How to Develop Your Leadership Brand
Photo by Paul Green on Unsplash
Your personal leadership brand comes together in bits and pieces over time. It can serve you best when you intentionally create it. Doing so will help you grow your career. With a personal leadership brand:
You become more focused on outcomes you care about, which is meaningful and satisfying.
You develop a reputation for others, giving them an opportunity to know when to call upon you. It creates "pull" for people to contact you.
You build true wisdom, making you more effective in the world as you act out of first principles.
You have a framework to rely on in stressful moments, when your mind becomes preoccupied with anxiety and confusion amidst high uncertainty.
How to Define Your Leadership Brand
Defining your leadership brand emerges from paying close attention to what happens around you in the work context. And how do you "pay close attention?" That emerges from a combination of focusing on the moment and reflection. The best mechanism for that is writing down what happens to you.
Here are a few possibilities:
Get a notebook and jot down your notes.
Use a journal. I like this one.
Take notes digitally using Notepad on your computer.
Use your phone’s default notes app.
Use a dedicated notes app. I like Obsidian.
Next, use these prompts to discover your leadership brand. Throughout the day (or at the end of the day), respond to one or more of these:
Notice what matters to you. What are you attracted to at work - what problems, types of projects?
What drains you? What activities are you involved with that make you feel tired or anxious?
What do other leaders do that you find inspiring and, conversely, off-putting?
How to Make Others Aware of Your Leadership Brand
Notice I didn't write "how to promote yourself." It's not about that. You bring unique capabilities that the world needs to resolve. You have ideas and an approach that others will find value. You simply need to make them aware.
Give a talk to colleagues at work, or a community group, or a professional organization. Use the responses you discovered about what is important to you.
After several weeks or recording your thoughts, review your notes. What themes jump out to you?
Based on this, make a short-term plan (one week, or even just one day) on prioritized work that consists of initiatives that matter to you.
Share what you've done: write a simple summary to your boss (and/or your team) describing the outcome.
Consistently tending to your brand will result in others’ seeing what you prioritize in your work. They will note what brings you life and over time, you will be increasingly looked to for what only you can uniquely contribute. This is your leadership brand.