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Start Now to Build Leadership into Your Brand

Lodged within your broader image is your brand as a leader. Your reputation as a potential leader may take years to fully develop, but it begins long before you manage a team or have a lofty title. Even when you’re just starting out, your leadership reputation influences how much people trust you and whether they want to work with you.

It starts in small ways. You look like a leader any time you spot a problem, create a plan to solve it, and then execute your plan. You act like a leader when you treat other people with respect and you leave them feeling a bit more positive. And you can become known as a leader when you accept responsibility and follow through on what you promise.

As we discussed in Chapter 4, the full scope of your personal brand includes the impression other people have about you, from your clothes to your technical skills. The leadership component of your brand is particularly important because it’s close to your core values. If you have a strong leadership brand, other people will have faith in your ability to deliver at a high level. Beyond that, when you’re clear about the kind of leader you want to be, your own standards will help you to make decisions. And once you decide how you want to be known, it will be easier to focus on your highest priorities.

How to make leadership part of your brand

How people regard your potential to lead is a significant part of what makes you distinctive. Your particular aura as a leader may have a huge impact on the kinds of opportunities that come your way. This four-part exercise can help you define and project a leadership brand that will serve you well:

1) Create your vision of leadership. A simple way to create your vision of the leader you will become is to compile a list of personal qualities that you want to develop, and that you want others to see in you. Begin your vision by coming up with the names of leaders whom you admire; they could be teachers, bosses, or historic figures. When you’ve named three to five leaders, start your target list of personal qualities by asking yourself:

What characteristics set these people apart?

Which of these characteristics do I want people to use when they describe me?

Which of these qualities sounds most like me when I’m at my best?

2) Expand your vision list. Review the following words and phrases that many people have used to describe effective leaders, and add to your own list any qualities that strike you as important:

Always growing. The best leaders are constantly learning something new. It doesn’t have to be job related. Your development as a leader is tied to your development as a person, and the growth areas you pursue in your free time can impact the way you show up on the job.

Self-aware and good at building relationships. Research by leadership expert Daniel Goleman suggests that strong leaders are distinguished from the mediocre ones by their level of “emotional intelligence.” And that means you have self-awareness, like noticing when you’re too angry or distracted to handle a delicate matter. In his book Social Intelligence, Goleman says “we are wired to connect” with one another and by becoming more self-aware we get better at managing our interactions with others.

Positive. A leader’s attitude has an enormous impact on the team, and most people are more productive when they are around positive people.

Engaged. To lead we must be actually focused on the people and activities around us. Other people can sense whether we tend to stay present in the moment, which can influence whether they see us as genuine and charismatic leaders.

Service oriented. Leadership may begin with the feeling that you want to help others, perhaps by delivering what they need or helping them to succeed. The concept of “servant leadership” emphasizes attributes like kindness, trust, empathy, and the ethical use of power.

Well organized. Good intentions aren’t enough to deliver results. To achieve their goals, effective leaders develop work habits and systems associated with productivity.

Collaborative. There’s a big demand for people who can work well with others to achieve shared goals. One reason for this is that innovation is so often the outgrowth of a collaboration involving people with different views and skill sets.

Energetic. To be at their best, leaders must manage not just their time but also their energy. This includes physical energy, which is linked to exercise, nutrition, and stress management.

3) Study your vision list. Now that you have a list of the leadership qualities you intend to develop, post it in a conspicuous place and look at it frequently, including each morning. Because we tend to remember pictures more easily than words, some people like to create an icon to represent the characteristics they’re working on. Bill*, a client, came up with five attributes to define his style of leadership. For each one he created a symbol—a simple picture—to capture a quality he wanted to develop. Because he’s an avid biker and was training for a mountainous 100-mile ride, his symbol for “perseverance” was a triangle, representing a challenging mountain. Bill could glance at his sketch of those five icons and instantly recall the characteristics he hoped to develop as a leader. Eventually, to thank his wife for supporting his efforts, he had a jeweler find or create each of the icons in a charm. Then he was reminded of his growth path each time he looked at the lovely gold bracelet that his wife wore.

4) Act this way. A key to projecting your brand is identifying the attitudes and behaviors that will earn the reputation you want. Once your vision list is complete, a quick look will remind you of how to act. You might also consider a methodical way to practice the qualities on the list, one by one. If you’re working on several characteristics, you might try a flavor-of-the month approach. Let’s say you want colleagues to see you as reliable, creative, and positive. Go to your calendar and, for each of the next three months, choose one attribute to be your theme for the month. Now here is the most important part: If “be reliable” is your target for May, commit to a specific type of behavior to bolster your reputation for reliability. For example, you might plan to arrive right on time for every May meeting.

Your brand sets you apart from the competition. And your brand as a leader reflects and influences the way other people encounter your deepest values.