Your Leadership Brand - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

During the past year, most nurse leaders have had a “head down” approach in their leadership. The emphasis has been on getting the job done while averting a crisis. There has been little time to do any reflection on one’s own leadership. Last week, I led a workshop on leadership branding and influence for a medical center. The CNO wanted to give back to his team that would not focus exclusively on how they led others.

I was not sure how interested leaders would be at this point to talk about leadership branding, but I was surprised at the high level of interest. In this era of social influencers throughout society, these leaders were surprisingly sophisticated in understanding how this applied to them in their leadership. Younger leaders seemed to understand the importance of a strong personal brand to career success. They were anxious to learn how to improve their own brands.

Historically, few nurse leaders spent time thinking about managing their careers by establishing a strong personal brand. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, described your leadership brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. A strong personal brand is what you are known for and how you present yourself to the world. It is the impression that you make and the reputation that you have. It is how you present yourself to the world and what your impact is. Done correctly, you can use it to enhance and leverage career success.

A current prominent example of someone with a strong leadership brand is Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has been influential during the COVID pandemic because his brand is authentic and focuses on scientific thinking, even if it means changing one’s mind when new facts are presented. He has been incredibly generous with his time and exercised tremendous emotional intelligence when others have criticized him. As I spoke with the leaders, I emphasized three key ideas around building a strong brand:

1. Be authentic
Your brand must be true to who you are as a person because ultimately, others will define your brand for you through the actions they see you take. It should be consistent with your core values. Consistency of action is important with your brand. Do what you say you will do. If your actions don’t support the image you try to create, you will not build a brand. I once knew an RN leader colleague who believed her brand to be a truly transformational leader, but her actions were very inconsistent, and few of her staff would have described her in this way.

2. Be known for something
It is important that you know yourself and what you are good at. All of us have some things that we do better than most people – what are those for you? If you were a product with a tagline – what would that be for you? Take the time to speak with many different colleagues to understand your strengths and then use this information to create your personal brand. Ask yourself how you make people feel or what benefits people receive from working with you. Knowing about yourself and how you can best do this is an important key to being successful. If you have a LinkedIn page and others have endorsed you – what have they endorsed you for?

3. Watch your online presence
Today, the first place others may look to learn more about you is online. What does your online presence say about you? Do you regularly Google yourself to see what information about you is prominent? Are pictures that you display online professional? – do they convey the type of image you want to send? Some leaders have no online presence, which is a mistake. Are you using LinkedIn to manage your professional identity and connect with others? If you are not, you are missing an opportunity to build your brand.

Once you have created a brand for yourself – be sure to be consistent with that brand and use it to help guide your decision-making and how you spend your time and energy. Michael Hyatt, a branding expert, talks about a noisy world and how important it is today to have a platform or brand. It is an important part of career success so take the time to do it – especially now.

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