Like it or not you have a leadership brand. Your leadership brand is what people really think reflects your behavior and effectiveness as a leader. This is based on what you do not what you say. If you don’t intentionally design your leadership brand there could be significant consequences. Intentionally designing your leadership brand brings the right alignment to what you want people to know you for and what they really know you for.
Your leadership brand defines your value and optimizes your influence and impact. It is never too early to establish your brand. Your leadership brand will evolve because it can be based in the context of what you are currently doing or can be redesigned to prepare you for what you want to be doing. Building your leadership brand will require you to focus, have discipline and thoughtful purpose.
Leadership Brand Design Plan
Following a leadership brand development plan will help ensure that you establish the right brand and that you live it. Complete each stage of the plan one at a time. This gives you the opportunity to evaluate, reflect, validate and fine tune your leadership brand plan. Before moving from one stage to the next, solicit feedback from your leadership customers and those who are committed and invested in your success and refine based on their feedback.
Laying out Your Leadership Expectations
Start with writing down what you and your leadership customers expect from you as a leader. Your leadership customers are your team members, your organization’s customers and superiors and peers. List the success criteria in your current role and your future roles.
Conduct a Self-Leadership Inventory
This stage requires you be objective, honest and reflective. Write down an inventory of who you are as a leader today. Use past assessments you may have received such as 360 reviews. In the first stage you should have also received feedback from your leadership customers on who they think you are as a leader in the present. From this inventory you will begin to understand your strengths and weaknesses and opportunities to realign your leadership customers perception. Where are the gaps between your self inventory and the feedback? Are there trends?
Design Your Ideal Leadership Self
Conduct a brainstorm session with yourself and think about the leaders you have worked with in the past. What was good about what they did? What wasn’t good that you should avoid or refine? Where do you aspire to grow towards and what would be effective qualities to possess to meet that aspiration? In this stage you combine your vision of effective leadership with what you’ve been exposed to either directly, such as working for great leaders or indirectly such as research, podcasts, trainings or other outside sources.
Messaging Your Leadership Identity
This stage is about crafting a public relations campaign that will be continuous. There are two types of messages about your leadership brand. One is what your leadership customers perceive of you and the other is the message you are delivering intentionally. Ideally these messages will complement each other. However, at the start, there may be gaps but that is why you are developing a Leadership Brand Plan.
Elements of Leadership Brand Plan Messaging
Body Language – Body language is important because it sends subtle clues as to your level of engagement, understanding and openness. This happens through facial expressions, eye movement, posture, gestures and the use of space. Mind your body language in all of your interactions to make sure you sending the message that aligns with the brand you a building. Additionally, the body language should complement the verbal language in social interactions.
Verbal language – It is as much about the words you use as the it is the tone and timing. Pace and pitch are important too because you want to make sure the emphasis is on the right words that demonstrate your leadership brand.
Words – This is establishing keywords, descriptions and phrases that accurately depict the leadership brand you are developing. These should be concise and represent the very essence of who you are as a leader. When choosing the keywords, consider how you would have to behave to bring them to life.
Craft Your Brand Statement and Test It
In this stage you will use all that was gathered from the previous stages to begin crafting your leadership brand statement. It is important that your brand statement connects what you want to be known for with how you will execute and deliver on your leadership brand. An effective brand statement accurately reflects who you are and what you do. It must align with your current role and the role you are aspiring for. The brand statement must provide value for your leadership customers and more importantly be something within your power to deliver on and bring to life.
Execute Your Leadership Brand Plan
The final and most important stage is to execute the brand plan that you have designed. This is how you will execute your brand in your day-to-day work and life. The best way to accomplish this is to share your brand statement with peers and your leadership customers and seek feedback on how they will know you are staying true to the leadership brand you’ve designed. Ask them to help hold you accountable to staying true to the brand statement.
Develop an action plan that outlines the steps you will take, if you are achieving them and that can be observed. In order to work the plan you have to be able to measure the steps you are taking to achieve the designed brand recognition. It is a best practice to develop a feedback loop in your leadership brand action plan so you can make the necessary refinements that will need to be made.
Leadership branding is a perpetual activity that will happen in multiple cycles throughout your career. Your brand will need adjusted in response to changing expectations that occur as your career progresses. The most effective leaders are the ones who are self-aware enough to act and grow in accordance with their leadership brand statements and evolving requirements of them as a leader at any given point in time.
