Your leadership brand conveys your identity, distinctiveness, communicates the value you offer and allows all that’s powerful and effective about your leadership to become known to your stakeholders enabling you to generate maximum value across. The reverse is also true for the wrong/outdated leadership brand.
You can choose to re/create your leadership brand by:
- identifying what you want to be known for,
- Letting go off the tasks and projects that do not let you deliver on that brand.
- Concentrate on the activities that do.
Spend some time reflecting and writing down your response to the following:
Q 1.: What major results do you want to achieve in the next 2 years ?
Consider all stakeholders
Focus on the expectations of those you are working to serve.
Leadership brand is outward focused; it is about delivering results.
Q 2. What do you wish to be known for?
What are your identifiable innate strengths? What more strengths/qualities/characteristics would you want to be known for? List these down as descriptors for e.g.: Collaborative, Innovative, Result Oriented, Communicator, Inspiring, storyteller, strategic…..
Q.3. Redefine/Reinvent your identity ?
Experimenting with many combinations helps you crystallize your personal leadership brand. Construct two-word phrases that reflect your desired identity. What you want to be known for and how will you act to get there? What could you accomplish through disciplined effort?
4. Construct your leadership brand statement, then test it…
“I want to be known for being _2__and 3________ so that I can deliver ____1______.”
For e.g.“I want to be known for being independently innovative, deliberately collaborative and strategically results-oriented so that I can deliver superior financial outcomes for my business.”
Ask the following three questions to see if it needs to be refined:
- Is this the brand identity that best represents who I am and what I can do?
- Is this brand identity something that creates value in the eyes of my organization and key stakeholders?
- What risks am I taking by exhibiting this brand? Can I live this brand?
Deliver what you promise. Ensure that the leadership brand you advertise is embodied in your day-to-day work, check in with those around you. Do they see you as you wish to be seen? If you say you are flexible and approachable, do others find you so?
This exercise of forging a leadership brand and the day-to-day discipline of making it real will help you stay focused on the most important challenges of your role.
Your leadership brand isn’t static; it must evolve in response to the different expectations at different times in your career. In our work, leaders with self-awareness and drive to evolve their leadership brands are more likely to be successful over the long term — and to enjoy the journey more.