Each week on this blog, I build my leadership brand. Whether you know it or not, that is what I’m doing. I spend more time doing it than talking about how or why I do it. It occurred to me recently that my readers may want to build their leadership brands.

First, a caveat: What I do works for me because I’m me. How much of this is transferrable to you depends on so many factors. So, I’ll tell you my story, more for inspiration than a step-by-step instruction guide. Here we go.

The origin of Zach on Leadership

Circa 2002

We need to go back to the beginning. Long before I was a leader, I was a follower. And who I followed, made all of the difference. In my early career, I made some big mistakes, but one incident in particular, changed my life.

I caused a catastrophic data center outage for my entire company worldwide. It was my fault. How I was treated in the moment and the aftermath was amazing. I didn’t get fired. I wasn’t tarred and feathered. I wasn’t “made an example of.” Everyone raced into action to respond to the incident and recover as quickly as possible. Once that was done, we examined what processes and technical designs led to the failure. Then, we made ourselves more resilient as a result. I never forgot that. If this story sounds familiar, that’s because it was the subject of Zach on Leadership article #1, The Sparky Incident.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized how unusual that experience was. I benefited from great leadership in my early career, and that was sadly rare. I owed it to those who had led me well to pay it forward and lead others to the best of my ability.

Circa 2011

In 2011, I recognized that I had good leadership skills for small teams, but I lacked the skills to lead a large organization. So, I went to grad school for three years and earned my Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership. During this period, I honed my writing skills, since I had to write papers every week.

I also wrote my Master’s thesis on exploring the opportunities of leveraging social media as a leadership platform. In 2014, it was early for that idea, but the seed was planted.

Circa 2016

After finishing grad school, I changed jobs, joining CHS. After about a year on the job, I was ready to put my theory into action. I registered zachonleadership.com and made a public commitment to the world. Here’s an excerpt from my launch announcement:

So, why blog? Well, my influence is currently limited to people in my direct sphere at work, and those I connect with over lunch or coffee. Simply put, I’d like to amplify my influence, and I think this blog may be a good way to do it.

So, here goes nothing. This is an experiment. I will aim to publish one blog entry per week for the next year and we’ll see what happens. Feedback is greatly encouraged. I’m not an expert, but perhaps through this blog both you and I can get better at leadership.

Zach on Leadership, May 19, 2016

Present day

Since that day, I’ve written 330 articles, published 176 podcast episodes, earned 12,000 followers on LinkedIn, and averaged 50,000 impressions per month.

Just this week, LinkedIn made me a “Top Voice” (formerly Influencer). According to LinkedIn, “Top Voices is an invitation-only program featuring a global group of experts on LinkedIn covering a range of topics across the professional world, helping members uncover valuable knowledge relevant to them.”

Apart from social media status, what’s the real, tangible value of building your professional leadership brand? Here we go:

1. I am known. I’m not a particularly outgoing person. No one would ever accuse me of being the life of the party, so I needed some help in that department. Because of my efforts, I get all sorts of face and name recognition at my company and across the industry. Not only am I known, but I get to control how I am known. It’s incredibly powerful.
2. I get speaking invitations. Just because I write a blog, people automatically assume that I’m an amazing public speaker for their next event. That’s mind-blowing to me. I’ve been working on improving my public speaking skills, so the constant stream of opportunities to practice is welcomed.
3. I recruit top talent. As a leader, I am judged by the quality of my team. Great team=great leader. Lousy team=lousy leader. That’s just how it works. So, I put extraordinary effort into building my brand so that I can attract and retain top talent. It works! CHS isn’t exactly a household name, but my branding efforts have led many to seek employment here.
4. I am smarter. We all have ideas floating around our heads. I take the time to write mine down, work out the logical fallacies, fully bake them, and present them as self-contained blog articles each week for you to learn from. This weekly discipline makes me a smarter leader. Here’s a relevant quote: “If you want to master something, teach it.” ― Richard P. Feynman, Theoretical Physicist
5. I am accountable. Each week, tell the public internet what kind of leader I am. That creates intrinsic pressure for me to live up to the standard I set for myself. If I mess up, people will hold me accountable: “Hey Zach, didn’t you write about this very situation last week? Why are you doing the opposite?” It has happened (fortunately not too often). I’m a better leader because of this built-in accountability mechanism. I must practice what I preach.

Your turn

This was a story about how I did it. Your story will and should unfold differently. Some of you really don’t know where to start. I have some good news for you. I recently found a free tool that helps you uncover your unique leadership brand platform. It’s called The StandOut Assessment. Give it a whirl, then go build your leadership brand.

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