Sustainable management

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Outstanding leadership personalities significantly impact corporate brand and success, particularly in stock-listed companies. For instance, when Josef Ackermann, then CEO of Deutsche Bank, experienced a health issue, the bank's stock plummeted, resulting in a half-billion Euro loss in market capitalization within hours. Similarly, Steve Jobs' absence led to a drop in Apple's market price, demonstrating how leaders can greatly influence a company's reputation and performance through their actions. Empirical evidence supports that a CEO's image correlates with the company's brand perception and affects media coverage, as shown in a survey of 137 communication managers from Germany's top 500 companies. Internally, employee perception of the corporate brand is also shaped by leaders' brand-compliant behavior. This concept, termed Leadership Branding by Thomas Gad in 2003, links branding closely to entrepreneurship and leadership, suggesting that effective branding allows leaders to reproduce their identity. By shaping a brand, leaders offer employees direction, ensuring alignment with organizational goals. This paper aims to define leadership branding, explain its successful implementation, and illustrate its effectiveness through examples of prominent leaders and their companies.