In a world of myriad options, where consumers can get anything anywhere at any time, having a strong brand is everything. But it's not just the company name that needs fortifying — top executives also must work to cultivate solid reputations and visibility in the marketplace today.
"It's not just about career building. There are advantages for the company as well," said Howard Seidel, a partner at Essex Partners, a provider of customized career transition and management services for senior executives. "It's a way for executives to understand what the other companies are doing, to present themselves and their leaders as thought leaders in the mix, and to learn about best practices. And it's also a way for the executive just to understand what life is like outside their own company. It helps the company stay fresh to understand what those best practices are."
What exactly is brand visibility for an executive? Seidel said it means being known — in a positive way — both internally and externally within the field.
"Recruiters know them, their colleagues know them. It makes it a lot easier when they're wanting to have conversations with people because they've already established credibility," he said.
Further, the internal and external brands should match — and be equally as strong.
"When they don't match, there could be rumblings," Seidel said. "If your external profile is more exciting than your internal profile, or your reputation externally is better than your internal reputation, then there’s the danger that somebody internally will say, 'He's not that good here.' At the end of the day, your outside world and your inside world do communicate with one another."
Learning leaders therefore should help their top executives cultivate reputations. Seidel said there are several key ways to do this, including participating in such opportunities as speaking and writing engagements, giving presentations and attending conferences.
"Having meetings, connections, conversations with people outside your company is important — getting together with colleagues, former colleagues, even getting together with people who are doing the same job in other places," Seidel said. "The other thing is being quoted. When you build a reputation as a thought leader, when you speak at conferences, when you do articles, when you are out there, reporters tend to try to find you as somebody who can provide them with thoughts and quotes, and that becomes very powerful. And it's not just for vanity's sake. There's a practical factor in that. These days, folks can very easily Google your name [and] see a myriad of articles that you've been mentioned in. To control that a little bit and make that positive is really important in managing your Web brand."
On that note, Seidel said maintaining a robust yet controlled online presence on sites such as LinkedIn is critical.
"What was three years ago a site for maybe midlevel executives with a more technological bent to connect with one another has exploded into the No. 1 executive and professional website for executives at all levels in all industries," he said. "You want to have [a] profile. You want to be complete. To have a few well-placed recommendations is really a good thing. [But] I'm not usually one to recommend having 90 recommendations on the site. I think that's perceived as overkill. But having a few of them that are strategic can be helpful."
