[MUSIC] So now we've set up the lessons from great brands to inform great leadership, but we haven't yet introduced strategies to achieve this greatness. Well, we will shed light on the first step toward becoming the great leader you seek to be, continuing the take lessons from building superior brands. And step one is what we're calling the branding-you audit. And just as great brands need to know what they stand for, so too must leaders know what they stand for. And to start this conversation, I'm going to ask you to answer one question. Imagine that you just got a brand new supervisor or boss. Someone who's going to evaluate everyone on his or her team before making any personnel moves. And you're called into their office and asked this question. Why should a new boss hire you? But, you're told they want you to answer it in no more than two sentences. What's your answer? How do you respond? Does your response reflect a rigorous understanding of what makes you authentically you, what makes you relevant and what makes you different? And can you say it in two sentences and can you do it well? For all the years that I have been doing this, there have not been more than three people who have been able to do this exercise and feel like the answer is built on a genuine and a rich understanding of themselves and their brand. But the next several videos will be designed to guide you through steps resulting in your ability to confidently answer this question, and here's how we'll do it. This branding-you process will inform your leadership approach by starting with a thorough brand audit. It will be followed by analysis and insight from that audit which should guide you to a deeper understanding about your brand. If the analysis is done with deep insight, it should lead to, among other things, your ability to answer the question posed on the last slide. In other words, why you? We'll go over steps to clarify your leadership goals and then strategies. So to start, understand that a thorough audit will unlock what is authentic about you and fully exposed the truths about this brand, that's the truths about you. Not surprisingly the quality of this process demands, enhanced and rich self-awareness. A self-awareness for most working professionals is not something they learn to do in school, nor is it especially well developed in the work place. For the cynic, it might be viewed as a time wasting, self absorbed exercise, getting in the way of action and tasks to be done. And yet, citing a study commissioned by Green Peak Partners and Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, leadership searches give short shrift to self-awareness, which should actually be a top criterion. Interestingly, a high self-awareness score was the strongest predictor of overall success, end quote. But why self-awareness you may be asking? Well, two important reasons. The first one being that self-awareness provides guidance in the face of new challenges. Imagine really knowing the brand you are, what you stand for and how you're distinctive. And then imagine how it informs the actions that you take. How you communicate in the face of new challenges, the ones not anticipated. And this of course is when real character presents itself. This is when having self-awareness can help inform how to approach conflict resolution, tough decision making and crisis management. Consider the circumstances that faced all of the airlines following the disaster of 9/11. When the FAA grounded all flights for several days followed by a marked slow down in air traffic due to general anxiety surrounding flying. Not surprisingly, most airlines responded with strategic layoffs due to the drop in anticipated revenues for the year, but not Southwest Airlines. Why? Because this brand's character served as the basis to inform their strategies. This company had built its brand on a set of values, one of which is summarized by the CEO as quote, treating employees like family and customers like guests, end quote. So in the face of this unexpected tragedy and the ensuing fall off of air travel, and the ensuing fall off of profits, Southwest went to their values statement. And unlike competitors, they did not reduce their work force because this would not be how to treat employees like family. Instead they didn't have layoffs, nor did they ask employees to take pay cuts. The only people who did so were the officers of the company who took pay cuts voluntarily and they still delivered profits. I love this example because character's most apparent when difficult challenges emerge, and in this case, the Southwest brand stayed differentiated, relevant and authentic. And because it also highlights how self-awareness helped them know what they didn't know in order to make informed choices. Instead of a leader's belief that they're supposed to have all the answers, self-awareness led them to fill in gaps, and in so doing, inform their choices and their communications. Time for one more pop quiz. Think of a new problem you faced this year at work. How did you figure it out? Did you muscle through it? And did you work toward doing it alone? Or did you supplement gaps by seeking help from others? How did you figure out how to proceed? Where did the best thinking come from, and what did you bring to it personally? How did you decide? And in facing this, did you do it while acting within your brand's character, were you informed by your brand's character? Now, I want to talk about the process for turning awareness of yourself into a process for a brand audit. Some of you may be familiar with a S.W.O.T. analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Now this is often used to help brands envision their positioning and then their strategies. Others of you know the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality inventory. There are lots of other self-assessment tools, but the one we're advocating is illustrated here built around four questions. What you're good at, what you're not, what you like and what you do not like. Now these four questions are disarmingly simple and presumably quite easy to answer. But to fully mind your personal information, your data, so it will fully inform your brand. You're going to be required to make a comprehensive self-assessment to make these tools come to life. For those who have done thorough brand audits, not for personal brands necessarily, you know that the quality of this process lies in its thoroughness. And the way to ensure it is thorough will be to answer the questions using a wide range of lenses through which to do the analysis, the audit. Start with your functional skills, the ones that you use at work. Which of these do you do well, which of these do you not do so well? And what about the ones you like and you don't like, be thorough. Then take on the same four questions looking through the lens of your education. What did you do specially well or badly in school? What did you like and dislike? Include the entire experience in college, high school, and not just your classes, you might even think back to grade school. Then the most difficult lens through which to take on these four questions surrounds personal interests. Next look at your natural traits and aptitudes. Go through the same self-assessment. Pay special attention to points of real reflection and inflection in your childhood and young adulthood. Perhaps even the ones that taken on the status of a story, because these are often things that illuminate your natural tendencies. The ones that are genuine, that are authentic, that are unfiltered. My pow-wow day experience qualifies for me, and of course I have others, so do you. What are the ones in your life that really do reflect your core values and behaviors? Think deeply. Record all of these in your audit. They will begin to shape your story. Even if that story has yet to be fully formed, or even fully understood. Oh, and one more step in the audit. When you feel you've done the work, and you feel you have been comprehensive, then seek honest feedback from a person you can trust to review this with objectivity, and then share their reflections with you with brutal honesty. It's so common to marginalize or forget the things that come naturally to us. So sometimes, these strengths are not even listed as important. Other times, there's a blind spot around short comings, and this truth telling friends or spouses can lend an extremely important perspective. They'll tell you the truth through their eyes. [MUSIC]
