The Forest In Between the Trees

Branding is an integral part of leadership, as it calls for leaders to deliberately contribute to the sense of belonging everyone feels inside a team or organization.

Every group and culture has a brand, which is much more than a visual identity. Instead, it's the set of emotions that someone feels when they interact with the brand or associate something with the brand. It is the story they tell themselves about how they belong with the group.

We all sell things every day, regardless of our field of work or industry. Leadership is about understanding this responsibility to create a narrative around the vision, purpose and culture that others will find resonant.

A culture's routine practices and norms are a reflection of the stories people tell themselves every day, and must therefore be carefully constructed and amplified by leaders.

Branding can become a powerful force for driving intrinsic motivation. Leaders must communicate a sense of purpose and of belonging to the members of the organization.

Branding is an integral part of leadership, as it calls for leaders to deliberately contribute to the sense of belonging everyone feels inside a team or organization.

Every group and culture has a brand, which is much more than a visual identity. Instead, it's the set of emotions that someone feels when they interact with the brand or associate something with the brand. It is the story they tell themselves about how they belong with the group.

We all sell things every day, regardless of our field of work or industry. Leadership is about understanding this responsibility to create a narrative around the vision, purpose and culture that others will find resonant.

A culture's routine practices and norms are a reflection of the stories people tell themselves every day, and must therefore be carefully constructed and amplified by leaders.

Branding can become a powerful force for driving intrinsic motivation. Leaders must communicate a sense of purpose and of belonging to the members of the organization.

Every group needs to establish a set of cultural norms that serve as a compass for decision making. Leadership is the careful act of crafting these norms around a vision, values and principles, embedding them into the group's culture.

A vision cannot be purely decorative. It gives meaning as to why the group does what it does. It is the North Star : every decision and action must be able to reach this vision.

Values supersede individuals and rank. They are the authority.
Principles are tools for clarity. They are a set of describable and observable responses to situations that arise often in the group. They are derived from the values. They should constantly be challenged, by members of any rank inside an organisation. They describe "how things are around here".

Leaders are not responsible for enforcing principles. They are responsible for clarifying the vision, values and practices and enforcing that everyone can and has to make decisions based on these, just as they would.

The approach to leadership education is currently broken. We must inverse the approach of how we educate our leaders in teams, schools and organizations.

The traditional approach to leadership education is centred around individuals. Instead, we need to bring teams and organisations to follow a cultural approach towards the education of their leaders, creating environments of growth and of trust.

The role of leadership, or the role of someone who leads, is: clarity, influence, safety.

Leadership is not about titles or ranks, it's about a personal choice. We should strive to build organisations where leadership is not a power or responsibility, but a norm.

The goal of leadership training programs or workshops is not to place or prepare individuals in leadership roles. What’s important is to create an environment where anyone feels safe to lead.

Truly great teams and organisations enable the co-existence of a culture of growth and a culture of trust.