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YOUR PERSONAL BRAND: DON’T EXPECT TO LEAD WITHOUT IT
ByBrenda Smith, Managing PartnerandJohn Kelly, Senior AssociateProphet
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Prophet, 2002 
Consider how New York City’s chief executive and the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm each demonstratedtheir personal brands during and after the events of September 11.New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was everywhere – rushing to the World Trade Center after the firstplane hit, fleeing for safety when the second tower collapsed, keeping the public informed, preparing the cityfor the unfolding aftermath of the attacks, meeting with firefighters and policemen, and consoling individualsand families over their losses. After a year of unending gossip and increasing irrelevance, he became theperfect leader for New York City in the most challenging of times. Informed, consoling and human, he wasable to re-gain the trust and admiration of the many New Yorkers who had recently written him off.In contrast, consider the Silicon Valley company CEO, as recounted in a recent issue of Fortunemagazine, who was stranded away from his office in the aftermath of September 11, but didn’t contact anyoneat his company for two days. Upon his return, a short speech about the events was prefaced by the remarkthat he wasn’t going to “pretend to be anyone’s spiritual advisor.” It’s hard to imagine that this CEO ever hadthe trust and admiration of his team.During challenging times – due to economic, national or natural crises – trust is fostered through thehonesty and consistency of deeds and words. That’s crisis management 101. But the real question is: shouldit really take a crisis to prod leaders to explore, identify, and act consistently upon their core set of values?Leaders need to have a strong personal brand through good times and bad. Defining yours andbringing it to life through consistency in action is something that today’s best business leaders instinctivelyrecognize, whether they articulate it or not. And the ability to build and demonstrate a compelling personalbrand will continue to be a critical career success factor, whether you’re starting, changing or optimizing yourcareer.How does one go about building a personal brand? The underlying principles are the same as thoseapplied to the branding of a soft drink, an automobile, or a technological service. Recognize your personalstrengths and gifts, think about how you best connect with people, consider what your target audience needsand wants, identify the value you deliver to meet those needs and wants, and communicate in a way thatreaches your constituents in their hearts and minds and via the channels that work best for you. And most
 
importantly, recognize the gaps in your personal brand and invest the time and energy to overcome thosegaps.On one hand, you have the functional aspects of a personal brand. A leader’s functional brand promiseis to deliver successful, objective results: to achieve profitable growth, to introduce a consistently successfularray of new products to the market, or to reduce costs. What’s more elusive to identify, much less to build,are the intangibles or the emotional benefits of a personal brand: being an inspirational visionary, an articulatecommunicator, or for most of us, simply being a compelling and confidence-inspiring leader.But make no mistake. It’s the emotional benefits delivered through your personal brand that make thedifference between being seen simply as an able business-person and being seen as a true leader.A personal brand is incomplete if it’s built by emphasizing either functional or emotional qualities alone.These qualities must work in tandem. Proficient functional skills and the ensuing results establish yourcredibility. The emotional benefits broaden the value you deliver. If built upon functional attributes alone, yourbrand risks a similar fate as products that slip into commodity status. You will be evaluated on a checklist ofattributes and will be seen as being far less nimble and flexible if the markets, industry or external events turnagainst you.How many times have we seen the whiz kid from finance or the guru from marketing ascend to the topspot, only to flounder in a role that requires more than just functional skills and results? Douglas Ivester atCoca-Cola, for example, had established an enviable record as an operational whiz while serving as the No. 2to CEO Roberto Goizueta. Few questioned Ivester’s functional prowess or begrudged his contributions toCoca-Cola’s success. But some questioned his intangibles for the CEO’s chair. As it turned out, Ivester neveridentified the gaps in his personal brand and was never able to establish the value of his leadership style.Over the course of his two-year tenure as CEO, concerns about his management style and Coke’s businessdifficulties were
both 
blamed for knocking billions off the company’s value. When he mishandled a series ofissues ranging from a racial discrimination case to tainted product in Belgium, he lost the confidence of Coca-Cola’s constituencies altogether and resigned abruptly from the job that he had always wanted. From abusiness perspective, the timing was odd -- Coca-Cola’s numbers were improving, but from a brandperspective, the company and Ivester realized that his brand just wasn’t delivering any emotional value. AndCoca-Cola learned that the concept of brand applies to its people as well as its products.Warren Buffett, on the other hand, has created his functional brand as an investor who successfullycapitalizes on value investments – with consistent and fully-realized personal traits of the homespunEveryman. (Never mind that he’s one of the richest men in the world.) He lives up to his brand promise on thefunctional end by delivering results, achieving an enviable five-year growth rate for Berkshire Hathaway. Healso has achieved emotional relevance through the consistency of his actions and his championing of issuesthat connect with his constituents. In recent years, for example, he’s been a vocal critic of both inflated CEOsalaries (his salary is $100,000 a year), as well as actions that undermine the true measures of value investing,such as the liberal use of stock options in executive pay packages. Mr. Buffet’s brand is a complete one – andwhat’s more impressive, he has maintained it extremely well over several decades. In the face of the most
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