Personal Branding is a leadership requisite

We know well that the hierarchical pyramid gets narrow at the top. Typically, in all organizations, there is a CEO at the top followed by select set of CXOs. The numbers start bulking up from the level below that, i.e.  CXO -1. Though these employees are certainly key constituents of the leadership pipeline of an organization, they have limited visibility of their career prospects. 

There are many competent and highly talented professionals who reach these senior management roles swiftly in their career span, but then their efforts to move further up becomes extremely challenging, as the pyramid gets narrower. Many a times, these professionals have to content themselves with job rotations or lateral movement.  This further impacts their career aspirations as it deviates from their core capabilities and also alienates them from important external interfaces like clients, suppliers, media and other industry participants.

This is where personal branding comes in and plays an imperative role in nudging them to the top.

Executives need to reckon the importance and indispensability of standing out in a crowd while shedding inhibitions about seeming desperate to get noticed. Most of the books and white papers on what differentiates a successful professional from a relatively less successful one, clearly highlight that it is mostly the underlying fear of being looked down upon for showcasing one’s achievements that holds a person back.

People forget that like others are too busy to remember anyone’s good work, they are equally busy to notice achievements unless one showcase them regularly. Some of the steps to develop a personal brand could be as basic as –

• Having a robust and active Linkedin profile. This could be coupled with active Twitter handle or Instagram or Pinterest profile to showcase expertise as a thought leader, creative individual, technology buff and so on.
• Mapping relevant stakeholders for outreach. These stakeholders could include media, clients, board members, industry leaders, peers, senior colleagues and even team members.
• Networking with these stakeholders. This helps in subtly showcasing ones capabilities and capturing right mind space amongst right audience, thereby building recall.
• Identifying areas of expertise and building relevant positioning around it. Here both, choosing the right messages/ views and platforms of dissemination, are critical

Through systematic planning across each of these and many such simple steps, one can craft a powerful personal brand.

Our inertia or inability to challenge the status quo, many a times, makes us lazy. Hence seeking a professional help often helps. An outside expert provides an independent and unbiased views to these executives, which even work as an eye opener in some cases! A professional also nudges these executives to pull up their socks the moment inertia starts setting in during the process.

Finally, whether done through professional support or self discipline, a well articulated plan around personal branding is critical to propel the career path of senior executives, recognizing fully well that personal branding is a leadership requisite and not a self promotion campaign.