Creating and Managing Your Executive Brand

FountainBlue’s April 22 When She Speaks in SF, Women in Leadership Series event was on the topic of Creating and Managing Your Executive Brand. 

We were fortunate to have panelists representing different backgrounds, upbringings and perspectives who so graciously shared their wisdom and experience on the topic of Creating and Managing Your Executive Brand. Below is their collective advice and recommendations.

First and foremost, our panelists encouraged us to be courageous enough to first know and then speak your mind with clarity, to be strong and open enough to learn from how others are responding to you and to coach and support others around you to do the same. This leads to meaty, authentic, transparent conversations which are healthy for the organization, for the team, and for everyone in it.

Taking the time to know yourself and how you’d like to be perceived, and also the strength and curiosity to understand how you’re showing up, how you’re perceived by others are fundamental to successfully accomplishing that goal. From there, you can manage the delta between what-you-want-your-brand-to-be and how-you-are-perceived, so that you can manage your brand, and leverage your brand to get to where-you-want-to-go.

Our panelists all encouraged us to mindfully target a position, role and company which best fits your interests and your values. Finding a culture that works for you will help you stay true to yourself, and holding the bar high in terms of culture and purpose will help you land in that right company and role.

Our panelists all talked about the power and learnings from failures and ‘bad management experiences’, remarking that there were more learnings from the negative than the positive experiences – if we have the courage and curiosity and perspective to learn and grow at each juncture.   

Our panelists recommended that we surround ourselves with a support network, a ‘board of directors’ that would help us succeed – ranging from mentors, friends and colleagues, who will support us unconditionally and help us keep true to ourselves, to advisers who can support us with specific challenges and solutions to executive sponsors who are our internal champions.

Each of our customers reflected these admirable brand traits:

• A customer and results orientation  
• A strong, centered, perseverance that can and have moved mountains
• An authentic, trustworthy, passionate communicator
• A courageous, curious, learning-agile, and humble leader-under-development
• An other-centric mentality which makes them great listeners and communicators 

Resources:

• Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
• Carla Harris – The mentor vs. the sponsor: Who gets to hear the good, the bad and the ugly?
• Malcolm Gladwell: DAVID AND GOLIATH, WHAT THE DOG SAW,  OUTLIERS, BLINK, THE TIPPING POINT
• Dan Ariely, Predicatably Irrational

• Start with Why by Simon Sinek

• A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

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Please join me in thanking our panelists for FountainBlue’s April 22 When She Speaks in SF, Women in Leadership Series event, on the topic of Creating and Managing Your Executive Brand and our gracious hosts at AppDynamics!

• Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue – Coach, Adviser and Consultant
• Panelist Steph Douglass, Vice President, People & Culture, OpenTable
• Panelist Shannon Eis, VP Corporate Communications, Yelp
• Panelist Nandini Ramani, VP Engineering, Twitter
• Panelist Gwen Tillman, Head of People Development, AppDynamics

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