Leadership Branding

Today and for five days after, excluding the weekend I am going to look at and dissect the idea of leadership branding. I found the following article by the Harvard Business Review  and it gives five easy steps to setting up a personal leadership brand.

Leaders need to have a way to set themselves apart from other leaders. A way that will match your strengths to your career. A way to show others your leadership power and what you can do with that power.

The five steps Norm Smallwood identifies are the following:

• What results do you want to achieve in the next year?
• What do you wish to be known for?
• Define your identity.
• Construct your leadership brand statement, then test it.
• Make your brand identity real.

I will look closer at these five items and put my own personal spin on each one. When someone thinks of branding they think of products but leaders are products they are selling their skills and knowledge to the company, customers and community. You want a brand that will reach each of these.

Tomorrow we will look at the first step.