Driving peak performance for CEOs and their boards, Westgate Executive Branding Offers Premier Advisory Services & Personal Branding Consulting for High-Profile Leaders. About Maureen—CEO & Founder.
Your brand speaks for you when you're not in the room.
The globalization of the labor market over the last ten years has produced a level playing field for many professionals—except for some regulated professions in most jurisdictions, such as lawyers, medical doctors, and teachers.
A CFO or CEO in Toronto or New York will now compete with others like them in international markets. “Standing out” in your industry, function, and profession is important so that you can compete in this new marketplace.
This article discusses, shows, and explains the 360360oReach Survey and its value as a primary component to your personal brand journey.
Personal Branding helps you stand out, and we begin with the 360oReach Assessment, known as the reputation report.
What’s more important than your reputation among your family, business, and career? Personal branding uncovers your reputation through an established process that helps represent you in the marketplace. Your brand speaks for you when you’re not in the room. Knowing what is perceived about you may be different from your self-perception. Our tool helps to uncover the perceptions others have about you.
This graphic demonstrates the personal branding process.
Extracting your brand
The first step in the process is to uncover your brand—to extract your value proposition and reputation among key people in your network. The 360oReach Report begins with your self-assessment. Once the self-assessment is completed, the survey is distributed to preselected members of your network, including friends, family, colleagues, clients, mentors, and others.
Would you be concerned about what others report about you? I know I was when I had my assessment done in 2019. I was pleasantly surprised, however. There were only two comments that surprised me (just a bit), and I could, as a result of this feedback, adapt my behavior and perspective to counter a perception that others had about me that was untrue. Perception is reality, so addressing others’ perceptions of you is important, so they don’t interfere with your goals and important relationships.
In my 30+ years of working in business, corporations, and with thousands of people, the one thing standing in our way of career progression is seldom our technical skills. Personal branding helps to draw out our unique value proposition.
Your unique promise of value
As a CEO (as an example) with a finance background (CFO promoted to CEO), your value proposition is your differentiator, which is a critical component of personal branding. How do you stand out among other CEOs in your industry? Your differentiator is important to pique the interest and respect of stakeholders in your business ecosystem as the following infographic demonstrates.
The CEO must have a thorough understanding of his/her/their relationships and accountabilities to many constituents. Personal branding helps to communicate effectively with your constituents which establish a solid foundation for building critical relationships so that you can serve your fiduciary duties effectively.
We begin with the 360o Reach Assessment, which produces your reputation report.
The 360° Reach Data Analysis & Summary Report
(your reputation report)
When I completed my own report in January of 2019, I was worried about what I would read in my assessment. As a required exercise for my personal branding certification, I was required to complete it. My coach assured me that everything would be fine. There should be no surprises, and if there are, it’s a great way to correct a potential misperception others have of us and our intentions.
Typically, the reputation report is 40+ pages long and comprehensively covers various aspects of your strengths and leadership capabilities. Your personal branding strategist will guide you through the process, so there is no confusion about the responses.
(1) The Big Picture Analysis begins with a review of your survey’s response rate and percentage of responses by respondent category, such as client, peer, colleague, friend, relative, manager, etc.
(2) Consolidated Data includes ranking your brand persona based on combined responses from your network. Examples of brand personas include Expert, World Citizen, Charmer, Connector, Performer, and many others.
(3) A sampling of Leadership Competencies include inspiring, expressing, visioning, relating, developing, and many others.
Each persona is carefully defined with examples.
In the self assessment, I chose “adventurer” as one of my brand personas. What was a huge surprise is that none of my respondents chose “adventurer” as a brand persona. Your brand is not what you believe it is, your brand is what others say about you. You may be surprised that others don’t align with your self-perception, and this is where tremendous learning happens.
Category of Respondent
Self Survey Comparison
Are you curious whether others perceive you as you perceive yourself?
Comments
Verbatim comments in the report help to bring context to the brand personas and leadership capabilities that you won’t get from any self-assessment (DISC included). At Westgate we are big fans of assessments, but assessments don’t always give the full picture, which can leave valuable opportunity under-utilized.
Conclusion
The 360° Reach Report is rich with information and insights you will use to create content for your marketing and visibility strategy to help you stand out as a new CEO, board member, or aspiring leader. Understanding how others perceive you will bring clarity because you will understand what areas of your brand to amplify and other areas for reflection and development. When you have a fundamental understanding of who you are, your values and your unique promise of value, your peers, your board, and your investors will notice.
You will stand out among your peers.
Bring us into your organization
Launch your offsite meeting confidently with our premier inclusion event.
Create inclusion and trust for your executive management team. Let people know you care by learning their behavioral styles and understanding their personal preferences for engaging with others.
This private event delivers a high return on time invested because you will walk away with a tool that takes the mystery out of people, making your relationships with your team members more meaningful, trusting, and effective.
For more information, contact: Maddison Shears at maddison@westgatecareercoaching.com.
Instant download below (Main Event Brochure)
Maureen Farmer, CEO/Founder, is a Certified Personal Branding Strategist. She helps CEOs build authority, trust and elevate their credibility with capital markets, shareholders, investors, employees, and clients.
