The Attractive Leadership Character - Personal Branding
This session provides comprehensive insights into personal branding, focusing on the attractive leadership character. Learn how to define your leadership identity, craft compelling storylines, and effectively communicate your brand across various platforms. Discover the importance of consistency, authenticity, and embracing polarity in building a strong personal brand.
The Attractive Leadership Character
Introduction
In today's competitive landscape, personal branding has become essential for individuals seeking to stand out and achieve their goals. A key component of personal branding is the attractive leadership character, which encompasses your identity, values, and communication style. This blog article will delve into the key takeaways from the session "The Attractive Leadership Character," providing you with practical insights to enhance your personal brand.
Key Takeaways
Define Your Attractive Leadership Character:
Understand your backstory and how it shapes your beliefs and mission.
Acknowledge your flaws and weaknesses and how they have influenced your growth.
Develop compelling stories that resonate with your audience and highlight your unique journey.
Develop Your Communication Style:
Find your authentic voice and tone of voice that reflects your personality.
Use powerful language and phrases that reinforce your brand message.
Embrace polarity and differentiate yourself from the competition.
Craft Your Core Storylines:
Utilize storytelling techniques like loss and redemption, us versus them, and the journey to connect with your audience.
Leverage your breakthrough moments and epiphanies to create compelling narratives.
Implement Across Platforms:
Ensure consistency in your messaging across all platforms, including social media, your website, and other channels.
Integrate your attractive leadership character into your content and interactions.
Conclusion
By understanding and implementing the principles of the attractive leadership character, you can create a powerful personal brand that resonates with your target audience. Remember, authenticity, consistency, and effective communication are key to building a lasting and impactful brand.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Personal Branding
00:37 Overview of the Personal Branding System
01:22 Defining Your Attractive Leadership Character
02:40 Crafting Your Core Storyline
04:32 Embracing Your Flaws and Weaknesses
05:50 Using Parables to Convey Lessons
07:28 Establishing Your Identity
09:25 Developing Your Communication Style
11:50 Embracing Polarity
16:36 Crafting Core Storylines
20:42 Implementing Across Platforms
22:21 Conclusion and Q&A
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Personal branding, and today we look into the attractive leadership character, which one part of personal branding,
and we will, we'll go through two things. The system is just a reminder, um, towards the last personal branding where we went into the whole system. So I just put the reminder. and show back where we are and, where the attractive character fits in. Now we do a deep dive on the attractive character or attractive leadership character.
So back to the system, the whole system from a personal branding perspective starts with your personal brand, which is the star. And then we have different components. Everything in the end leads to. and lives in the hub, which is your personal website. And from there, we have different parts that we are [00:01:00] engaging with.
We have the content that goes to your hub. We have the distribution, which is from your hub and the rest of the world. Then we have a community aspect, and then we have the career aspect. We went into all of these different elements inside of the personal branding session, the last one. So if anyone is interested, of course, you can look into the video.
It was recorded as well. The attractive character fits into the personal brand itself. So it's a key part of the personal brand. So who are you going to be and how are you showing up inside of the totality? I mean, just At another member. So attractive character fits into the personal branding part. So from an, I don't know, more people are joining.
Hello. Hello.
So [00:02:00] let's, let's, let's go back to the overview so that, that we quickly start with, with the starting point. Attractive leadership character is. It's an important part of the branding aspect of your personal brand. So inside of the attractive leadership character topic today, we go into defining your attractive leadership, leader character elements, developing your communication style, embracing polarity, crafting your core storylines, and then implementing across platforms.
Define your attractive leader character. That's the starting point. It all starts with your backstory. We have had a storyline already in the other call, but it's really all about how do you go from a story that is. Forming your character, which illustrates different journeys, and of course, as always, when it comes to storytelling includes [00:03:00] struggles, failures, and how you overcome them in different ways.
So building a storyline and building a story that is attracting other people into your life. And that's what we showed last time when I talked about how you implement that in your hub. Which I have, for example, when you go on the landing page of my personal web page, that's a storyline that drags people into my ecosystem.
So it's really about a story that you can tell and that drags people into your ecosystem and gets them believing in you as a person. And questions to consider when you're developing that is what are pivotal moments that you have experienced in your life? How did these moments shape your current beliefs and mission and what drives you to do what, what you do?
And here's an example, but I just give my example. So when I talked about my storyline, I have two storylines that are going in the same direction. One was I was made redundant when I was 23. [00:04:00] And, uh, I needed to reconfigure what my life is. And then the other one is where I'm standing in a train going in over the bridge in Malmö, uh, which is Sweden or going from Copenhagen to Sweden, and then decided to leave Ikea.
And that leads me to where I am today. So it's, it's, it's just a story that you tell that gets people understanding. You started here, you came from here and you struggled in different ways and then you came to who you are today. So that's, that's the story. And then a very important part of that total is as well, like you have flaws.
Every one of us has flaws and it's good to be known that you have flaws. You have different tics, you have different things that make you human because nobody is perfect in this world. And if you're, if you're not building that in, then you're not really human as well. So considering certain things what are your [00:05:00] weaknesses and struggles?
How have, these flaws manifested in your life? or work, what lesson have you learned from this floss? And then, of course, you use different, different floss in the way you, you, you tell your stories and the way you communicate. For example, I often tell people that I, um, One part is an engineer and then even worse, I'm a German engineer, so I have an Excel brain and I tell that quite a lot, that kind of, that's, it's not a flaw, but it's, it's a specific thing that, that makes me, me.
And though I work a lot with leadership and design and, um, creative things, I still have the Excel brain and I can't get rid of that, which is a good thing. So that's like one example on my end. Parables is, are really short, illustrative stories that convey lessons and principles. So having smaller stories as part [00:06:00] of how you're communicating, and I do this.
Um, if every one of you has ever, uh, listened to my daily podcast, I'm bringing that quite often in, or I do this in the videos that you see wherever you, in case you do, you do follow me somewhere on social media, then you will see that all over the place. So it's smaller stories that convey messages and, and give people an understanding.
Again, a couple of questions to consider what experiences have shaped your perspective, right? How can you turn these experiences into smaller stories which you can teach lessons from and what insights can your audience gain from this story? So always focus on telling this story. So. that other people can learn from it.
Like I once invested heavily into a new service that flopped because I didn't validate the idea with the customers first. So that taught me the importance of testing before scaling as simple as this thing. So it's not rocket science. It's very [00:07:00] natural how you, how you do that and build that. And it's just that you do this consciously when you're built.
Your personal brand, because then you have like almost an arsenal of stories that you bring in whenever you communicate. And that can be a short one like this one. And you, of course, when I do public speaking and keynotes, then I'm bringing these stories into that as well. So that you always relate to people with your story.
one of the most powerful tools. And then the next part is identity, your identity, the role you play in your audience's life. And that's the cool thing. When you build a personal brand, you're kind of the bridge between the past and the future. And you play a role, not that you play a role as such like being like playing a role.
What's more, you are kind of the attractive character that is Showing something to the other, to the rest of the world. So you're identifying or your audience is [00:08:00] identifying themselves with who you are and how you communicate. Like if you take me, I'm a lot about leadership. I talk about innovation. I talk about design, but in the end, everything is about the human connection.
And I talk about that a lot. So that's the people that are interested in connecting with me and are interested in me. Let's say my character, my leader character, that are interested in this topic. In contrast to that, other people who don't like leadership, and who don't like human aspects, will not be interested in working with me or getting closer to me.
So the question in this part is, do you see yourself as a leader, a guide, or an explorer? How does this identity influence the stories you tell? So you bring always that back to the stories. And how can you use this? identity, to build a deeper connection with your audience. And it's really going more into, let's say, if you are a mentor, and how do you do that as a mentor and [00:09:00] how do you help people to face the challenges?
And, and this all sounds very, Kind of theoretic. I get that. I just tried to bring it into slides, but in the end, you do this naturally. It's not that you need to do like build something completely artificial. It's just that you do this consciously and put different things in place so that you bring that up again and again and again.
So then it's because that leads us to the communication style, how you communicate, and how you bring that to life. And one part of that is your tone of voice. Like, is it formal? Is it casual? Is it somewhere in between? And for me, and you see this, like people who know me in person and have known me for years, this is not different in social media.
This is not different if I'm in formal conversation somewhere. I'm always the same person. I'm the same person when I'm drinking beer, then I'm in [00:10:00] the office. And that's something I learned for myself to be truly myself over the last, I don't know, 20 years. And the question is really like, what is the tone of voice you want to use and how do you want your audience to feel when, when you, when you utilize that?
And of course, the words and phrases, you constantly use reinforce your brand and how you do that. That's, I think for a lot of people, an obvious one is just doing that again, consciously. How do you bring that in? And then you can use catchphrases, um, that help people to remember you and, and bring things, um, into their, their mind.
As more you use that, as easier it gets. So when I started with social media or started consciously, let's say five years ago, I was using a lot, um, a brand that I've built, which was called Innovateur because I would, I was an electrician and innovator at the same time. And in Germany. An electrician is called [00:11:00] installateur, so I combined these two words and used them everywhere.
So everyone was talking, even calling me this. Now, if we, if we talk about this, I'm, I'm going to use rising stars more and more and more. So I'm, I'm introducing USA rising stars. How are you doing today? You see that even in my posts inside of the community. So that's kind of one of the phrases I'm going to use more and more when it comes to that So the question for you is really what are these phrases that capture your brand essence and how do you bring them to life as part of your personal core values and so on as well.
So it's really simple things that you can bring into your personal branding journey. And this one. is the most difficult. And I, I really fought against it, but I know it's super powerful. Like, embrace polarity. Polarity is the thing where like, if you're, if you're vanilla, nobody gives, gives a [00:12:00] damn thing about what you do.
But if you're too extreme, like let's say you're, um, something that's extraordinary, like bubblegum ice cream, it's only certain people that like that. Or if you're a chocolate, there's also certain people who like that, but vanilla is something that everyone kind of likes and nobody can disagree with it.
And that's what, what this is about. So how can you be on the edge, but not too much on the edge that you're, um, and you see these extreme versions, um, right now in politics, you have, if we just take, because we're in 2024? What is it? September and the U. S. Elections are happening right now and are going to happen in November.
You see this. Um, if you have seen and watched the, um, was it the, the discussion between Camilla Harris and Donald Trump, these are extremes, like one is on one side and the other is on the other [00:13:00] side. And they do that with it. With strategy. So one of the things is really as part of the polarity, it's like identifying what you stand for.
So what are, what do you believe that might be controversial and against the mainstream? What industry practices? Or opinions you disagree with. How do you use this belief to kind of set yourself apart from others? A simple one I use almost every day, almost. And if you are into topics like I am, then it's not controversial, but I always distinguish between managers and leaders.
For some people, there's no difference when it comes to managers and leaders. For me, there's a huge difference and I'm pushing always with bad, bad managers are not, are not leaders. And so, and so I'm, I'm trying to use that as one of the things. So I believe in challenging the status quo. or rejecting traditional outdated leadership tactics.[00:14:00]
So I'm always pushing against the old school way of I'm the boss and you have to do what, what I, what, what I'm saying. And of course, some people still believe in that. I fed it when I was on stage a couple of weeks ago, like I was, I was talking about how I learned to empower people and help personal development plans when I was working in Ikea.
And this person was kind of not saying completely against it but was fairly offended by it because it was like, I'm the boss, I'm telling where it goes. So it's always interesting to experience when you, you know, when you press that nerve with people and then of course, how you communicate that boldly.
Like, how can you clearly and convectively express your stance on those issues, like put things and as well push back when it comes to disagreements and stand your, your ground? So of course you can do that in social media, like a lot of people do that extreme version of that. [00:15:00], I don't believe in the extreme version, but it works.
Like if you really want to stand out, then do things, that nobody agrees with. Or the majority does not agree with it. So as more people will support you in what you're doing, you see this, for example, right now, another example of that is, um, Elon Musk. He is extremely in the polarity angle. So I, it's, I almost either you love him or you hate him.
So that's one of these versions, um, as an extreme version, then I engage with your audience on this topic. So what topics will spark the most meaningful conversations? I always use, leadership topics and bad managers and organizations and organizations with super hierarchy for my topics at least.
And then how can you bring that into discussions? How can you strengthen the relationships with the people that are on your side, like people that? If, if we take my topics that are interested [00:16:00] in leadership, that are interested in personal branding, that are interested in these things, they're, they kind of are on my side and believe that as well.
And there are others who don't believe them. There are people that don't believe in personal branding. There are people that don't believe in leadership and say, yeah, it's, it's all about the organization that matters. It's not about the individual. And so that you have two sides when it comes to this.
And that's, that's something you can play with in, in the social media or in your communications as well. And depending on how much you want to push that, um, you go further in one direction or in the other. And then again, this leads us to crafting your core storylines. And there are a couple of, Things that work always in storytelling.
Um, we covered that a little bit in, the other call as well, loss and redemption. It's, it's really like, how did you get from one side to the other side and how did you overcome, um, [00:17:00] the challenges and, and with that, you're kind of crafting a narrative that will everyone understands, like you went from here to there and you went through the fire so that everyone understands it from a story perspective.
Us versus them. In my case, it's like leaders versus managers. It's not that huge. But it's in, in the end, it is one or the other. So with that, you create a sense of belonging with the people that are interested in what you're doing. And you're triggering, um, as part of your branding activities, the people that are interested.
So if you have, if you have a personal brand that triggers people to get closer to you, you can utilize that for several things. I use this of course, for getting speaking engagements. And dragging people into my direction when it comes to the community and other things I'm doing because I want to, um, attract the people I want to hang out with in the end.
Because I want to work with people that I like, I want [00:18:00] to work with people that are interested in the topic. So I'm using that for my business and I'm using it as well for my personal life. And then the journey, um, one of the most powerful things is letting people be part of your journey. telling the stories, how you go through things, and letting people be part of that story there.
I mean, there are amazing storytellers out there. Um, one, extreme example is again, um, one of the, I think he is the number one YouTuber in the world. Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is, I don't know. He has, I don't know how many millions or billions of followers. It's definitely the biggest YouTuber in the world.
And the most probably the first trillionaire, however, that is. Um, calculated, but he, he, he started, uh, out when he was, I don't know, 12 or something doing YouTube videos. And he was reading the phone book [00:19:00] and now one of his videos is, um, I don't know, cost like five, six, seven, 10 million in production, but people have been able to follow him over the last 10 years.
and seeing his progress. So it's always fascinating when you have the possibility to see people. And you see this quite often, like, um, before and after pictures on social media, like this was the old me. This is the new me. Um, obviously when it comes to weight loss, you see that a lot, but it's also like, I use it the same.
I still have it on my Instagram. Uh, one of the photos that is pinned is me, in a blue-collar outfit when I was 16. So that's like me at that time and me at that today. And that helps people to get on a journey with you so they see where you come from. And then again, again, like the breakthrough moment, which is called the epiphany.
How do you bring these things [00:20:00] into your storylines? How do you tell all of these individual stories as pieces so that you can? Use them throughout social media and throughout what you're doing in general, because it's always a perspective shift that you lead the other people. So if I'm telling you the story, um, I got, um, made redundant when I was 23, and I tell that story in all details, then you understand my perspective shift as part of the story.
And some people, of course, get then the epiphany on their side. They have had things like this in their life or are going to have them in their life as well. So it's always the connection with this. And of course, the story is the key part. The last part of today is the implementation across platforms.
Obviously, when we talk about the branding system, it needs to be visible in your hub, but it is super important to integrate it everywhere. Like wherever [00:21:00] you are visible from, let's say if you want to use social media from a professional perspective and you have professional profiles. Um, like I have, for example, two Facebook profiles, I have different profiles on other social media, which one is my super personal, which is like just me private.
And the other one is the professional, which is more, uh, one I use for professional topics so that people can separate that other people don't separate it at all. Like in Instagram, for example, I don't separate it. But it's, it's really, you can use that across social media if we take social media, social media as the example.
But what is important need to be consistent, like you can't be on one side, you are the extremist that is pushing in that way, and the other, you're something completely different. So that, that, that will take people away from you. Because they don't believe you anymore. It's the same as you have, you have most probably had managers in the past that are playing a [00:22:00] role.
They're super friendly, super friendly, super friendly until the time comes when they're not friendly anymore. And then you see the real face of the people. Happens in, in life as well, that's, that's true. And his manager is just an example. So as more consistent you are, as more people believe in you and follow you as an attractive character.
That's it.
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Transcript:
Personal development masterclass. One of the topics that's dear to my heart, because of what I have seen over the last 15 years is that personal development is quite seldom in organizations. It's not really taken, uh, in a proper way, at least in my eyes. So that's why I'm really keen on sharing this today.
So we have two. main perspectives. One or two topics for today. One is personal development talk versus performance evaluation. And then we do a deep dive into how I'm doing personal development talks. And then we do questions in the end. Personal development. So we have one part, which is the personal development talk, and then we have the performance evaluation.
And a lot of organizations, focus on performance evaluation. And the difference between those two is that the performance evaluation, the main part they are focusing on, or the main source of that is the company. So the company is on the top. And from there, it goes into, the individuals and the different tasks that need to be done to accomplish what's happening in the company, what is required to do to be done in the company.
And the individual that is doing the task is the last point. And then inside of the performance evaluation, you're looking backward. So you look, how did this person perform in the past? The development talk is the opposite. So the most important part of the. Development talk is the future. Where does the person want to be in the future?
And it has nothing to do with the outcome of the company or where the company wants to be. The goal of this is, and why, why do this personal development talk? I believe that if we are developing people in organizations beyond what the organization needs, they will contribute more to the company. They will contribute better.
So the goal of what I'm doing with development talks is finding out what the people desire and going deeper into that. And we will have a look at that in the next couple of slides. And then look, what are the different tasks of the organizations that fit the person and what the person wants to be. And then you marry these two things.
And then it works as well from a performance evaluation perspective. So that's my perspective on development talk and performance evaluation. Let's go into personal development talk a couple of, I think it's almost two years ago or something. I've developed this in as, as a worksheet. So if anyone is interested in getting this worksheet as a PDF.
Happy to share that. So, the starting point of a development talk is really a setup of the atmosphere and the place. So you are going to do a development talk with another person. So you are the manager and the, the other person is like reporting to you and then you're meeting up. So what you need to make sure of is that you have, an appropriate place.
The best case is always doing this outside of the office environment in a. In a place where people feel well, the atmosphere is super important. The time of the day is important, not doing it on Friday afternoon, for example, when people want to go on the weekend, of course, you need to be aware of your relationship with the other person, depending on how deep your relationship is.
You of course have then a perspective on how deep you can go. And how much that is. And then what is important as well is that you put the note-taking responsibility to the person that is inside the room or is working with you. So me as a leader, I always give the note taking responsibility for the other person because then you see what they understand and what they get out of that.
And then I always do as well. A version in front of us so that people understand this. So printing out this worksheet as an example, if you do that in a physical space, then you print it out and then you go into the development talk. And the starting point of the development talk goes really wide.
Looking into what's the personal vision like. I always ask these as open questions without showing them the worksheet in the beginning. Who do you want to be? And that's very, very, very wide. Like, who do you want to be? What does it mean? Some people who have never had a conversation like this, struggle with this.
So they start with, yeah, I want to be a manager. I want to be something specific. So they go very, very, very specific and they don't really look into the future. So the first round of this, I just, Help them to find out who they want to be and they write down, they write down a manager. I want to be a good father.
I want to be whatever they come up with. And then I go to the next question and I show them the next question, not before. So why do you want to be that person? So then they're reflecting on the answers they have given and then they go back and refine who they want to go to be. And that's an interesting process because what.
You as the manager that is holding this development talk are doing, you're literally shutting up and just asking open questions to tell me more. How, how does that feel? What does that look like? What would that look like in the future? So you only ask open ended question when that gets the person talking and reflecting.
So if you're saying this, what does it mean? So, and then they're explaining, explaining, and they go in a loop between who am I going to be? And why do I want to be that person? So until they have clarity, and the first loop is always. The starting point where they don't know what's going to come, then who am I going to be?
They come up with high-level topics and then they go, Why do I want to be that person? Then they go back to Who am I going to be? And then they go deeper. And I always then give them a perspective. Okay, think about five years, 10 years from now, who do you want to be? And then they go more particular in all of these things.
And then we go, we don't close this, we keep it, we put it aside. And then we go to the next sheet, which is a personal development map. So I want them again to reflect on certain questions. And it doesn't matter in the order, I just take them clockwise right now. But it's really going and answering the specific questions.
What do I want to learn? So you're asking this, the person that is in front of you. So what do you want to learn to be that person? So linking it back to that person of the future. And then you're asking, what do you want to improve? And then they come up with things. So it's, it's like writing down the, all the different topics and then what do I want to leave behind?
And then they come back with topics that they want to leave behind. Another question is what excites you? Yeah. And then going deeper into this, who is important to them? And then what is important to them? And when you have done this circle, you go around it and they were deeper in this topic.
What quite often happens then if you ask them, so how, if we go back to the other one, is that still the same thing you want to be? Because they have now clarified what they want to be. and answer the question, they go back to this one and then clarify, no, no, no, I want to be this, I want to be this. What I always ask them, in this part is to paint a picture.
So when, when we have finished with this one, I go back to this one. And say, from a personal vision perspective, imagine a picture and describe the picture that you see on the wall. And then they describe to me who they want to be and who they are going to strive to be inside of a picture and explain everything that is around them.
I've had, for example, a person that told me where they are going to live, what, how it feels, um, in this picture, where the kids in this picture, where the wife or husband and, and going really into details and then linking this to. A job perspective as well, because in the end, we are at least this part is in a job environment.
So they are linking that to the job environment of who they're going to be working with as well. So these two are super powerful. And then you go into the next step, which is a goal perspective. So it starts with the staircase. So in the top right corner, we have what is the goal. And the starting point is really, um, defining that goal.
So if you want to be this person in five years, what is the goal for the next year for you to be very specific? And of course, you can do smart goal setting and all of that, but it's in the end, What does feel right for that person? What is the development goal they want to reach in one year from now?
And then they formulate that goal. And then you go to the bottom of this page where you look into where do you stand today on a scale from one to 10. So they're rating themselves on how close are they to that goal. If they're close, then they're at 10 or 9. If they're far away, then they're at 1. And what always happens is they're somewhere in between, obviously.
So when they have rated that, then you look into what are the things that get you closer to that goal, meaning moving your scale from 5 to 10. And that's what they are writing down above the stairs. So, above the stairs are the things that are getting them closer to their goal. And then they're defining this in bullet points and formulating that out.
And [you do that obviously all in a conversation. You ask the person who is doing the development talk, you are asking them questions to get them moving. You're asking them clarifying questions about the topics that are put, into the sheet. And then the next part is, what are the things that getting you further away from that goal?
So downstairs, if you think at it from a staircase perspective, and then they're writing these things down and then they have a clear picture of a goal staircase where they, they know they want, where they want to be linking that to the vision that's five years from now and the goal picture, and then they rate themselves.
And have then clear understanding of that are the things I need to do to get to my goal and that are the things I should not be doing. And then the last step of the development talk is getting specific. So now we zoom into one year and actionable goals that help them or tasks that get them towards the one-year perspective.
So what are the things they're going to do? When are they going to do this? What do they need to make happen to be able to do this? What are the things they need help with and how I'm, how they going to measure them? So it's a very, very simple setup where they write down literally the different steps that help them to get there.
And they're putting measurable goals towards the goal. And this is roughly. I would say one and a half hours, even if we go through this right now in a theoretical setting in, let's say 15 minutes in a real conversation, in a coaching style, where you ask the manager or coach the other person to find out what they are desiring and where they want to be.
It takes roughly one and a half hours if you do that well, sometimes it's faster depending on the relationship as well. The fascinating thing with this is it has zero to do with the company you work in and one hundred percent to do with who they want to be. And as well as zero to do with you as their manager, if you're their manager, like your perspective, your opinion on anything of that.
Um, just to give you a couple of examples, I've had people that told me that they want to be. building their own company in the next five years and they worked in the company and I was their manager they told me because they trusted me that they wanted to build their own company and we built a plan for how they were going to build their own company and I've had situations where people told me that they want to get married in the next five years and then we built a plan to get them towards marriage getting married and looked into how that does that work with the career perspective same with kids and all the other things so this is a development tool you That I use with everyone that is working with me over time because I believe that as further we as managers and organizations help people to develop as better it is.