In 2022, building a CEO brand as an extension of your company brand has never been more important, with external stakeholders watching to see what business leaders are all about, how a CEO positions him or herself is vital to the success and perception of their companies. In episode 16 of Can, You Hear Me? Co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson discuss a simple, five-step CEO brand audit that will help leaders on the road to a more focused public perception. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Can You Hear Me podcast, which explores best practices in communications for executives everywhere.
MacKay CEO Forums: https://mackayceoforums.com/
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconsciousness by Carl Jung: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Archetypes_and_the_Collective_Uncons.html?id=Yc5PlU9MyDwC
The 12 Jungian Archetypes: https://exploringyourmind.com/twelve-jungian-archetypes/
Rob Johnson [00:00:09] In 2022, building a CEO brand as an extension of your company brand has never been more important. With external stakeholders watching to see what business leaders are all about, how a CEO positions him or herself is vital to the success and perception of their companies. In episode 16 of Can You Hear Me? Co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson discuss a simple, five-step CEO brand audit that will help leaders on the road to a more focused public perception. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Can You Hear Me? Podcast, which explores best practices in communications for executives everywhere. I'm Rob Johnson, president of Rob Johnson Communications, based right here in Chicago.
Eileen Rochford [00:00:58] I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of the marketing and strategy firm The Harbinger Group, also a Chicago based company. Based on conversations we are having with our leadership and CEO clients who are really focusing on building their brands, we bring you episode 16, the five-step CEO brand audit. When we say audit, what we really mean is where you take stock of your priorities for 2022 and maybe in the next few years, examine what you are doing currently to communicate clearly and effectively with your key audiences. Identify what you may need to change to improve outcomes and determine what you need to start communicating. That is a big priority for you now. Today, we're talking about simple things to get you going or to give your current brand efforts a healthy tune-up.
Rob Johnson [00:01:51] You know one thing that we want to talk about to Eileen when we're talking about the audit, we don't want people to sit here and say, Oh gosh, I've got to change everything. I've got to radically do something different. We're talking about taking stock in what you're doing and finding the places you can improve upon to be a better CEO brand.
Eileen Rochford [00:02:07] That's right. One more important reminder for the purposes of our conversation today, Rob, the CEO brand, is always complimentary to the organization's brand, but it's strong enough to stand on its own.
Rob Johnson [00:02:20] Yeah, that's a very important fact to bring up. So the end goal is to promote your company and to get ahead that way. But the CEO brand is so much a part of that now that it's really important to talk about. Which is why we're talking about it today. I saw some interesting information from MacKay CEO forums that talked about this very topic. The first item we want to discuss is to define major results that you want to achieve in the next 12 months in your professional life and the ones you want to achieve in your personal life. Now, this is important because once you put them into the universe, it's harder to shrug them off.
The other important point here is that the professional and the personal brands are loosely related because professionally and personally, this is how you're going to define yourself on social media. Even though you may put most of your professional content on, say, LinkedIn or Facebook, and use something like Instagram for your personal posts, whether it be with family or some of your weekend pursuits. So we want to just say that we're talking about the professional CEO brand here, but even what goes on personally also defines you.
Eileen Rochford [00:03:34] Yeah, and that's just the reality of having a leadership role in an organization, having to be cognizant of how your behaviors, your choices, your comments might reflect back on the company that you represent front and center.
Rob Johnson [00:03:52] Even if you put it out in the universe, you say, Oh, that was a private weekend or this or that. Like, if you put it out there, it's for public consumption and you need to understand that clearly. And, right off the bat, there's not a lot of privacy in your world if you're in that leadership role and especially if you're posting things that may seem innocuous. They're still in the public domain.
Eileen Rochford [00:04:18] Yeah, we're not saying this to kind of scare anybody, really. That’s not the purpose. But it is something to absolutely be cognizant of, just in your leadership position that it does kinda reflect back on the company that you represent. So I like your idea of almost compartmentalizing or choosing one that's more for personal and one that's more for professional. I like that. But I think even when doing that, bearing in mind that no matter whether you're designating something like your personal stream, it still has the potential to reflect back on the organization that you represent. Yeah, good thing to keep in mind. Well, we did say there are five steps, so how about we move on to step two?
Step two, is defining who you are as a leader, a key part of building any thoughtful CEO brand. Is this aspect really defining who you are for yourself? If you have not done this already at some point in your professional life, it's a simple and powerful practice that we always recommend as the best place to start. What that looks like is choose four to five words that reflect the characteristics you want to be known for as a leader. Here's why we always recommend this because when you think more deeply about how you want to be seen, it will become easier for you to make choices that honor these identity choices in all the areas of your life. This is important in the professional communications that you utilize as a leader.
I'll just say that, I do find that this exercise can be tough if you haven't done it before, or maybe you're in a place where you're starting a new venture or even taking a different turn on your career path. So I suggest starting with some self-reflection and focusing on the best parts of yourself. What are the key areas of your life where you tend to thrive? Maybe you think about projects or roles in your professional life that were your biggest successes, as well as your hardest lessons because it's in this place where you'll find the characteristics there at the core of your leadership style and thus your personal brand. I'll share another bit of advice really to get you going and selecting your own. Like we said, four to five brand words in advertising.
In marketing, the use of brand archetypes is based on the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung's theory that human beings have a basic tendency to use symbolism to understand concepts. He identified 12 archetypes, and each one has a powerful identity with its own set of values, attitudes, behaviors, and characteristics. People connect with and relate to the personality and aspirations of brand archetypes, which are frankly universal, and they represent our fundamental needs and our wants. So I'm recommending that you check out the definitions of Jung's twelve brand archetypes because it might get your brain moving in the right direction. I'll be sure to drop the list and a few links to the definitions of the archetypes into the show notes, of course. But here let's just go through a few of them to give you a flavor of what I mean. Sure, the creator, the regular guy, the sage, the hero, the caregiver, the lover, you get the idea. So while these brand archetypes are typically used for organizational or corporate brands, I believe and I've seen it work really well, they can also help leaders define their personal and professional brands, and they can be a great inspiration for creating your own unique archetype.
Rob Johnson [00:08:14] That's really interesting to have those different personalities that you're trying to zero in on like that and to ask you as you're going through this exercise to be self-reflective, which is not always easy for some people to do.
Eileen Rochford [00:08:29] Right! I do want to be clear about those established archetypes from Jung. They're not the only ones available. They're just you branching off point, right? Kind of inspiration. Like I said, I have seen leaders create their own really unique brand archetypes. I love the connector myself, it's one of my favorite tech accessible, transparent, professional, loving the connector lately one of my I faves. But, Rob, I was thinking, wouldn't it be fun if we share our own brand words with our listeners?
Rob Johnson [00:09:08] Sure. Why not? I mean, we got a few minutes.
Eileen Rochford [00:09:11] OK, cool. All right, I'll go first. Just because it was my crazy idea. Mine are, and I only have four. They are: inspire, educate, elevate and enjoy. I must have a thing with the letter E!
Rob Johnson [00:09:29] One I and three E's. Yeah. Unless you're doing inspire with an E, you're not doing that are you?
Eileen Rochford [00:09:35] No, I spell it correctly.
Rob Johnson [00:09:36] Why do you feel like those are so reflective of who you are as a leader in your company?
Eileen Rochford [00:09:44] Well, it's interesting. As inspire in particular, it's a big part of my job just as a client counselor, we're always trying to inspire our clients with great ideas, great thinking, new campaigns that get them super excited about doing this work with us. So inspirational style is baked into everything, whether I'm advising clients and introducing new concepts or working with the people on our team here at the agency just to get them inspired not only about the work but about being a marketer and learning to be a marketer and always staying kind of on it. So I think it's just part of my personality.
Rob Johnson [00:10:34] Plus in a general sense to being the boss everybody's looking at you. They're always looking to see what you're doing, how you're reacting, that sort of thing. So you have that self-awareness to know that all eyes are on you anyway. You're going to do your job, whether they were or they weren't? But they are.
Eileen Rochford [00:10:51] Yeah, and the education part is just that we have this part of our core values at our firm is this constant curiosity. So educating ourselves is really part of the way that we do business, and that definitely comes from my desire as a marketer to always be learning and advancing. Like, I can't stop reading about what we do, and as an industry. So that educates and elevates, just like raising people up. Because when you are the leader, no matter if things are just going down the toilet, it doesn't matter.
You have to be the person elevating everyone else to rise to the challenge and get the job done right. So that's what I when I think of Elevate, that's what it means to me. And enjoyment is just, the day that I stop enjoying this is the day I stop doing it. Because that's the only reason why I like showing up is really liking being a marketer and the people on my team and the clients and you get it.
Rob Johnson [00:11:51] It's awesome. You've always said, that's who you are, and that's the way you've always shown yourself tTo be as a leader is somebody that enjoys it and somebody who is mindful of other people. I just think that, to be able to talk the talk and then walk, that walk is very important. Those four words describe you pretty well. So, let me take a crack at this. I don't have the alliteration down nearly as well as you do. I would say for me, it's authentic, professional, collaborative and knowledgeable, authentic for me. I hear people say it all the time, which may be because my previous life in television, maybe the bar was a little bit low for when people say, “Oh gosh, you're you're so down to earth, you're so authentic. You're so, you're so nice for somebody that was on TV”. It's always qualified that way.
I think sometimes people are surprised that I'm down to earth and I'm an authentic person. Whether you love me, whether I'm your favorite guy or not, I'm authentic too who I am and try to be relatable to people. It's not that hard at all. Professional means that I try to be organized. I try to be professional. I don't take anything personally, and it's all about getting the job done. It's all about showing people the way to do it and showing that I'm determined. So, that's kind of how I define the professional piece of it. Collaborative is a really important one for me because, I tell people this story all the time.
When I did TV and we'd have a good newscast or a good election coverage, people would say, “You were great, you did a great job.” I tell people, I get more satisfaction out of advising clients and having people kind of follow the instruction that I'm giving them as it relates to any number of communication issues than having them succeed and having the awareness of other people who go, “Wow, you've really got good at that to somebody else.” That's the collaboration that I feel. So to be in front of the camera than to be the guy behind the scenes. I get more satisfaction from that than I ever did in television. I really love that, and that is the collaborative part and then knowledgeable like, what do you know?
People say, what's your industry? I say, well, it's if you have a hard time communicating, it doesn't matter if you're in health care, if you're in insurance, if you're in financial services, I'm here to help you through that. And that's the knowledge of not only having the expertise from that but spending all those years on that side, in that business and watching people do it well, watching people do it poorly. So I had a very long list. When I first started in this business and before I had clients, I would say, we started these fires, you're trying to put them out. We started them. That's the knowledge that I think I bring to the table. So that's why I picked those four words to describe my brand.
Eileen Rochford [00:15:05] Those are great and those are excellent choices. I mean, if I were advising you, I would say right on, knowing what I know and I know you pretty well, authenticity is absolutely one of the things that straight out of the gate, I'd say. And all four of them are all terrific. Authentic is, I mean, the one thing that I've always noticed and really enjoyed about you is you're never trying to be something that you're not. And I think that's awesome.
Rob Johnson [00:15:36] Well, thank you. I appreciate it. You've been so helpful on this journey with me. That's when you talk about, elevating, inspiring and enjoying yourself. I mean, these are all things that are completely authentic to you.
Eileen Rochford [00:15:52] Nice. Well, when you think about it. So we've got our forwards and you've got yours. I've got mine. The folks listening hopefully are going to get to work on developing their own or refining their own based on kind of where they are now. At any time, you can drop those out for yourself, especially if you're writing a particularly important communication to your team internally or to some critical stakeholders. Take that out and evaluate what you've written against those brand words for yourself. And, be kind of harsh and really use it as a means to say, my living up to these words in what I've written here or what I'm planning to say in the speech or anything like that.
Rob Johnson [00:16:37] So that is a perfect Segway into step three, which is developing your own CEO brand statement. Something like this works well. I want to be known for this so I can deliver that at work and outside of work. So it's what do you want to be known for and what are you delivering and what are you doing inside the offices, the walls of your office and outside? So these are all things you need to think about. Again, sometimes that's mostly professional and some personal, but mainly we're focused on the professional piece here, but as you can see, personal can kind of creep in there again.
Defining yourself in this more directed way will help you focus tightly on how and what you will communicate both internally and externally. As you just mentioned in your leadership role and the outside of work piece is important because the personal story you're going to tell is going to help fill in the blanks about who you are as a professional. So that's why I brought it up a couple of times there that they're interwoven, even though we're more focused on your CEO, your professional brand.
Eileen Rochford [00:17:43] Yeah, I love the usage of a CEO brand statement or a leadership brand statement. Again, the more tools that you can equip yourself with as reminders to keep, a tighter focus on yourself, anything that you write, anything that you say, anything that you post, moving in the direction of who you are aiming to be and that's not creating something from scratch. It's born as we've set out kind of the core characteristics of who you are, but it is intentional and intentional and the consistency of the usage of your characteristics and your values and words. That's how you eventually get there. But it's nice to have tools like your key brand words and your CEO brand statement to lean back on when you're looking for some inspiration or might be kind of losing your way a little bit.
Rob Johnson [00:18:49] I just think it's a great idea because self-awareness being able to assess yourself is so difficult for some people to do. I see it all the time with professionals who are like, We got this, I'm good, we're fine. You're like, You know, you're really not. But if you think you are, you're going to have a pretty low ceiling. I think the people that understand that they can get better at what they do, that they can be better day in and day out that kind of expect that from themselves are going to have a far higher ceiling than those who are like, “I got this, I'm good. I don't need any advice. I've learned everything I can learn.” Again as you said earlier, reading and just being voracious in your appetite to learn more about the business and intellectual curiosity. Those are things that all successful people have in common. You know, they're not like, I got this all figured out. I can do better no matter how well you're doing. If you don't think you can get better, then you might as well just stop what you're doing.
Eileen Rochford [00:19:46] Yeah. I'll just throw in another thought, which is when I sit back and think about the different, highly inspirational leaders, people with great responsibility who I've worked with directly, you know, over two and a half decades. Those who have kind of an inner circle that they go to for input, but the inner circle is composed of people who are willing to challenge them. They're the most successful. They're not just the most successful, but. They're the most enjoyable to be around because, it just kind of flows into everything that they do, this essence of collaboration and input versus top-down, buck stops with me type attitude. So this is also a great Segway into our next tips.
We're moving on to step four and that is to be transparent and share your CEO brand statements with key internal and external stakeholders and ask for their feedback. So select a nice cross-section of people who know you well in your professional life and whose opinions you really, really value, people you respect and those who have your best interests at heart. This doesn't have to be like a direct colleague, a direct report or another person in the C-suite, but it maybe it could be your mentor, your business coach or executive coach again, people you've worked with in the past, maybe through associates or charitable work like boards that you're on, just think of a cross-section of them, people you really trust and run it by them.
I would just say, avoid the people who might take a little pleasure in pointing out your shortcomings in kind of a negative way. If it's constructive, if they're the types who even though they might be a little more direct, if their feedback is always constructive, then go to them. Definitely don't take them off the list, go to them. Sometimes you need to hear it right? But those are maybe kind of dig a little or relish in breaking people down. Don't go to them. They're not going to be helpful in this regard. So the point is, you just want to get this cross-section of inputs to check yourself, is this statement good? Does this really embody me in the place that I'm trying to take my leadership brand and the organization I lead?
Rob Johnson [00:22:30] We don't want people to have any anxiety about this, like, Oh gosh, I don't want to put myself out there with people that might be critical or might really point out my shortcomings. These are the people with whom you feel comfortable, who at any point in your life, professionally, personally. We talked about mentors who are executive coaches, but it could be a fellow business leader. Maybe you work at different companies, but you've forged a friendship, whatever it is, based on some of your similar experiences. So this is the safe place you can go to get honest feedback from people who have your best interests at heart who aren't like you said, Eileen, are so keen on tearing you down or to help be productive in the feedback that they give. Those people do exist.
If you think hard enough, if you think initially like, well, I can't trust anybody, that's not true. There's always people in your life that you can trust. You identify them and you need to put yourself out there a little bit and say, Hey, this is what I'm thinking about, because this is the new normal. This is going to be the new normal. Maybe it isn't yet, but it's going to be the new normal for leaders everywhere. I think the good ones have already employed it, already doing it and the ones who are a little bit slower to come along, realize I better do it because this is the way it's going in corporate America. I really think it's true.
Eileen Rochford [00:23:51] No doubt.Yeah. The organizations that the CEO's personality is the company's personality. I mean, maybe a smaller founder based there. They're going away from the past. So yeah, it's good to form that network who can help you get an outside reaction to where it is that you want to take yourself as leader brand.
Rob Johnson [00:24:21] It can also just give you that good advice, too, like I would do that or oh, you're onto something there. Keep doing that. So somebody that can offer clear guidance that can help you down that road, that helps you avoid maybe some of the pitfalls because you're not sure how is this going to play or how is that going to play? You can have somebody you trust that gives you that good advice that you can lean on, and you know that they're coming at it from a position of support.
Eileen Rochford [00:24:47] For sure, and that takes us to step five.
Rob Johnson [00:24:50] It does. Everything we're talking about here. I guess that's the way it's supposed to be, right ? It's just flowing very nicely. This is also a chance for us to toot our horn a little bit. Because I've had people quoted back to me and say, Hey, you and Eileen came up with this and I'm like, Yes, we did. So take stock of how you've been communicating over the past year or so. Determine what's missing, what's not working. And this is a good time to bring up how you position yourself.
Are you a We-brand or a Me-brand? And by that, we talked a lot about this in episode six of Can You Hear Me? This was back in August. As a refresher, the We-brand is somebody who is active on social media, shining the light on his or her team and the people around them. They do it all the time. The ME-brand is someone who is all about promoting themselves directly, and this is almost a cult of personality. So few people are like that, but think about Mark Cuban or Richard Branson. For them, the Me-brand it's about me really works, and there's really no right or wrong way. They're just very different. If your personality is such, you need to be authentic to your personality, we've already said that.
I do think that We-brand when you go out there and you shine the light on others, you develop such a good audience because you have people that you're working with who are supportive of it and who see that, Oh, this person, is it making it all about themselves? They're making it about all of us, and we all do the hard work. I love this because it's a chance for us to sort of say, Hey, this is something we kind of came up with. I can't tell you how many times I've had people quote this back to me and they say, Oh, and you're on your podcast. You talked about the We-brand in Me-brand and I'm thinking, A- I'm glad people are listening, B- they're retaining this information.
Eileen Rochford [00:26:43] Yes, retaining information is critical. I love it. I do really like it's not just catchy, it's easy to remember. That's big and easy. The folks who are listening right now as they move forward-thinking, I want to be a We-brand. OK, well, then take that out and read that next to your four brand words and your brand statement and put a stake in the ground so that as you're evaluating what you're going to write or what you have written, you can see is all of that coming through loud and clear and as authentically as you want it to?
Rob Johnson [00:27:20] Yeah, I really firmly believe to do that correctly, what you've just prescribed is perfect because you can't just say, Oh, I heard him say, We-brand, I'm going to be a We-brand. Well, you need to balance it with, who you are authentically the way you described yourself and in our unit position to be able to do that in a way that's real, that people are going to get behind or are they going to say that's not who that person is? That's the worst thing you can do if you gravitate toward a certain idea about how you're doing the CEO brand building and it's not the way you truly are, then you're going to fall flat on your face. I really believe that.
Eileen Rochford [00:28:06] Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's seen as January. And, we're kind of even though we're winding down a bit in January and looking into the next 11 months of 2022, feels like a really good time for those who choose to go through this exercise to even look back over communications that they've written.
Maybe they've recorded things like town hall meetings or other all-hands communications with the folks inside their organization. Any other Stakeholder calls or meetings that have been held, just look them over and evaluate what I want to be coming through in those communications. And if the answer is kind of, great. So retain those parts.
If the answer is not nearly as much as I would have wanted, then it's a perfect opportunity to map the course for 2022. Knowing great! What do you want to come across more strongly this year? And where are your opportunities in your interactions with these different constituencies where you can bring those threads through more clearly? It's a great exercise.
It's the kind of thing that I find those we work with tend to do in the off-hours, even the weekends, or maybe a snippet of a vacation. It's because it's really reflective work, right in the chaos and bustle and constant demands of the regular workday. You're not going to get a lot of concerted thinking time, but setting the time aside to go through the exercise, particularly right now, we still have a lot of the balance of the year remaining would be well worth it.
Rob Johnson [00:29:55] whether it's before your workday, when it's quiet or after your workday when it's quiet, that's a good thing to do when your brain slows down a little bit and you can really think about it and really assess it and take a look at it and say, OK, is this communique? This email, this town hall, whatever the case is that me being myself? Is that me being the person, the executive that I want to be?
Eileen Rochford [00:30:24] Yeah, because as we both know, consistency is key. Consistency and repetition of themes attributes all of that. That's when people start to hear you, and it comes through much more powerfully than just, Oh, I floated that back 11 months ago. What? You didn't hear it? No, you’ve got to keep saying it over and over, albeit in a slightly different form
Rob Johnson [00:30:47] They're going to forget what you did 11 months ago. If you did it once, 11 months ago, nobody's going to remember.
Eileen Rochford [00:30:52] No doubt about it. Finally, I think we have one more tidbit of advice to share, which is now focusing your time in your role, your behaviors, and all of your communications again and on both sides, the inside and the out. Making sure that they're aligned with this refreshed brand that you've just established through this simple five-step exercise because, again, all that focused repetition, it's how you're going to gain traction.
Rob Johnson [00:31:23] Again, this is so important to bring up. This isn't you making something up, you've already gone through this work, you've already determined what the words are that you describe yourself. Then you put it into practice and then you start living it and you start doing it on a regular basis.
You know who you are, and to your point about saying something 11 months ago, if you said it once 11 months ago, nobody's going to remember it. If you don't repeat it if you don't repeat the good habits you have, if you don't repeat the sort of brand that you want to be, the brand that you truly are, if you don't beat that proverbial drum regularly, you're not going to be helping yourself at all. That's why it's so important.
Eileen Rochford [00:32:08] So I'm going to give one more tiny piece of advice because I can never stop. That is, if you're not doing it now, think about starting to establish a diary or journal repository of the communications that you're creating as a leader. And that doesn't have to include social media. That would be ridiculous.
So presentations, maybe that you make to employee groups, your board, other, significant stakeholders keeping them in one place, either digitally or if you're a paper person in a binder, keeping them in one place makes it really easy to go back and check yourself. Am I carrying this thread through in my communications? And when you're about to write a new one, you can go back and consult that repository to see, How did I do it really well before? OK, well, what's a nice little twist I can introduce today that still honors the theme, makes it sound fresh but establishes the consistency of repetition? So that's a little tip that I frequently give to the leaders we work with that they tend to find really helpful.
Rob Johnson [00:33:28] Listen, you can sit there and have an opinion about what you're doing. You can say, Oh gosh, I'm very self-aware of what I'm doing, but there's nothing like going to what you wrote, something that you created, something you can't take back, it's not like something you said. Then, somebody says, oh we misinterpreted that whatever it's in writing. That's a true test of where you are in terms of the evolution of you building that CEO brand.
Eileen Rochford [00:33:57] I would really love to hear from our listeners about their experiences in building their own brand, so we always encourage folks to reach out to us in our show notes. I'll have the email where you can send us feedback. We're dying to hear all about it. If you find these tools useful, we love to hear your use cases and things, so please keep it coming. I'll be sure to put all these steps in a nice little cheat sheet that will attach to our show notes. So you don't have to scramble to write any of it down and will make it simple for you to reference in the actual show notes.
Rob Johnson [00:34:31] I think that's very helpful. And to your point to getting the feedback from everybody, this is how we make this podcast better is we think we bring up topics that are relevant to people that are in these decision-making roles. However, the only way that we truly know is when we get people to say, like I was referencing earlier, like, Hey, that We-brand and Me-brand thing you did that really resonated. Like, I get that.
So yes, it is catchy and it's also relevant and people get it. So any feedback you all have, we always appreciate hearing what you have to say. That I know you could probably hang on for far more minutes than what we have right now, but that's going to do it for another episode of the Can You Hear Me podcast. This was episode 16. We thank you for listening. As always, I'm Rob Johnson, President of Rob Johnson Communications.
Eileen Rochford [00:35:32] I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of The Harbinger Group. Please join us again next time for another edition of Can You Hear Me? Remember, you can listen to this wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify. All the good ones. Until next time. Thanks, everybody. Bye.