Repeatedly, I have seen how branding can take shape more powerful companies, catapult individual careers, and result in more and more greater achievements. Within my years like a brander and marketer in Fortune 100 companies, I observed this phenomenon firsthand – both with corporate brands and private brands.
Yes, branding works best for everybody – companies, employees, first-time supervisors, middle managers, senior-level executives, entrepreneurs, people looking for work, as well as graduates fresh from college.
This idea is particularly effective for executives because every leader includes a specific brand that impacts their capability to lead effectively. It’s things i call your Executive Leadership Brand-“The Trademarked YOU™®.” Consider it by doing this: Nike and Starbucks possess a “TM” after their names, why should not you? Convey a ™ after your company name, and consider what you would like your Executive Leadership Brand to face for.
When you are fighting off that advice or thinking, “Brenda, you have me incorrectly. I’m not going or require a brand like a leader,” well, here’s the offer: Whether you’ll need a brand or otherwise, you have one.
That is because your Executive Leadership Brand may be the way others see, think, and experience you like a leader, in contrast to other leaders. Since people at the office curently have perceptions, ideas, and feelings in regards to you, which means you’re already branded, simply due to being you at the office.
The issue then becomes: Like a leader inside your organization, have you got the company you would like? Otherwise, it is your responsibility to take control of defining and communicating the leadership get you noticed desire. Because with regards to branding yourself, there’s one factor about that we am absolutely positive: How good you manage that brand helps to make the improvement in your failure or success. You won’t want to allow chance.
Just like companies painstakingly define their brands and communicate them available on the market to enable them to have better control of how individuals brands are perceived by their target markets, which means you, like a leader, can and really should perform the same inside your workplace. Indeed, with no brand, your odds of reaching top of the echelons associated with a organization are restricted.
Branding Equals Big Egos, Right?
If you are still resistant against this idea, maybe you are thinking, “But, Brenda, people already accuse executives of getting big egos. Why would i would like to behave like produce a brand personally that will cause others to consider I am much more egotistical?” That statement paves the way to among the greatest myths about self-branding: that the brand is “about you.” Contrary to public opinion, developing a professional Leadership Brand isn’t an ego exercise.
Remember: Your brand is when others see, think, and experience you, so that your brand’s most significant component is not really “you” whatsoever. It is the “others” inside your world who’re doing the perceiving, the thinking, and also the feeling. Without one, you cannot actually have a brand. It might be such as the proverbial tree falling within the forest without anybody there to listen to it.