Published on <a href="http://ift.tt/2pQtB43">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Melissa Rosenthal <img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2p386tU">
I wish I had a dollar for every client that has come to see me wanting to work on his or her personal brand. It’s been touted by many as the silver bullet to career success.
Scratching under the surface with a few challenging questions I find most people have a reputation that is well defined and appreciated — except in terms of their leadership. Often it’s the absence of a leadership brand that is stopping them from realizing their career goals.
So how can you build on a strong personal brand to create a great leadership brand?
If you can answer the following 6 questions, your leadership brand will be in great shape:
1. What is my unique promise as a leader? In other words, what are the principles that guide your actions and decisions?
2. What is my leadership mindset? If you’re thinking about leadership as a job, I’m asking you to think again. Leadership is a mindset that can be applied by anyone in any role. The best leaders I know are focused on enabling the success of others. They are constantly learning and sharing their learnings with others. They trust in both facts and instincts. These ideas form the basis of their leadership mindset.
3. What does authenticity mean for me? Authenticity is frequently cited as the key to great leadership. I’m not disagreeing with the idea — but I do think it requires nuance. I would argue that great leaders demonstrate what I call “purposeful authenticity”. They know which parts of themselves to bring to any given situation. You don’t have to show all of yourself all of the time — and in fact that can be quite risky. Try thinking about how to show your “best, most appropriate you” in every situation. It’s the extremes that typically pose the greatest challenge — for some that’s vulnerability and for others it’s making the tough calls. Either way, it’s important to show who you — even when under extreme pressure.
4. How do I create my desired leadership brand? This is about how you “package” the way people experience working with you. This can include everything from your vision, skills, experience, attributes and behaviours, values and style — how you talk about it and more importantly, how you deliver it. It takes planning, commitment and effort. For example, I met with a CEO today who talked about his leadership commitments which included sending a personal Christmas to all of his 1,500 employees — hand written and sent to their home address. He achieved this by working with HR to have 100 cards send to him per week from July. He systematically worked through the cards until they were all complete and ready to be sent. For him this was a personal way to say “you are important to me” to everyone in the company.
5. How do I make sure my leadership brand “lands” with others? If you want to make sure that people “get” your leadership brand, ask yourself:
<ul>
<li>Is it clear who I am (and who I’m not)?</li>
<li>Am I being consistent in my behaviour and my communication?</li>
<li>Am I visible to my target audience?</li>
</ul>
6. How do I evolve my leadership brand over time? Throughout your career it’s likely that you’ll need your brand to evolve to respond to changing goals and to create opportunities. Planning ahead will be important so that you have enough time to build your brand and position yourself in readiness for those opportunities.
If you need help working through these questions and holding yourself accountable to an action plan consider working with a coach. The coaching process will challenge your thinking, push you to consider your leadership in new ways and give you a safe space to road test new ideas.
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<a href="http://ift.tt/2p38yIq">6 important questions to ask yourself about your leadership brand</a> was originally published in <a href="http://ift.tt/2cAqCpx">Prototyping: From UX to Front End</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

6 important questions to ask yourself about your leadership brand

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