The Competitive Edge: How Senior Leaders Position Their Authentic Personal Brand To Stand Out

How to write a LinkedIn profile that outshines the competition.

When it comes to building a LinkedIn profile that doesn't just attract opportunities but positions you above your industry peers, the secret weapon isn't what most senior leaders think. It's not about having the most impressive job titles or the longest list of accomplishments—it's about authentic differentiation.

At the core, incorporating your unique personal brand into your profile means understanding not just who you are and what value you bring, but how that value is distinctly different from every other senior leader in your space. It's about sharing that differentiation with the world in a way that makes you the obvious choice for the opportunities you want most.

I'm going to teach you exactly how to do that step-by-step, from the top to the bottom of your LinkedIn profile—with real-world examples that show how senior leaders have used these strategies to dominate their markets.

Let's position you for competitive advantage.

Step 1: Establish Your Executive Presence With Strategic Background Positioning

Your LinkedIn background, or header, is the banner at the top of your LinkedIn profile that sets the mood for the reader. It helps them understand the goal of your profile (either explicitly or implicitly) and it creates the emotion and intrigue that gets them to read further. Therefore, your background photo is one of the most important pieces of your profile to get right….and the good news is that most people don’t do this, so it’s a great way to stand out!

 From the background photo perspective we have three main goals:

1) Set The Mood For The Reader

There are many pieces of information that we can include in your background photo that signal who you are as a person, what you care about, and how you want to show up in the world. For example, what colors you choose tell the reader more about your vibe as a human, what design aesthetic you choose tells them a little more about your personality, and what interests you represent help them get a sense of how you want to be spending your time personally or professionally.

When you share this type of information, it sets the mood for the reader and makes them feel something. When someone feels a connection to you they are inspired to learn more about you. And, that’s how we draw them in.

2) Position Your Background Photo to Your Intended Goal

What is positioning exactly and how do you do it? Positioning is all about connecting what you say to match what the reader wants to see, so they land on your profile and think, “this is exactly the person I'm looking for!” To do this, you need to have a very clear understanding of the goal of your profile, and who you need to land on your profile to accomplish that goal. 

Let's look at the example of a VP of Product Strategy who's positioning for an SVP role at a high-growth fintech company while establishing thought leadership in AI-driven product innovation. In this case, you would want to use words that demonstrate the attributes, values, and interests that an SVP, for the type of company and industry you're targeting, would have.

Perhaps, you might choose a color and design aesthetic that helps people see you as a visionary/data-driven/innovative/yet strategic executive. Perhaps, you'll want to include a quote that hits on your philosophy around AI ethics and human-centered innovation. Maybe you'll want to include some hashtags that highlight the industry and niche you're targeting like #fintech, #AIproduct, or #productleadership. And perhaps you want to add a call to action (CTA) that gets people to reach out for strategic conversations if they want to discuss the future of AI in financial services or explore advisory opportunities.

This would be way more effective than, for example, choosing a mountain landscape because you live in Denver.

3) Inspire Someone To Act

The best way to generate strategic connections and opportunities is to create clear pathways for engagement that align with your leadership goals. You want to make it easy for the right people—board members, executive recruiters, industry peers, or potential strategic partners—to know exactly how to connect with you.

Adding a Call To Action (CTA) to your background might feel unnecessary when you're not actively job searching, but the most successful senior leaders understand that opportunities flow to those who make engagement effortless. Your CTA isn't about "selling" in the traditional sense—it's about positioning yourself as accessible for the right strategic conversations.

For example: A VP of Marketing looking to establish thought leadership might use: "Let's discuss the future of customer experience in fintech" or "Open to strategic conversations about marketing innovation."

Or: An SVP of Operations exploring board opportunities could include: "Interested in advisory roles in supply chain transformation" or "Let's connect about operational excellence strategies."

Another approach: A Senior Director positioning for speaking engagements might use: "Available for keynotes on leadership in digital transformation" or "Let's discuss industry trends in sustainable business practices."

The key is making your CTA specific enough to attract the right conversations while broad enough to not limit unexpected opportunities.

There are endless examples you could use, if you’re clear on the goal you’re trying to achieve.

Step 2: Project Power and Influence Through Your Profile Photo

Your LinkedIn photo is one of your most strategic assets as a senior leader. It's the first impression that hiring managers, executive recruiters, industry peers, and potential strategic partners form about your leadership presence—and it appears everywhere your name does across the platform.

At the Director, Senior Director, VP and SVP level, your photo isn't just about looking professional; it's about projecting the kind of power and influence that signals you're ready for greater responsibility and industry recognition. According to Forbes, photos with strategic eye contact can produce feelings of trustworthiness and leadership credibility—critical factors when stakeholders are evaluating your potential.

As you advance in your career, your photo will be evaluated by people considering you for promotions, board advisory roles, speaking opportunities, and strategic partnerships. Every element—from your positioning to your expression—communicates your readiness for increased influence and responsibility.

Here are the top 3 elements that separate senior-level photos from the rest:

1) Professional Excellence

Aim for a photo that is primarily just you, has a simple, clean background, and has high resolution for the best effect. At your level, consider investing in professional photography that demonstrates senior-level polish through clean composition and sophisticated lighting. Whether we like it or not, people form conscious and unconscious biases about us for all kinds of reasons. The quality of your photo is one of the areas where people might start to draw assumptions about your leadership presence and professional standards.

As a senior leader, ensuring that your photo is oriented correctly, free of elements that are not you (e.g., partners, friends, furry animals, busy backgrounds), and professionally shot becomes increasingly important as you position yourself for greater visibility and influence in your industry.

2) Authenticity

One of the things that can kill human connection quickly is when someone gets the feeling that we’re not portraying ourselves authentically. So, it’s important to choose a photo that captures how you want to show up in the world, as you are today. Are you bright, bubbly, and colorful? Choose a photo that shows off this vibe. Are you professional, serious, and crisp? Show that.

You don’t want to create a bait and switch feeling of someone landing on your profile and creating a certain impression for you and then meeting you virtually or in-person and realizing you’re a totally different person.

3) Charisma

According to The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master The Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, there are three factors that allow us to become more influential, more persuasive, and more inspiring: presence, power, and warmth. This aligns perfectly with research from my mentor, colleague, and friend Alison Fragale, author of Likeable Badass, (which I highly recommend reading!) who shows that the most effective leaders master the balance of competence (power) and warmth—exactly what senior leaders need to project in their profile photos. 

Now, let’s talk about how you can capture each of these in your photo. One of the best ways to do this is through your eyes and non-verbal body language. 

• Eyes: What do they say, “the eyes are the windows to the soul”, or something like that? The point is that a lot can be communicated through the eyes alone. People can pick up warmth and presence through your eyes, so it’s important to have your eyes be a dominant part of your photo. Make sure your eyes are near the center of the frame; looking directly at the camera; and are clear, bright, and easy to gaze into. You want to simulate that direct and compelling eye contact, even through your photo.
• Non-verbal body language:  Exuding a confident and executive presence is one of the most sought after skills our clients want to develop. Everyone wants to feel like they take up a little more power in the world—but of course in an influential, not dictatorial way.

So how can you go about generating presence from your photo alone? Think about how you fill up the space in your profile photo. Similar to the way a gorilla broadens their chest when trying to exhibit dominance, the more we see of your chest in your profile photo the more confidence, power, and presence you will appear to have. Aim for a photo that ends about 3 to 4 inches below your collarbone and keeps your eyes near or just above the center of the frame. Having too much of your body in the image will shrink your overall image and make you seem small and having just your head causes your photo to lose that power dynamic. Instead, you want a little bit of your body, but not so much that your eyes lose their place as being the primary focus. 

Step 3: Craft a Headline That Differentiates You From Industry Peers

Your LinkedIn headline is arguably the most important part of your profile. It’s the only part of your profile (besides your photo and name) that every person sees without viewing your full profile—for example, when you’re commenting on a post, viewing someone’s profile, or writing your own post. Furthermore, it’s one of the most searched parts of your profile, so you’ll want to pay attention to what you say and the mood you create for the reader, but also what specific words you choose.

So, how do you choose what exactly to say here, and avoid using the default <<job title @ company>> structure? Here are a few factors you will want to consider including:

Your functional area and level: An example here would be something like, Director of Marketing. This example lets someone know what level of an organization you’re at (i.e., Director) and the functional area you work in (i.e., Marketing). If you’re aiming for a Director role, but haven’t held it yet, you might instead say something like, “Direct marketing strategies" instead.

Your unique contribution statement (or unique value proposition): A unique contribution statement focuses on the type of impact that you can bring to an organization that no one else can. One way to think about this is if you had to sum up your special sauce in less than a sentence what would you say? This is a great place to stand out, but remember you don’t want to say something that everyone else would say, you want this to be uniquely about you. For example, any VP of Marketing could say something like, "Lead marketing strategies to drive revenue growth and market expansion." But that doesn't tell us anything specific or unique about them, their brand, or how they go about their work. More to the point, it doesn't tell readers why they would want to hire them over all the other VP candidates or consider them for SVP opportunities. So instead, you might write something like: "Growth strategist who transforms underperforming brands into market leaders through data-driven customer psychology and cross-functional innovation."

Your industry or interest area: You may also choose to signal the industries that you work in or want to work in, so we get a deeper picture of what type of environments allow you to thrive and feel engaged. You might also use this strategy if you're thinking about pivoting in a new industry. Perhaps, you're a VP in traditional retail looking to move into e-commerce, or maybe you're an SVP in manufacturing exploring opportunities in clean tech. Your headline might include: "Passionate about [your target industry/cause]."

Call to action (CTA): One thing that most people underutilize in their headlines is a call to action or CTA. If you’re being intentional with your LinkedIn profile, you have to think about the goal you’re trying to achieve with it. Are you looking for job opportunities? Are you looking for board or speaking opportunities? Do you want to grow your network in a new space? Are you trying to learn about something new? Are you trying to create thought leadership and build a follower base? Do you want someone to visit your website or portfolio or reach out to you? Whatever your goal is, leveraging a CTA in your headline (and About section) makes it as easy as possible for the reader to know how to best connect with you. And, after you incorporate your amazing personal brand into your LinkedIn profile, surely they will ; )

Step 4: Highlight Your Thought Leadership Through Strategic Featured Content

In your featured section, you can showcase your work directly by adding things like posts, media, articles, newsletters, and links. Your featured section is also a great place to highlight some of the most powerful things about your personal brand.

Going back to our earlier point, it's important to think about the current goal of your profile and then add relevant information that might strengthen your positioning for that goal and help you achieve it. For example, if you're positioning for board opportunities or advisory roles, perhaps you would add thought leadership articles, industry awards, or links to strategic initiatives you've led. If you're someone who's trying to get more keynotes or speaking engagements, perhaps you'd include a link to your speaker reel and common keynote topics. If you're a jobseeker trying to highlight particular skills, ideas, or experiences you bring to the table, perhaps you'll include a portfolio, a recommendation, or an article you wrote or where you were quoted.

If you don't already have these items prepared, you can be thoughtful and strategic about what 3-5 pieces of content would add to your goal and create them now, with a little bit of thought and strategy this can be an easy lift and make a big impact on your profile.

Step 5: Position Your Authentic Leadership Story To Stand Out

Your about section is, as you might imagine, one of the best places to really expand on who you are and what you’re all about!

Many people struggle with figuring out what to include in this section, but it doesn’t have to be so hard. Your personal brand is a story—a story and narrative that pulls the reader in and creates connection points that allow them to see themselves in your story. This is true regardless of the goal of your profile, because the ultimate goal is always creating connections with others. Those connections are what leads to aligned opportunities.

Here are a few pieces that you may decide to include in your about section as you build it out.

Brand Statement

Consider starting off your LinkedIn about section with a strong statement that draws the reader in and sets the stage for what they are about to read. Write 1-3 sentences that tell me something deep and personal about who you are and how you want to show up in the world. 

Depth and Breadth of Experience

Listing out every experience you’ve had and the specifics of what you did is what your experience section is for, not your about section. Instead, here, you should look back at your entire career to find commonalities in your experience and share a high-level take in 3-4 sentences. This way someone can get the gist of your entire career quickly and decide if they want to learn more, remember people don’t read they skim, so giving them a quick snapshot means they are more likely to consume the information you want them to.

Personality and Values

In this piece of your about section, you might start to signal more about what you care about, why you care about it, and what values are strongest for you. This will not only give someone a sense for you as a person, but it will also start to signal the type of connections and opportunities you’re open to and culturally where you’d be a great fit. People want to work with others who share similar values, and this is a great place to signal this.

Expertise

Of course, your unique expertise is a part of your personal brand, as well, we just don’t want it to be the only facet of your brand. If you have a specific or general area for which you’ve been building expertise over a certain period of time, let readers know about it, and perhaps let us know why you were inspired to build this type of expertise and point us to some examples that demonstrate that expertise like thought leadership pieces or posts. 

Key Accomplishments and Results

While we want to focus mostly on sharing a compelling narrative here, adding a few key accomplishments in this section can also be a great way to bring some of your career highlights to the surface. This might allow some of your achievements to stand out and differentiate you in a crowded market. Choosing what to include here can be strategic, so lean towards accomplishments that align with the goal you've set for your profile, and that you would almost inevitably talk about if someone asked you to share about some of your proudest career moments.

Skills

While there is a skills section on your profile (we’ll talk about that in a minute), sometimes people decide to include an abbreviated list of skills toward the end of their About section to strengthen the positioning of their skills and the goal of their profile. If you decide to do this, aim to choose 5-10 skills (maximum) that are aligned with the skills that you believe are unique to you and your brand. And, don’t add too many or you may end of diluting your credibility or make you seem unfocused.

Call To Action (CTA)

Similar to your headline, consider including a CTA in your about section to let the reader know exactly who should reach out and why. People hesitate to reach out to strangers because it’s intimidating. If you let people know they are welcome to reach out, they will be more likely to do it. And don’t worry! You won’t get bombarded by messages and connection requests, people are still very hesitant to reach out to stranger. But, including a CTA will give them a little more confidence to reach out and will help you find the people you’re most interested in connecting with.

Step 6: Demonstrate Your Market Impact Through Your Experience Section

Many people struggle with the experience section. You may have even heard conflicting advice to leave it blank or just copy and paste your resume. But both of these strategies result in a missed opportunity for incorporating your brand.

Your LinkedIn profile gives you the space to elaborate on your experience in ways that you can’t on your resume. You’re not trying to fit everything on a page or two, so your LinkedIn experience can be more of a narrative that showcases how and why you've driven results and influenced your industry.

For each role, you have the space to give profile viewers:

• The rationale and the why behind each role you’ve held
• A full view of the depth and breadth of what you did in each role: Paint a picture of your work there, don’t just list barebones job duties or tasks
• An understanding of what you enjoyed about the role and where you thrived 
• A couple of key accomplishments and skills from each position that demonstrate your impact

Your experience section is like practicing the interview questions, “Tell me about yourself,” or “Walk me through your resume,” but in written form. The more color you share in your narrative, the more someone feels like they know you and are excited to get to know more about you. This is key for attracting relevant and ideal career opportunities through LinkedIn. 

Here 4 key elements for you to incorporate into the description for each of your experiences:

1) Depth and Breadth

Start with a high-level depth-and-breadth statement that gives us a full glimpse into what you did in the role. If someone were to read only those 1-2 sentences they should still be able to walk away understanding what you did in the job and know whether or not it’s relevant for them to read further.

2) The Why

Include 1-3 lines that share more about your rationale for taking the position, what you enjoyed most about working there, and what you wanted to learn next (which is a segue into your next position). This helps the reader see themselves in your story and connect with you, and personal brands are all about creating connection points with the reader.

3) The Accomplishments

Because the majority of your accomplishments and results for each job will be on your resume, this is an opportunity to choose the top 1 or 2 that you’re most proud of and elaborate on them. This is ideally not written in resume language (which is a strange type of writing that most people aren’t skilled to do well) and instead written more like a narrative that tells readers a little more about that particular accomplishment and why it means so much to you. 

4) The Skills

If you decide to include skills in this section, first just list them instead of tying them directly to the skills section on the platform. Second, consider only choosing the top few skills related to this role and that are relevant to your overall brand, instead of creating a long laundry list of skills that detract from the compelling narrative you just wrote. Remember, people will resonate with elements of your story. It’s less likely they will see a list of skills, and think, “Oh, me too!”

Step 7: Leverage Your Education and Extracurriculars for Additional Differentiation

The education section is pretty straightforward. You can simply add your universities/schools and call it a day; that strategy is totally fine. But, there is also an opportunity to add more color here if you’d like to. Perhaps, you want to include 1-2 sentences about why you chose that school or that major and what you learned there.  Or consider whether there are any activities, scholarships, leadership roles, or associations related to your time at school that strengthen elements of your personal brand, create connection points with your audience, or demonstrate a competitive advantage in a crowded market. 

Anywhere you can add information that won’t fit on a resume is an opportunity for you to expand your authentic personal brand. And your education section is no exception.

Step 8: Select Skills that Reinforce Your Positioning and Goals

The skills section of your profile is a bit of an enigma, and no one is sure how it “really” works. I can tell you that since teaching my very first course on LinkedIn way back in 2011, the strategy behind this section has changed many times. Notably when LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft, the platform started to ask people to endorse everyone for Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, which is how SO MANY people wound up with these endorsed skills on their profile. In the real world, who would endorse someone for being great with Microsoft Word?! Um, no one. 

So how exactly should you approach this mysterious section then? My take, leverage it to it's fullest advantage, in the event that the functionality actually does show up in searches.

First, focus on adding all of the skills that are relevant to the primary goal of your profile. For example, if you're hoping to get Senior Director, VP, SVP, or even C-suite roles coming your way, think about the skills that someone hiring for this position may search for and add them to your skills section. (Obviously you need to actually have these skills, as well). 

Second, if you're aiming to seek out alternative opportunities like speaking, board opportunities, or starting your own business, add additional skills relevant to those goals.

From a personal brand and positioning perspective, what is most important here is pinning the most important skills to the top of your skills section. Choose the 2-3 skills that are the MOST relevant to your key positioning and pin them on your profile. As a bonus, if anyone endorses you for skills, it’s MUCH more likely that they will do this for the top skills pinned on your profile. So this is a good strategy to gain endorsements and increase the searchability of your skills.

Step 9: Use Recommendations to Validate Your Competitive Edge

The recommendations section is often an underutilized area for demonstrating your personal brand. The reason is that most people think they don't have control of this section because someone else will be writing it, but that’s not the whole story. There are many things you can do to ensure that your personal brand and competitive edge shine through. Here are a few things to keep in mind. 

1. Be selective in who you ask: You can decide who you ask for a recommendation and also whose recommendation you share on your profile. Just because someone writes a recommendation for you it doesn’t mean you need to include it. If it feels like it’s highlighting the wrong area, it wasn’t written well, or you simply no longer want to be associated with the person who wrote it, for whatever reason, you can hide it on your profile.
2. Keep it recent and relevant: It’s very common for people to only ask for recommendations when they are job searching, so you may see a flurry of recommendations and then a several year gap before they have more (if they have more at all). Sometimes, people think, “well I have several strong recommendations so why do I need more?” But the thing is that you learn and grow over time, so we would expect your recommendations to evolve with you. Perhaps, the impact that you created at the beginning or your career is different than the impact you can bring now. Try to get a new recommendation each year from someone who you work with closely and can speak to the value you’re bringing to others. Bonus, this will be a  big confidence booster for you when you actually do go out to look for a job!
3. Decide what you want your recommendations to focus on before you ask for them:  Do a little bit of reflection first to think about where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going next in your career. You want to focus on the areas that will help provide social proof and demonstrate the areas that are most important for the goal that you’re trying to achieve. Perhaps, earlier in your career you want to be very known for having a strong work ethic, being meticulous, and always delighting people. As you move further into your career, maybe you want to be seen for your strategic insights, your expertise, your breadth of experience, and/or your ability to collaborate. And, as you move into senior-level roles you now want to be seen more as being a calm and trusted leader, an analytical thinker, a mentor, and a coach. Some examples might look like, if you’re trying to gain speaking engagements: get a recommendation that talks about how and why you’re such a captivating public speaker. If you’re trying to land a job: understand the top attributes someone will be looking for in that role and talk about those. If you’re trying to build thought leadership: have someone talk about how insightful your content is and what they have learned from you. Whatever your goal, get clear on what parts of your personal brand best match what you’re trying to achieve and focus on those. 
4. Guide the direction of your recommendations: Did you know that it’s ok to let recommenders know what you’d like them to say, and in fact they appreciate it? Writing a recommendation for someone else, especially when it’s going to be a public representation with your face and name attached to it, can be stressful for the writer. They might wonder what to say, what to focus on, or what will be useful to you. Ultimately their goal is to be useful to you, so help them out! When you reach out to make the request, let them know specifically which areas you’re hoping they will focus on, share some examples of times where you believe you’ve demonstrated that skill, knowledge, expertise, and let them know the reason that you’re looking to get a recommendation now. 

Step 10: Signal Your Strategic Interests and Values Alignment

The interests section is another strategic place to incorporate elements of your personal brand. But for many people, it's an afterthought. There are 2 main benefits to thoughtfully curating your interests section: 

1. Signal Your Strategic Focus: It will give readers valuable insight into who you are as a leader. What top voices, companies, groups, industry publications, and thought leaders you follow says a lot about your professional priorities and personal brand. Why not use this opportunity to strategically signal your areas of expertise and influence?
2. Cultivate Your Feed With Relevant Content: By following information that's aligned with your leadership goals and industry focus, it's more likely that strategic content will show up in your feed, which means more opportunities for you to engage with high-value discussions, and every piece of thoughtful engagement enhances your personal brand and industry presence.

Now, You're Ready to Position Your Authentic Personal Brand for Competitive Advantage

What we know for sure is that reflecting and sharing your authentic personal brand is challenging for every senior leader, because it requires looking deeply at who you are, what differentiates you from your peers, and how you want to show up as a leader in your industry.

But you now have a strategic framework for exactly what to include and where to position your authentic brand to stand out in a crowded market. When you implement these strategies thoughtfully, you're not just building a LinkedIn profile—you're creating a competitive moat that positions you as the obvious choice for the opportunities you want most.

Your authentic personal brand is your strategic advantage. Use it.