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
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