How Can Authentic Leadership Help You Build Trust and Influence People?

Why Is Personal Branding Essential for Modern Leaders to Drive Change?

Master the strategies from The New Rules of Influence to become a trustworthy change agent. Learn how to build a personal brand, practice authentic leadership, and use storytelling to engage teams and drive lasting impact in a changing world.

Ready to stop being a “shrinking violet” and start leading with bold authenticity? Continue reading to discover the step-by-step personal branding strategies that will maximize your influence today.

Recommendation

Modern leaders need to be trustworthy change agents who make a positive impact on those they lead. You may think that’s Leadership 101, but in today’s world of change and uncertainty, leaders face new challenges and need fresh leadership guidelines. To respond to that need, personal branding expert Lida Citroën provides an empowering framework that will enable even the most perplexed leaders to become more effective and generate lasting influence.

Take-Aways

• Follow newer, better rules of engagement.
• Be courageous and bold.
• Be true to yourself.
• Be credible to influence others.
• Serve others.
• Inclusive leaders benefit from a wide variety of contacts.
• Inconsistent leaders wield no influence because people don’t trust them.
• Rigid leaders cannot cope with a changing world.
• Storytelling leaders engage their teams.
• Shrinking violets are not effective leaders.
• Today, everyone is a brand, and every leader needs a personal brand strategy.
• Positive influence passes from leaders to their followers and to their followers’ contacts.

Summary

Follow newer, better rules of engagement.

In business and elsewhere, the conventional rules and approaches that worked in the past won’t work today or in the future. Businesspeople, particularly leaders, need new rules of engagement – new standards for exercising authority and influence while also sharing their “humanity and vulnerability.”

“When we share who we are, why we’re here, and what we believe in, others give us their attention, buy from us, and offer up their loyalty.”

Influencing others is a required skill for exercising inspirational leadership. To build this skill, embrace the new rules of leadership. Set out to earn your employees’ loyalty, drive peak performance, move resolutely into the future, and discover your best self.

Be courageous and bold.

Courage is not a quality that magically appears without a summons and takes over to inspire you and supercharge your life. You must seek and develop your courage and be ready to wear it like impenetrable armor.

Striving to be brave begins with taking bold and sometimes even scary risks. When your inner voice tells you to hold back, find a way to leap forward. Say what you believe and live your beliefs. As a person of courage, you must stand up for what you know to be right and live up to your ideals.

“Your courage will drive your influence. You must believe in yourself and your message even when others don’t, or when they are skeptical and question your reasoning. Particularly when you ask others to have faith in you, you’ll need to project your courage.”

Act strategically and don’t expect it to be easy. Courage takes guts and is, ultimately, an act of will. You must choose your moment and decide to act with courage. Banishing fear is within your power. Regard courage as an irreplaceable, nourishing form of “personal agency,” not as the absence of fear. Even when you may feel fear, you can move forward, act with courage, and do the right thing. Boldness is a choice. You can learn how to choose bravery until courage becomes a habit.

Be true to yourself.

You cannot expect to influence others positively if you don’t let them see the real you, including your shortcomings. People don’t trust – or allow themselves to be influenced by – inauthentic leaders who try to conceal their true nature.

“Being real is letting people see you, hear you, and know you. It’s showing your vulnerable side and trusting that your audience [and others] won’t abuse or hurt you because of it.”

Being real means speaking from your heart and expressing your feelings, instead of following a scripted message that’s meant to make you look good. Whether you are leading a team or standing at a podium in front of an audience, be willing to say, “I’m going to get real with you all.” And then, speak from your heart with courage and vulnerability. Your followers will appreciate your candor and that appreciation will fuel their loyalty to you.

Be credible to influence others.

Are you a credible person, someone who doesn’t only talk the talk but also always walks the walk? Such leaders exemplify credibility. They make sure their day-to-day actions align with their stated values. People with that level of credibility have the best opportunity to exert a positive influence on others.

Credibility is not a magic cloak you don quickly to get others on your side. That’s not how credibility works. To illustrate, while trying to defend herself and her firm in court on a fraud charge, Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, the blood therapy company, made a point of lowering her voice when she spoke. She was trying to sound confident and credible, but – given that she was guilty – it didn’t work. She was convicted of fraud. No assumed mannerisms could hide her lies and deceit. The jury saw through her game.

You don’t earn credibility by your manner of speaking, dressing, or carrying yourself. You earn credibility when you live your values for everyone to see, and you articulate what you stand for and who you are.

Serve others.

Those who serve others have the greatest positive impact on other people’s lives. These admirable leaders focus on other people’s needs first; they don’t regard being of service as conditional or transactional. Rather, they are always ready to help and put aside their needs to focus on others. This generosity is another form of courage, and it inspires profound loyalty within a team.

“We’re all running super-busy lives with massive to-do lists [but] there’s always time to serve others, too.”

The recipients of such service could range from the poor, unhoused, and unfed, to businesspeople who suffered burnout or setbacks and may need mentoring, networking, career support, or venture funding. Those you help can also include people on your team who are having a difficult time at work or at home.

Inclusive leaders benefit from a wide variety of contacts.

Keep your circle of acquaintances, friends, associates, and business contacts as broad and as diverse as possible. To build your sense of inclusion, recognize a wide range of different mindsets. Value opinions that may not match your own, listen respectfully to others even when you disagree, and remain willing and eager to learn from those around you.

“Seek to hear from the marginalized or less educated voices…who are often overlooked…Being inclusive means you bring everyone to the table to participate in shaping the vision.”

Inclusivity means that everyone on your team can count on being seen, heard, and respected. This is the essence of “psychological safety.” People who feel psychologically safe are more likely to share their ideas and concerns than those who feel unsafe. Employees who feel safe have greater confidence about asking for and receiving the support they need. People need strong, inner confidence to embrace risks, including the risk of accepting a leader’s support.

Inconsistent leaders wield no influence because people don’t trust them.

Inconsistent leaders who act one way today and another way tomorrow cannot wield positive influence over anyone. Their behavior undermines trust and any sense of safety.

This is true of many kinds of inconsistent leaders, including those who show up one way in person and present themselves in an entirely different way online, or those who act restrained and courteous at work but are rude, disruptive, or dismissive away from the office.

“Consistency requires self-discipline, self-awareness, and situational awareness [so you] know how you’re behaving and being received.”

Everyone knows that people who run hot and cold are not trustworthy. And, if people can’t trust you, they will never let your leadership influence them. Consistency means that you must own your voice. It means aligning your online profiles to your daily actions, so your followers know the individual they see on LinkedIn is the same person they’ll meet on your website, in YouTube videos, on your Instagram feed, and in person. Consistency nurtures trust.

Rigid leaders cannot cope with a changing world.

The world is constantly changing, and the pace of change is accelerating, Those who cannot keep up will get left behind. This includes leaders who hope to influence those they lead. No one will follow leaders whose information is outdated and who are wedded to the past. To avoid this scary conundrum, today’s leaders must learn continually, seek personal growth, and encourage their team members to do the same.

“Today, having influence requires being able to flex and adapt and stretch and grow into changing markets and conditions.”

Everyone must adapt to rapid change, but to be adaptable, you must stay informed about the world around you. Yes, of course, you can learn about changing currents by keeping your eyes and ears open, but go a step further and make it your responsibility to learn all you can about the complex shifts affecting your organization, your industry, and your community. Work hard to develop an agile, learning mindset.

Storytelling leaders engage their teams.

Being a skilled storyteller gives you a great advantage in influencing others. People are more willing to adopt visionary ideas when their leaders can explain them by sharing engrossing stories. Powerful, relatable stories are the best way to “hook” your listeners and persuade them to adopt your way of thinking.

“A gripping story brings readers in and helps them relate to your message even if they’ve never experienced what you’re describing.”

Stories educate and teach valuable lessons. They open your listeners up to new concepts and strategies. They shape morals and morality and offer new points of view. Good storytelling can breathe life into staid data or outline emerging opportunities.

Additionally, stories make history and its lessons less confusing and more accessible and understandable. A strong narrative conveys arguments persuasively to convince people of the best course of action.

Shrinking violets are not effective leaders.

People will not follow – or let themselves be influenced by – timid leaders who are unwilling or unable to get out in front. Leaders need to be able to get up on the stage, stand behind the podium, look into the audience or the camera, assert themselves, and share their plans for the future. Shrinking violets can’t lead or influence anyone, because no one ever sees or hears them. They have no presence.

“If you want to influence others with your idea, message, vision, or movement, how can you do so if they can’t see you, hear you, and kick the tires, so to speak, of your idea? Being visible gives a face, voice, and context to your idea.”

If you are a shrinking violet, and you want to lead and start to have a productive impact on others, the time has come to step out of the shadows. Empower yourself to emerge as the capable leader you know you can become.

As you begin to assert yourself, be patient. Carefully schedule your public actions according to a step-by-step, little-by-little, “assert-myself” plan. Keep your plan and goals simple, and take the time you need to build and then present your new more confident self to your colleagues.

Stepping out of the shadows and beginning to assert yourself can create anxiety and fear. Try to draw upon the courage and boldness you have developed. The days when leaders could advance their careers by just clocking in and being on time, on budget, and passive are gone. Successful leaders take charge, first of themselves and then of their team. To influence others, you must be visible and clearly in charge.

Today, everyone is a brand, and every leader needs a personal brand strategy.

In the current market-oriented world, each leader has a personal brand. Your personal brand involves the traits you are known for as well as how you act, speak, and relate to others. Like it or not, branding is the way people experience others, particularly in business.

If you are a leader, you need to develop a personal brand strategy that includes finding effective ways to recruit others to support your brand.

“A weak or inconsequential brand leaves you at risk for misunderstanding, misperception, and being passed over.”

To define your personal leadership brand and create a brand strategy, outline your primary strengths and assets. Carefully choose how you strategize ways to promote your brand. Whatever you do as a leader, don’t let anyone, including those who may not like you, brand you “by default.” You can steadily brand yourself with the way you communicate, your actions, the quality of your work, and your impact on others.

Positive influence passes from leaders to their followers and to their followers’ contacts.

Researchers who studied people who routinely play Tetris – a popular online game where players try to get rapidly falling puzzle shapes to fit together as they land – came up with an intriguing concept known as the “Tetris effect.” They found that many expert Tetris gamers eventually developed advanced “sorting” skills. According to related research, that means they become better at connecting and unifying seemingly disparate aspects of a whole entity and, often, they are the only ones who can see it as a whole.

Influence works in a similar way. Leaders who positively influence followers should bear in mind that others share that influence down the line. This pass-along effect moves according to a pattern in which followers pass their influence along to others, including people the original leaders may never meet.

“Anyone of any background can aspire to a place at the table to share their voice. The old rules of sitting on your hands for a decade before you’ve ‘earned’ the right (and the look and the training) to speak up are over.”

Leaders can’t “see, touch, and claim” this positive pass-along impact, but it nevertheless exists. The leader’s initial positive influence travels from one person to the next in ever-spreading waves that become the legacy of any influential leader.

About the Author

Lida Citroën, a personal branding and reputation management consultant, also wrote Control the Narrative: The Executive’s Guide to Building, Pivoting, and Repairing Your Reputation.