Being a leader means that you have walked a long way to the top. You now know what it takes and that very few people can make it there. And being there also means that it’s time for you to have your you-nique personal leadership branding. To tell the world how you articulate your vision and deliver results, while overcoming limitations and continuous crises, through challenging times.
Having a personal leadership brand is no longer considered as self-promotion, but as a leadership requirement. Until recently, it used to be the winners’ competitive advantage versus the rest, but current times demand a clear and concise personal brand. Nowadays it is a mandatory element in order to achieve trust and collaboration.
So, what is Personal Leadership Branding? It is what people say about you when you are not in the room. It is the impact of every decision you made while you were leading the way forward. It is the perception of others about you and about your footprint on the path to the top.
Personal leadership is about your responsibility of taking charge of your own life and responsibilities and letting the world know your real value in order to gain the hyper value of what you deserve. Part of growing as a leader is to be always ready to expand your capacities and strengths and to be able to share the improvement in a way that adds constantly to your value as a personal leader.
You might ask “Why do I need a personal leadership brand?”. Because your personal leadership brand communicates structurally who you are, what your values are, what you stand for. They are all things that you don’t want to let others define or misinterpret by their own criteria.
A personal leadership brand is your north star, your anchor. You won’t find it in a book, you have to craft it yourself. All the elements required to build it already exist: They are your values, your strengths, your credentials, your history, your reputation, your legacy, your vision. You will find them all in your soul, where your personal leadership brand also exists. Find it and, at the end, you will be compensated and be given the right opportunities, according to the perceived reality that you professionally shared to the world.
Building your personal leadership brand
Establishing your personal leadership brand drastically benefits several aspects of your professional identity and performance:
- You make a better first impression, which means that you amplify your ability to influence others.
- You can easier and quicker achieve your monetary and non-monetary objectives.
- You can create trust and respect among leaders’ groups, where you will be distinguished for your uniqueness.
- You can establish yourself as a thought leader, since your authenticity will be structurally communicated.
- You can create better networking opportunities among different opinion makers and power groups.
In order to design an efficient and effective executive leadership brand, you should first consider some critical questions. What results do you want to achieve in the next few years? What would you wish to be known for? Then, you should define your leadership identity, following three steps:
- Figure out the impact of your presence in your work and in the world.
This is all about both your physical and mental presence, your attitude and your readiness to take on new risks, overcome challenges and make a significant impact. It has to do with how you “show up” daily and for every occasion. Do you show up looking as a leader, acting as a leader, and with the attitude of a leader? Are you consciously ready for the next opportunity if it arrives soon?
- Define your big-picture leadership goal.
Leadership identity drives your decisions towards big–picture leadership goals. When defining your own big-picture goal, you have to ask yourself: What kind of person will you be when you reach that goal? What will be different, better? Now compare the mindset and decisions of the person you are today to that of the person you will become when you reach your big-picture goal. If you’re like most people, there’s a gap; your mindset and decisions need to be consistent with where you want to be, versus where you are today. It’s like the old saying goes, “What got you here won’t get you there.”
- Let your values, mindset, actions and responses reflect your leadership identity.
Values, along with the mindset, actions, and responses that go with it, shows up in your leadership identity. This means that they reflect on your energy in front of an audience, your attitude, your creativity levels, and your overall presence.
The final stage is to make your brand identity real, every day and on every occasion, business, social and personal. The creation of your personal leadership brand is based on some basic building blocks which are already part of your leadership identity: Your behaviors, your responses, your presence, your habits, become structural elements of your personal leadership brand, and make it similar to no other. They are the proof why you should not try to be unique, just be you-nique.
The essence of your brand is the story of you.
I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a brave act. A successful leader is the one who can look into him/herself, identify his/her uniqueness and his/her impact in the world and speak his/her own truth. Contemporary leaders seeking timeless hyper value of their reputation build their personal leadership brand methodically and define it via an executive leadership Brand Statement.
A personal brand statement is basically a catchphrase that says something about your expertise and what makes you unique. It gives people a quick glance into what you can do so they’ll be able to understand how you can be of benefit to them. And if it’s catchy enough, that’s how people are going to recognize and remember you.
A brand statement may differ, depending on the professional profile the leader wants to structure and communicate. If you want to be perceived as a Change Leader, you may be a “Master disruptor”, a “Catalyst for future-forward change”, a “Business transformer who creates calm out of chaos” or a “Turnaround architect for new technologies”. If you present yourself as a People Leader, you could be a “Transformational people catalyst”, a “Developer of the next generation of leaders”, a “Leader who makes leaders of achievers” or a “Leader who brings people and ideas together”. If you prefer to be identified as aResults Leader, you may be a “Builder of a culture where success breeds success”, an ”Enabler of great outcomes”, a “Closer of big business deals” or an “Evangelist for the power of advocacy to drive loyalty, growth and sales”. And if you choose to be known as a Service Leader, you can be a “Leader of change inspired by customers”, a “Passionate driver of outstanding design that users love and value”, an “Ambassador for ideas that change or improve our society”, a “Champion of the unseen” etc.
Being a leader who has created such a solid personal brand, you will always have a clear advantage over your competitors. A well-built and structured profile means easier access to resources, knowledge, information, opportunities that will allow you to achieve trust and collaboration, in order to pursue your professional goals and visions. At the end of the day, having gone up all this way, it also means that you will finally be able to gain the hyper value that you deserve.
Published on CEO CLUBS NETWORK MAGAZINE