You have a personal leadership brand. But do you have the right one?

A leadership brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. If you have the wrong leadership brand for the position you have or the position you want, then your work is not having the impact it could.

We use the term “brand” deliberately. Acme Manufacturing can make the greatest widget in the world, but if few people know about the company or the widget—if neither has a strong brand—then that widget will generate little value. It’s the same thing with leaders.

In this article, which is adapted from our book Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value (Harvard Business School Press, 2007), we will show you how to shape a personal leadership brand that showcases who you are and what you can do.

1 Determine the results you want to achieve in the next year. Ask yourself, “In the next 12 months, what are the major results I want to deliver at work?” Take into account the interests of these four groups:

§          Customers: Identify customers who directly or indirectly receive value from the goods or services you produce. How can you add value for them?

§          Investors: What do they want? What can you and your group do to meet their expectations?

§          Employees: What employee outcomes do you seek? What do your employees need from you?

§          The organization: How can your team help the organization execute on its strategy?

We once worked with a very talented and hardworking executive we’ll call Judy, whose performance earned her a promotion to a general manager position. To succeed in her first large-scale leadership role, she knew she needed a new leadership brand.

She reviewed overall customer retention, satisfaction and revenue figures and called on three of the business’s largest customers to hear their thoughts on the division’s strengths and opportunities for improvement. She analyzed her division’s financial performance, assessed how employees both inside and outside the division regarded it, and thought carefully about how her business could contribute more to the organization as a whole.

2 Decide what you wish to be known for. From the following list, pick the six descriptors that best capture what you want to be known for.

Judy picked six descriptors that balanced the qualities that came naturally to her with those that would be critical in her new position, and tested her choices by sharing them with her boss, her peers and some of her most trusted subordinates. Their responses helped her refine her list to ultimately include: collaborative, deliberate, independent, innovative, results-oriented and strategic.

The list you put together may require you to stretch yourself in new directions, but be sure not to include traits that you do not believe you can ever truly exhibit.

3 Define your identity. Combine these six words into three two-word phrases that reflect not only what you want to be known for but also how you will probably have to act to get there. Judy combined the six descriptors into the following three phrases: Independently innovative, deliberately collaborative and strategically results-oriented.

This second list neatly pulled together what came easily to Judy with what she could accomplish through disciplined effort.

4 Construct your leadership brand statement and test it. Pull everything together in a leadership brand statement that connects what you want to be known for (Steps 2 and 3) with your desired results (Step 1):

I want to be known for being __________so that I can deliver ____________.

Judy’s read: “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 questions to see if your leadership brand statement 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? What will the brand keep me from understanding and doing?

§          Can I translate the qualities in my leadership brand statement into day-to-day behavior?

5 Make your brand identity real. After Judy defined her personal leadership brand, she shared it with others and asked for feedback, especially on her efforts at working collaboratively.

Six months into the job, Judy reported positive results overall: Her team members identified challenges with clarity, respected one another’s judgments, made hard decisions and moved forward together.

YOUR BRAND SHOULD EVOLVE

Your leadership brand isn’t static. Leaders with the self-awareness and drive to evolve their leadership brands regularly are more likely to be successful over the long term—and to enjoy the journey more.

Dave Ulrich is a professor of business at the University of Michigan and cofounder of The RBL Group (www.rbl.net), a consultancy in Provo, Utah. Norm Smallwood is cofounder of The RBL Group and coauthor of five books and many articles on business strategy, organization and leadership. They can be reached at MUOpinion@hbsp.harvard.edu.

Five steps to building your personal leadership brand

You have a personal leadership brand. But do you have the right one?

A leadership brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. If you have the wrong leadership brand for the position you have or the position you want, then your work is not having the impact it could.

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