Report shows that business leaders are expanding their responsibilities to protect their personal brand.

Business leaders are striving to protect their personal brands by expanding their roles to incorporate areas such as ESG, marketing, HR, strategy, and chief-to-staff responsibilities.

This is according to a report ‘From Brand Leader to Master Conductor’, by Broome Yasar.

Business leaders have been motivated to grow their skillsets by the unprecedented quantity of resources available, according to the report. Many are using the opportunity to take on wider remits where required, even absorbing whole departments into their role.

“Somehow, as a profession, we need to reflect the extra elements now being bolted onto the role and get across the breadth of delivery we now have, in terms of impact," says Phil Thomson, president of GSK’s new Global Affairs department.  

“So, at GSK, we wanted to encapsulate something about the role that was ‘beyond traditional corporate affairs’, beyond the classic disciplines of communications, government affairs and policy. Hence ‘global affairs’.”

For many organisations included in the study, this movement reflected a company culture trend whereby departments such as brand and marketing are becoming indistinguishable.

Respondents to the study listed improved alignment, strategic coherence, and cost and process efficiency, as benefits to the expansion.  

Challenges faced included conflicting responsibilities and, most commonly, bandwidth and time management issues.  

“Your role as a leader changes in really practical, fundamental, but radical ways. So how do you lead, and what does ‘leadership’ mean, when you can’t be as close to people or spend as much time with them individually as you used to?” Says Katja Hall, former Chief Corporate Affairs and Marketing Officer at Capita.

“That’s a big change, and you have to be cognisant of it.”