The Importance of Personal Brand for IT Managers
The development of personal brand might seem out of place in IT leadership skills and it presents a constant dilemma for IT managers and CIOs. The plain truth is that IT management is very different from IT, and IT leadership is very different from IT management. To be successful, a manager needs clear insight on the top priorities, inter-personal skills for building influence and effectiveness, some practical guidelines to align to changing business priorities and technology leadership skills to put them into practice.
If you are interested in this topic, why not request a complementary download of the chapter on “Personal leadership” from “Excellent IT Leadership” by David McKean, published by Amazon’s Createspace, 2014 – the one on which our course is based.
Personal Brand and IT Leadership Skills
If you are interested in some further information, we give some of our favourite references at the bottom of this page. Always keen to learn more, let us know if you have any papers or books on these subjects you could recommend. We cover the following topics on the course.
Personal leadership
Daniel Goleman’s model of emotional intelligence emphasises personal leadership — our ability to understand ourselves and achieve our best.
- How CIOs optimize time and activity
- Secrets of successful CIOs
- Leadership opportunities for IT professionals
- Building and maintaining reputation
- Developing a personal brand
Building a personal brand
As IT managers develop in their careers, they need to pay careful attention to their real strengths and how to promote themselves and their team effectively. In this section, we look at this and some related topics.
- What your brand says about you
- Creating a trustworthy brand
- What makes a successful CIO – as told by CEOs and recruitment professionals
To find out more about the location and dates for courses near you, click on the link for your region. The course is based on the experiences of over two thousand senior IT managers and CIOs and presents the most valuable lessons on the road to delivering exceptional IT leadership.
Click to find out more about dates for our IT Leadership courses.
IT Leadership is first and foremost a practical and interactive course. It combines our own experience with that of over 1,000 clients and delegates
Delegate feedback has allowed us to tune the course profile to deliver a careful blend of models and guidelines, supported with carefully designed, enjoyable and interactive role plays, case studies and team exercises.
Module 1 starts with personal leadership and how we need to manage ourselves to be successful. In his excellent paper, What makes a leader, Daniel Goleman identified the most important characteristics of a leader. 3 of them relate to personal leadership.
To find out more about the location and dates for courses near you, click on the link for your region.
Further thoughts and recommended reading on personal leadership
‘What makes a leader’ by Daniel Goleman
One of the most highly influential papers written on emotional intelligence was written by Daniel Goleman. Entitled, ‘What makes a leader?,’ it used research from 100’s of organizations to identify what it was that top performing managers did that was different from their less well performing peers. The research identified 5 key leadership skills – self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill. What is very interesting about this, is that 3 of them relate to personal leadership.
‘Moving from CIO to CEO’ by Dr Robina Chatham
Robina Chatham is a visiting fellow at Cranfield Business School and a presenter of the Excellent IT Leadership course. She conducted research to identify what it was about IT managers that allowed some of them to move on to senior positions outside of IT, in particular to the position of CEO. Her research makes interesting reading and is available on request from IT Leaders.