How can Brand Managers build strong relationships with team members?

I agree and showing genuine interest to your team is crucial: Building strong relationships requires investing time and effort in getting to know your team members on a personal level. Take an interest in their professional aspirations, hobbies, and challenges they face. Engage in casual conversations, ask about their weekend plans, or inquire about their families. By demonstrating genuine interest, you create a sense of belonging and make your team members feel valued beyond their professional contributions.

Understanding your team’s goals and challenges is foundational for any new product’s success and continued success. Sharing a vision for branding and how that is defined and measured is necessary, as is how each team segment contributes ad how those contributions are evaluated for overall brand success. Soliciting continuous feedback and ongoing dialogue at each step is important to promote brand cohesion and consistency. Finding creative ways to eliminate barriers is also important. This assures goals are met, contributions are optimized and team members have satisfaction toward achieving branding and product success.

This is very true. Understanding who your colleagues are personally and professionally is critical when strengthening your relationships. This insight helps you create opportunities for transparent conversations and pathways to projects that will build their careers and meet brand goals. Demonstrating that you understand them, their individual lives and their needs also creates trust and allows them to freely approach their work with authenticity and creativity.

I like to think Brand Managers can build strong relationships with team members by understanding each individual's unique role and how they contribute to the organization’s overall brand. By recognizing the value of each person’s personal brand and offering flexibility, managers empower team members to contribute meaningfully, enhancing collaboration and cohesion.

Communication cannot never be over-emphasized, especially in brand management. Making sure all team members remain on the same page and work together to common goals is essential. Listening and validating input & feedback is critical. Making sure communication flows timely and appropriately up, down and across channels is also essential. Soliciting active participation from your team, in whatever manners work best is also necessary. Active engagement is an important component to effective communication.

“Yes, and…” is a powerful response to ideas from all team members and stakeholders. “Yes, and…” validates the idea on the table and allows others to build on it. In the end you are allowing space for innovation. The too common response “No, but…” squelches conversation and stifles people from sharing ideas.

Everything that happens within a company can have an impact on the brand. So, as someone responsible for brand management - you want to minimise the negative, and amplify the positive contributions. My fav way to do this is by including all employees in the process. It's not just the marketing team - this leads to a siloed marketing bubble. You want to design programs and initiatives that foster a company-wide brand culture. Then, everyone can genuinely contribute to the brand. And this shows in how they represent the company, how they talk about it and how they genuinely care about it. Note that this is not necessarily about making decisions by consensus - it's about considering everyone as stakeholders in the process.

As early as possible! Collaborative Wisdom holds the power to outpace talent every time. Right at the inception of an idea and while the strategy is getting carved for an undertaking/project/engagement is probably the time when the Team becomes a unit. The willingness factor of each player energizes the group while eyes on the prize achieving their win during the end game. Strategies sharpened togethers optimizes understanding on the strengths and advantage for each resource within the team and most importantly the element of trust vs the committment which was right there to bring the objective home...

More than anything else, brand management teaches the art of high stakes problem solving. Brand is where multiple interests collide - like sales and marketing misalignment that can happen in large organisations. To achieve brand unity and integrity sharpen your negotiation skills. Put as much effort as possible to understand what motivates involved parties. Make it clear that you are working together towards a mutually acceptable resolution. Listen to what others have to say, and be open to give up some ground. One technique which I find particularly helpful is creating a map of all possibilities. This allows you to cross out bad options, as well as identify non-negotiables. Which then leaves you with a sphere of potential agreement.

Conflicts are healthy as far as they serve the objective. The moto for a winning team is "Create value and let the best idea win"

"Willingness" is the one factor that defines leaders vs followers. As a mentor, manager or team member keep assuring that this factor stays upbeat and to one's surprise more will step-up in the vision to contribute way beyond.