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Have you ever seen two people offer a similar idea, and one is heard while the other is not?

Have you ever been that person whose idea was passed over?

I have. I can recall a time in my career when my colleague successfully motivated our boss to take action to fund a marketing strategy. It was an idea that I had come up with, but I had not been successful in influencing my boss to move forward with it. My colleague succeeded where I had not.

Why? I wondered. What had my colleague said, or done, that made the difference? What was getting in the way of my ability to speak so that others—particularly my boss—would follow?

I didn’t know how to present my ideas in a way that connected deeply with the needs of my audience.

Communication is an influencing tool. To influence others to take action, you need a personal leadership brand. Developing your personal leadership brand ensures that your communication messages connect with your audience, even if your audience is a boss or other senior leader.

Too often we believe that leadership is only for those who have a certain title or the responsibility to lead others who report to them. But, ironically, those who need to develop their personal leadership brand the most are those who do not have a prestigious title or direct reports. Influencing others when you are in a supporting or advising position is when you require leadership skills the most.

So what is a personal leadership brand?

A personal leadership brand requires you to clearly know your core offering and how it benefits your target audience. Effective brands are leaders in the marketplace because they connect emotionally with their audience and offer a benefit that their audience values. Their communication is consistent with their core offering, which, in other words, is what they do better than any other brand out there; it is their point of uniqueness, and they have found a way to connect it to those who want and need this offering.

We are all unique. You are unique. Your core offering is based on your strengths, values and overall experience. When developing your personal leadership brand you must learn to connect that core offering with the needs of the boss or senior leader who you are serving or advising. When trying to influence them with your ideas and perspectives, your messages must consistently provide your target with a benefit that addresses their needs.

Here are some key steps to get you on the path of developing your personal leadership brand.

Clarify your core offering
Oftentimes we minimize and dismiss the brilliance that actually sets us apart from others. A strength is usually something that comes to you so naturally that you can gloss over it. To build clarity about your strengths, ask people around you for one adjective that best describes you. Be sure to gather these adjectives from a variety of work associates, as well as personal friends and acquaintances. Try to compile these adjectives, along with your ideas about what you do best, into one sentence. The resulting sentence should be specific and yet broad enough to cover a variety of actions.

For example, you may get adjectives that describe you as direct, straightforward, incisive and decisive. You may also think that one of your strengths is your ability to solve problems quickly because you get right to the core issue while others may not. Your core offering sentence may be something like this: “I help people solve problems by being direct and incisive, and by effectively cutting through the clutter to tackle the issue at hand.”

Identify leaders as your target audience and understand their needs
As a communicator, you may have several target audiences. And yet, your core strength may have to be adjusted and expressed differently to meet the needs of leaders. It is a good idea to first start with identifying your top priority targets. If your target is a group of executives, it is best to cull it down to one particular person within the group. Next you want to identify the needs of the audience. Go deep into understanding the needs of this person. Try to understand their personal motivations and aspirations. For example, with a target that has a personal need to win, you may want to soften your direct approach and instead solve the problem in a way that helps them believe that they have been the problem solver.

The more you see your leaders as customers, the more likely you will be successful in applying your core offering to help meet their needs. By meeting your targets’ needs, you will influence and motivate them to take action.

Be consistent or risk losing equity
Brands are created as a result of clarity on both the core offering and the targets’ needs. However, brands are destroyed when they are inconsistent with those same offerings. Communication that is inconsistent with either your core offering or your target audience’s needs will not connect. Most people fail at consistency once their personal leadership brand is developed. So make every effort to ensure consistency.

Developing your personal leadership brand is an effective tool to advance your career and to influence those around you. As a communicator, you can also assist your leaders in developing their personal leadership brands as well. Using these steps will help you to solidify your brand so that when you speak, you are sure to have others follow.