Leadership Brand - What is it? Why is it important and How do you create it?

Your Leadership Brand conveys your identity, your distinctiveness and your value as a leader.

Do you know what your current Leadership Brand is?

How do you go about building the Leadership Brand you want to succeed as a manager of people?

In this Great Managers® MasterClass extract, Sandra Wood discusses the Leadership Brand what, why and how. You can hear the full MasterClass session below.

In this short Video, we discuss;

1. How to identify any thoughts that could be adversely affecting your Brand as a Leader

2. Getting clear on what you want your Brand to be as a Leader

3. Identifying and documenting the characteristics of your Brand as a Leader

Click above to download the FULL PODCAST of this Great Managers® MasterClass (Duration:19:26)

[Video Transcript Below]

What I’m going to show you in this session will increase your confidence and allow you to become the manager you’ve always dreamt of being in the shortest possible time.

Our MasterClass today is on Leadership Brand.

Let’s start with the question,

What is “Leadership Brand?”

Now some of you may have heard of it before, I’m sure you’ve all heard of brand before. But we’ll talk specifically about Leadership Brand.

Your Leadership Brand is how you’re known as a leader.

It’s how people perceive the value you bring to your role.

Your Leadership Brand conveys your identity and your distinctiveness as a leader. It’s what sets you apart from others.

It communicates the value that you offer as a leader.

If you’ve got the wrong Leadership Brand for the position you have or the position you want, then you’re not having the positive impact you could be having.

So a strong personal Leadership Brand allows all that’s powerful and effective about your leadership to become known to your colleagues enabling you to generate maximum value and get the results that you want.

What is your current Leadership Brand?

Most people don’t even think about this. They might have some vague ideas about it but no real clarity.

Great managers do think about this. And let me tell you, as a leader you do have a brand whether you’re aware of it or not and whether you’ve thought about it or not.

Your current brand is perhaps what your staff are saying about you when you’re not present.

So think about that for a moment; What do you think they would say at a family BBQ if someone asked the question – “What’s your boss like?”

If you don’t think about your brand and you don’t create it deliberately, then your brand will simply be an extension of your identity.

You don’t want to leave it to chance. You want to be more skilful, more deliberate in creating your Leadership Brand.

What is so Important about your Leadership Brand?

Now, you might be thinking why is this important? Is it really important to develop your brand?

The answer is “yes” and here’s why.

You always performed in a manner consistent with your self-concept. Your self-concept is taking form in your life every day.

It comes out in the things that you do, the things that you say and particularly in your way of being.

This is the term that we use often in the Great Managers® Academy – your way of being.

Your way of being is the way you step into the world.

It determines the way other people experience you. Your self-concept or identity precedes and predicts your level of success. This is the same for all of us, so this is why it’s very important that we know this.

As an intelligent adult, our Leadership Brand is the identity we decide to create for ourselves. So here’s how you go about creating it:

Reality-Check

The first thing that you need to do is become aware of any self-limiting beliefs you may be holding.

What do you hold onto from your past that may no longer be true?

I want you to find out what these thoughts are and reality-check them. I do this all the time when I’m coaching people. I get them to make their thoughts about themselves conscious.

I’ve had people say things to me like, “I’ve had a real fear of failing.”

So together we reality-check them and I ask them, “What evidence do you have to support that belief or that identity you have of yourself? When have you failed?”

Very rarely can they come up with any evidence.

Now this belief may have come from something a teacher said to them at some point a long time ago or an experience they had when they tripped over and got roused on or something a parent might have said to them. And they carry that through their life as if it were true.

A lot of the people I’m working with are quite senior leaders. So they’re obviously quite successful in their roles.

When I ask them, “What evidence do you have? When have you failed?” Sometimes it’s something that goes right back to their childhood, there’s no recent evidence.

So we reality-check it and remove what is not true and what does not support you.