Category: Executive Personal Branding

Uniting your top leaders is fundamental to your organization’s success.

What’s the one thing you want your audience to know about your organization? The one thing that, if you articulated it well, would align your board and thereby put you fully on track to deliver on your mission and vision? The answer is at the heart of your brand declaration, a statement of the aims of your company or non-profit.

Take the case of The Atlas Enterprise, which publishes the resource lovingly known as “the Bible of neurosurgery.”

When The Atlas Enterprise worked with Revealing Genius and strategy consultancy Clarke & Esposito to build its brand declaration, it created unprecedented alignment among its leadership team members—the board directors and its founder and public voice, Aaron Cohen-Gadol, M.D.

Before creating the brand declaration, the non-profit’s leaders were struggling with how to talk meaningfully and compellingly about the organization’s portfolio of products together, then as stand-alones. Since developing the brand declaration, the team has been able to describe the non-profit’s offerings so their complexity is heard and understood. 

In addition, the brand declaration development process helped Dr. Cohen recognize and acknowledge that his personal brand was just as important to organizational success as the overarching brand. He wrote a brand declaration for himself, too! (Read the case study about this initiative.)

Board and leadership alignment are clearly key to organizational success. Let’s dive deeper into the ways it can help with high-level strategic work and day-to-day governance, key obstacles to achieving board alignment, and strategies for overcoming those obstacles, including the brand declaration.

The Board Alignment Imperative

At a high level, board alignment is fundamental to overall organizational health and success because it boosts decision-making, organizational culture, stakeholder confidence and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. 

The benefits of board alignment in day-to-day governance also are many. A board that’s aligned: 

• Ensures the organization’s mission and strategic pillars are promulgated. When everyone on the board is on the same page, working collaboratively towards common objectives becomes easier, increasing the likelihood of success in achieving the organization’s mission.
• Streamlines consensus in decision-making and actions. When board members share values, vision and goals, gaining consensus on critical decisions becomes easier. Alignment also enhances the effectiveness of the board’s actions.
• Helps raise the floor on organizational culture. A cohesive board with shared values and a unified vision can set an example for the rest of the organization, demonstrating a culture of teamwork, trust and collaboration.
• Inspires stakeholder confidence. When stakeholders see a united front, they are more likely to trust the organization’s leadership and support its initiatives.
• Can better adapt the strategic plan to changing circumstances. Alignment is crucial during the strategic planning process. A unified board can more effectively develop and implement strategic plans that reflect its collective wisdom and vision. This enhances the organization’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and achieve long-term success.
• Provides common ground for conflict resolution. In any organization, conflicts can arise. Shared values and goals provide a foundation for finding common ground and working toward mutually beneficial solutions.
• Increases board member commitment, engagement and retention. Members are more likely to be engaged and committed when they feel the board aligns with their interests and values. This, in turn, fosters a stable and supportive community. 
• Increases the effectiveness and efficiency of governance processes. For example, when board members are aligned, onboarding and offboarding board members become seamless.

10 Obstacles to Board Alignment

An organization benefits when its board and leadership team are aligned, but getting there isn’t always easy. Here are some common obstacles that can get in the way of uniting your top leadership.

1. Diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Board members often come from diverse professional backgrounds, disciplines and experiences. Balancing these diverse perspectives and aligning them toward a common vision can be challenging, especially if differences in values or priorities exist.
2. Competing interests. Board members may have different interests or priorities based on their roles, affiliations or professional agendas. Conflicting priorities can make it difficult to achieve alignment on overarching organizational goals.
3. Limited communication. Inadequate communication or information-sharing among board members can hinder alignment. If members aren’t well-informed about the organization’s mission, goals or ongoing activities, it can become difficult for them to align their efforts.
4. Lack of trust. A lack of trust among board members can lead to skepticism, resistance to change and difficulties in reaching consensus on important decisions.
5. Turnover and transitions. Board turnover or changes in officers can disrupt alignment efforts. New members or board chairs may bring different perspectives or priorities, and it takes time for them to integrate into the existing culture and align them with the organization’s objectives.
6. Resource constraints. Limited financial or human resources can lead to competing demands and priorities. Board members may struggle to align with one another when faced with resource constraints or competing for the same limited resources.
7. External pressures. Changes in regulations, economic conditions or shifts in the academic and professional landscape can create challenges for board alignment. Adapting to external pressures while maintaining alignment requires excellent strategic planning and effective communication.
8. Lack of strategic planning. Without a clear and well-defined strategic plan, board members may lack a roadmap for alignment. A lack of strategic direction can result in disparate efforts and conflicting actions among members.
9. Cultural differences. In organizations with international or diverse memberships, cultural differences can contribute to challenges in achieving alignment. Different cultural perspectives and expectations may need to be navigated and harmonized.
10. Communication styles. Differences in communication styles among board members can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations, making it difficult to establish a shared understanding and alignment.

Building a Board Declaration

Overcoming the challenges above requires thoughtful and proactive efforts from board leaders, including employing effective communication strategies, fostering a culture of trust and collaboration, and investing in team-building activities. Regular assessments of board dynamics and a commitment to reaching a shared vision also are essential.

At Revealing Genius, we recommend a brand declaration to support board and leadership alignment and effectiveness. Developing a declaration based on our time-proven Excavate–Tell–Affirm™ process helps excavate your company’s purpose, what it stands for and whom it most wants to serve. Once you’ve excavated your brand, you can affirm it until all your leaders feel it with conviction and more effectively tell all your stakeholders about it.

Considering a brand declaration for your organization or yourself? We’re honored to work with boards and leadership teams and individual leaders. You can also learn more via our free 10-minute webinar, Brand Leadership Summit or online course.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE

An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.

Healthcare leaders, departments and organizations with on-purpose brands elevate patient care and propel themselves forward.

This blog was originally published on swaay.health.

Stacey Parkin is the chief patient experience officer of a large health system in Washington state. For her, improving the patient experience is personal—and a key element of her executive personal brand.

“Having a child with a congenital heart defect and a mother with MS, I have navigated the healthcare system for years and wanted to make it better from the inside out,” she says in an article from Healthcare Innovation. “I am passionate about my work and making the experience more seamless and personal.”

Having such clarity about their purpose and where it comes from helps healthcare marketers like Stacey build trust and credibility with patients.

A healthcare marketer’s executive personal brand is in turn very important to medical facilities, as patients develop their impressions about a facility based on their interactions with the professionals they meet there.

Executive personal branding—for individual marketers, whole departments and even boards and entire organizations—is a key tool for clarifying purpose, deepening conviction about that purpose and finding the best ways to express it. Done right, personal branding helps leaders, their organizations and ultimately, their patients.

So, what exactly is executive personal branding? And how can you, your team and your organization use it to create a sustainable positive impact on individual, team and organizational performance that will lead to a top level of patient care?

What Is Executive Personal Branding?

Executive personal branding is about excavating what you stand for, who you would most like to serve and the transformation only you can create for them.

It’s also about learning how to do a good job when you tell everyone you meet, in every setting, about your brand. Going through an executive branding process should help you ably and confidently answer the age-old business question, “So, what do you do?” It can also help you build an effective LinkedIn profile, prepare an on-brand all-staff presentation, write a CV that will help you get an interview and then give an amazing interview.

Executive personal branding is also about affirming your brand. After you go through the process, you will be able to feel your brand in your bones and share it with conviction.

The Power of Taking Personal Branding Past the Individual Level

I have worked with many individual healthcare leaders to refine their executive personal brands. Knowing what you stand for, who you most want to serve and how to express those two things is powerful in helping individuals take their next right steps.

And executive personal branding can be even more powerful and transformational when groups of leaders look at it together.

In addition to working with individual leaders as a consultant, I’ve facilitated the development of marketing department brand manifestos as a chief marketing officer, ensuring that everyone in the department aligned on why the group existed and exactly how it was meant to serve the organization.

As a CEO, I’ve worked with C-suite leadership teams on the brand message for the high-traffic “About” page of the organization’s website. In the CEO role, I’ve also worked with board members, enabling them to align with a brand manifesto for their organization, a document that goes beyond vision, mission and values to emotionally describe why and who their organization exists to serve.

It is exciting for everyone involved when branding goes throughout the organization. The patient experience benefits when staff engagement goes up as the process progresses, and each team member becomes more effective in building trust and credibility with everyone they serve.

Try This On: An Executive Personal Branding Exercise

In my executive branding work with leaders at all levels, I present numerous small exercises as part of Excavate-Tell-Affirm™ process to help them clearly articulate their foundational purpose. Here’s a three-minute example you can try right now:

Take out a piece of paper and make two columns on it, one with the header, “More of this, please,” the other with the header, “Less of this, please.” Spend two minutes completing your table. Think about all aspects of your life as you compile your answers: spirituality, health, style, relationships (family, friends, community), work, finances, recreation, social and learning. Write down what comes top of mind.

Now, look at your list. What stands out to you? When you think of your executive personal branding, what gives you energy when you do it? What would you like to say yes to?

There are many more strategies and tools for developing an executive personal brand for yourself, your department, your C-suite, your board and your whole organization. Learn more by taking our self-paced online course, and let us know how we can help.

Mary E. Maloney, FACHE

An executive advisor, educator, speaker, author and producer, Mary E. Maloney is the founder of Revealing Genius and the expert that accomplished leaders trust for positioning, messaging and brand strategy for themselves, their teams and their organizations. A former CEO and CMO, Maloney guides C-suite leaders, founders, physicians and board directors to powerfully and strategically message their expertise and “why” so they lead with conviction and achieve their most coveted goals.