Overview:For this assignment, you will construct your Personal Leadership Brand Statement. Prepare your assignment by responding to the prompt below. Please save your file in or x format.For more guidance about APA formatting, please visit the APA Resources folder in the Student Resources course menu tab.*To view the grading rubric for this assignment, click on the name of the assignment and click “View Rubric”
Instructions:
Download the Five Steps to Building Your Personal Brand file (link is under the assignment title above).
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Five Steps to Building Your Personal
Leadership Brand
by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood
A NEWSLETTER FROM HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING ARTICLE REPRINT NO. U0712A
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You have a personal leadership brand. But do you
have the right one?
Th e question is not trivial. A leadership
brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness
as a leader. It communicates the value you off er. If you
have the wrong leadership brand for the position
you have or the position you want, then your work is not
having the impact it could.
We use the term brand very deliberately. Acme
Manufacturing can make the greatest widget in the
world, but if few people know about the company or the
widget—if neither has a strong brand—then that widget
will generate little value. It’s the same thing with leaders. A
strong personal leadership brand allows all that’s powerful
and eff ective about your leadership to become known to
your colleagues up, down, and across the organization,
enabling you to generate maximum value.
In this article, which is adapted from our book
Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders
to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value (Harvard
Business School Press, 2007), we will show you how to
shape a personal leadership brand that showcases who
you are and what you can do. Th e benefi t of consciously
shaping a leadership brand is focus; when you know with
utmost clarity what you want to be known for, it is easier
to let go of the tasks and projects that do not let you deliver
on that brand and to concentrate on activities that do.
1. DETERMINE THE RESULTS YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE
IN THE NEXT YEAR
Th e fi rst thing you should do is ask yourself, “In the next
12 months, what are the major results I want to deliver
at work?” Take into account the interests of these four
groups:
n Customers: Identify customers who directly or
indirectly receive value from the goods or services you
produce. How can you add value for them?
n Investors: What do they want? What can you and your
group do to meet their expectations?
n Employees: What employee outcomes do you seek:
greater creativity, better collaboration, higher retention?
What do your employees need from you?
n Th e organization: How can your team help the
organization execute on its strategy?
We once worked with a very talented and hard-
working executive we’ll call Judy. Her successful
performance in several varied roles at her organization—
she’d been an auditor, a process engineer, and a customer-
service manager—earned her a promotion into a general
manager position, in which she would be running one of
the company’s largest businesses. To succeed at her fi rst
large-scale leadership position and meet the complex set
of expectations she would encounter in it, she knew she
needed to become more deliberate about the way she led
others. In short, she knew she needed a new leadership
brand and turned to us for help in forging it.
On our advice, she reviewed overall customer
retention, satisfaction, and revenue fi gures and called
on three of the business’s largest customers to hear their
thoughts on the division’s strengths and opportunities
for improvement. She analyzed her division’s fi nancial
performance over the previous years and thoroughly
reviewed the fi nancial performance expected of it in the
coming year. She met with small groups of employees and
reviewed employee surveys and other data to assess how
employees both inside and outside the division regarded
it. Finally, she thought carefully about how her business
could contribute more to the organization as a whole.
Notice that we advised Judy to begin by focusing on
the expectations of those she was working to serve, rather
than on what she identifi ed as her personal strengths.
Leadership brand is outward focused; it is about delivering
results. While identifying innate strengths is an important
part of defi ning your leadership brand, the starting point
is clarifying what is expected of you.
2. DECIDE WHAT YOU WISH TO BE KNOWN FOR
Given the context of the business results you want to
achieve, consider how you wish to be perceived. From
the chart below, pick the six descriptors that best capture
what you want to be known for.
Possible attributes
Accepting Accountable Action-oriented
Adaptable Agile Agreeable
Copyright © 2007 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.
Five Steps to Building Your Personal
Leadership Brand
by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood
Building Your Leadership Brand continued
Analytical Approachable Assertive
Attentive Benevolent Bold
Bright Calm Caring
Charismatic Clever Collaborative
Committed Compassionate Competent
Concerned Confi dent Confrontative
Conscientious Considerate Consistent
Creative Curious Decisive
Dedicated Deliberate Dependable
Determined Diplomatic Disciplined
Driven Easygoing Effi cient
Emotional Energetic Enthusiastic
Even-tempered Fast Flexible
Focused Forgiving Friendly
Fun-loving Good listener Happy
Helpful Honest Hopeful
Humble Independent Innovative
Insightful Inspired Integrative
Intelligent Intimate Inventive
Kind Knowledgeable Lively
Logical Loving Loyal
Nurturing Optimistic Organized
Outgoing Passionate Patient
Peaceful Pensive Persistent
Personal Playful Pleasant
Polite Positive Pragmatic
Prepared Proactive Productive
Quality-oriented Reality-based Religious
Respectful Responsible Responsive
Results-oriented Satisfi ed Savvy
Self-confi dent Selfl ess Sensitive
Service-oriented Sincere Sociable
Straightforward Thorough Thoughtful
Tireless Tolerant Trusting
Trustworthy Unyielding Values-driven
Judy knew she was seen as technically profi cient
and hardworking but somewhat aloof. Th ese traits, she
realized, added up to a leadership brand that would not
take her very far in her new role.
Working from our list, she picked six descriptors that
balanced the qualities that came naturally to her with
those that would be critical in her new position, and then
she tested her choices by sharing them with her boss, her
peers, and some of her most trusted subordinates. She
simply asked them, “Are these the traits that someone in
this general manager role should exhibit?” Th eir responses
helped her refi ne her list to ultimately include:
n Collaborative
n Deliberate
n Independent
n Innovative
n Results-oriented
n Strategic
It is important to keep in mind that the list you put
together may well require you to stretch yourself in new
directions—that is fi ne. But be sure not to include in it
traits that you do not believe you can ever truly exhibit.
Judy, for instance, recognized that working collaboratively
did not come naturally to her, but she felt it was in her
power to do it eff ectively.
3. DEFINE YOUR IDENTITY
Th e next step is to combine these six words into three
two-word phrases that refl ect your desired identity. Th is
exercise allows you to build a deeper, more complex
description: not only what you want to be known for
but also how you will probably have to act to get there.
For example, calmly driven diff ers from tirelessly driven.
Experimenting with the many combinations that you can
make from your six chosen words helps you crystallize
your personal leadership brand.
Judy combined the six descriptors into the following
three phrases:
1. Independently innovative
2. Deliberately collaborative
3. Strategically results-oriented
Th is second list, which, like the fi rst she tested with
several colleagues, neatly pulled together what came easily
to Judy (“independently innovative” and “strategically
results-oriented”) with what she could accomplish
through disciplined eff ort (“deliberately collaborative”).
Judy was satisfi ed that it aptly described both the kind of
leader she was and the kind of leader she was becoming.
4. CONSTRUCT YOUR LEADERSHIP BRAND
STATEMENT AND TEST IT
In this step, you pull everything together in a leadership
brand statement that makes a “so that” connection
between what you want to be known for (Steps 2 and 3)
and your desired results (Step 1). Fill in the blanks:
I want to be known for being ______________ so that
I can deliver __________.
Judy’s leadership brand statement read: “I want to be
known for being independently innovative, deliberately
collaborative, and strategically results-oriented so that I
4 HARVARD MANAGEMENT UPDATE | DECEMBER 2007
Building Your Leadership Brand continued
can deliver superior fi nancial outcomes for my business.”
With your leadership brand statement draft ed, ask
the following questions to see if it needs to be refi ned:
n Is this the brand identity that best represents who I am and
what I can do? If you lived this declaration of leadership,
would you see yourself as successful? Are you willing to tell
others that this is your personal leadership brand?
n Is this brand identity something that creates value in
the eyes of my organization and key stakeholders? Is this
something that is needed?
n What risks am I taking by exhibiting this brand? What will
the brand keep you from understanding and doing? Th is
is an important question—it can be tempting to choose
a brand identity that supports organizational values but
not your own personal values and strengths. For example,
in many technology-oriented fi rms, technical know-how
is valued over salesmanship or interpersonal strengths. It
would be a mistake, however, even in such an organization,
to disguise yourself as a technical leader if what really
drives you is something else. Acknowledging the things
your personal brand keeps you from understanding and
doing helps you build a team that can compensate for
areas that are not your strengths and actually increases
your leadership effi cacy.
n Can I live this brand? Do you have the ability to
translate the qualities you articulate in your leadership
brand statement into day-to-day behavior? Can you make
specifi c time commitments to live the leadership brand
you espouse? Can you translate it into the decisions and
choices you make?
Aft er going through this exercise, Judy was satisfi ed
that she had craft ed a personal leadership brand that was
appropriate for her new role and within her power to live
into and make real.
5. MAKE YOUR BRAND IDENTITY REAL
Espoused but unlived brands create cynicism because
they promise what they do not deliver. To ensure that
the leadership brand you advertise is embodied in your
day-to-day work, ask those around you. Do they see you
as you wish to be seen? If you say you are fl exible and
approachable, do others fi nd you so?
Aft er Judy defi ned her personal leadership brand, she
shared it with others. She let people know that she was
evolving as a leader and invited their feedback, especially
on her eff orts at working collaboratively.
Six months into the job, Judy reported to us that she
had achieved positive results overall. While she believed
that the business could have reached some goals faster
if she had relied solely on her own technical expertise
in charting its course, she recognized that such success
would have come at the cost of building a strong team.
And a strong team it was: members identifi ed challenges
with clarity, respected one another’s judgments, made
hard decisions, and moved forward together.
Th e exercise of forging a leadership brand and the day-
to-day discipline of making it real, Judy said, helped her stay
focused on the most important challenges of her new role.
YOUR BRAND SHOULD EVOLVE
Your leadership brand isn’t static; it should evolve in response
to the diff erent expectations you face at diff erent times in
your career. In our work, we have seen that leaders with
the self-awareness and the drive to evolve their leadership
brands regularly are more likely to be successful over the
long term—and to enjoy the journey more. u
Reprint # U0712A: To order a reprint of this article, call 800-668-6705
or 617-783-7474.
This article is adapted with the permission of Harvard Busi-
ness School Press from Leadership Brand: Developing Cus-
tomer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Last-
ing Value, by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood. Copyright ©
2007 Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood. All rights reserved.
Dave Ulrich is a professor of business at the University of
Michigan and cofounder of The RBL Group (www.rbl.net), a
consultancy in Provo, Utah. Norm Smallwood is cofounder of
The RBL Group and coauthor of fi ve books and many articles
on business strategy, organization, and leadership. They can
be reached at MUOpinion@hbsp.harvard.edu.
HARVARD MANAGEMENT UPDATE | DECEMBER 2007 5
RESOURCES
Leadership brand plays out very powerfully at the institu-
tional level, too. Companies with strong leadership brands
create deep pipelines of skilled managers and executives
and often enjoy a distinct competitive edge. To learn more
about organizational leadership brand, see our Harvard
Business Review article, “Building a Leadership Brand”
(July 2007, # R0707G), or our recently published book,
Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to
Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value (Harvard Busi-
ness School Press, 2007).
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