The Power of your Personal Leadership Brand
It’s a typical boss conundrum.
You’ve noticed a behaviour that needs… tweaking. You’ve decided the subject matter is sufficiently important to warrant a conversation. You’re dreading it. You want the problem to go away, without any (further) drama. You want to avoid offending the person. And you don’t want to get a reputation as a _____ (you can pick your own adjective here).
The reality is that this type of dilemma – the “how honest and direct can I ACTUALLY be?” conundrum – is one that plagues bosses and leaders all the time. It forms the basis of many of my coaching conversations with my clients. And my answer to that question always comes back to one concept – their ideal self, their goals and objectives, their North Star – which is all encompassed into their personal brand.
Similar to how organizations incorporate their mission, vision, and values into their branding, that’s what I recommend for my clients. Leadership, like branding, aims to influence. Whether you’re influencing someone to buy a product or service or fall in line behind a team goal, it becomes much, much easier if the person finds some kind of alignment with your personal brand. Likewise, when trying to have honest conversations about behaviour to be improved, information can be digested and accepted with far less emotional BS if the other person inherently understands (and is cool with) your motivations. If you’re not clear about your own goals, objectives, and the type of boss/leader/person you want to be, then other people are way more likely to jump to their own (maybe undesirable) conclusions about you.
Have you ever had a boss who was work-shy? Who had no idea what they were doing? Who had zero appreciation for the effort you and their other direct reports put into your jobs? I’d bet that’s not how they perceived themselves. Regardless, I’d also bet that you probably weren’t as engaged in your work as you might have been if you had more respect for your boss. And it would have been a lot easier for you to do that if your boss had been more intentional about clarifying and communicating their personal brand.
Whether you need to rebuild your reputation after a setback, you’re trying to reinvent yourself and reinvigorate your relationship with your team, or you’re new at “bossing” and feel overwhelmed, figuring out your personal brand is where you need to start.
This Wednesday, members of our new leadership development program (called “The New Boss”) will get access to a live masterclass that will set them up to create their personal brand. Because we believe so much in this content, we’ll make the masterclass recording available to all our clients.
That’s because we know that after taking a good hard look at their own personal brand, our clients can put any conversation jitters aside and opt for an approach that is very much “on brand” for them. That they can feel comfortable and confident when presenting their analysis of the situation. They can believe in what they’re saying, how they say it, and why they are saying it. That they can impart much-needed information (and incredible insight and awareness in the process) AND efficiently clear the way towards making the project/role/relationship a success. Because that’s what leadership is all about. THAT is the power of an awesome personal brand.
If you would like to chat more about your own personal brand, CLICK HERE to book a free consultation.
