This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
- George Bernard Shaw
Congratulations! You have your Leadership Brand Card in your hands. Your leadership brand is a representation of your personal commitment to scale your impact in the world. This is you at your innovative best and most fulfilled.
Here is how you can use your Leadership Brand to guide your day-to-day decisions, build relationships, maximise your impact, and accelerate your growth:
Your Leadership Brand provides direction. You rely on your Leadership Brand to do very complicated things. The decisions we make every day are rarely clear-cut -- we deal with complexity every day, and people change their minds. Without these principles, you are forced to react to every decision in an ad-hoc manner, as if these decisions are independent with completely no relation to each other. You don't make decisions that are tempting in the short term but do not fit with your long-term goals. You don't try to do everything and be all things to all people all the time. It keeps you out of the drama triangle.
Your Leadership Brand is a lens through which you shift existing mental models, thought patterns and habitual behaviours. When you first start changing things that have become habitual, you need to pay a lot of attention. Your Leadership Brand helps you hold firm to your personal commitment.
How to use: When you're feeling overwhelmed by indecisiveness, or triggered before a key meeting, or wondering whether it's all worth it and wanna give up (we all have those moments), refer back to your Leadership Brand to centre yourself. The invitation is to hold your personal commitment to scale your impact as you navigate the uncertainty in the world. This is something you can absolutely count on: not the outcome (which you can't fully control), but the motivation you bring, the vision you hold, the North Star you choose to follow. Refer back to your Leadership Brand often.
Your Leadership Brand can scale. The four principles can be applied by others to drive the outcomes that you want. It is impossible for you to be in every meeting room to supervise every micro-decision being made. But your principles can stand in your place. Principles are a lot more empowering than micro-managing. Principles help people understand where you're coming from. As the founder of a startup, your leadership brand is a representation of the founder-market fit. And when you can clearly articulate your values, people will feel empowered to make the right decisions for your organisation.
How to use: Share your principles with your employees and stakeholders. Communicate, communicate, communicate. How clearly do you communicate? Clear enough such that people FEEL the agency to do the right thing. Acknowledge others when they apply the principles; they will be motivated to do more of it.
Your Leadership Brand attracts talent, customers and investors/sponsors. People will forget what you say; but they will never forget how you make them feel. Your Leadership Brand reflects your values. You stand for something. People who stand for the same values will gravitate towards you. In their eyes, you snap out of the blurriness into sharp relief. Like when your camera comes into focus. Snap!
How to use:
Use the four principles as a starting point to create your Executive Bio when you speak at industry events, or in the About section of your Linkedin profile.
Use the keywords in your leadership brand as a lens to create authentic and relevant social media posts that reinforce your public profile.
When you come across an interesting news article or image, look at it from the lens of your leadership brand, then ask yourself: What does the article make me think? Or feel? When you have some clarity, re-share the news article or image, and add your personal commentary.
Share the principles from your leadership brand during presentations or when meeting someone new. Some examples:
Tell me about yourself. Use your PURPOSE or POWER statement.
What's unique about you? What motivates you? Talk about your PASSION statement.
What do you do? Share your PURPOSE statement.
Why do you do the things you do? Share your PRIZE statement.
Your Leadership Brand helps you prioritise the activities that really matter. Use your Leadership Brand to get more done by doing less. Get more out of your work, rather than cramming more "stuff" into it. Use it to identify the tasks that really matter. Swim in your lane. When you align your work with your values, naturally you'll find your work intrinsically motivating. Doing the work itself brings a lot of joy and happiness to you. That's how you can perform at your peak in a consistent and sustainable manner.
More importantly, use your Leadership Brand to say no to the tasks that make you feel busy but actually don't get you results. We jokingly call this insecurity work; it's our much-cherished, finely-tuned coping mechanism when we're feeling insecure. Mine is internet research (a.k.a. doom scrolling). But with a principled approach using your leadership brand, you end up with more than enough time for what matters and a sense of peace and spaciousness that constant activity has kept outside your reach... until now.
The four principles come together as a self-management process that helps you operate in the sweet spot for performance. It’s like the lane markers at the bottom of the competitive swimming pool. It helps you swim straight. Ambling from day to day, quieting that niggling feeling that your dreams aren’t being fulfilled, is the alternative.
The Self-Management Process (fly-wheel)
How to use: Use the principles to reflect on your daily activities and figure out what small things you can do differently TODAY to do less and accomplish more.
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PERSONNA is a leadership development company focused on the human side of transformation. We're here to help ambitious leaders and teams elevate their performance without burning out.
We provide leadership branding, leadership coaching and group experiences. Drop us an email to find out more about reaching your next level of performance; hello@personna.me.
In PERSONNA, we hold a simple belief that everyone is an extraordinary force for positive change, and our solutions should be as unique and agile as you and your business challenges.