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As a CEO of your organization, you’re likely desirous about investing in your personal brand, but you’re likely also hesitant. My personal branding agency works with GenX CEOs from across the globe, and I can assure you that you simply’re not alone in your hesitation.
As a GenX’er — member of the usually called “forgotten generation” — you probably did not grow up with a cellphone in your hand and didn’t develop a habit of sharing each opinion and all of your whereabouts online. Lots of the leaders we speak with hesitate to place themselves out into the general public eye because they don’t have any affinity for the highlight. As a substitute, they wish to focus internally — on constructing a world-class organization, scaling teams and galvanizing enviable organizational cultures. And in fact, many CEOs have internalized the importance of discretion – selecting battles with careful deliberation to avoid any controversy.
Related: 7 Reasons Why CEOs Must Develop a Personal Brand — and Methods to Construct One.
The importance of private branding for modern leaders
And yet, the world we live in has modified. Hiding behind the proverbial curtains of our organizations isn’t any longer an option. Research shows that almost 50% of Millennials expect CEOs to talk out, and this number is growing yr to yr. Silent CEOs risk criticism from employees, the media and positively consumers.
Edelman Trust Barometer study showed that employees expected their employers to take a stance on quite a lot of societal issues, including vaccine hesitancy (84%), climate change (81%), automation (79%) and racism (79%).
Because of this, we’ve got seen the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Salesforce and PayPal speaking out about LGBTQ rights. The CEO of Merck has spoken up on racial injustice. And the CEO of Walmart took a position on gun control.
Whether generated internally or externally, the pressure to have a more visible public profile is more prevalent for you than ever. And it actually comes with a myriad of risks to mitigate. The court of public opinion could be merciless in terms of hot-topic issues. Just ask the CEO of Anheuser-Busch about it!
And before you utilize the Brendan Whitworth example as one more reason why a low profile is the winning strategy, let me offer a paradigm shift. I posit that the very reason Whitworth and Anheuser-Busch have faced the quantity of backlash all of us saw is just not due to a public stance, but slightly due to a knee-jerk decision to capitalize on a trend. The trend of an influencer-du-jour.
You see, in branding — each corporate and private — it’s crucial to first understand what your brand actually is and what it stands for, after which remain “on brand” across all marketing efforts. Anheuser-Busch didn’t try this. And neither did most of the “canceled” CEOs you think that of when considering your personal public presence.
Let’s use their examples as a reminder of the crucial importance of going through the means of brand discovery, creating a private brand architecture, after which aligning all communication to stay “on brand” in any respect times.
All of it begins with identifying a brand positioning for your personal brand. And, by the best way, if the term “personal branding” feels overly narcissistic and unrelatable, simply replace it with “leadership branding.”
Related: The three Biggest Mistakes CEOs Make With Their Personal Brand (and Methods to Turn Those Mistakes Around)
Brand positioning
What’s it and the way do you discover yours? In personal branding, brand positioning is a technique to express who you’re or what you stand for in a singular word or phrase. With a view to define yours, you want to zoom out — away from what you do, away from the vertical you serve, and as close as possible to the essence of your core beliefs.
A private brand positioning is often a mirrored image of a core:
If you’ve got discovered your purpose, the WHY in Simon Sinek’s terms, the query to ask is: WHY is that your WHY? Please forgive the tautology, and concentrate on uncovering what core belief fuels that purpose.
For one among our clients, his brand positioning is expressed as “timeless principles.” This can be a reflection of his core values: He’s someone who believes in the facility of a handshake over a signed agreement and investing in gold over crypto. One other brand positioning we developed for a client was “interiority” — the “inner space” of physical spaces, with feelings over things on the core. Her WHY as an interior design entrepreneur is to provide people a way of a house, and the core belief behind that “why” is that spaces are built out of things, but their key purpose is to create feelings and memories.
My brand positioning is centered around “radical authenticity.” I think in taking a stance against censorship in every possible form, including self-censorship and censorship of each opposing opinion (cancel culture is the stuff of nightmares for me).
Listed here are some exercises to enable you uncover yours:
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Construct out your “lifeline.” Discover essentially the most significant moments of your life, each personal and skilled. Look for patterns. What keeps surfacing for you? Engage a qualitative researcher or a private branding agency when you are stuck.
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List out your core values. Is there one which expresses the true essence of who you’re?
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Do you’ve got a viewpoint on something that’s so unshakeable that you simply would defend it at any cost?
Now take what you uncovered and hand it to a branding specialist — or placed on your personal creative hat — to show it into an idea you can “own.”
Related: Methods to Construct a Personal Brand in 5 Steps
What to do next
That is merely the first step. It is probably going the toughest piece of the branding puzzle, however it’s the one which lets you align the entire other pieces of the non-public branding architecture. Before you step out into the highlight, you will want to have clarity in your:
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Brand descriptors: How do you ought to be perceived?
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Brand voice: How do you ought to sound, each digitally and offline?
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Content pillars: What topics do you ought to be related to, and which of them do you ought to keep away from?
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CEO story: Gone are the times of the boring bios that no person wanted to write down, let alone read. Research shows that storytelling helps release cortisol, dopamine and oxytocin in the brain — all chemicals that enhance human connection, empathy and an emotional response. Replace your corporate-sounding bio with one rooted in storytelling. You’ll use its components for your social media profile, speaker page and whenever you’re introduced at events.
I spend my days speaking concerning the importance of private branding with CEOs individually and from global stages. The hesitations are the identical no matter geography and, yet, so is the understanding that non-public branding is inevitable for the fashionable leader. With 82% of individuals more prone to trust an organization when its senior executives are energetic on social media, and with 77% of consumers more prone to buy when the CEO of the business uses social media, your impact on the perception of your organization is more significant than ever. Will 2024 be the yr you construct and scale your personal brand?