Leadership Brand
Dear clients,
The word LeMaSa stands for Leader Manager Southern Africa. LeMaSa’s vision is that we are recognised as the ultimate authority in developing dynamic leaders in the business arena and broader community in the SADC countries, through using scientifically researched, “Proudly South African” products.
Our mission is that we unlock potential in organisations, both nationally and in SADC countries, by identifying potential and then facilitating growth. This is done by using Assessment and Development Centres, Training and Development interventions, as well as Organisational Development interventions. The express goal of LeMaSa is to add value to our client’s bottom line.
All aspects relating to leadership-management are therefore important to us and we are very interested in laying a proper foundation for leader-manager development by establishing an organisation’s Leadership Brand. This in turn influences the organisation’s leadership strategy. This month we provide some background on the services that we deliver in helping you to determine and implement your Leadership Brand.
We hope that the winter is not too harsh and that you have
time to be creative while relaxing with some hot chocolate
in front of a fire (or heater!)
Regards
Sandra Schlebusch

Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood (2007) coined the term “Leadership Brand” and expand on it in their book with the same name. They defined Leadership Brand as the identity of the leaders throughout an organisation that bridges cus tomer e xpectations and employee and organisational behaviour. Leadership Brand leads to a reputation for developing exceptional managers with a distinct set of talents that are uniquely geared to fulfill customers’ and investors’ expectations.
A Leadership Brand is also embedded in the organisation’s culture, through its policies and its requirements for employees.&nb sp; For example, the tagline of Lexus is “the pursuit of perfection.” Internally, the Lexus division translates that promise into the expectation that managers will excel at managing quality processes, including lean manufacturing and Six Sigma (Ulrich and Smallwood, 2007).
Building a strong Leadership Brand requires that organisations follow five principles:
· First, they have to do the basics of leadership—like setting strategy and grooming talent — well;
· Second, they must ensure that managers internalise external constituents’ high expectations of the orga nisation ;
· Third, they need to evaluate their leaders according to those external perspectives;
· Fourth, they must invest in broad-based leadership development that hel ps manag ers hone the skills needed to meet customer and investor expectations;
· And finally, they should track their success at building a Leadership Brand over the long term (Ulrich and Smallwood, 2007).
LeMaSa a ssists o rganisations in developing their Leadership Brand through the following:
· Creating a business case for building the Leadership Brand;
· Creating a Leadership Brand Statement;
· Building awareness of the Leadership Brand;
· Assessing leaders against the Leadership Brand; and
· Designing and implementing development initiatives to entrench the Leadership Brand behaviour.
Source:
Ulrich, D & Smallwood, N. 2007. Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value. Boston. Harvard Business School.