Six Strategies to Build Your CEO Brand
Download70% CEO success: Strategy, Execution, Talent Management (all leaders)
30% CEO success: Leadership brand (unique to each leader); Physical (dress, grooming); Physiology (body language, voice, words); Emotional Intelligence (people skills);
Time mastery (who, what, where, how)
Definitions:
- Company Brand is what the firm is known for.
- Leadership brand (what leaders are known for) is critical to success because it turns customer expectations into employee behaviours and accelerates results.
Wal-Mart Brand: Everyday Low Prices; Leadership Brand: managing costs efficiently
Apple Brand: Innovation and Design; Leadership Brand: creating new products outside industry norms
P&G: Managing Brands; Leadership Brand: Defining and growing brands in the marketplace
CEOs have a personal brand (what the CEO is known for) that must be aligned with the organization’s leadership brand. Your CEO brand is your identity, reputation, or distinctiveness as a leader (e.g., Steve Jobs, Jack Welch).
Premise: Your CEO personal brand is critical to helping you achieve your goals because it determines your ability to motivate and inspire people to take positive action.
The following six strategies will help you build your CEO Brand.
- Define major results that you want to achieve in the next 12 months in your professional life.
- Define major results that you want to achieve in the next 12 months in your personal life.
- What are six words that characterize what you would want to be known for as a leader?
- Develop a CEO brand statement: I want to be known for…, so that I can deliver… at work and… outside work.
- Be transparent and share your CEO brand statement with key internal and external stakeholders and ask for feedback.
- Focus your time, behaviours and communication (internal and external) aligned with your CEO brand.