3 Simple Questions to Elevate Your Leadership

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I started thinking about this last week after I joined a networking group for entrepreneurs and someone asked the question, “What is your brand?” They asked in the frame of what you want your clients and prospects to think of you, but as I thought about it afterwards, each leader has a brand. We may not always think of it this way, but every leader (and every person for that matter) has a brand… there’s a way we are known by the people we work with.  

For leaders, this is an important question to consider: What is your brand?
The better your brand fits your environment and the results you want to produce, the more effective you’ll be at gaining buy-in and leading people to produce great results.
This is something to evaluate at least annually. Take a quiet 5 minutes and ask yourself the 3 simple questions.

The first question: How do the people I work with think of me?  


The question is not, “How do I want them to think of me?” We’ll get to that. First, ask yourself, “How do they currently think of me?”

The second question – you’d think would be something like: “Is this how I want them to think of me?” Or, “How do I want people to think of me?” But it’s still too soon ask these questions.

The second question is actually: What do I want to accomplish?   


What do I want my team / my organization to accomplish?  What results do I want to deliver, and in what timeframe?

With these two questions, you now have a picture of how you are known now (your current brand), and what you want to accomplish in the future. Most times, when we ask ourselves these two questions, the leader we are now is not quite yet the leader who will accomplish those goals.

So then, the third question is: What kind of leader would I be to accomplish these goals? 


*Take into account the people you work with and the culture you work in: What kind of leader would you need to be – with these people and in this culture – to accomplish these goals?

This third question should help to paint a pretty full picture for you, but if you feel like there’s still more you want to include, you could ask: “How else do I want people to think of me?”

Sometimes, it’s a small adjustment FROM “What do people think of me now?” TO “What kind of leader would I be to accomplish those goals?” And sometimes, it’s a big change.

But the good news is: human beings are malleable. We can rapidly grow and change how we think and how we operate. So as you evolve your brand, nothing is really out of bounds. You can evolve your brand at any time to produce the results you want and to lead in new ways.

You can even do it right now.