Leadership as a Brand

Product brands are pervasive; in fact, we buy certain products in part because their brand reflects our self-identity. However, the emphasis in branding has shifted from products to the firms that produce or design them. Today it is less a specific product that entices the customer and more the reputation of the firm—and the firm’s brand is sustained and enhanced by the firm’s leadership brand.

A leadership brand represents the identity and reputation of leaders in the company. Leaders demonstrate a brand when they think and act in ways congruent with the desired product or firm brand. A leadership brand exists when leaders at all levels demonstrate a consistent reputation for both attributes and results.

Thinking about leadership as a brand offers several insights:

• Brand has both core and differential elements. Certain core elements of leadership are common among successful leaders. Leaders need to think about the future and act in the present, engage people and govern organizations, and demonstrate personal qualities that give them credibility. But what differentiates branded leaders is the ability to reflect in their leadership style the attributes and results that customers want to see in the firm. Your leadership brand should reflect the expectations of your customers.
• Brand focuses on the outside-in. A leadership brand is valuable to the extent that it results in a firm that is more likely to attract and please consumers. We define effective leadership for a firm by asking, What would customers want this firm to be known for? What do our leaders need to know, do, and deliver to make that customer-desired identity happen? With this approach, leadership matters because customers and investors put money into the firm. Leadership brand requires that leadership results be assessed by the extent to which leaders deliver value to customers and investors outside the firm.
• Brand evolves over time to meet the changing market. Brands change with consumers. Brands evolve, and so do leaders. Successful leaders continually tie their brand or identity to the changing expectations of customers and investors. As customers change, so must the leadership brand.
• Brand puts leadership into business terms. Leadership rhetoric is plagued with fuzzy terms such as transformation, vision, aspiration, character, and empowerment. A leadership brand focuses on quantifiable business terms of customer share and market value. The ultimate return on a leadership investment should be a “return on intangibles” that shows up in a firm’s stock price. When leadership brand connects to customer share or market value, the rationale for leadership investment is easier to make.

Firms with a leadership brand win with investors because investors grant higher market value for similar earnings, often called intangibles. Quality of management or leadership gives investors confidence in the future, leading to a higher share price. Of course, if the perceived brand value is not rooted in reality, or if the brand does not transfer to the demands of the new consumers, the brand image fades. But branded leaders are often in firms that have a higher price-to-earnings ratio.

Firms with branded leadership win with customers because customers have confidence that the leaders will respond to their needs in a consistent and appropriate way. Nordstrom wins in the service game because its leaders are branded with a service mentality. They don’t have to ask for permission to serve customers; they do it as a part of who they are. And customers respond with high customer share.

And, firms with branded leadership win with employees. When a consistent leadership brand exists, employees know what to expect and the engagement-draining dissonance is eliminated. One leader told us that he treated his best customers as if they were his best employees and his best employees as if they were his best customers. If a firm makes a customer brand promise of timely and responsive behavior, the same brand should be reflected in employee relations.