Brenda Bence

Let’s face it: As a leader, you want to be liked, but you also want to be respected. And it really is important to have both if you’re going to be effective on the job. But accomplishing both can be difficult, and maintaining a balance between the two can be even more challenging.

If you spend too much time trying to be liked, chances are you aren’t leading effectively – you’re not making the truly tough decisions (that may not always be popular) and assuring that everyone is doing their job well. Maybe you avoid confrontation and cower at the thought of having to deal directly with workplace issues and problem team members. Or, perhaps in your efforts to be liked, you stick with the status quo, not wanting to “rock the boat.” Outcome? Your team members don’t grow, and you end up with mediocre business results.

On the other hand, if you spend too much time trying to be respected without caring enough about being liked, you may struggle to get your team to support you. Leaders who don’t care at all about being liked may cause their employees to feel like victims. Issues aren’t raised up to you until they have turned into crises because people are afraid of your reaction. Or maybe team members don’t come to you with any new ideas, anticipating that you’ll just put them down anyway. Outcome: Horrible morale and escalating employee turnover.

As tough as it may be, leaders with great Leadership Personal Brands work hard at maintaining a balance between the two poles. It requires weighing every situation carefully and thinking about how your actions and reactions will likely be perceived.

So, what to do? Here’s an exercise:

1. On a piece of paper, draw a horizontal line with a “1” at the left end and a “10” at the right end. Now, think about how you operate as a leader. If “1” represents a 100% focus on being respected, and “10” represents 100% focus on being liked, where would you fall in that continuum? Do you worry too much about how much YOU™ are liked? Or do you try to earn respect without worrying at all if your team likes you? Be honest with yourself: How balanced is your leadership style between these two poles?

2. Based on your schedule for the upcoming week, write down a plan that concentrates on creating a balance between being liked and respected. What actions can you take that will promote this balance? What opportunities might arise that will help you maintain the kind of like-vs-respected balance you want? Think about your options, and weigh the consequences of each. Consider which choices will be most likely to bring you this important balance, strengthening your Leadership Personal Brand in the process.

CHICAGO – April 2011: Internationally-recognized branding expert and award-winning author, Brenda Bence, has been ranked #7 among the World’s Top 10 Most Influential Brand Gurus for 2010. Bence was chosen by Brand Gurus International based on her works, her contribution to the global community, and the votes of her peers in industry.

In order to choose the most influential brand gurus, emails were sent to 22,000 business people, consultants, academics, and MBA’s around the world for nominations and a public opinion poll. A top 30 list was compiled from this research, and a top 10 list was compiled based on the number of votes each individual received. According to Brand Gurus International, the criteria for judging focused on “originality of ideas, practicality of ideas, presentation style, international outlook, impact of ideas, quality of publications and writings, dispersion of publications, and writings, public opinion, [and] guru factor.”

“This distinction means a great deal to me,” says Bence. “Anyone who knows me knows I’m passionate about the power of branding – both personal and corporate – so to be recognized as #7 in the world is a great honor.”

With an MBA from Harvard Business School, Bence began her 25-year career developing mega brands for Procter & Gamble and Bristol-Myers Squibb across four continents and 50 countries.

Today, Bence is President of Brand Development Associates International, and she travels the world speaking, training, and coaching individuals and corporations to greater success through creative, yet practice brand development. She has appeared on numerous television and radio programs and has written dozens of articles on the subject of branding. As a certified executive coach, she works individually with some of the world’s top CEOs to help them rise to the top of their careers by building their leadership personal brands.

Bence’s three books in her How YOU™ are like Shampoo personal branding series have won a total of ten national book awards, including the Best Beach Books Festival National Grand Prize. All three of the books walk readers through Bence’s unique personal branding approach, the world’s only step-by-step, start-to-finish system for defining, communicating, and taking control of a personal brand. The first book is targeted to helping people succeed within the corporate world, the second book, How YOU™ are like Shampoo for Job Seekers, adapts the system to help make a job search faster and easier through personal branding. In the third book of the series, How YOU™ are like Shampoo for College Graduates, Bence revised her groundbreaking system to help college grads through the process of creating a personal brand to succeed in job interviews – even though they have little practical work experience.

Click here for the full list of brand gurus.

If I started a conversation with you about the Super Bowl, I suspect you’d reply, “Huh? That was two months ago, Brenda – ancient news by now.” Indeed, one of the biggest sporting events in North America has been long forgotten and has been justifiably replaced by much bigger and more noteworthy news like what has happened in Egypt, Libya, and of course, in Japan.

So, why bring up the Super Bowl two months later? With an average of 110 million people watching every year, the American football sporting event has become the single most expensive piece of “advertising real estate” in the world – each 30-second ad costs just over $3 million to air. That’s $100,000 per second, folks!

With that kind of price tag, agencies and brand leaders who decide to advertise during this important event spend months and months – and millions more in preparation – all to produce ads that justify that kind of price tag. And, from watching hundreds of Super Bowl ads over the years, it seems like almost all of them strive to include some kind of humor factor – to stick out of the pack and get people talking about them.

And the ads do become “talk of the town” for days before, during, and after the event. In fact, this year, I checked out – literally – dozens of web pages, blog posts and articles all written about the ads that aired.

For those of you who watched the game, I ask you – two months later – which ads do you remember, and, more importantly, which brands did those ads represent?

Stumped? If you’re struggling to remember, sadly, you’re not alone. That’s because too many ads aired today don’t have true “sticking power.”

In order to build your brand, your marketing efforts need to stick like Super Glue. As Chip and Dan Heath teach in their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, ads that make a splash don’t always count. It’s the ads that change a pattern of some kind – and then stay consistent with that pattern – that stick in the minds of a target market.

A clever one-off ad that might make people laugh for a few seconds but walk away with nothing won’t keep the brand in their minds. Successful brands are built by being consistent – 24/7/365.

And, importantly, this is true of both corporate brands and personal brands. The way you communicate your brand must stay the course to make a real impact on how your target market or audience perceives, thinks, and feels about your brand – or YOU™.

So, what are you doing to make your brand stick like Super Glue? Take a look at the Super Bowl ads again. Do you remember any of them? More importantly, will you remember them again in two months’ time? Sound off and let us know if you think any of them are truly “sticky” enough!