Latest / Executive Careers with Fexingo: VP, C-Suite, and Senior Leadership Career Strategy / How Senior Leaders Use Personal Branding to Control Their Career Narrative
Transcript
- Lucas: We talk a lot on this show about how senior leaders navigate their next move — the interview, the negotiation, the board seat. But there is a layer underneath all of that that I think we have not really dug into, and it is the brand you carry with you before you ever walk into a room. Luna: Personal branding. And I know some executives roll their eyes at that phrase. They think it sounds like influencer territory. Lucas: Exactly. And I get it. If you have spent twenty years building real operational chops, the last thing you want is to be told you need to ‘build a brand’ like a twenty-five-year-old lifestyle blogger. But the reality is, whether you like it or not, you have a brand. It is the perception people have of you when your name comes up in a room you are not in. And if you are not shaping that perception deliberately, someone else is shaping it for you. Luna: That line — 'when your name comes up in a room you are not in' — I think that is the core of it. So how do you actually take control of that as a senior leader? Lucas: Let me give you a concrete example. I was talking to a former Fortune 500 CFO — let me call her Sarah, not her real name. She had spent fifteen years at a large industrial company. Great track record. But when she started thinking about her next role — she wanted to move into a chief operating officer or even CEO path — she realized that the external narrative about her was entirely backward-looking. She was known as the person who had cleaned up a messy balance sheet. That was her brand. Financial fixer. Luna: Which is valuable, but it is also limiting. It does not say 'I can lead strategy' or 'I can drive growth.' Lucas: Exactly. So she did something deliberate. She started a small writing practice — not a blog, not a newsletter with a thousand subscribers. She wrote three long-form articles over six months, published them on LinkedIn and on a platform called Medium. Each one was about a transformation she had led, but she framed it around strategic decision-making, not just cost-cutting. She also started saying yes to two or three speaking invitations a year at industry conferences, but she was very specific about the topics she chose. No more 'lessons in financial discipline.' Instead, 'how to build a resilient business model.' Luna: So she was deliberately changing the keywords associated with her name. Lucas: Exactly. And within about eighteen months, she told me, headhunters started reaching out with a different set of opportunities. They were no longer calling about interim CFO roles at distressed companies. They were calling about chief operating officer roles at mid-cap firms. The external perception had shifted. And it was not because she had done a PR blitz. It was a very targeted, low-volume, high-signal content strategy. Luna: I think a lot of executives underestimate how much their brand is currently being defined by their employer. If you have been at one company for a decade, your brand is basically that company's brand, plus whatever your title suggests. And if you leave, that association evaporates. Lucas: That is such a critical point. Your employer is a powerful brand halo, but it is borrowed equity, not owned equity. The moment you are no longer 'VP of X at Well-Known Corp,' you have to have something that stands on its own. And building that while you still have the platform of your current role is much smarter than trying to build it from scratch after you have left. Luna: So what is the first step? If I am a senior leader listening to this and I realize I have not thought about my brand in a structured way, where do I start? Lucas: I would start with what I call a brand audit. And it is surprisingly simple. You sit down and answer three questions. First: what are the three words or phrases you want people to associate with you? Not your title, not your company — you. Second: what are the three words or phrases you suspect people actually associate with you right now? And third, what is the gap between those two sets? Luna: And you have to be honest about that second one. It is easy to convince yourself that everyone sees you the way you want to be seen. Lucas: Right. Which is why I suggest you ask a few trusted peers or even a former boss to describe you in three words. The feedback can be humbling. I know an executive who thought his brand was 'strategic, collaborative, innovative.' His colleagues said 'reliable, detail-oriented, steady.' Which are great traits, but they are not the same thing. They basically said he was a solid operator, not a visionary. That gap told him exactly where he needed to invest his time. Luna: And then after the audit, what is the mechanism? You mentioned writing and speaking. Are those really the only levers? Lucas: They are the most effective for senior leaders because they are scalable and they create a permanent artifact. A single well-placed talk can be recorded, clipped, shared on LinkedIn. A single article can be referenced in a meeting or in an interview. But there are other levers too. Board service, which we have talked about in previous episodes. Teaching an executive education module at a university. Even just being more intentional about the questions you ask in public forums — your comments in a conference Q&A or a panel discussion can reinforce your brand more than your official remarks. Luna: Let me push on that a little. Is there a risk of over-indexing on personal branding? I have seen executives who spend so much time polishing their external image that they neglect the actual work, or worse, they come across as self-promotional in a way that turns people off. Lucas: It is a real risk. The antidote is to anchor your brand in substance, not volume. You do not need to post three times a week or have a podcast. You need a small number of high-quality signals that demonstrate depth. The CFO I mentioned wrote three articles in six months. That is it. But each one was dense with insight. That is far more effective than a weekly newsletter that is mostly aggregation. Luna: Which ties back to something you said earlier — low volume, high signal. That is a good rule of thumb. Lucas: It is. And it works because senior leaders are time-poor. If you try to do too much, you will either burn out or produce mediocrity. Pick one channel — writing, speaking, teaching — and do it well for twelve months. Then evaluate. Luna: I want to come back to the idea that your brand is being shaped whether you participate or not. That is a kind of uncomfortable truth for people who prefer to just focus on results. Lucas: Absolutely. And I think the best way to internalize that is to think about it as risk management. If you do not have a clear brand, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to being branded by a single data point — a bad quarter, a restructure you oversaw, a comment taken out of context. When you have a deliberate brand narrative, those data points are interpreted in a larger context. They do not define you. Luna: That resonates. And speaking of context — this is a show that we produce without ads, because we believe the content should speak for itself. If you find these conversations useful and want to support that approach, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just a way to keep the episodes ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, we really appreciate the people who have done that. It makes a difference. Back to the brand audit — once you have identified the gap, the next step is to identify one single narrative shift you want to make. Maybe it is from 'financial expert' to 'transformation leader.' Then you find one story from your career that exemplifies that shift and you craft it into a five-minute talk or a thousand-word article. That is your starting point. Luna: And you test it. You try it out on a small group. You see if it lands the way you expect. Lucas: Yes. And you iterate. The first version of Sarah's article was too technical. She got feedback that it read like a white paper. So she rewrote it to lead with the human tension — the moment she had to convince a reluctant board to back a risky investment. That version got shared widely. Luna: So the brand is not just about changing perception. It is also about storytelling skill. Lucas: It is. And that is a skill you can develop. It is not an innate talent. I think a lot of executives avoid personal branding because they think it requires charisma or a gift for writing. But really, it requires clarity and discipline. If you can state clearly what you want to be known for, and you can share one or two stories that illustrate it, you are ninety percent of the way there. Luna: So what happens if you do the audit and you realize your brand is actually fine for where you are now, but you want to move into a completely different area? Say a supply chain executive who wants to move into sustainability. Lucas: That is a bigger lift, but it is doable. You need to build credibility in the new space before you make the move. That might mean taking a course, getting a certification, volunteering for a sustainability project at your current company, and then writing about what you learn. The key is to start creating content that signals the new direction while you are still in your current role. By the time you actively look for a sustainability role, there is a trail of evidence that you are serious about it. Luna: And that trail is your brand. Lucas: Exactly. It is your career narrative made visible. And it gives you control over how you are perceived, rather than leaving it to chance. Luna: One final thing — we have talked a lot about the external brand. But what about internal brand? How you are perceived inside your own organization? Lucas: That is a whole other episode. But briefly, the same principles apply. You want to be known for specific things internally, and you can shape that by the projects you take on, the meetings you speak up in, and the way you support others. Internal brand is often built through consistent behavior over time. But you can accelerate it by being more intentional about the conversations you have with your manager and your peers about what you want to be known for. Luna: We will have to come back to that. For now, the takeaway for me is: do the audit, find the gap, pick one signal, and start small. Lucas: That is a perfect summary. And remember, if you do nothing, you are still being branded. You might as well be intentional about it.