Case Study: Mindell Leadership
A Start-Up Business
I met Jane Shlaes at the ICF-Chicago holiday party and was immediately taken with her infectious energy. She told me she was launching her leadership coaching business, Mindell Leadership, and in fact was looking for a photographer for her brand images. Now Jane's a do-er. A few minutes later, while socializing with another party-goer, my phone vibrated in my pocket with the message that she'd already booked a brand illumination call for the next day.
Jane comes with decades of experience in developing talent and leaders in the healthcare industry — holding such titles as Chief Learning Officer; Director, Talent Development; and Senior Talent Consultant and Leadership Coach. She really shines in turning newly-promoted subject matter experts and clinicians into capable and visionary leaders. She came to me to help her start up her own leadership coaching business, needing branding, a website, and photography.
Brand Essence and Strategy
We began with Jane herself. Collecting reflections from people who know her, as well as Linked In testimonials, we named Jane's essence as:
Infectious Passion
Joyful Discovery
Common Sense
Deep Curiosity
Open Authenticity
We decided to foreground Jane's infectious passion and her mindset of joyful discovery. Leadership coaches and consultants are often called in to "fix" problem issues in an organization. Unfortunately, the client and their employees then hear this as "we're bringing someone in to fix you." The resulting coaching and programs then often suffer from an assumed agenda of fixing people, fault-finding, and remediation. Not a useful context for true participant engagement and real personal and organizational transformation!
Jane, however, naturally shows up from a place of joy, passion, and discovery, and her leadership development philosophy shows it. Her clients' report enthusiastic employee engagement. This is a key brand differentiator for Jane’s business.
We also needed to keep in mind that Jane is primarily hired by organizations to work with their leaders and teams (and a fewer number of individuals). An organization's intent is to develop leaders in order meet organizational objectives. It's not so much about personal expression and satisfaction (although that happens in the process!), but KPIs and the bottom line. So in Jane's branding we'd need to calibrate the balance between supporting the organizational mission while expressing her joyful philosophy and personality.
Messaging and Copywriting
We took additional core messages from Jane's essence:
Common Sense speaks to her pragmatism regarding any particular philosophy or methodology of leadership development. She's fluent in a number of approaches and picks the tools that are right for this group and this situation.
Jane's Deep Curiosity is a key messaging point. She digs deep and isn't satisfied with superficial answers or halfway solutions. She's not all happy-talk; she's tough enough to ask the awkward question.
Jane's Open Authenticity speaks to her ability to relate to anyone in the corporate hierarchy. She's comfortable with whomever she's conversing with. Her realness is disarming, and it leads to more candid, open, truthful conversations.
We created a tagline for Mindell Leadersh: "Elevating leaders to achieve missions that matter." It's the most visible text on the home page and achieves several aims:
It immediately identifies "leaders" as Jane's clientele. The site visitor knows immediately if the site is relevant to their interests or not.
The tagline reinforces the ascension visual metaphor used throughout the site (see below). "Elevating" also suggests a higher level transformation of client leaders than alternatives such as simply acquiring new skills or tools.
It also places these leaders in the context of "missions that matter". This language resonates with the nonprofits and healthcare organizations Jane serves.
We also helped Jane craft her core values as "I believe" statements that would stand out to potential clients. It's so easy to fall into empty platitudes when writing about ones values. An "I believe" statement can give a value some real meatiness. For example:
"Empowering Leaders: I believe every leader harbors their own singular genius waiting to be unleashed."
Branding Design
Color palette. The safe corporate choice is blue. It’s a color that works well on screens and deeper tones can communicate solidity and stability. Blue’s become a cliche. We picked a warm yellow/green base tone to suggest both growth and warmth, with pops of vivid orange to amplify Jane's sunny, joyful, leadership philosophy and personality.
Imagery. We employed a coherent motif of leadership development as ascension — rising up — first in the staircase hero image on the home page and with images of mountain climbers, obstacles, and supports through the website. The ascending steps toward the sunlight in the jungle is a particularly invites you into the elevating journey Jane offers.
Photography Like any coach or consultant, Jane needs to show up with both professional authority and human relatability. Fortunately she had on hand several killer outfits that would elevate her status. We held the shoot in Millennium Park, with its wonderfully suggestive pedestrian bridge, and at the Art Institute. Jane brought along her vivacious daughter to add to the fun and joy of the shoot. Both locations elevate her status, while her natural energy communicates her relatability.
An excellent partner on this co-creation journey
I had a wonderful working experience with Dan Lewis. I came to him seeking a photographer who understood leadership coaches to help me take photos for my new website. In working together we focused on my brand identity to ensure the most important messages came through in the photos.
As I got comfortable with Dan and learned about his capabilities, I ended up hiring him to be my partner in creating the website. He understood what I was trying to accomplish (even if I didn't) and brought both design and technical skills to help me bring it to life. He also was very helpful in helping me create and highlight my Brand messaging.
What a patient man. This is a highly iterative process. He has the patience, empathy, collaboration skills, not to mention his clown humor, that make him an excellent partner on this co-creation journey. I'm very pleased with the outcome and highly recommend Dan as a photographer and website designer.
Jane Shlaes