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Think of Your Boss as a Brand

You see the term all the time on the business pages of the newspaper or hear it used on television to describe something or someone in trouble. It’s called a brand. There are a lot of them out there. A country has a brand, the president has a brand, a corporation or an institution has a brand. So does a product.

What is a brand? It’s an image, an impression, a reputation. It’s not what you think you are or what you say you are. A brand is what you do, how you do it, and why.

This is an era of perception relevance. Investing in your brand is critical so that others will think well of you. If your brand, your culture, your policies, or your values are being questioned or are in jeopardy, one way to protect them is to build trust.

I like to think of it as a trust bank, like that piggy bank you had as a child and put your simple treasures in to save for the future. Focus on building trust first and restoring it second. If you have it in the bank, it is easier to repair the damage if you experience a setback. It’s a lot like preventive medicine. Keep your brand healthy with good care and feeding.

It doesn’t take much to tarnish a brand. It can happen to a company such as Toyota, to a product such as Tylenol, or to an individual such as Tiger Woods.

You don’t have to be Tiger to have a brand. Your boss has a brand. Why? Because he or she represents something or somebody. You have a responsibility to help burnish that brand.

You want your boss to be perceived as the best he or she can be. You want your boss to be seen as someone who leads an organization well.

It’s not only good for business; it’s good for maintaining relationships with stakeholders. Those stakeholders include the public at large, the community in which you live and work, customers, clients, government officials, the media, and, most important, the employees.

Successful branding is about providing information and education to stakeholders about what you do, how you do it, and why. It’s about promotion, but not the kind you buy. It’s about earning the attention of stakeholders by being the best you can be. It’s about having a dialogue with them so that they know about you and you hear what they have to say. It’s about having strong relationships with each and every one of the multiple stakeholder groups to which you are responsible.

It’s about unique and cutting-edge messaging that informs people about your boss and your organization and draws people to your boss and your organization. It’s about preparing messages that answer the who, what, when, where, and how questions that others have about your boss and your organization. It’s about having core values that you can talk about.

In this twenty-first-century world, the emergence of a new global information system has been so fast and so interlinked that everything a person or an organization does or fails to do about the brand is transparent and obvious to the stakeholders. One must stay ahead of that wave or fall victim to the current.

I have been responsible for the reputations of prominent people such as Bill Crowe and Colin Powell, the eleventh and twelfth chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’ve been responsible for the images of institutions such as the U.S. Army and organizations such as America’s Promise—The Alliance for Youth.

Each one was a brand each and every day in each and every way. I would ask myself continually what were they doing, how they were doing it, and why. I did that because I knew someone else out there would ask the same questions. These are questions that you need to ask yourself continually on behalf of your boss.

If you make your boss’s brand as bright as it can be, the two things you can build and maintain for the boss are reputation and credibility. The reputation is what others think of your boss, and the credibility is whether others believe in your boss. If either is lost, the boss is doomed. Your job is to never let that happen.

Managing a brand requires a lifetime of work. Brands are fragile, even the best of them. The success of any brand is not an entitlement; it has to be earned every day. It is often your most valuable organizational or individual asset, one worth building and burnishing.