In thinking through how to effectively deal with poor performers in your organization, ask yourself these five important questions:

Are there people on your team who are not performing up to the expectations of the job?

• Over time, the poor performers ultimately hinder the productivity of even the best employees.

Are you walking the talk regarding your brand?

• Are your top performers listening to you preach about the brand and its values/benefits, only to witness poor performers getting by just as easily as before? Leaders who allow poor performers to ride the coattails of the strongest members of the team will ultimately lose credibility.
  

Are there members of your team whom you would not hire again if given the opportunity?

• If so, you are losing the war on poor performance. There are three ways to handle this situation:
• Inspire the individual to learn what it will take to become a great performer.
• Motivate the individual to try another position within the company where his/her energy and skill may be better suited.
• Terminate the individual who does not positively represent the company's brand and who does not have what it takes to live it in his/her daily work. Rarely do leaders fire someone and then say, "I wish I had kept him/her a little longer." In fact, most often they wonder why they didn't do it sooner.
  

Do your people know how they're doing?

• Great leaders don't allow employees to wonder. If they are doing great, these leaders let them know. If they are doing just okay, they let them know. And if performance is hindering progress, they let them know that, too. Leaders must care enough to confront performance, otherwise they risk losing the respect of their top performers.

Do you set realistic expectations for success and attach deadlines for success?

• When someone isn't performing as expected, you have to take the time, energy, and focus to redefine for that person what success looks like and establish a benchmark for accountability. Doing so will instill the urgency and focus required for the employee to have the greatest opportunity for success.
  

Essential characteristics of effective brand-building leaders include: strong beliefs around the brand, an ability to communicate those beliefs as part of a compelling vision for success, and the courage and energy to manage a culture transformation.

How can we forget the memorable scene in The Wizard of Oz when the Cowardly Lion is talking to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman doing his best to muster up any available courage:

Cowardly Lion: All right, I'll go in there for Dorothy. Wicked Witch or no Wicked Witch, guards or no guards, I'll tear them apart. I may not come out alive, but I'm going in there. There's only one thing I want you fellows to do.
Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow: What's that?
Cowardly Lion: Talk me out of it!

If as a leader you're running low on or never really had any courage, you may be in need of a trip to the Brand Wizard (wouldn't it be nice if there was such a magical being?). If you’re interested in making your brand THE business versus PART of the business then you’ll need a heck of a lot of courage to get it done. Leadership courage is absolutely critical to achieve any brand success!

Leadership needs courage to:

• Confront all levels of the organization with the business reality in order to help others understand the need for change.
• Reallocate resources to fuel the implementation of the brand strategy.
• Make difficult decisions to keep the brand-building momentum alive. In many cases, these are people-related decisions that are in the best interest of the company. It takes courage to make them.

Like the (not-so) Cowardly Lion, now you've got courage. You'll also need another powerful ingredient to drive sustainable brand-building: energy. So, take a long sip of the proverbial Red Bull and start sharing it with others.

Leadership needs energy to:

• Raise the expectations for performance and accountability. Leaders will need to demonstrate consistent focus on aligning the brand strategy and associated behaviors with individual job category behaviors. This energy starts at the top and permeates throughout the organization, infusing accountability in carrying out necessary performance evaluations and assessments. Keep in mind that people respect what you inspect. Have the courage, energy, and focus to consistently inspect.
• Recognize and reward employees who model the required behaviors and deliver the desired brand experiences. Again, leaders must keep the energy level up and stay focused on the art of finding success in others and sharing them throughout the company. 

The best brand-driven leaders in the world are rarely the smartest people in their company or have the most dominating personality, they just know how to muster the courage and tap into the energy necessary to build and sustain the brand.

Given my line of work, I have the pleasure of regularly meeting and presenting to some of the top business leaders in the world and some of the truly worst. What's interesting is that I learn as much from the best as I do from the worst. The biggest difference I notice between the best leaders and the worst leaders is the self-awareness of the purchase and influence power these leaders have. The strong leaders recognize they play a MAJOR role in infecting culture change and sustaining the ideal culture throughout their organization. The worst leaders delegate or completely underestimate culture change and culture sustainability.

Only leadership has the power to ensure brand and cultural success. There are two types of power:

1. The power to purchase - Both knowledge and money are required to execute culture/brand strategy. Leaders are fully aware of the company business plan, its objectives and strategies. They must know and communicate key strategic information in order to justify investing in culture-transforming strategy.

2. The power to influence - Executing culture/brand strategy requires focus, passion, and persistence. Leaders must have the power and persistence to keep fellow leaders and employees focused on strategy, day in and day out regardless of industry, product, or service changes. Leaders have the ability to heavily influence their organization through a strong focus on consistent communication and the demonstration of behavior in alignment with the organization's strategy.

Let's face it: A company cannot successfully implement a culture/brand strategy without leaders as champions. Leaders have the ultimate power because they understand the whole package regarding the growth of the company.

Implementing a successful culture/brand is leadership's responsibility. Leaders need to check their enormous egos at the door and get it done...it's their job!

A brand is the sum of all experiences a company’s people have with an audience. Brand Integrity is the ultimate business and management strategy. It is the one strategy that works in companies of all sizes and within all industries to strengthen culture and business results. Brand Integrity aligns who a company is (core values, mission/vision, and strategic benefits) with where it is going (goals and strategic plans) and how employees will deliver the behaviors and experiences to achieve results.

In addition to being a management strategy, Brand Integrity is a destination. The destination is the point at which a company achieves its desired brand image while reaching its business goals. Said another way, it’s when employees, customers, partners, and the market understand, believe, and experience that the company is who it says it is.
To achieve Brand Integrity, leaders need a strategy and employees need to know the strategy and how they can best deliver it through their day-to-day work activities.