Building your personal brand as a leader

Personal branding seems to be the new buzzword, but it’s not a new activity. It’s been around as long as business, now it simply has a name. Most of us have been inadvertently doing it for years, building our in-person networks alongside our online ones.

For anyone serious about forging a career in leadership, personal branding is part of the game.  

I’ve been developing my personal brand for years. It’s not an overnight job; it’s something that you have to plug away at over time. In doing so, I’ve been offered opportunities and met amazing people whom I might not have met otherwise.  

What is personal branding and why does it matter? 

Personal branding is how you express and communicate your value and values. The result is how you’re seen by your peers - the thoughts, feelings, attitudes and assumptions that others hold about you.  

When we think about marketing, we typically think of products and services, but personal branding is how you market yourself. Typically, it’s your online presence and how that translates to someone meeting you in person. In “old-fashioned” terms, it’s your reputation, only it’s purposely created and curated by you.  

The direct result of a strong personal brand might be speaking opportunities, being headhunted for a dream position, and building a strong referral network.

The indirect results might be a stronger sense of purpose and confidence, but there’s also evidence which suggests personal branding can be a major strategy to support diversity in leadership positions.  

The art of curating a strong brand presence is just that, an art. There’s no exact formula, no science to it, but it does require one thing. Authenticity. It has to be true to who you are and your values.

While we’re marketing ourselves, we have to be authentic in our actions, our words and how we show up. I’m not a personal branding expert, but I have learned a few things along the way and here are a few things that have worked for me.  

Sharing advice and learnings 

I don’t gatekeep. I’m a firm believer that we all have to start somewhere and we should all be continually learning, so a big part of my personal brand is sharing advice and my perspective.

In the same way that I want to help everyone in my team, I want to help those in my network that I can.  

You won’t find clickbait headlines and promises of secrets to success coming from me. Instead, I take the approach to be as helpful and open as I can be. (Although I recently posted a picture with Rod Stewart which received more engagement than any other content I have ever posted!) 

Take the Leaders with Ambition podcast, I get the opportunity to talk to so many different people and learn from them.

As Matthew Meadows, Managing Partner at Moore Kingston Smith said in a recent interview, “You’re a sponge”. My aim is to share as much as possible through my personal brand to help myself but also to help others. For me, sharing advice also includes asking for advice or crediting others for their help.    

Being open and vulnerable 

When we lead with authenticity, it provides us with opportunities to share in a more open, and possibly vulnerable way. We’ve all seen examples of this backfiring, like the LinkedIn post of the CEO crying when he had to make redundancies, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share when appropriate.  

For me, this can be as simple as including hobbies or things I enjoy in my posts - like my morning runs around Central Park when I’m in New York. Showing who you are as a person outside of the workplace or sharing what your ‘why’ is or events in your life which have impacted who you are helps build genuine relationships with your network.  

Everyone has a different level which they’re comfortable sharing, being open doesn’t mean sharing every aspect of your life. For me, it’s about showing your humanity.

Nobody is perfect, and for me, the best way to do that is to show up as my true self, not a fictional polished version of myself which I won’t be able to live up to in person. 

Saying yes to opportunities 

There’s a saying that nothing grows in your comfort zone. To grow, whether that’s personally or professionally, we need to step outside what we’re familiar with and do something that’s a little bit scary.  

When you’re building a personal brand, you might get opportunities you hadn’t thought of before, maybe it’s to be a guest on someone’s podcast or perhaps it’s to speak at a conference, or simply to go for a coffee with someone you admire. They’re all packed with potential, but they’re all a bit daunting.  

Saying yes to whatever comes your way is a surefire way to develop yourself, to put yourself out there but also to continue building your personal brand. If you appear on a podcast, they’ll promote that to your audience who might then discover and start following you. 

I try to say yes as much as I can. You never know what the result might be, and while it’s adding something else into my schedule, I love the challenge and promise that comes from saying yes.

Now, it’s not always possible to fulfill every request but if I can’t then I make sure that I decline it in a positive and graceful way, because you don’t know when our paths might cross again. 

Getting comfortable being visible 

For many that I speak to about personal branding and showing up on social media, this is one of the biggest barriers. Personal branding can seem like you’re showing off, boasting about yourself and your achievements. It seems brash and bold, and it puts you in a vulnerable position.  

People think they aren’t interesting enough, the imposter syndrome creeps in and doubt puts a stop to any activity before it starts. I never feel fully comfortable with marketing myself, it can be cringe to see yourself on a video, but it helps to build trust. Without that trust your network won’t grow, and you’ll be overlooked for opportunities you know you could do in a heartbeat.  

Being visible is uncomfortable, it’s slightly awkward, and it requires faith in yourself.

After all, if we go back to building an authentic personal brand that truly reflects your value and your values, we aren’t going to be saying or participating in anything we don’t believe in.  

In times where I’m doubting my personal brand, I need to hit post before I can talk myself out of it. As they say in the film, "We bought a zoo”, “All it takes is 20 seconds of insane courage.” 

Personal branding isn’t about your ego, it’s not about creating a fake version of yourself, it’s about highlighting your work and your values, so it’s there for the people you want to find it.  

Even if you never wanted to be in the spotlight, you need to think about your personal brand, because it impacts everything we do. Every job we apply for, every client we court, every promotion we’re considered for.

If you don’t curate it and shape it in a purposeful and authentic way, then your personal brand will create itself and you might not like the result.