The Power of Building an Ecosystem for Your Personal, Business, and Leadership Brand

In last week’s blog, where we were joined by Matthew Mason and talked about how you can systemise and monetise your IP so you can scale up the impact you can make beyond you actually delivering the result or transformation.

Especially in this context, I do get a lot of questions from my clients where they should focus on their efforts first: their personal or their company brand.

Short answer: it depends.

Long answer: grab yourself a pen and notepad and break it all down.

Let’s start with a definition of the different types of brands first so we’re all on the same page:

• Personal Brand:

  This is all about who you are as an individual – your values, beliefs, strengths, and the unique qualities that make you stand out.

  It's the perception people have of you as a person and I always say it’s the basics, the nitty and gritty and yes- the unsexy part of building your presence because it involves asking [yourself] all the tricky to answer questions, the questions no one else asks you when you grow up like what’s important to you, what do you believe in, what should other people remember about you, and so forth. But when we have this aspect sorted, the rest - aka the marketing of your point of difference is the easy part.

• Leadership Brand:

  Still starts with your personal brand as you aren’t [and shouldn’t] be 2 different personas in your professional and your personal life but since your responsibilities are different and the type of people you’re with are different, your own behaviour needs to be different.

  However, the actions you take still need to be in alignment with your personal brand as otherwise, you will burn out if you always try to push uphill [meaning: you’re always trying to be someone you’re not or lobby for something you don’t believe in]. You can do it but a) only for so long and b) people can sense it when you don’t fully stand behind your actions. So your leadership brand is all about how you lead, inspire, and influence others to get to a certain outcome.

It's the impact you have on your team and your ability to make things happen through and with others. I always categorise it more on an operational and executional level, how you communicate with individuals and the team, how you make decisions, how you think and take people on the journey etc.

And remember: being a leader goes beyond managing people [in my books anyway]. You can influence and lead people obviously but also change and projects. Lastly- you can also lead through your thoughts aka being a thought leader but this crosses [my] lines and goes more so into executive branding. 

• Executive Brand: executive branding goes beyond the tactical, day-to-day aspect of leadership and role/ organisation. It’s more focused on you establishing yourself as a strategic leader through your content, building a community, showing up online or at events etc. 

It’s not necessarily connected with your actual title or having a team underneath you.

I’d consider Seth Godin to have a strong executive brand or Brenee Brown - yes, they have people working for and with them but this is not what we know them for or are directly impacted by. How they inspire and educate through their thought leadership content, the way they carry themselves on stage and in interviews, the way they communicate - all of that impacts us also when we’re not in direct proximity with them and working in or on one outcome. 

• Company Brand:

  Finally, the company brand is the public face of your organisation or the organisation you work for – its values, products, services, and reputation in the market.This is the sum of people work in an organisation, making up the culture that has then a certain reputation. Can one bad egg change the dynamics of how a company brand is perceived? 100%! One of my clients who had a bit of a crisis in terms of talen attraction got into that situation: they engaged me to change the perception of them in the market in the eye of talents because a previous CIO fired people who didn’t stay behind [and I’m talking beyond midnight on a regular basis] on the spot so you can imagine how quickly that makes the rounds especially in a tiny market like Brisbane.

Let’s shift gears and talk a little bit about the importance of branding. So what are the drivers that make branding so crucial in 2023 and beyond?

We live in a digital age where we have more access to information and with that, a whole lot more competition but also transparency. These days, it’s very hard to hide anywhere and people form an opinion about someone or something regardless so why not take control over this perception by a) being aware of it, b) being intentional with how you show up and c) being consistent in the actions you take and the stories you tell. 

So that leads us into today’s topic and the question: where should you focus on when it comes to building your brand and presence?

It’s not one or another. It’s the intersection and synergies between all of them that really moves the needle and creates a ripple effect.

Whilst it always starts with clarifying your personal brand, the other aspects of branding are ‘only’ lived and breathed values in action for a certain audience, serving a certain purpose.

There’s power beyond words in being crystal clear about your personal brand because doing the groundwork of really digging deep to get a good understanding of what makes you tick, why you respond in certain situations like you do, why you’re drawn to some people, places, projects and tasks and dread others and of course- why, where and to whom you can add the biggest value based on your unique makeup of values, strengths, skills, and personality traits. 

I often compare it to wearing glasses with smudged lenses. Once you clean them and put them back on, you can't ignore what you see.

But it doesn’t stop there because once you’ve laid the foundation - and that’s already the word that says it all, you build on it. You then pursue the leadership roles or you then show up online and share content or develop and monetise your own IP through keynotes, courses and consulting packages. 

The benefit of focusing on your personal brand - no matter the industry, company or role you’re in is that you can pivot a lot easier, for whatever reason that may be relevant. What we also have to mention is that you don’t have to do one or the other. You can absolutely switch when you say the main intent is to build a company to sell - then of course, focusing on the company brand [but still through the power of personal brands meaning individuals of the business talk about the brand] makes sense. But you see- one goes hand in hand with the other as a company brand should be a reflection of individual beliefs and values. And vice versa- working for a company that is against everything you believe and stand for takes a toll and you will never be able to give 110%, the discretionary effort you would put in if you wholeheartedly behind the cause.

In the end- people buy from people and if I trust the leaders of an organisation already due to their content they put out there, the presence they have and with that, the social proof, the conversion aka the decision to go with one company over the other is done a lot quicker.

Building your executive presence - so your profile beyond your role and organisation can massively fast-track this relationship building activity and establish yourself as the trusted authority who becomes the rainmaker, who is the talent magnet and who is the one attracting the right partners and opportunities to the organisation.

This is why I’m banging on so much about the importance of investing in individuals and leveraging them as brand ambassadors because every level in an organisation plays a different role: for people in sales and business development, it’s all about attracting future clients and customers so their profiles for example would be written very differently to a resume because it’s not about them and how good they are but what a future client can expect from engaging them. I often see profiles saying ‘exceeded sales targets by xxx%’ or ‘highest billing consultant’ and so forth which - to be honest - couldn’t be more appalling to me as a potential client. So the focus should be on values and their approach on working with clients, success stories they achieved for their clients and proudest moments in their life.

However, from an executive perspective- these people are more the ‘insurance’ for any potential opportunities because their role is to build credibility, communicate cultural fit and inspire collaborations in any shape or form. 

If you’re more in an individual contributor role let’s say a mid-weight software engineer without direct reports or aspirations to be in a leadership role, then your executive presence may be built more around your technical area of expertise and your personality / values that is demonstrated by your social involvement, your hobbies and the way you talk about projects because that resonates with talents on a similar level and ideally, we want the people who work with and for us, to attract like minded people. 

So hopefully you see that every role in an organisation has a different role to play based on the goals and their executive presence has a different emphasis / focus. There’s no one-size fits all approach but the key take away is that once you have awareness of your brand DNA, you can leverage that in all aspects to fast-track your personal and your business’s results.

Anyway - I will talk about a cut-through LinkedIn strategy for an organisation with the different levels in a couple of week’s time because it’s always a hot topic and many leaders are concerned about their people being poached by other companies.

Another common concern that I always hear is that especially my executive clients don’t want to share too much personal content on LinkedIn. And I get it. Good news?

There’s no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It is very much up to you how much you share or not share. You don’t need to show your kids’ faces or your family home. It’s more about being human and sharing your insights through and supported with your personal stories and experiences. They don’t even have to be super recent - they can be from years ago. But it’s exactly those emotional touch points that not only make you more human and relatable but also memorable.

What I do recommend however is to have a brand style guide - not just for your business (if you have one) but also for your personal brand as this allows you to outsource content creation as well as design. In your style guide, you want to not only capture your colour codes and fonts but also saying and phrases that you’d never use including emojis. This way, someone can pick up on your tone and voice a lot quicker and you can measure easier whether content and design is ‘on brand’ or would create confusion.

To wrap things up, while company and personal brands are distinct, they are interconnected. One can be leveraged to build and boost the other and the focus can always shift. Simply tagging the company you’re working for or with in every single post, getting others to tag the company and you as the leader/ founder and publishing a lot of content through your company page- this is how you establish brand awareness and recognition. If your goal however is to establish yourself as a consultant, coach, speaker or thought leader, the focus should absolutely be on your personal brand since people buy into your IP, your personality and your stories/ experiences and not in a company’s. You can still scale this type of business when you train others, get others involved in meetings and the delivery of outcomes but your personal brand is again the ‘insurance’ to get what you promise. Think of Gary V- no one would expect him being on the tools to develop a social media strategy or the actual content for their clients but his omni-presence is exactly what attracts certain clients who resonate with his style and take on to Vaynermedia.

A strong personal brand of key employees, such as executives or thought leaders, can positively influence the perception of the company brand. Likewise, a reputable company brand can enhance the credibility of individuals associated with the organisation.

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