We often talk about our personal brand, or our leadership brand. This is who we would like to be perceived as, as a leader.
Our brand is often tied to our Values, our Vision of ourselves as Leader, and our Personalities.
Recently I was thinking about my Leadership Brand, about how I would like to be perceived, and I started to define what I thought my Brand was. I think that this is a good process that we should all look to do, as we can then ensure that our actions are aligned with our brands.
We can also check whether our desired Brand is a aligned with our Values, and if it isn’t then it’s going to be very difficult for us to be Authentic.
Anyway, about half way through the process it occurred to me that what I wanted my Brand to be was irrelevant, as I have already been leading for many years, and I probably already had a Brand which people associated with me.
It was probably also easier, and better, for me to determine what my existing was and to see whether it was the Brand I was happy with, or whether I would need to make changes.
I decided that, as I have over 100 recommendations on Linkedin, it was probably going to be fairly easy to review these and see what were the recurring themes as this would be the strong components of my Brand.
As I went through the recommendations there were 9 key themes which kept repeating: Leadership; Simplicity; Passion; Focus; Challenging; Results; Partnership; Nurturing and Attitude.
This was my leadership Brand, as I reviewed this, I felt that this was a good reflection of what I wanted my Brand to be, and I also felt it was well aligned with my Values.
So this was a Brand which was Authentic to me, and one that would be easy to live up to.
In order to re-inforce the Branding, I selected a quote from the recommendations associated with each key theme, which I thought best described how I wanted live that characteristic, and I put them into a Branding document that I review regularly to ensure that I keep living my Brand.
This was great fun thing to do, and one that I can fully recommend.
You can also share your Brand with your team as a commitment as to how you will lead.
I have included mine here as an example.
Gordon Tredgold
Enjoyed the whole writeup plus the pic at the last was quite inspiring
Thanks Shivram, much appreciated
Thanks for sharing, truly inspiring and a very good refresh of what we should do to lead people…get back to the basics, get back to who you really are!
Ricardo, thanks for that feedback it really helps. I wasn’t sure when i wrote this post whether it would be of much interest as it felt a little more personal than informative. But i do feel its a good exercise, it can help to remind us of who we are, and how we are perceived. Personally it also helped me when i received criticism over my leadership style from my boss, that his was just one opinion, and that how i did things was appreciated by the people who worked for me, and it gave me the courage to continue to lead as people wanted me to lead rather than how my boss thought i should lead.
The feedback i have had on this one post has been very encouraging, and its interesting that the more personal stuff attracts the most comments 🙂
thanks for your sharing
You’re welcome mahmoud
Interesting…thanks for sharing this Gordon. The only question I have is on the sample….you took a LinkedIn recommendation as an indicator. How well have you known each of these…or how long have you worked with these people? what is the moral anchor for these people to tel you the truth?
Our Lord Jesus has also done the same thing…He asked his disciples who the people say he was…they told him what they thought who the people said he was…and later he asked them What they say about him/who he is!! For him the most important view was his disciples view….
Many of these are people that i worked with for several years, or I worked along side as business partners. Ofcourse they only tell part of the story, the ones who didn’t enjoy the experience or had negative views didn’t communicate them as recommendations, and if they did i possibly wouldn’t have shown them.
For me the point was more is the person i feel i am the person that people see, if the answer is no then why is that.
I also admit, that these qualities were also why some of the people didn’t like me or didn’t appreciate my style, but thats unfortunate becasue its who i am and i am not necessailry prepared to change as that wuld then put me in a position of being inauthentic which is a road to disaster :0