Leadership Lounge: How to develop your personal leadership brand

Summary

Redefiners Podcast: Leadership Lounge – How to Develop Your Personal Leadership Brand

Release Date: November 6, 2024
Hosts: Hoda Tahoun and Clarke Murphy
Guests: Jenna Fisher, Shun Lim, Amy Sissons, Rafa Martinez Gallardo

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Introduction

In the latest episode of Redefiners, titled "Leadership Lounge: How to Develop Your Personal Leadership Brand," the conversation delves deep into the significance of cultivating a personal leadership brand. Hosted by Russell Reynolds Associates Leadership Advisor Hoda Tahoun and former CEO Clarke Murphy, the episode features insightful discussions with leadership advisors Jenna Fisher, Shun Lim, Amy Sissons, and Rafa Martinez Gallardo. The guests share their expertise on defining, crafting, and activating a personal leadership brand, offering valuable advice for both established and aspiring leaders.

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Defining a Personal Leadership Brand

Jenna Fisher opens the discussion by emphasizing the essence of a personal leadership brand. She echoes Jeff Bezos’s sentiment, stating, "Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room" (01:46). Fisher highlights the ubiquitous nature of one's brand, especially in the digital age where online presence on platforms like LinkedIn significantly shapes public perception. She underscores the importance of authenticity in crafting a brand, ensuring it genuinely reflects who you are.

Key Points:

• Personal brand reflects how others perceive you in your absence.
• Online presence is a critical component of one's personal brand.
• Authenticity is essential in brand development.

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Importance and Benefits of a Strong Leadership Brand

Introducing Shun Lim, the conversation pivots to the importance of developing a personal leadership brand. Lim explains that a well-crafted brand serves as a differentiator in a competitive talent marketplace. It fosters trust and credibility among stakeholders by clearly communicating one's purpose and motivations. He cites Koji Sato, CEO of Toyota, highlighting that "people do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it" (03:26).

Key Points:

• Differentiates leaders in a crowded marketplace.
• Builds trust and credibility with stakeholders.
• Communicates underlying motivations and purpose.

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Key Elements of Crafting a Leadership Brand

Shun Lim outlines three critical elements necessary for developing a strong personal leadership brand:

1. Clarity: Understanding who you are, your core values, and the legacy you wish to leave. This involves deep self-reflection to determine what is truly important to you (03:47).

2. Congruency: Ensuring your brand is authentic and aligns with your values, passions, and personal purpose. Authenticity ensures that your actions consistently reflect your brand (03:47).

3. Consistency: Maintaining a consistent presence and behavior across various contexts and challenges, reinforcing your brand's coherence and reliability (03:47).

Key Points:

• Clarity, congruency, and consistency are foundational to a strong brand.
• Authentic adherence to core values enhances brand integrity.
• Consistent behavior solidifies brand reputation.

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Activating Your Leadership Brand in the Market

Amy Sissons, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Russell Reynolds Associates, provides actionable strategies for leaders to activate their personal brand:

1. Engage Regularly with Your Community: Actively use your voice in the market by responding to current events and participating in discussions (06:11).

2. Curate Relevant Content: Share pertinent articles, research, and insights to position yourself as a thought leader (06:11).

3. Create Original Content: Develop personalized content using tools like AI to streamline the creation process, making it manageable even for time-constrained leaders (06:11).

Sissons emphasizes the balance between creating and curating content, ensuring leaders not only broadcast their messages but also engage in meaningful dialogues with their audience.

Key Points:

• Active engagement and responsiveness enhance brand visibility.
• Consistently sharing relevant content establishes thought leadership.
• Leveraging AI tools can simplify content creation.

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Balancing Personal and Professional Content

Amy Sissons discusses the delicate balance between sharing personal passions and maintaining a professional persona. She advises leaders to incorporate aspects of their unique personality and interests into their brand, ensuring it remains authentic and relatable. By aligning personal passions with professional expertise, leaders can create a distinctive and ownable brand identity (07:51).

Key Points:

• Integrate personal interests with professional expertise.
• Authenticity fosters relatability and strengthens brand.
• Personal passions can differentiate your leadership brand.

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Common Mistakes Leaders Make

Rafa Martinez Gallardo highlights common pitfalls in developing a personal leadership brand:

1. Over-Polishing Content: Being excessively corporate can make a brand appear inauthentic and unapproachable (10:18).

2. Excessive Focus on Organizational Achievements: Overemphasizing company successes or personal accolades can detract from the authenticity of the brand (10:18).

3. Avoiding Personal Opinions: While it's crucial to have a point of view, being overly ideological can alienate parts of your audience (10:18).

Amy Sissons adds that leaders often neglect audience engagement, focusing solely on content creation. She advocates for a balanced approach where leaders also interact, comment, and engage with their community to foster meaningful connections (11:17).

Key Points:

• Maintain authenticity by avoiding overly corporate or polished content.
• Balance professional achievements with personal narratives.
• Engage with the audience to build a dynamic and interactive brand presence.

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Advice for Emerging Leaders

Jenna Fisher advises emerging leaders to engage in self-reflection to identify their unique strengths and areas of expertise. By focusing on what you are genuinely good at and passionate about, you can create a credible and distinctive personal brand that resonates with others (12:38).

Rafa Martinez Gallardo suggests aspiring leaders study and emulate admired leaders' online presence. By analyzing successful leaders’ content strategies and maintaining consistency across platforms, emerging leaders can gradually build a robust personal brand (13:16).

Key Points:

• Conduct self-reflection to uncover unique strengths and passions.
• Analyze and learn from the online presence of admired leaders.
• Consistency and thematic focus in content creation lead to a stronger brand over time.

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Conclusions and Takeaways

The episode wraps up with a concise recap of the essential insights shared:

• Existence of the Brand: Your leadership brand exists whether you shape it or not.
• Narrative Control: Define your values, passions, and desired legacy to take control of your narrative.
• Authenticity: Align your public persona with your true self to build trust and credibility.
• Engagement: Interact meaningfully with your community beyond just broadcasting messages.
• Continuous Journey: Personal branding is an ongoing process that requires regular self-reflection and content refinement.

Leaders are encouraged to invest time in crafting and nurturing their personal brands, recognizing it as a powerful asset in today’s digitally interconnected world.

Key Points:

• Active and intentional brand management is crucial.
• Authenticity and consistency are key to a powerful leadership brand.
• Engaging with the community enhances brand influence and presence.
• Personal branding is a continuous, evolving journey.

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For More Insights:

If you have topics or burning questions you'd like the Redefiners team to explore in future episodes, feel free to reach out via email at [e-mail]. Don’t forget to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode!

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the Leadership Lounge episode on developing a personal leadership brand. Whether you're an established leader looking to refine your brand or an aspiring leader just starting, the episode offers valuable strategies and perspectives to elevate your leadership presence.

Transcript

[Emma Coombe]

Welcome to the Leadership Lounge, a place to kick back and listen as our experts dissect some of the biggest questions leaders face today. I'm Emma Coombe, leadership advisor in our London office. Today we're talking about how to develop your personal leadership brand. It's never been more important to get your personal brand right as a leader, but it isn't easy to concisely articulate what you want to be known for and what your unique value proposition is. So what is a personal leadership brand and how do you begin crafting it? How can you activate your leadership brand in the market? And what are some of the common mistakes leaders make when cultivating their personal leadership brand? Before we dive in, remember to share any burning questions you want our experts to answer by emailing redefinersusslerynolds.com we'd love to hear from you. And if you enjoy listening to our episodes, leave us a five star review on Apple or Spotify. So let's dive into the topic. First up, we'd like to welcome Jenna Fisher, leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates Palo Alto office and author of the book to the How Women in Corporate Leadership Are Rewriting the Rules for Success. Jenna, welcome to the Leadership Lounge.

[Jenna Fisher]

Thank you so much. It's great to be here, Jenna.

[Emma Coombe]

We know that a strong personal leadership brand can be a powerful differentiator, but leaders aren't spending enough time crafting their brand. We found that 74% of CEOs said that they spend too little time on themselves. And no doubt this statistic applies to a broader cohort of leaders. How would you define a personal leadership brand?

[Jenna Fisher]

I think it was Jeff Bezos who said that your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. And everyone has a personal leadership brand, whether they know what it is or not. Certainly online, when somebody Googles your name, that's your brand. What they see on LinkedIn, that's your brand. And I think it's really important that you spend some time crafting and honing what your brand is. But I think it's super important that it is authentic to who you are.

[Emma Coombe]

And Jenna, it's really interesting. Somebody actually said to me only today that 60% of who you are is what people say about you when you're not in the room. 20% is what you do, 20% is what you say about yourself. But 60% is exactly what you're saying when you're not in the room. And that can obviously be in the virtual world as much as in the real world. To talk further on this point and to uncover some of the benefits when a leader takes control of their leadership brand, we'd like to introduce Shun Lim, Leadership Advisor in Russell Reynolds, Associate Singapore Office, into the conversation. Shun, welcome to the leadership Lounge.

[Shun Lim]

Thanks. I'm really glad that I could make it and I'm really glad to be here.

[Emma Coombe]

So, Shun, why do you think it's important for leaders to develop their personal brand and what are some of the benefits when they get it right?

[Shun Lim]

When it is crafted well, your leadership brand can differentiate you in a crowded talent marketplace. It quickly helps you to build trust and credibility with stakeholders because it gives people a very quick sense of who you are and why you do what you do. To quote Koji Sato, the CEO of Toyota, on this point, people do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

[Emma Coombe]

I think that's a great point, Shun, and demonstrates the importance of knowing your purpose and effectively communicating it. So when we think of a strong personal leadership brand, it's like a well crafted story. It has depth and resonates with the audience. But Shun, what exactly goes into creating this narrative? What are the key elements that make up a strong personal leadership brand?

[Shun Lim]

There are three key elements that make up a strong personal leadership brand. The first one is clarity. So being clear headed about who you are, taking time to consider what is truly really important to you. The legacy that you want to leave, what you want people to say about you. The second is congruency. The brand needs to be authentic to you. It should stand for who you are, your values, your passion, aspirations and personal purpose. When it is authentic, you will more naturally act and behave in ways that are in alignment with your brand. Finally, the third one is consistency. This is a function of you showing up consistently across different challenges and contexts in alignment with your values and passions.

[Emma Coombe]

That's exactly right, Shun. And you can see these traits in many successful leaders today. Knowing your values in particular is key to not only starting to develop and hone your personal brand, but also to your long term success. And Shun, our research found 95% of leaders said having a clear sense of their personal values was important in preparing them for their current leadership roles. When I think about a leader who really has to your points, clarity, congruence and consistency. Richard Harpin comes to mind who is the founder and chairman of HomeServe, an international home repairs and improvement business that he founded from nothing, a 10,000 pound investment into a 4.1 billion revenue business in 2023. I feel Richard has developed an incredibly clear narrative across multiple platforms. He writes the column in the Sunday Times business section. He's a very active voice on LinkedIn, and he's the author of a book. And all of his communication, whether on LinkedIn, in his articles, or through other means, is really consistent about his desire to support growth, to support entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, and to share the lessons that he's learned. I'd now like to welcome Amy Sissons into the conversation. Amy is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Russell Reynolds Associates and executive Producer of Redefiners. She's based in our New York office. Amy, welcome to the Leadership Lounge. We're really excited for you to share your insights on this topic.

[Amy Sissons]

Thank you. It's great to be here.

[Emma Coombe]

Amy. We've spoken about how important it is for leaders to spend time defining their personal leadership brand. But when it comes to activating their brand in the market, what's your your advice for leaders?

[Amy Sissons]

Great question, Emma. When I'm meeting with C suite leaders to talk about activating their brand, there's sort of three things I ask them to think about. First of all is how are you engaging your community on a regular basis, making sure that you're not only using your voice in the market, but also reacting, responding to things that are happening in the market. That's one. The second piece of this, which is really important, is curating content on a regular basis. When you're reading something that's particularly relevant or there's a new piece of research that comes into the market, you want to make sure that you're on front of that and you're sharing that with your community. And then the third piece around this, where I think it gets really interesting, is when C suite leaders start to think about what is the content that I can create as an individual. And some people find that really overwhelming. But it doesn't need to be. With AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, it can become very easy to sort of create first versions of content and then you iterate on that over time.

[Emma Coombe]

Wow, Amy, that's some quite bold things that you've raised there. Absolutely fascinating. And if you feel that content writing isn't your strong suit and you're time strapped, I can see that some of these tools, if used correctly, could be really helpful. And actually this podcast has really helped me to think about different topics and how and where to share my perspectives. But I'm also conscious that it's a journey. There's more I could be doing. I'm sure I could bring more of a personal angle into it, but it takes time, and obviously you don't want to distract from the professional Persona that's central to what you're typically doing on platforms like LinkedIn. Amy, on the point of activating your brand in the market, how much of what you share should be personal from your point of view?

[Amy Sissons]

This is a tricky question for many professional leaders in the marketplace because oftentimes we anchor ourselves in our role or our function or what we're particularly known for. But where the brand really comes to life is where you have your uniqueness and you have a bit of your personality, your interests and your overall purpose come through. One way to think about that is what are your personal passions? If you could donate 10 hours of your time every month to a nonprofit organization, what organization would that be? And how does that relate to your purpose? And once you start to weave that in with some of your professional expertise, it becomes very, very unique and ownable in terms of your brand.

[Emma Coombe]

I think that's such an interesting way of framing it. Amy for leaders who might be unsure of what to share besides who they are in their or their function, it helps you to really think beyond your corporate Persona, but make sure that it's all tied into some consistency around your values and your purpose. When I think about issues that align with my values, I've led charity partnerships with the Prince's Trust at Russell Reynolds Associates and with a local secondary school, the Chelsea Academy. This has been able to really neatly leverage our skills around leadership advisors developing careers. So doing things like mock interview practice, CV writing workshops is tied in really neatly. And it's not something that I've shared, to be honest. I think it's incredibly British to kind of hide these things under a bushel. But actually I will now reflect on whether that could be helpful to share a bit more about who I am, what I believe in, and also to represent Russell Reynolds Associates in an effective way in the market. I think Nike is an organization that's great at not talking about their products, but actually the purpose behind it. It's really quite sophisticated. They tend to focus on the power of sport and how sport can enhance people's lives. And whilst they don't ever specifically talk about products, the brand resonance in the market, as we all know, is incredibly powerful. We'd now like to introduce another voice into the conversation. Rafa Martinez Gallardo, leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates Mexico office. Rafa, welcome to the leadership lounge.

[Rafa Martinez Gallardo]

Thanks, Emma. It's great to be here.

[Emma Coombe]

So, Raffa, we know that it can be easy to misstep. When creating and communicating your personal leadership brand, can you talk us through some of the pitfalls that you see?

[Rafa Martinez Gallardo]

It's pretty easy to make a mistake in this space. The mistakes that I do see leaders commit often is maybe have a little bit too much polish, a little bit too much corporate in the content. Sometimes leaders tend to talk too much about the organization or their own personal achievements. And the other thing that I would suggest is to try to be less political or less ideological than you are in probably your real life. We all have hot takes on a lot of us, a lot of stuff. But you really want to avoid alienating a large portion of your audience in this respect.

[Emma Coombe]

Absolutely, Rafa. And on this podcast, we've also previously had some really interesting discussions about when leaders should and should not weigh in on social issues. It's about finding the right balance, having a point of view on a topic, but also being sensitive to the fact that some perspectives can be incredibly polarizing. Amy, I might bring you back in at this point. What's another common mistake you see leaders make?

[Amy Sissons]

So for me, the number one mistake that leaders get trapped into is around the whole idea of curating and creating without actually thinking about the audience and engaging with audience. And it's really important when you have followership or when you have community, where you're commenting on others, work, where you're celebrating others, where you're engaging in a dialogue or even a debate. A healthy debate is always, always fantastic for thinking about your voice in the market. And so what I encourage people to do is make sure that you're spending just as much time on curating and creating content as well as engaging with your audience.

[Emma Coombe]

Amy, that's definitely something I could be doing more of by not engaging with other leaders on LinkedIn and other platforms. As you say, you're not necessarily capitalizing on opportunities to expand your network, to be involved in important industry discussions, and to identify critical thought leadership that you could share with your followers. By breaking out of your echo chamber, you can foster a more dynamic and influential presence. But of course, time ends up being a very precious resource and balancing it, it's not always so easy. So we've covered some of the common mistakes that leaders make. We'd now like to turn our attention to aspiring leaders. Jenna, what advice would you give to emerging leaders who are starting to build their personal brand?

[Jenna Fisher]

I think earlier in one's career there's a tendency to want to be well rounded and to try to hone things that perhaps you're not as naturally good with and that's great. But I also think what's really important is to do the self reflection to figure out what is it that I am uniquely good at, what can I opine on to others, what can I be an expert at? And when you think about that in the context of what can I post on LinkedIn or talk to my clients about, it's really thinking about what are the things that I know so well that I am an expert around that I can be credible to others.

[Emma Coombe]

Sharing and Rafa, what advice would you give?

[Rafa Martinez Gallardo]

I would say be intentional about how you build your brand. The first place and a great place to start is look at a leader that you really admire, analyze their online presence, what do they put out there in what platforms, etc. If you Google one of the, you know, one of these people that you admire, you're going to see a lot of depth and a lot of breadth in the content. One thing that I did a couple of weeks ago is I asked a panel of aspiring board members to Google themselves and it was really surprising to them the lack of depth and the lack of content that was around their name. Some people didn't even actually come up in the Google searches. So it's not an end in itself, but it's a great thermometer to understand how you are going about curating your content. If you go back and start creating interesting pieces of content in different platforms with different topics around a thematic line and you're consistent over time, that presence will start to become more robust and you will find that in a couple of years it is a matter of time. Unfortunately. You will find that your presence and your personal brand will start having heft and it'll start having profundity to it.

[Emma Coombe]

I think that's great advice for our listeners. Rafa what's key to remember is that crafting your brand requires consistent self reflection and for you to invest time to align your content with your core values. And of course this might shift and evolve over time in a really healthy way. In today's digital age, where your online presence is under constant scrutiny, a well cultivated leadership brand can be an extremely powerful asset. So our time in the lounge today has come to an end. I'd like to thank all of our guests for sharing such invaluable insights. In 30 seconds, this is what we've learned. Your leadership brand exists whether you shape it or not. Take control of your narrative by clearly defining your values, passions and the legacy you wish to leave behind. Authenticity is key to a powerful leadership brand. Align your public Persona with your true self to build trust and credibility. Don't try to imitate anyone else. Don't just broadcast. Interact. Your brand thrives on meaningful engagement with your community. Curate, create and contribute to discussions to establish a dynamic presence. Your brand is a journey, not a destination. Continuously refine it through self reflection, feedback, and intentional content creation. Remember, depth and consistency over time yield a robust presence. If you have any topics or burning questions you'd like us to cover in future episodes of Leadership Lounge, then get in touch. Email your questions to redefine uslerynolds.com and if you've enjoyed listening to this episode, leave us a five star review on Apple or Spotify. You can find us on LinkedIn and follow us on X raonleadership. You can also find us on Instagram DefinersPodcast, and you can now subscribe to our YouTube channel. Until next time, goodbye.