Ask Susan Hodgkinson why she wrote The Leader’s Edge: Using Personal Branding to Drive Performance and Profit, and she’ll tell you about her audience: leaders on all levels who consider themselves and their careers, or WISH to consider themselves, well-recognized brand names in the executive marketplace.

An award-winning executive coach, Sue is principal and founder of The Principal Brand Company, a Massachusetts-based firm providing leadership development, executive coaching, motivational speaking strategies and brand strategy consulting to business professionals of all stripes. Thanks to years of extensive work with both large and small organizations, Sue came to understand that the successful professionals are the ones who relentlessly manage their brands, i.e., the impressions they make in the hearts and minds of their target markets. Companies whose brands become household names rely upon this very process to assure their product’s continued success.

Personal branding is vital for survival in today’s demanding, fast-paced, rapidly consolidating global economy, Sue repeatedly reminds her readers, because the old employment contract-for-life is gone. The key to success in today’s business world is to take charge of your own career and see yourself as a distinctive, respectable and attractive brand in the marketplace.

Her book, published recently by iUniverse in 2005, introduces readers to the 5 Ps of Leadership.Brand®, a comprehensive brand management formula she created to help professionals define, develop and control their value within their organization. These 5 Ps of Leadership Brand® are:

1. Persona – Understanding how your personality is perceived by others.
2. Product – Being fully aware of how your product compares with its competition in terms of quality and value.
3. Packaging – The key driver for brand management because it allows your customer to immediately recognize your product – a reflection of you.
4. Promotion – Calling attention to your product or service, and building a consumer awareness of it and its key benefits.
5. Permission – The force that allows you to succeed because you realize that you are as talented and professional as the best in the marketplace and that you have as much right there as anyone else.

In The Leader’s Edge, Sue devotes a chapter to each of the 5 Ps, incorporating engaging examples of how executives and leaders, both emerging and established, can implement these principles in their work lives. She also provides the reader with an easy-to-use worksheet that helps identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. The book, of course, offers many exercises to strengthen the weaknesses, as well as a comprehensive list of resources.

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about emerson consulting group, inc.
emerson consulting group inc. transforms consultants, companies, law firms, professional service firms, and professional speakers into thought leaders by getting their articles and books published, arranging speaking engagements and raising their visibility in the media and on the Web. This separates our clients and thought leaders from the competitive pack, boosting profitable relationships with their existing clients as well as attracting new ones.

Company Website: http://www.thoughtleading.com

Ken Lizotte

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