Marcus Darbyshire: The Practical Guide To Digital Leadership Branding

Today’s episode is our first interview with an industry insider and let’s just say- you’re in for a treat

We are joined by Marcus Derbyshire who is a VP at Gartner | Executive Partner | CIO Leadership Coach and Advisor | Digital Strategist

I’ve come across his profile on LinkedIn because his focus very much sparked my interest: Marcus works with technical leaders on all things branding- from creating awareness internally what role IT plays but also externally to attract the right talents, partners and clients.

Marcus has such an interesting take on things and uncovers a lot of unspoken challenges when it comes to personal branding, especially for corporate professionals who don’t necessarily think it is important for them. However- these days, being amazing at your work isn’t enough anymore.  It is about educating stakeholders, letting others know about the projects the team is working on and how it impacts them. Often, especially in IT, we all expect that it all runs smoothly but don’t really understand what goes on behind the scenes to get there. This is where branding, positioning, and communicating the value of the team and department comes in

Make sure you take notes because Marcus dropped so many actionable tips and shared so many insights that you can apply in your own organisation. I’d also highly recommend connecting with Marcus and follow his journey because he sure is a leader in many ways. So, with no further ado, here’s my interview 

Petra

We are joined by somebody who is been an executive for the last couple of decades and specialising with working with leaders in a different tech space. Marcus Darbyshire is joining us. And he's got an incredible presence and profile. 

This is how I actually found him on LinkedIn. And he's focusing on working with CIOs on implementing technologies, but at the same time, also working on the leadership side. And I'm really excited about this conversation to hear more about what personal branding is all about, and also how he works with those technical leaders who are often struggling to communicate the video. Now, with that said, Marcus, thank you so much for joining us and welcome. 

Marcus:

You're very welcome. Glad to be here. Excellent. 

Petra

Now, can you give us a quick snapshot? How did you get to where you are now? And what are you doing now?

Marcus

Yeah, certainly. So I was a CIO for best part of a decade working in Melbourne, and joining Gartner to be an executive partner, which is essentially a CIO advisor role. And part of that is to talk to CIOs and their teams about their reputation, their brand image and their awareness of their own sort of emotional intelligence as well to be better and more effective leaders.

Petra

Excellent. And if you could describe what personal branding is for you, because there's so many definitions and so much misunderstanding also, what it actually is, what would you say? is personal branding all about?

Marcus

Yeah, sure. The concepts I teach to my SEO clients, you know, are based around a lot of the research that Tom Peters did In Search of Excellence from that sort of foundation, but also with a number of the sort of researchers from Gartner that look at the various aspects of leadership. If I think through some of the concepts, we teach our CEOs and IT leaders about branding, it's, there's a really great quote from Jeff Bezos, who talks about what personal brand is: it is what people say about you, when you leave the room. 

So, it's not what you think it is, it's what they think it is, and what they're prepared to say, probably when you're not there. 

We go through the concepts about general marketing and branding, and relay that into how that translates to a personal brand as well, and the importance of branding. As you'd expect, CIOs and IT leaders tend not to think about the personal branding, part of their leadership role. 

It's more about keeping the computer system stable and upgrading and just making the technology engineering work. But I'm sure as your listeners will know, that there's many other aspects to leadership that are just as important around the politics and the reputation and creating a sustainable and self-actualizing environment through the image that you're portraying. So no, selling yourselves and selling your IT departments. And you know, being good at what you do tends to not be good enough, you need to actually communicate those things, you know, in an effective way.

Petra

I love it. This is a famous saying, being better is not good enough anymore. Being different is better than being better. And this is exactly what you just mentioned, your incredible work, doesn't do it anymore. It's expected; it's average. 

And everything is, you know, high expectations in terms of how you different how you lead in how you started your conversations, how you perceived. Now you're working mainly with technical experts and executives, why is it so hard for those senior leaders to also focus on person branding. Why is this not a priority to think?

Marcus

Well, you know, predominately, as I mentioned earlier, the focus tends to be on the engineering mindset, it's often about architectures and thinking about keeping systems operating well and improved and things. 

People in general have a very helpful energy. They want to help they want to support they want to make systems run well and make the business really productive. 

But, as I said before, sometimes there's just not enough like people sometimes just expect that as table stakes. For example. Most CIOs spending a lot of money and effort with their teams to keep out malware, antivirus viruses and things through their organisation. And there's this sort of expectation from the rest of the business that that that's just easy to do, and a normal and they expect that level of quality, the reality that's really hard to continue to service and so educating their stakeholders, colleagues and peers and users of these things is really important to show how hard it is working to keep this company safe. 

This is one example of a communication channel or method of improving the brand of it to demonstrate how we are adding value to our company, and the CIO is leading that.

Petra

That's such a valuable point, because we're talking about how important it is to build your personal brand internally, it has nothing to do with being famous out there. It's also having this reputation internally and educate others what you're actually doing, simply doing the doing isn't what speaks for itself anymore. 

And often, we are so busy with our work that we don't see what happens in other departments. And I think it would also improve understanding of how the team actually works, and what is involved to make everything work smoothly together. Would you agree with that?

Marcus

Totally. And, you know, I say to my clients: ‘doing great work, doesn't necessarily equal having that great reputation’. People around you are not necessarily mind readers. They don't know all that effort that's gone into that. 

And sometimes, you may have experienced that yourself is doing lots of great work, don't necessarily get you the kudos or to get your next promotion. For example: people go ‘what a great performer this person is, let's give them more work’, right?

And so you're sitting there going ‘I'm good, but I'm just not going anywhere, because they just sort of keeping me in this some cycle of performance’. 

Whereas what I want to do is get to this next level, and I need to make people aware of my capabilities to do that as well, from a career point of view, at least, exactly, I totally experienced it myself, I just put my hand up for every project and responsibility and thought, this is how I demonstrate leadership, for archers got more work, I didn't get the title, because everyone thought I enjoyed working so much with I had to delegate, and this is what leadership is, and there's the same new levels, new devils, you also need to let go of something if you want to reach the next level. This is exactly right. 

And so often, I see it professionals say that I don't need to market myself, my boss will do that, for me, you know, the CIO will be the head spruikers or have a reputation. 

But you know, sometimes they're worried about their own sort of careers and brand and sometimes don't necessarily think well about their teams. 

They're often very busy. And then of course, they come and go as well. 

So, you might have a boss that does that. And then you've got to start again with another one. It's really up to you. 

But then the last point I'll say about that is a lot of IT professionals sometimes think that's personal branding, or self-promotion is seen as boastful and bad.

And it just doesn't sit well with them. So I try and talk to them about the benefits of doing it and doing it in a way that sort of fits their personality styles and the channels that they use to do it, and make it more of a sort of a two way education piece. So, it's not all about me, you know, it's about you as well.

Petra

This is a great point, because again, it's misconception or misunderstanding what it actually means it's not about being out there, it's not about being me me me.

It's about getting bringing people on the journey, getting everyone on the same page and simply educating because we said I also give them more power and show them what the team is doing. 

And you mentioned such a good point in terms of ‘I can't expect my leader to look after me’, because also in the future of work concept, we have to change not only jobs more frequently, but entire careers. 

We have to look after our own reputation, and what are those transferable skills that we can use in another industry or professional, whatever it might be? And not just be focused on our title or our direct leader?

Marcus

Yeah, exactly. 

I tend to use a framework to think about branding, looking at the purpose of that person. Yeah. What is your purpose as an individual? 

What do you aspire to, what are your values, etc, so that you're consistent and authentic to your own personal image. Then I talked to him about the social styles and how they're perceived through the way they behave the way they talk and use social media, how they dress, for example, and body language and things like that. 

I talk to them about general communication styles, whether that's public speaking, or even just drafting emails about how that might be perceived. And then we look at the historical calm component of the brand. 

So know what baggage have you sort of developed over the last few years or what bridges have you may be mended as well.

It's about how do you are perceived based on that sort of historical view of you and quite often we know we pull up people on social media and look at their history and form judgments very quickly about that. 

There are ways that you can manage those messages to give the impression that you would like to do that that is still factual and authentic. And the last bit we look at is this concept of versatility, which is about adapting oneself to the different audiences and making sure that you're promoting the right things to the right stakeholders, so that you've got that sort of match the description and the concept of the holistic approach, actually, because you're so spot on, we've got an online and offline presence. 

Petra

Usually, the first point of contact these days is online, we're looking somebody up on LinkedIn or find somebody on their website, and we, it takes us 33 milliseconds to make this impression, whether we like this person or not. And simply looking after your profile photo, your headline, your background, makes already all the difference. And this is nothing fake it simply managing it practically.

Marcus

Exactly. 

I do quite a lot of work with my CEOs and some of their IT leaders around looking at their resumes, and more likely at their LinkedIn profiles. 

And as you'd expect, there's a lot of room for improvement, there's still some good ones out there. But generally, we in the IT industry, certainly on the sort of end user side of the of the model tend not to be good at selling ourselves. And we like to talk in sort of facts rather than sort of selling the sizzle.

Petra

And to wrap up, what can we do to get started, especially to build our brand internally, because you're also working mainly with corporate professionals.

It's not about getting out there getting all the speaking engagements, which is obviously a nice benefit of you being more productive, but simply how can we get started as a senior it later or technical leader? How can we build a personal brand?

Marcus

Well, I would suggest the first things to do is do a bit of a, an audit of your current brand. So do some assessments, personality tests, you know, speak to people about how you're perceived in their views as well. 

So, you know, get that sort of baseline of where you are today with your personal brand. And then think about where you would like it to be. 

You may, for example, be seen as a very sort of technical CIO later today. And that may be where you want to be.  And you just keep going and keep promoting the various channels that suits that audience. 

But if you go – no – I want to be a more of a you know, business executive CIO leader, because I have ambitions for boards later in career, etc, then you need to actively work on not only, you know, developing your capabilities with those attributes of leadership, but also making sure that you're in the right groups of people, you got the right people around you have, you know, the right channels that you're communicating with, that you're using appropriate language. 

So, a lot of it's about, you know, business acumen or financial acumen, for example, to bolster that perception that you're not just a techie person. 

They are probably the things that we teach the most so is the brand that you have today, the one that you want in the future. You know, what is it you really want to specialise in? 

And how can you develop those skills, and then promote them through the various channels, and, you know, pick out those sorts of influencers.

We talk a lot about using LinkedIn as a as one of those channels, for example, and looking at the brand statements that you can put there in the headline, making sure that you, you know, you, you have enough recommendations and skills, endorsements from appropriate people to determine that they write you in that capability as well, such as it's not just what you say, it's what they say. 

Then you continually work on refining both - that capability and the promotion of that in a way that suits your personality.

You don't want to be seen as inauthentic or that that CIO that's always promoting themselves at every opportunity because clearly, you know, there's something not quite right out there. So do it appropriately.

There were three powerful aspects extra dimension it's about starting with a vision, where do you want to be because personal branding is also about taking steps now that benefits you later and not keep you stuck where you are, and usually high performance and higher driven individuals want to progress further and they want to grow? 

And doing the same thing will keep you where you are. Then other steps to actually get there, skill development, new network proximity principle, how can we get closer to where we want to be simply by osmosis basically and absorbing it. Then - what is your personality? What suits you? And this comes down to self-awareness for price you?

Marcus

Yeah, I think so. I remember seeing a model years ago that talked about the three C's. 

So clarity: being really clear on what your unique value proposition is. 

I talk to clients a lot about that- what is particularly unique about you. 

And they might say ‘Well, you know, I'm good with customers, or good with technology’.

I go ‘it's got to be more specific. There's 1000s of people that could say that, try and think of something that is really unique to your style’.

Then the next is the consistency bit, which is walking the talk, and really being authentic to what you're saying, and what you're doing. Otherwise, the whole brand model is irrelevant. 

And the last c would be constancy, which is about doing it regularly. You can't just say I'm going to work on my personal brand for a week and then give up.

Petra 

So powerful, so true. Now, before we wrap up, what has been one tool, one strategy, one tactic that you have applied and has worked for you say, secrets and tips you can share with us?

Marcus

Well, whenever I think about the current job that I have now, I had this job in mind in from my previous employer, and I've worked very hard to build my network, build my social profiles, through blogs, and LinkedIn posts and profiles, etc. also doing a lot of public speaking and writing, you know, somewhat semi unprofessional research, but I kind of I was preparing for the job that I wanted by doing the things that the next job sort of did and was looking for. 

Looking going for awards and things like that in the industry that sort of would be recognised as an employee of choice for where I'm working now. I think that's probably the tactics that worked most effectively. For me.

Petra

Honestly, this has been incredible. Thank you so much for so many valuable tips and very practical steps that you've also taken. that inspires others to do the same. And obviously, the better we are, the better we can do for others. So I really appreciate it. 

Now - where can everyone find you and follow your journey to see what's next for you and keep up to date?

Marcus

Yes, well, I'm still working at Gartner with CIOs helping them across the whole plethora of IT management issues. But I'm doing quite a lot of work with them around not only the personal brand of the CIO, but the brand of the IT department and the reputation that it has. And as you'd expect, the IT department can get beaten up quite regularly. So I'm hoping to sort of do more work to build the capability and the salesmanship, of IT departments to really demonstrate the great stuff that digital leaders are doing for organisations these days. So I'm not that active on Twitter these days. I certainly I'm on LinkedIn quite regularly. So happy to connect up with anyone on that platform.

Petra 

Incredible. I'll put all the links to the show notes. And again, thank you so much. It was honestly a better interview than I would have ever expected. Thank you.