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Building a leadership brand.

Dave Ulrich¹, Norm Smallwood

¹RBL Group, Provo, Utah, USA. dou@umich.edu

Harvard Business Review

|July 24, 2007

Summary

Firms build a pipeline of excellent managers by developing an organizational leadership brand. This "outside-in" approach links customer expectations to required management skills, creating trusted leaders.

Area of Science:

Organizational Psychology
Human Resource Management
Business Strategy

Background:

Many organizations focus on individual skill development for leadership.
This approach often fails to create a sustainable pipeline of excellent managers.
An alternative strategy involves building broader organizational leadership capability.

Purpose of the Study:

To explore how some firms consistently produce excellent managers.
To define and examine the concept of a "leadership brand."
To identify strategies employed by companies with strong leadership capabilities.

Main Methods:

Analysis of 150 companies with strong leadership capabilities.
Examination of the "outside-in" approach to executive development.

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Identification of five key strategies for building leadership brands.

Main Results:

Companies with leadership brands link customer expectations to management skills.
Key strategies include mastering leadership basics, internalizing customer expectations, incorporating feedback, customer-involved skill development, and long-term tracking.
These firms develop a reputation for high-quality, trusted leaders.

Conclusions:

Building a leadership brand creates a sustainable source of excellent managers.
This approach fosters trust and ensures delivery on company promises.
Strong leadership brands can lead to companies becoming "leader feeders."