22, 2025
2 min read

Updated: Mar 23, 2025

  • Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram are being increasingly used to incite persons of certain community in couple of hours without any apparent preparation. Similar situation prevailed in riots in Bangalore & Delhi in recent past.

  • Vehicles like tractor trollies full of huge stones were rushed in from neighbouring outside places in a particular direction with a target of attacking particular community

  • Houses identified by Tulsi and vehicles having Ganesh idols were subjected to brutality & arson

  • Police officers were subjected to violent attacks including by axe, stones and swords

  • Swords from ancient period were available with a section of attackers. These continue to be stored unchecked.


    Lessons:

    Continuous monitoring of social media platforms either technically or by being members of groups run by suspected persons

  • Enforcing ‘Nakabandi’ to check movement of vehicles & suspicious persons towards a particular direction suddenly

  • Keeping adequate reserve police squads equipped with riot control equipment including helmets, shields, tear gas , and weapons to meet any contingency in sensitive police stations

  • Have ‘police mitra’ in huge numbers who can inform police about suspicious developments in advance and also work with police during riots

  • Police officers should not rush to such spots without helmet and adequately prepared , else they are victims and sustain serious injuries or even deaths

  • Constant dialogue with sensible leaders to avoid flaring up of tempers

  • Instruct corporation officers to ensure no construction material is allowed on roads as the same can be used as missiles

  • Remove road blockades including tyres regularly as it hinders movement of police, fire brigade and ambulances in emergency

  • Continuous preventive action against known bad elements who take disadvantage of such situations and create ruckus

  • Have regular mock drills , once in six months , by police even when there is peace to face such violent situations

  • Police also need to be more equipped during the month of Ramzan as most of the riots have taken place during this period. This is allegedly linked to incitement in the name of battle of Badr, where on 17 th day of Ramazan Prophet Mohammad had attacked his enemies at Badr.


(The author is a former Director General of Police, Maharashtra.)

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