In this article:

• Why large organisations need to look at leadership brand maturity across the whole business, not just the top table
• The six questions that reveal how mature your organisation’s leadership brand really is
• What a mining example reveals about how this plays out at scale

Picture a business with forty leaders across sites, departments and functions. A handful of them are genuinely clear on who they are, how they lead, and what they stand for, and it shows in how confidently they communicate and how much trust they’ve built. Most of the rest are improvising a version of leadership presence day to day, without much of a throughline between one leader and the next, or between what any of them say and what the organisation stands for.

From the outside, stakeholders experience whichever version of leadership they happen to encounter. From the inside, that inconsistency compounds, across onboarding, culture, succession and every stakeholder relationship that depends on leaders being seen as credible and aligned.

Can a company have a strong culture if its leaders across the business don’t have a clear sense of their own leadership identity?

Not for long. Culture is what people experience day to day, and leaders, at every level, are the most visible, most repeated signal of what an organisation actually values, as distinct from what it says it values on a slide. When leadership identity hasn’t been deliberately built and isn’t consistent across a business, that ambiguity shows up in how consistently values get applied across sites, how confidently managers advocate for their teams, and how much trust stakeholders place in what the business tells them.

The six questions that matter – but you’re probably not asking

A useful way to test where leadership identity sits across a business is to ask the six questions at the heart of NWC’s Leadership Brand Maturity Diagnostic, moving from the inside out:

1. Who are we as a leadership team? Strategic clarity on what the leadership group and board align on.
2. Who am I as a leader in this organisation? Developing an individual leadership identity that supports the business and culture.
3. Are we living out our agreed leadership brand? Whether behaviour is consistent with the message.
4. Are we seen and heard, where it counts, within the organisation? Internal visibility and influence, not just a title.
5. Are we leading perspectives with a strong voice in our industry? External presence and genuine thought leadership.
6. Is ‘who we are’ empowering ‘where we are going’? Whether leadership identity is aligned with vision and strategy, or working against it.

In my experience, these 6 questions are not ones that boards or leadership teams are used to answering – but they can immediately see the value in finding the answers, when the questions are posed.

What this looks like in large organisations – a mining example

I’ve seen this play out clearly in mining, where geographic spread and a diverse range of technical disciplines within one business can create inconsistencies and gaps in how leaders represent what the organisation stands for, and what good leadership looks and sounds like. These gaps create cultural, reputational and commercial risk.

I’ve seen different area managers, each well-intentioned, interpreting the company values differently across sites; even choosing different values to focus on. The ELT’s version of “safety first” sounds one way at corporate HQ, while another reality plays out on site, when managers are under pressure to produce. New staff and contractors onboarded at scale into that inconsistency don’t experience one leadership brand.

When you have a large employee base, across regions and functions… a set of talking points just isn’t enough – it needs to feel authentic at the individual level, for the individual to confidently represent the organisation and the part they play within it.

Another concern in the mining and resources sector is different ways of talking about the organisation and what it does, when communicating externally with some vocal and often competing stakeholders. When you have a large employee base, across regions and functions, communicating with different groups in different ways… a set of talking points just isn’t enough – it needs to feel authentic at the individual level, for the individual to confidently represent the organisation and the part they play within it.

These are just some of the factors making it hard to develop a trusted culture and brand in the mining and resources sectors – and in many others where large organisations operate.

Where are we on the leadership brand maturity scale?

NWC’s Leadership Brand Maturity Diagnostic scores leadership across the six questions on a 30-point scale, landing an organisation into one of four broad stages.

At the early stage, leadership brand is largely undefined and fragmented, with identity and influence mostly individual, reactive and inconsistent.

Developing maturity looks like real but uneven progress: some leaders articulating identity and engaging stakeholders with intent, but not yet consistently or strategically.

Organisations with more established leadership positioning have a clearly defined, broadly credible leadership brand, intentionally linked to strategy, with room to scale and embed further.

At the strategic, market-leading end, leadership branding operates as a genuine organisational asset: shared clarity at team and individual level, consistent behaviour and messaging, and leadership identity explicitly built into strategy, transformation and succession planning.

Where an organisation sits on that scale is rarely uniform across all six questions, and it’s rarely uniform across all its leaders either. A business can have a handful of leaders operating at the strategic end and a much larger group still at the early stage, and the overall maturity score is a function of both.

That unevenness is usually where the larger opportunity sits. Knowing exactly where the gaps are, and which leaders and functions they sit with, is what turns leadership brand from a vague aspiration into a specific and commercially strategic piece of work.

If you want a clearer picture of where your own organisation sits, NWC’s Leadership Brand Maturity Diagnostic takes about eight minutes and gives you a scored report against all six areas, with priorities for where to focus next.

Further reading

When your people need clarity… sharpen your leadership lens

Leadership Branding Programs for teams and organisations

Work with Julissa

Individuals   /   Organisations, boards & teams

In this article:

• Why leadership brand work rarely stays with one person
• How a GM’s individual clarity became a team capability, then an organisation-wide investment
• What a VP noticed as he watched this unfold
• The misconception that can keep this work confined to one or two leaders

A General Manager sits down with me to do some deeply personal work on his own leadership identity. Nobody else is in the room. Six months later, members of Business Development, Legal, People & Culture and Corporate Affairs are doing versions of the same work.

Rather than a hypothetical, this is what happened recently with a client in the resources sector, and it’s worth understanding why, because it changes how you should think about the return on investment on this kind of work.

Does getting clarity on your own leadership identity change anything beyond how you personally come across?

The GM’s brief was typical of the usual individual-level leadership branding engagement: distil a career’s worth of experience into a clear, confident account of who he was as a leader and what he brought to the table. That work is personal. It looks at values, leadership style, career story… the whole person, not just a polished CV.

What happened after that is the part worth paying attention to! He didn’t keep it to himself. He brought his senior team, working in new green energy markets, through a similar process. Team members who had never had a structured way to talk about their own contribution suddenly had one, and the effect on how they operated as a team, not just individually, was immediate.

As the Vice President overseeing the business described it:

“Today’s corporate market has no shortage of competition and a well-built, relevant and authentic identity is a foundation of a strong business strategy. A failure to manage this vital part of the business can result in reduced productivity, loss of market confidence and ceding market share to competitors. The stakeholder socio-commercial interface in today’s market is a pressing influence to manage to establish a brand that meets social and community expectations of governance, performance and inclusiveness.

With this in mind – As a Vice President leading a nationally significant new energy business, I required a comprehensive professional brand make-over and my rapidly growing management team also required the same support.”

Why this expanded past the new markets team

The work didn’t stop with the ‘mission-critical team’ leading the business’s strategic growth. Senior leaders saw the opportunity for the business in moving leadership brand development into the corporate functions that work alongside technical and growth teams: Legal, People & Culture, Corporate Affairs. These are teams whose value to the organisation is real but often harder to articulate than a growth team’s, because their contribution doesn’t show up in a sales figure.

The VP’s own account of what changed points to why this matters at scale, not just for the individuals involved:

“The structured approach engages leaders to not only build their profiles; it is a learning experience teaching the client about careful and effective brand development, delivery and maintenance… aligned with business growth objectives, target market and key stakeholder base.”

The leadership branding program, from start to finish, was not about creating a one-off deliverable such as a refreshed LinkedIn profile. It was about building lasting capability that keeps generating value not just for the participants directly involved, but for the business and the culture.

A misconception worth correcting

Some leaders that consider this kind of work default to thinking of it solely as an individual personal leadership challenge: the new CEO’s bio, the board director’s public profile, perhaps a handful of high-potential executives preparing for increased exposure. Useful, but narrow.

What this engagement demonstrates is different. Leadership brand clarity, approached strategically with one intentional leader who cares about creating a culture of confidence, tends not to stay contained. It moves sideways into their leadership team, and from there into other parts of the business that support and enable growth, often the functions least likely to have been offered this kind of development in the first place. Legal and People & Culture professionals are just as likely to be underselling their value, and just as worthwhile investing in to provide them with the framework to articulate that value.

The business case for organisation-wide leadership brand development also extends beyond the designated participants and the program you paid for… just watch what happens when you give a few passionate leaders the clarity to articulate their own value properly, and how others start to notice.

Further reading

When your people need clarity… sharpen your leadership lens

Why Comms and Marketing Teams need a Leadership Brand

Work with Julissa

Individuals   /   Organisations, boards & teams

Professional Confidence in the Age of AI: Organisation Development practitioners around Australia weigh in

In May 2026, New Work Consulting facilitated an online roundtable for Organisation Development Australia, drawing on findings from the Australian Leadership Study, Professional Confidence in the Age of AI. Practitioners from across internal and external OD roles came together to examine what AI’s acceleration means for employee confidence, professional value, and organisational trust.

The discussion surfaced some of the most pressing questions facing OD professionals right now: where confidence is eroding, what clients will still need from humans when information is no longer a differentiator, and what it means to lead effectively in this environment.

The summary below captures the key themes from two structured discussions and is available to download as a PDF.

Further reading

Confidence, Trust and Stronger Human Identity in an AI World

Why a Leadership Brand Matters for the Chief People Officer and Their Team

Work with Julissa

Individuals   /   Organisations, boards & teams

Feb/March Leadership Roundtables Summary

In February and March, we have been busy conducting a range of discussions with senior leaders on the key insights from NWC’s Professional Confidence in the Age of AI national leadership study, partnering with hosting organisations in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.

Across our discussions over the last few weeks, a consistent picture emerged:

AI is already embedded in day-to-day work. Its impact is uneven, fast-moving, and not fully understood. And while the conversation often centres on capability and efficiency, what surfaced most strongly was something more human: confidence, judgement, trust and clarity.

The discussions did not land on a single answer, but they did point to a set of tensions that leaders are now navigating in real time.

Related material

Rate your team on the Team Brand Confidence Scale

What’s your organisation’s ‘special sauce’?

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Why Corporate Affairs, Communications and Marketing Professionals Need a Leadership Brand

Over the past decade, the remit of Corporate Affairs, Communications and Marketing leaders has expanded dramatically.

Once focused primarily on messaging, campaigns and media relations, these functions now sit at the centre of an organisation’s most strategic questions: trust, reputation, narrative and stakeholder alignment.

At the same time, expectations of leaders in these roles have shifted. Boards and CEOs increasingly look to them not simply as technical specialists, but as strategic advisors who can shape how an organisation’s value and intentions are understood by employees, customers, regulators and the broader public.

This is where the concept of a leadership brand becomes important.

A leadership brand is not about personal promotion. It is the consistent value that others experience from how a leader thinks, communicates and acts. As leadership researchers Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood describe it, a leadership brand exists when a leader’s strengths reliably deliver value to stakeholders.

For leaders responsible for corporate narrative and reputation, the absence of a clear leadership brand can create ambiguity about what the function stands for and where it is best positioned to lead in the organisation. When it is well defined, it becomes a powerful source of influence, credibility and organisational alignment.

Why a leadership brand matters for Comms and Marketing teams

1. An organisation’s reputation is shaped through leadership, not just messaging

Reputation used to be thought of primarily as an outcome of communications and marketing activity – but that view is increasingly outdated.

Research and advisory work from organisations such as McKinsey emphasises that organisational reputation is shaped by leadership behaviour, transparency and narrative, not simply communications outputs.

In other words, stakeholders no longer separate the organisation from the people leading it.

For Corporate Affairs, Communications and Marketing leaders and their teams, this creates both opportunity and responsibility. Their influence now sits as much in how they guide leaders to articulate and embody the organisation’s story as in the communications plans they design.

But to be able to guide leaders in leadership… you must be seen as a peer to those leaders… a leader yourself.

“…to be able to guide leaders in leadership… you must be seen as a leader yourself.”

2. Strategic influence depends on clarity of value

In many organisations, Communications and Marketing functions still face a persistent challenge: demonstrating strategic value beyond tactical delivery.

Without a clear leadership brand, the function can easily be perceived as reactive or service-based.

By contrast, when the leadership brand of the function is well positioned – not only as a source of strategic narrative, stakeholder insight or reputational judgement, but as a key player in governance and commercial strategy – it changes how senior executives and board engage with the team.

Research on personal and professional branding emphasises that leaders who intentionally define and communicate their value are more likely to influence organisational decisions and be recognised for their contribution.

For leaders in these roles, the question becomes: What do people experience when they work with me and my team?

Leadership branding is also a team capability

One of the most powerful applications of leadership branding is not individual but collective.

When a Comms team articulates a shared leadership brand, it creates alignment about:

• how team members communicate with stakeholders (as leaders in their field!)
• the standards they hold and the strategic outputs they prioritise
• how the organisation’s narrative and strategy is shaped and reinforced.

A well-developed team leadership brand can transform the function from a delivery capability into a strategic leadership capability. Instead of only producing communications, the team helps shape how leadership shows up.

Questions for leaders and teams

For leaders of Comms teams who are considering their leadership brand, a few questions can be a useful starting point.

For the leader

• What do people consistently experience when they work with me as a leader?
• What value do I want executive peers and boards to associate with my judgement?
• Where do I bring a distinctive perspective to leadership discussions?

For the team

• What do we want to be known for as a leadership group?
• How do we want stakeholders to experience our function?
• Where do we add the greatest strategic value to leadership conversations?

Some practical considerations for shifting how you are seen

In our experience, professionals in the communications space can encounter internal roadblocks and cultural challenges in being perceived as leaders. After gaining clarity on ‘who we are’ and ‘why us’ to strengthen the team’s leadership confidence and communication, it’s useful to check in on some of the specific ways our language and behaviour send messages about our leadership (or lack of).

These can include:

• How much we communicate from value, aligned with what our intended audience (such as the C-Suite) care about – such as strategy, risk and commercial outcomes.
• How we make connections between our work and current business challenges (such as AI adoption and risk, shareholder and stakeholder pressures etc.), in order to emphasise the value of our work and explain our priorities and decisions.
• How pro-actively we integrate our work with other departments and encourage cross-pollination of ideas, creating a sense of working towards shared goals.
• How well-informed we are on industry best practice, trends and opportunities for competitive advantage – and whether we reference these in our work.
• How we ‘show up’ to be taken seriously (through personal presentation, verbal and body language, conversational and presenting skills) – sometimes this means coming across less as ‘creatives’ or ‘journalists’ and more as business leaders.

The opportunity ahead

As expectations of organisations continue to evolve, the role of Corporate Affairs, Communications and Marketing leaders will only become more central, where these professionals are truly leading.

Developing a leadership brand — individually and collectively — is one way these leaders can clarify their value and strengthen their strategic influence.

Related material

How personal brand development supports a culture of leadership

How CPOs can get their Board & Executive aligned

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Your role as a Chief People Officer (CPO) – and the role of your team – is evolving rapidly. What was once largely about internal HR operations is now deeply integrated into business strategy, culture, risk, transformation and stakeholder trust.

In this context, cultivating a personal leadership brand is no longer optional – it’s now recognised as a core strategic asset. Here’s why.

1. As CPO, your mandate has expanded — and so has your need for influence

• Recent data shows that 85% of CPOs in Australia and New Zealand are seeking to upskill, emphasising strategic leadership, influencing decision-making, and embedding HR strategy into overall business planning. (Human Resources Director, March 2025)
• Your remit increasingly includes shaping culture, guiding transformation, and safeguarding reputation — placing People & Culture squarely at the executive table.
• In organisations where HR leaders are treated as business leaders, HR becomes a critical lever for growth, cost management, risk mitigation and long-term value creation.

The People & Culture leader can no longer afford to think of themselves as a “behind-the-scenes custodian.” As CPO, you are a key business leader. A personal leadership brand helps you show up accordingly — with credibility, clarity, and confidence.

2. A defined leadership brand amplifies your team’s impact on culture, trust and reputation – essential enablers of business success 

• As identified in a recent article, organisations are increasingly developing leaders’ personal brands as part of broader cultural and reputational strategy. This is not just an important consideration for senior leaders, client-facing or business development teams, but for internally-focused teams also. Organisations are now recognising a strong personal brand as a bedrock of influence and confidence for employees focused on all kinds of leadership and communication.
• A strong, consistent leadership voice across your team helps build stakeholder trust — internally (employees, management, board) and externally (partners, regulators, market). This starts with the CPO’s personal brand and continues with their leadership and mentoring of team members, as they develop their presence as a unified, authoritative team, and as individual professionals.

In essence: a leadership brand becomes a lever to translate strategy and values into lived reality across the organisation, and to be seen as a true peer at the decision-making table.

3. A trusted leadership brand helps navigate today’s People & Culture team challenges: complexity, uncertainty and stakeholder expectations

• In today’s world, organisations face heightened reputational risk, regulation, talent competition, digital disruption — all while managing culture, engagement and transformation. A clear leadership brand gives you a platform to lead with consistency and clarity.
• It also helps you build credibility when presenting to boards, executives, shareholders and other challenging stakeholders: by showing who you are, what you stand for, and why your people agenda matters to the business. A leadership brand is not self-promotion; it’s strategic alignment between people, culture and performance.

What forward-looking CPOs in Australia are doing — and what works

According to recent reporting, many CPOs are rethinking how they operate — and adapting accordingly. Common approaches now include:

• Upskilling internally — many are investing in strategic leadership, data literacy, influence and business acumen, acknowledging the broader remit of the role.
• Positioning HR as a brand function — in some organisations, People & Culture is partnering with Communications, Marketing or Employer Brand teams to ensure consistency between internal culture and external reputation.
• Leveraging personal visibility — senior HR leaders increasingly see value in building thought leadership, sharing insights publicly (e.g. LinkedIn, industry events) to shape how the business — and external stakeholders — view their function and priorities.
• Aligning personal brand with organisational purpose and values — this alignment ensures authenticity and reduces the risk that personal brand efforts are dismissed as superficial or self-serving.

What this means for you and your People & Culture team

If you lead People & Culture, embracing a leadership brand mindset can help you:

• Elevate the function of People & Culture from service provider to strategic enabler and influence how culture, talent and people strategy are perceived and led at board and executive level;
• Attract, retain and engage talent who buy into purpose, clarity and consistent leadership, while reinforcing culture levers such as values and behaviours;
• Reinforce trust and credibility for the organisation externally, especially important in regulated or high-risk environments.

At the team level, this requires shifting from seeing brand-building as marketing’s job to recognising it as an outcome of leadership behaviours — repeated, consistent, credible actions that reflect the organisation’s values and vision.

Practical steps: How CPOs can begin building their leadership brand today

1. Clarify your leadership positioning. Start with a tight, authentic articulation of what you stand for and what you focus on as a People Leader, and how that aligns with organisational purpose. Think beyond generic language to what’s distinctive about how you lead and why it matters.
2. Integrate brand thinking into HR strategy. Embed leadership brand considerations into talent management, culture programs, organisational development thinking, learning programs, internal communications and stakeholder engagement — not as a side project, but as part of how HR delivers value.
3. Use data + human insight to build credibility. Combine people data (engagement, attrition, performance indicators) with narrative about culture and human impact. This dual lens helps position People & Culture as rigorous, strategic and human-centred.
4. Be visible in the right places. Whether through internal forums, town halls, board updates — or external platforms (industry events, thought pieces) — consistent, values-aligned visibility builds recognition and trust.
5. Align your personal brand with team and organisational brand. Ensure what you stand for as a leader complements and amplifies the organisation’s purpose, values and culture, and actively bring your team into an exploration of brand expression through their own roles.

As the scope of the CPO role continues to expand, the importance of personal leadership branding — for you and your People & Culture team — becomes harder to ignore. When done well, it’s not self-promotion: it’s strategic influence, credibility and cultural leadership.

Pssst… We do this work all day long. Ask us for our checklist tailored for CPOs to help them define and build their leadership brand.

Related material

How personal brand development supports a culture of leadership

How CPOs can get their Board & Executive aligned

Work with Julissa

Individuals   /   Organisations, boards & teams

CPOs: Align your LT and Board through one ‘Leadership Lens’, to enable strategy and build trust with internal and external stakeholders

Challenge your board and leadership team with these 4 questions to explore individual ‘leadership lenses’ and start to connect and align those ways of seeing and leading, as a team.

Challenge your leaders to reflect on the following questions – first individually, then as a collective. These questions are designed to help you begin identifying the values, experiences and strategic focus that shape their leadership approach – and focus together on what matters most now.

1. What values consistently guide your leadership decisions — even when the pressure is on?
   Think about moments when you had to make a tough call. What principles did you lean on?
2. What story or experience best illustrates your leadership philosophy?
   This could be a defining moment, a challenge overcome, or a time when your leadership made a real impact.
3. How do you want to be perceived as a leader — by your team, your peers, and external stakeholders?
   Consider the reputation you’re building and how it aligns with your intentions.
4. What’s around the corner for your organisation or industry — and how are you preparing your leadership lens for what’s next?
   This is about future-readiness: what do you need to sharpen, shift or communicate differently?

Want to take this further?
This exercise is just the beginning. I work with senior leaders, boards and leadership teams to uncover and articulate their ‘leadership lens’ — helping them lead with clarity, confidence and strategic impact. If this sparked something for you, let’s talk about how we can explore it in more depth.

Explore the Sharpen Your Leadership Lens Workshop for your board/LT

Explore individual Leadership Brand development

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In today’s complex business environment, leaders are expected to bring clarity, confidence and conviction to their decision-making and communication. But how do you ensure that your leadership approach is not only effective, but also authentic and future-ready?

Take time to sharpen your Leadership Lens.

It starts with sharpening your leadership lens: the unique perspective you hold, shaped by your values, experiences and strategic focus.

Your leadership lens influences how you interpret challenges, guide teams and communicate your vision. When clearly defined and well-articulated, it becomes a powerful tool for building trust, aligning culture and driving change. Yet many leaders haven’t taken the time to reflect on what has shaped their lens — and how to use it intentionally.

Sharpening your lens means asking the right questions. What has consistently motivated you throughout your career? What values show up in your leadership style? What global or cross-industry experiences have influenced your approach? These reflections help you uncover the stories and philosophies that underpin your leadership — and communicate them with clarity.

Align your team’s Leadership Lens.

Importantly, this isn’t just an individual exercise. Working with your leadership team to explore and align your collective leadership lens can be a powerful way to strengthen team cohesion and strategic direction. Through facilitated exercises such as experience sharing, leadership value mapping, and “lens alignment” workshopping – where each leader reflects on their own lens and then co-creates a team narrative – you can build a unified perspective that guides culture, decision-making and external messaging. These exercises help surface common values, clarify strategic priorities and build trust across the team.

This is hard. Where do I start?

To begin, ask yourself:

• What do I want my leadership legacy to be?
• What story best illustrates my leadership philosophy?
• What impact do I aim to have through my leadership today?

These questions aren’t just for personal reflection — they’re the foundation for how you show up, influence culture and build reputational value. And that’s what human-centred, strategic leadership is all about!

I’m sharing a sample of this work with readers – send us a message if you’d like to try a starter exercise to sharpen your leadership lens, or learn more about our short strategy session for boards and leadership teams – Julissa

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What has changed in how organisations approach trust and reputation management

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In today’s high-stakes environment—characterised by tighter regulation, intense competition and greater reputational risk—organisations are increasingly focusing on the visibility and clarity of their leadership.

A growing number of national companies are now deliberately developing the personal brands of their top leaders as part of broader business and cultural strategy.

Why this is on the agenda now

Leaders’ personal brands are being treated as a strategic asset in response to four key business needs:

1. Trust in an age of risk: When leaders show up consistently and credibly—online and in person—it strengthens stakeholder trust and market visibility, while mitigating reputational risk. A clear, aligned leadership presence can amplify organisational messaging and reassure stakeholders – especially in the Age of AI!

2. Engagement through uncertainty: During change, leaders need to communicate with confidence, clarity and impact. A strong personal brand helps leaders engage their teams and stakeholders more effectively, providing stability and focus.

3. Leadership readiness: Organisations need their leaders to step into greater visibility with confidence. A structured approach to leadership brand development can fast-track personal growth and improve executive presence.

4. Strategic differentiation for commercial outcomes: In saturated or challenged markets, leadership branding helps organisations stand out. It provides a platform to communicate what makes the business—and its people—different, future-focused and valuable to customers.

What leading companies are doing now

Rather than short-term training or isolated LinkedIn sessions, organisations are integrating leadership branding into broader leadership development frameworks. This often includes:

• A tailored program that aligns personal brand development with organisational strategy, culture, and stakeholder communication.
• A cross-functional approach that connects People & Culture, Communications, and Business Development teams.
• A deeper understanding of personal branding — not as self-promotion, but as a tool for clarity, influence and strategic visibility.

Programs are being applied in different ways, depending on strategy, scope and budget: with executive teams, in high-impact departments, or scaled across the business to build leadership capability early.

Results they’re seeing

Companies proactively developing their leaders demonstrate marked improvements in organisational performance and staff retention – this is not new and is easy to find data on. Developing leaders’ identities and how they communicate that (a.k.a. their ‘leadership brands’) is now being recognised as a tool in the organisation’s toolkit that bridges culture, HR, business development, brand and reputation management.

Organisations are reporting stronger engagement, clearer positioning of their leadership bench, and improved confidence among emerging and senior leaders. From early days in a leadership branding program, organisations start to see results through their people.

Here are some of our real client examples:

“I’ve gone from standard ‘employee’ speak to talking about impact, targeting senior audiences.”

“Very helpful in gaining clarity on positioning; was able to get past self-promotional idea to clarify what I want to say.”

“Taking the time to consider my brand in more depth allowed me to clarify my key points of difference and where I can add value to (Company X).”

“Helped me get mentally ready for the next phase in my career.”

It is a true privilege to work in a space that supports talented people to create meaningful impact in their organisations, through developing their leadership positioning and communication.

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Why defining your PROFESSIONAL APPROACH builds value and trust – and what to do about it.

One of the core tools I use with teams and organisations is NWC’s Team Brand Confidence Scale, which measures how clear and confident a team is on who they are, what they do and why that matters. I use this rating scale to find out how team members feel about the level of confidence in their team or department, when it comes to communicating their identity.

Low scores all round…

One thing on that rating scale that usually scores quite poorly is how well the team articulates their APPROACH to the work they do. Have they defined, as a team, HOW they do things, and why this makes a difference for clients, stakeholders, or the rest of the organisation?

I also observe that many senior leaders and business owners I work with haven’t taken time out to really define their own professional or leadership approach, so they can’t readily put it into words or call on it when they need to – such as in performance reviews, job interviews, in business development conversations with new clients… or when leading their team.

What do I mean by defining your ‘PROFESSIONAL APPROACH’ to the work you do?

An individual professional might have developed a personal approach to their work, whether overtly or naturally over time. This can include things like how they tackle a new project, what steps they take, how they measure progress, how they communicate with others and how they lead.

Similarly, a cohesive team can have a collective, agreed ‘approach’ to their work, and this could include:

• Team Purpose and Goals – what we care about making a difference in, what we focus on achieving together, what we measure
• Team values – what matters to us in how we do things, what we prioritise and celebrate, what are our non-negotiables in delivery
• Method – the frameworks, important steps, principles and approaches we take
• Systems and processes – how we structure our work
• Style – such as our communication style, relationship style, sales style etc.

As an example – here’s a high-level model of New Work Consulting’s differentiated approach, along with a core analysis tool to start a client’s exploration of opportunities, gaps and risks:

What does a defined approach get you?

Many of my individual clients are senior executives moving to portfolio careers or starting their own consultancy in their area of expertise. When these clients are formulating their offering, I encourage them to illustrate their approach in a model or graphic that simply and clearly defines how they do things – their method for getting results.

A visual model not only helps people to quickly understand HOW you achieve what you do, but it helps them remember you for that clear approach, which in turn:

1. Builds trust in you as someone who has developed a time-tested method that achieves results.
2. Creates ‘share-ability’ – your audience can easily articulate, demonstrate or point to your approach to others they wish to refer.

My team needs a PROFESSIONAL APPROACH. Where do we start?

As a team, how can you communicate your professional approach with more clarity and confidence?

Some first steps might include:

• Gather as a team to reflect on our ‘best practice’ – how do we do things, at our best, that works for us?
• Look for the differentiator and put language to it – how do we do things differently, that makes a meaningful difference to our stakeholders?
• Review company values and examine how they apply to our team in practical ways.
• Revise and recommit to what we are trying to achieve together and for others.
• Co-create a visual framework or model to illustrate your professional approach, and decide how you will use it to communicate with your audiences.

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