Eight Steps to Create your Leadership Brand
Considering the advent of social media you are a brand now and you can manage it well. The same goes for your leadership brand as well. I recently read a book called Reinvention by Shane Cragun and Kate Sweetman. It is a wonderful book and they talk about eight steps to create your leadership brand. A lot of it is commonsense and we might already know them. Here they are with my interpretation of it.
Describe the ultimate legacy you want to leave – This is ultimately answering the biggest life question of all which is “What do I want to be remembered for when I am not there.” I would also suggest define what you want people to say about you when you are not there. Create a one page definition of the ultimate vision for your life. I also suggest that you probably want to hear some of this when you are alive.
Identify your greatest passion – What really makes you excited. What gets you going so much that you wake up so early or stay up so late and you cannot wait for another day? This is something that you just love to do. I would like to clarify that being passionate alone is not enough. You need to marry passion with competence. Find out your passion and ensure your competence is high in that area as well. Identify your natural strengths and skills – If you have read Now Discover your strengths then you know that all of us have some unique strength. In other words our most important job is to find out what we are really good at and then focus on improving that area. You need to do some serious introspection to get to know this. Think of your life from the beginning and identify where you have done well.
Discover patterns – If you have done the above 3 steps then you will identify patterns and will give you a clear Launchpad on where you want to go.
Craft a unique leadership brand statement – Here the authors have three great questions that can help in creating this. “What promise are you making to me as a leader if I do business with you? What is your unique value proposition to my organization? What do you want to be known for?”
Test, Validate and Refine – Take action to create your brand and then socialize it with friends, colleagues and family to get feedback.
Acquire knowledge to close gaps – Act on the feedback and ensure you live your leadership brand.
Reintroduce yourself to important others – Identify the people or organizations whom you would like to reintroduce yourself to based on your brand statement. There you have it the eight steps to create your unique leadership brand.
The views expressed here are my own and do not represent my organization.
Describe the ultimate legacy you want to leave – This is ultimately answering the biggest life question of all which is “What do I want to be remembered for when I am not there.” I would also suggest define what you want people to say about you when you are not there. Create a one page definition of the ultimate vision for your life. I also suggest that you probably want to hear some of this when you are alive.
Identify your greatest passion – What really makes you excited. What gets you going so much that you wake up so early or stay up so late and you cannot wait for another day? This is something that you just love to do. I would like to clarify that being passionate alone is not enough. You need to marry passion with competence. Find out your passion and ensure your competence is high in that area as well. Identify your natural strengths and skills – If you have read Now Discover your strengths then you know that all of us have some unique strength. In other words our most important job is to find out what we are really good at and then focus on improving that area. You need to do some serious introspection to get to know this. Think of your life from the beginning and identify where you have done well.
Discover patterns – If you have done the above 3 steps then you will identify patterns and will give you a clear Launchpad on where you want to go.
Craft a unique leadership brand statement – Here the authors have three great questions that can help in creating this. “What promise are you making to me as a leader if I do business with you? What is your unique value proposition to my organization? What do you want to be known for?”
Test, Validate and Refine – Take action to create your brand and then socialize it with friends, colleagues and family to get feedback.
Acquire knowledge to close gaps – Act on the feedback and ensure you live your leadership brand.
Reintroduce yourself to important others – Identify the people or organizations whom you would like to reintroduce yourself to based on your brand statement. There you have it the eight steps to create your unique leadership brand.
The views expressed here are my own and do not represent my organization.
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