Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance
Does it matter if you’re not a natural-born leader to enjoy a success career? No, but providing leadership is becoming a key requirement for effective career management and success. If you’re not a natural leader, then you can breathe a sigh of relief, because leaders are made, not born.
Leaders are developed through on-the-job training, working with mentors and role models, and formal training. In their book, Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value, Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood make the case that a leadership brand translates customers’ needs into employee action, with results that satisfy investors. Ulrich and Smallwood explain a leadership brand is, why a leadership brand matters, how to develop a leadership brand, how to maintain a leadership brand, and why your personal brand is also crucial.
What is a Leadership Brand?
Great companies use their leadership brand as a logical extension of their marketplace brand as they focus on the outside of their company. Great companies develop leadership in their ranks by placing importance on the style, tenor and quality of a firm’s than the identities of individual leaders like the CEO. If you’re committed to developing leadership, as yourself “What do your customers truly care about?” If you can answer this essential question, you have the potential to overcome the competition and achieve great success. Turning these customer expectations into your employee actions becomes your company’s vital “leadership brand.”
The Components of Any Leadership Brand
If you’re a manager, your company’s leadership brand aligns your company’s plans and projects, along with its employees’ day-to-day activities, customer and/or investor priorities. Think of your leadership brand as a logical extension of your marketplace brand. As you align company to customer and/or investor, pay attention to the five components of leadership brands: strategists, executors, talent managers, human capital developers, and personal proficiency.
- Strategists – Leaders plan and prepare their organizations for the future
- Executors – Leaders take action to achieve goals
- Talent Managers – Leaders direct others through motivation, communication, encouragement, and direction
- Human capital developers – Leaders nurture future leaders
- Personal proficiency – Leaders are decisive, ethical, and intelligent
The Six Benefits of Leadership Brands
The upside to developing and becoming effective in leadership branding?
- It enables a superior workforce plan to develop additional, future leaders
- It establishes a strong commitment to the customer
- It prepares flexible leaders who can identify and pursue new strategies
- It allows for international expansion while maintaining the core brand
- It provides for organizational growth, whether it is organic or results from mergers and acquisitions
- It provides an adequate supply of professional leaders as the company expands
Investing in a Leadership Brand, Developing Leaders
Great leaders are made, not born. One long-accepted rule for developing leaders was expressed as a 70-20-10 formula. In this ratio, on-the-job experience accounted for 70% of the leader-in-training experience, 20% came from working with mentors and role models, and 10% derived from training. Ulrich and Smallwood argue that this breakdown no longer reflects the current state of business. Today, an accurate ratio today is 50-20-30, where work experience accounts for 50% of a leader’s development, 20% from mentors and roles, and formal training accounts for 30%.
Leadership Development
Great leaders also inspire followers and produce future leaders. Your CEO can have a wide-ranging influence on the executives in your company. A sign of a true leader is the extent to which he or she has produced other leaders.
For additional informational on how to maintain a leadership brand, and why your personal brand is important, check out their book, Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value.
Recommended Reading List
- Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood
- The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking
by Roger L. Martin
- What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
- Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls
by Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis
