‘Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.’
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon
In 1933, a man benefiting from the total disarray of the political situation in a country crippled by one of the deepest ever economic crises was elected as the new German chancellor. He was passionate about his country and used simple, yet powerful rhetoric that resonated deeply with the frustrations, desires and fears of an increasingly unsettled and anxious German population.
He was viewed as a saviour with the ability to wash away the humiliation of the First World War defeat. His public presence was impeccable. He used controlled gestures, an engaging vocabulary and ways of speaking and flawless rhythm in his speeches. His rhetoric was never left to chance. He would systematically start in a lower tone of voice and finish shouting. The effect he always aimed for was to hammer thoughts into people’s minds. He had charisma and gravitas.
This man was Adolf Hitler and he led the world into one of the deadliest wars of all time. He changed for ever the notion of cruelty and crime towards other human beings.
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The brain contains about 180 billion neurons, processing information via 15,000 synapses per second. It is bombarded with millions of pieces of information a day, all needing to be assessed, filtered and stored – and this never stops.
The brain needs to be supremely efficient in order to cope with this. It also has a way of creating shortcuts for processing everything by using what is called a prediction filter, against which any information that comes its way is assessed. If it fits, then it is stored. A new storage process is only created when the brain receives error messages – in other words, when the stereotyping does not work any more. This happens when an individual disrupts pre-set patterns, forcing the brain to adjust. The more an individual demonstrates consistent behaviours, the harder it will become for the other person to remember any old behaviours. This concept is known as heuristics.
Why are these examples relevant to the concept of a leadership brand? Well, establishing your leadership brand requires you to package what makes you unique and make this resonate with your environment, as Hitler managed to do. You also need to be disciplined and consistent in your behaviours so others register or ‘store’ you in the way that you want, as the concept of heuristics demonstrates.
To develop your leadership brand, you will need to mix self-questioning and feedback, with tangible actions and integrate the notions of charisma and gravitas.
The concept of a ‘leadership brand’ is ultimately about making others see your value and allowing you to focus your actions on what will help you deliver on it.
Developing your leadership brand requires you to analyse what it is you want to be known for and want to stand for, while taking into consideration what you know about yourself. It also invites you to understand what leadership means in your organisation.
To adequately build your leadership brand, you need to follow the same approach of self-questioning, calibrating this with feedback and focusing on a tangible action plan that has been outlined in previous chapters.
‘I am honest in everything I do, I have a can-do attitude and I am known to be a good coach and push people to develop into the best they can do. I want my peers and my bosses to associate who I am with efficiency and execution. So I invest time in not only creating networks but also making sure everything that is thrown at me is treated with the highest quality level possible.’
Camilla Hartvig, Country President for AstraZeneca, Spain
This executive knows exactly what perception of herself she wants people to take away after meeting her. She also knows what perception she needs to create in order to continue her career journey onwards and upwards.
To aim towards achieving this level of self-awareness, it is important to look both inside yourself and around yourself. Being aware of how people perceive you and to act on their feedback will help you to develop. Investing time in developing a consistent and actionable approach is the ultimate step towards building a powerful leadership brand for yourself.
This is about leveraging your self-awareness and translating it into dimensions, actions or attributes that will allow you to be perceived as a leader. While it may involve focusing on your ability to deliver or execute, it might also be more geared towards softer attributes, such as demonstrating empathy or the ability to influence your internal and external stakeholders.
To look inside yourself, try answering the following questions:
The first question will enable you to ground your brand in delivery and address the needs of different groups. To answer it, think about how you can add value to what your customers, stakeholders, employees or investors need or want. Consider what you can do to meet their expectations, but also what they need from you.
The second question will allow you to work on how people perceive you. To answer it, look at the list of possible attributes below and pick three to six that you can or want to make yours.
The third question will help you to construct a tangible action plan at a later stage. It will translate your thoughts into actions and ensure you demonstrate what it is you want to be known for.
The name of this exercise comes from the idea that it should be possible to deliver a summary of a business idea in the time it takes an elevator or lift to get to the floor you want – approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
To adequately capture what it is you want to be known for, consider creating a statement of a couple of sentences or so that will act as your catchphrase or motto, your elevator pitch. The statement should represent a summary of who you are and what your values are and be concise and tangible. Remember, this is about you, not your business, and is for you to sell yourself. Here is an example.
If you were in a lift with the CEO of the company of your dreams and you knew she was looking for people, what would you say to her?
‘I am a driven individual, passionate about innovation in our industry and committed to delivering results.’
Equally, your personal elevator pitch could be given by someone else talking about you and then it could look like this.
‘… is a charismatic individual, thorough and with unyielding integrity, who has always delivered superior financial outcomes for the business.’
If a person who knows you was in an elevator with the CEO of the company of your dreams, what would you like them to say about you?
This is the second critical step towards adequately defining your leadership brand. It involves looking around you so that, ultimately, you can be in a position where you can harmoniously mesh who you are with the organisational culture in which you are operating.
To do this, you need to observe and absorb the culture around you. In other words, establish what it is you need to demonstrate to become a respected leader within that culture.
So, reflect on the following question.
This is helpful for gauging what you should aim to become and assessing the potential stretch necessary, given your natural aptitudes and abilities. To do this, you can look for leadership models in your organisation. Who are these people, what behaviours do they demonstrate, what have they achieved and how can you emulate them?
The corporate culture part of this step is very important to bear in mind, but especially when you are changing company or even moving from one part of the organisation another.
General Electric defines leaders as those who can imagine, solve, build and lead with uncompromising integrity. It praises the values of curiosity, passion, resourcefulness, accountability, a teamwork orientation, commitment, openness and being energising. The company is very pro functional technical expertise (marketing, finance, technology, for instance) and the use of teamwork to produce innovation and deliver results.
Royal Dutch Shell promotes a health, safety and environmental culture. It looks for leaders who are highly intellectual, can develop networks and promote consensus in the decision making process. It also generally wants to develop well-rounded individuals without putting so much emphasis on natural strengths.
So, if you want to be perceived as a respected leader, you will need to demonstrate different skill sets and attributes that align with the corporate culture in which you are operating.
There is a saying that ‘people’s perceptions are their reality’. Testing how your leadership brand works in your environment is critical. This is because how you see it and how others see it can differ, so it is important to expose your brand to others to check whether or not your perceptions are correct and recalibrate if necessary. Gathering feedback to make your brand more effective is the objective. It is recommended that you look for feedback within your organisation and reach out to external sources as well.
For truly comprehensive feedback, a good sample size is required. Consider making a list of seven to ten people you trust and respect in the following professional groups:
It is a good idea to add a couple of people from your personal network to this list for a balanced perspective and see how your corporate persona fits with who you really are.
With each member of your feedback group, present and discuss:
Based on the feedback received, rework some or all of your leadership statement. Authenticity is an important trait in a leader, so if you feel that some of the feedback does not ring true for you, try to slip into the shoes of the person who gave you that feedback and replay some of your behaviours. If you conclude that your behaviour was more circumstances driven than rooted in the core of who you are – qualify the feedback.
You may also consider speaking with external stakeholders, such as customers or investors. As this can appear awkward and put you in a vulnerable position, consider shifting the focus of the exercise. Do not ask for direct feedback, but give it a data-gathering format instead. Ask them what their expectations are, what attributes they expect to see in a person in your position and if they see you demonstrating them.
The questioning and feedback phases can be sequenced in any way that you feel comfortable with, as long as you consider both the personal and external dimensions and recalibrate your brand as required in an iterative process.
The ‘baseline’ is the natural or unaltered state of your leadership brand, your default position.
Starting from your natural state is another way to go about building your leadership brand. This will allow you to assess if there is any perceptual gap between you and, say, your feedback group. You will be able to compare what you think you are projecting with what they see.
It is helpful to remove any chance of bias, so make sure you do not present your feedback group with answers, but, instead, ask open questions to develop your brand. Here are some examples of open questions you could use.
This exercise is particularly beneficial if you are hitting a roadblock regarding your leadership brand and need to adjust it quickly.
In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell presents a new way of understanding why, at times, change happens as quickly and unexpectedly as it does. He describes what we could call a ‘recipe’ codifying how change happens. One element presented in the book is the ‘stickiness’ factor – that is, the attributes that give a particular message impact and prevent it from going in one ear and out the other. Gladwell likens such messages to catchy songs that you cannot get out of your head.
How can you make your leadership brand stick? By developing concrete actions and being disciplined about it.
Bringing your leadership brand to life really comes down to taking action and committing to exhibiting certain behaviours. It should be evident in the way you make decisions, choices and communicate. For every attribute you have decided to include in your leadership catchphrase, write down the tangible behaviours required and the action you need to take to make them happen.
Also reflect on the specific language you should start to use to get your message across and create the right perceptions of you. Only a mix of actions and ways of communicating will get you the results you need and allow your environment to experience the leadership brand you have or want to develop.
Here are some examples of things you can do to master this process.
Be consistent in your behaviours and sustain this for the long term. Heuristics is the term used for the human need to identify predictable patterns of behaviour in the world around us (facts), which then allow us to react to instances of these without having to analyse them each time. By establishing and maintaining a consistent brand, you can take advantage of this evolutionary mechanism that is hardwired into all of us.
Consistency is critical when you either want to create a particular perception of you or change people’s perceptions of your leadership brand. Once you have defined the actions and vocabulary that will convey your newly identified leadership brand, ensure you demonstrate them. Consistently use your chosen words in your interactions.
As a leader or aspiring leader, your impact will be measured as much by your behaviour in the most mundane situations – the fact that you say, ‘Good morning’ to everyone or walk into the office with a smile – as in the more obvious ones – such as in team meetings or in one-on-ones with your boss.
The Executive Vice President of Strategy of one of the big oil companies was always very aware of the impact he could have on others, and how this, in turn, could impact his leadership brand. He consistently made a point of calling catering staff by their names and asking how they were doing while ordering his coffee. This might have seemed rather unnecessary, or even irrelevant, as it did not have any direct impact on his business success, but, it helped create an overall perception of him as being a respectful and inclusive person and, hence, a respectful and inclusive leader.
Habits will make this perfect, but living and breathing your leadership brand will require discipline from you and constant awareness.
This is the title of an article in the Harvard Business Review by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood who list the following steps:
Once you have invested time and effort in building your leadership brand, you also need to keep it alive, as you are evolving and so is your environment.
The change in the General Electric company’s view of which attributes of leaders should be valued is a good example of how to keep your brand current.
Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, argues that the best leaders display the ‘Four Es’: very high energy levels, the ability to energise others around common goals, the edge to make tough ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ decisions and the ability to constantly execute and deliver on their promises.1
Jeffrey Immelt, Welch’s successor and current CEO of General Electric, adjusted the above definition, adding concepts such as imagination and innovation, and, thus, bringing the desired values into line with what is needed to remain competitive in today’s increasingly cut-throat world of business.
Environments change ever so rapidly – people even more so. All experiences and challenges will shape you as a leader or future leader. Success and failure alike will have an impact on you. Never take your leadership brand for granted, never forget the essence of the leader you want to be or the leader you want other people to see. If you do, you will probably let it slide and will have to start from scratch again. Maintaining your leadership brand is an ongoing process, by consciously thinking about it, it will help it become part and parcel of your leadership DNA.
Keeping the adjectives ‘disciplined’ and ‘iterative’ in mind will help greatly.
When it comes to your leadership brand, be deliberate in what you do and ensure you maintain momentum and focus on your actions.
This can be achieved by factoring in some kind of review mechanism with either your feedback group or on your own to keep your eye on the ball. Timing a review of your leadership brand with the performance evaluation process of the organisation can be a good way to go about it.
You will never stop evolving, changing and adjusting – never expect to be finished! It has been demonstrated that leaders with the self-awareness and drive to evolve their leadership brand continuously are more likely to succeed in the long term than those who don’t.
To keep you plugged in and evolving, you need to be able to quickly assess the following:
It is important not only to measure progress made but also assess what you want to keep focusing on to further enhance your brand or any new elements you want to start integrating to remain competitive or match up to a potential new job or career change.
This toolkit may be useful in times of crisis, when your leadership brand is no longer yielding the results you expect. Equally, if a negative chain of events has tainted your leadership brand, start with the questioning (see page 46), gather feedback, craft and deliver an action-orientated plan and get back on track.
It can also have great impact when you embark on your brand transition – in other words, when you are using a career change to reinvent yourself.
In the Harvard Business Review article (March 2011) ‘Spotlight on landing the next big job: Reinventing your personal brand’, Dorie Clark presents five key steps for any personal rebranding:
It would be interesting to integrate these into any new brand building exercise. Be aware that traces of your old brand may linger, but a carefully considered strategy and the ability to create unique value in your changed role will help your new brand stick.
The best example of the power of rebuilding a brand remains Michael Milken, who was once best known as a 1980s high-flyer, jailed for securities violations. However, his long-term efforts have dramatically redeemed his reputation. In the course of more than three decades of committed philanthropy, he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to combat prostate cancer, melanoma, epilepsy and more, earning him a 2004 Fortune cover story – and huge rebrand – as ‘The man who changed medicine’.
What, then, is it important to keep in mind?
The essence of the influences on your leadership brand are expressed in Figure 5.1.
Your leadership brand needs to be rooted in what comes naturally to you, based on your natural strengths. It also needs to serve a purpose and deliver something to the different groups you want to lead.
This leads on to the fact that your leadership brand has to be authentic. There is no point in claiming traits that you do not believe you can truly exhibit, even if you stretch yourself. That is why gathering and analysing feedback can be incredibly insightful.
Building a leadership brand requires investments of time and patience. Consider setting aside one to two hours to comprehensively reflect on your personal brand in order to kick-start the process. It is preferable to do this outside the office, when you have the opportunity to pause and think. It is also important to find the most appropriate environment and timing (refer back to the advice given in Chapter 4).
You will not always see results straight away and, at times, you will have to fight the temptation to go back to your old habits. You might feel as if you are behaving artificially and be discouraged by this, but it is entirely natural and to be expected. Just keep things in perspective and recommit to your personal development.
It can take three to six months for you to see the results of your newly established leadership brand. After this time you should experience a ‘tipping’ point in people’s interactions with you based on your new attributes – then you will know that you have made an impact. When in doubt, remember that a strong leadership brand is a key element of corporate success.
It is recommended that you do the following two to three times a year, to both allow your progress to be measured and keep pace with changes in the organisation or the environment.
Set aside some time with your feedback group and specifically ask them if they feel you are living and breathing your leadership brand.
If they say ‘No’, ask for concrete examples of situations where you did not live up to your leadership statement. Ask what you should do or could have done differently.
Also invite them to provide you with any observations regarding your behaviours, traits or emerging habits in your leadership. These could be positive or negative, but extremely valuable.
The most efficient way would be to do the following once a year, preferably at the year-end to allow you to factor in what you learn and set proper objectives for the following year:
You may decide to specifically pick one member of your feedback group as your leadership brand ‘custodian’. This person can be in charge of observing and giving you feedback on your leadership brand and style. You could organise this as follows:
At all times and with any plan you pursue, ensure that you take immediate note of the feedback given and develop a subsequent action plan.
Charisma and gravitas are powerful accelerators when you are building your leadership brand. They are part of what gives you presence and impact. Many people might argue that you cannot teach anyone how to have charisma or demonstrate gravitas, as they are an intrinsic part of an individual, but, by paying attention to the way you carry and present yourself, and communicate, you will be able to prove otherwise.
‘Charisma’ is usually defined as a mix of charm and grace. It is the ability to draw people towards you without demonstrating any type of authority. Typically, political and religious leaders demonstrate significant charisma. Think of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs or Mother Teresa. Charisma is usually perceived as inherent, rather than cultivated or taught.
‘Gravitas’ is associated with an impression of weight, influence or authority. It relates to sobriety, seriousness and maturity. Someone with gravitas is someone whose words you want to listen to, someone who inspires trust and respect. Consider Warren Buffett, Jack Welch or George Soros. Gravitas could be considered to stem from nurture rather than nature.
In order to grasp the diverse forms charisma and gravitas can take, the following examples might help:
There are two main points that are universally true when it comes to charisma and gravitas:
Studies have shown that physical attributes such as height and attractiveness play a part in whether or not you are perceived to have leadership potential.
A study carried out by Erik Lindqvist of the Stockholm School of Economics for the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in May 2010 underscored the relationship between height and leadership. Using data from a representative sample of Swedish men, the study found that tall men are significantly more likely to attain managerial positions than short men. An increase in height of 10 centimetres (3.94 inches) is associated with a 2.2 percentage point increase in the probability of holding a managerial position. Selection for managerial positions explains about 15 per cent of the unconditional height–pay premium. However, at least half of the height–leadership correlation is due to people perceiving there to be a positive correlation between height and cognitive ability.
What does this mean? The taller you are, the more intelligent people will perceive you to be or the more commanding people will believe you to be.
Why? Because in our primal brain, height is still synonymous with strength, hence increasing the chance of survival of the group. Height, therefore, even now, is considered synonymous with intrinsic leadership ability.
If you are not naturally tall, you can always wear shoes that make you look taller. However, you may find that there are other ways to compensate – by, say, carrying yourself with a lot of authority or demonstrating a great deal of energy.
Using body language well or even the way you dress can help you to create your leadership presence or establish your leadership potential. This is particularly important when you are meeting people for the first time. Princeton University research confirms the old saying that, ‘You‘ll never have a second chance to make a first impression.’2 People evaluate others in the first tenth of a second of their initial meeting. This means establishing your leadership potential from the start is critical.
The following six principles are easy to remember and can create an immediate positive impact:
If you are a woman, consider the following additional things.
7 | Sweep back your hair from your face to ensure that people can see your features clearly. This will lead to you being perceived as self-confident and self-assured. |
8 | Keep make-up subtle or to a minimum. This will be perceived as a sign of self-confidence in your intellectual abilities. |
The way you dress is also a key factor in establishing your leadership presence. Humans are visual beings and image counts. In the absence of other relevant information, people will look for visual clues as to how a person regards him- or herself and how professional he or she seems. The way you dress helps establish your credibility and your brand. This is all part of creating your corporate persona and establishing your potential.
Most personal coaches recommend dressing for the job you want, not for the job you have. How, then, do you identify the dress code for leadership material? How do you reconcile embodying the leadership traits of your corporate culture with dressing for leadership (power dressing, if you will)?
For instance, would you be perceived as a credible leader wearing a dark pinstripe suit to see a company such as Google or Facebook? At the opposite end of the spectrum, would you be considered leadership material at a private bank or wealth management company in chinos and a polo shirt?
This is a difficult balance to strike. However, adhering to the following two rules may help.
To convey the image of your choice, keep the following in mind:
It’s not only what you say, but how you say it that will establish you as someone with gravitas and charisma.
It is important to start by being perceived as knowledgeable and insightful. This is about inspiring respect, trust and demonstrating a certain calm.
Additionally, visuals and words go hand in hand, so what people say verbally about themselves will then either support or contradict the initial visual impression, not the other way around.
Investing time in becoming the best communicator you can be is the final key element to consider when honing your charisma and gravitas. This can be achieved when thinking about the following seven attributes for all occasions:
Some of the following are additional techniques that you can practise to help you strengthen your charisma and gravitas:
Charisma and gravitas will come more naturally to some than others, but they can be built on and will help you strengthen your leadership brand.
Building an effective leadership brand can actually be summed up in one word: energy. It has been proven that the most successful people are usually the most energetic. Think about how to create energy around you in the way you talk, listen, interact with and connect with people.
Branding demands commitment – to continual reinvention, striking chords with people to stir their emotions and to imagination.
Here’s a reminder of some of the key points from this chapter:
1 Walter Kiechel (2005) in ‘What you can learn from Jack Welch’, The Results-driven Manager: Becoming an effective leader. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
2 J. Willis and A. Todorov (2006) ‘First impressions: Making up your mind after 100-ms exposure to a face’, Psychological Science, July, 17(7): 592–8.
3 Coco Chanel, French fashion designer, Founder of the Chanel brand.
4 Chris Abbott (2010) 21 Speeches that Shaped our World, Rider, is – a good source of powerful and inspiring speeches. So is the website www.voicegig.com