Here's the Quick Review of Leadership Brand: Developing customer-focused leaders to drive performance and build lasting value by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood.
How this book is different:
Concentrates on leadership as a company endeavor, not as a matter of individual growth.
The authors attempt to get you to analyze your company's leadership from the outside in.
Strengths:
This is truly about leadership development in the company.
The chapter on "Assessing Leaders Against the Brand" is worth the price of the book.
Good research and citations.
Warnings:
You may have trouble reading this book from cover to cover.
What's here is far too programmatic to be practical taken whole.
The concept of "Leadership Brand" may get in your way.
Bottom Line:
If you're interested in leadership development, this book should be on your shelf.
Now for the detailed review.
There's not much new about leadership. But every new leadership book attempts to give you something unique, a new way to look at the subject, new things to try, or old things to try in different way. Every book tries to shift your thinking.
Leadership Brand by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood attempts to shift your thinking from studying leaders to studying leadership and toward influencing how leaders connect the company to customers and other "outsiders." They work through the metaphor of a "leadership brand," which they tell us is "the identity of the firm in the mind of the customers made real to employees because of customercentric leadership behaviors."
That quote tells you that this book will stretch your thinking about leadership development in your company. It also tells you that the authors are overanalyzing and, yes, branding the process they describe. Here's a quick chapter outline
Branding Leadership – the authors introduce their concept of Leadership Brand
There are six chapters that lay out the process in step-by-step fashion.
Creating a Leadership Brand Statement
Assessing Leaders Against the Brand – worth reading if you read nothing else
Investing in Leadership Brand
Measuring Return on Leadership Brand
Building Awareness for Leadership Brand
Preserving Leadership Brand
Implications for Personal Brand
There are two Appendices
Criteria for a Firm Brand – worth reading for an overview of things to do
Firms with Branded Leadership
How this book is different
Leadership Brand concentrates on leadership as a company endeavor, not as a matter of individual growth. That makes it different from most leadership books, but similar to recent books like The Leadership Pipeline.
The authors also attempt to get you to analyze your company's leadership from the outside in. This is a powerful concept and one you can use in any company.
If you start thinking about leadership development by thinking about the results that need to be produced, you will see things that you won't see with the "competency" or "trait" approach. You will also be able to identify the ways that leadership at your company needs to be different than leadership at other companies.
Strengths
This is truly about leadership development in the company. It will help you develop a leadership development program or modify what you've got.
The chapter on "Assessing Leaders Against the Brand" is worth the price of the book. This chapter is filled with tools and references that will help you assess leadership and leadership development whether you use the authors' program or not.
I love leadership books that are well-researched. Because the authors describe their thinking and support their points with research, you can judge whether you agree. You can also adapt a point or suggestion more effectively to your own situation.
Warnings
You may have trouble reading this book from cover to cover. The prose is absolutely tortured at times.
What's here is far too programmatic to be practical taken whole. Like so many programmatic books, this one lays our multiple, detailed steps and makes it seem like you go through them, bang-bang-bang in a linear fashion.
The fact is that the kind of changes the authors are calling for require changes in multiple company systems and in the culture. It's a generational process that will take years, not months.
The concept of "Leadership Brand" may get in your way. It did for me.
I never understood how a "leadership brand" was different than the culture and values of a company. Ultimately I just substituted "culture and values" in my head every time I read "leadership brand." That seemed to work fine.
Bottom Line
If you're interested in leadership development, Leadership Brand should be on your shelf.
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