Enhance Your Personal Brand: Feedback as a Catalyst for Change with Dale McKay (2/2)

Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

How often do you ask other people for feedback? Why are you asking for feedback in the first place, and what will you do with the feedback you receive? Dale McKay, our guest this week in episode 289, would remind us that the purpose of feedback is to make ourselves better, and we can articulate that purpose to other people when we ask them for honest feedback.

This week we talk through Dale’s experience as a technical instructor and consultant with undertones of mentorship sprinkled in along the way. You’ll hear Dale emphasize the importance of enhancing your personal brand and the importance of creating positive feedback loops in that process.

Original Recording Date: 07-10-2024

Dale McKay is currently a VMware consultant working with federal customers. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Dale, check out Episode 288.

Topics – An Interest in Mentorship, The Consultant’s Role, Personal Brand, Asking for and Processing Feedback, Feedback through Role Transitions, Closing Thoughts

2:25 – An Interest in Mentorship

• John highlights very few organizations have formal training or specific schools for different disciplines like the military does. Could that gap be where Dale’s interest in mentorship came from?
  • Dale says yes.
  • He worked for ATT back when they had a corporate training campus. They would send employees there for different trainings on both technical and soft skills. It was conducted by trainers who were ATT employees who were very effective instructors.
    • Dale doesn’t know of many other companies today who have that same concept where employees get weeks off to go and build skills in this way.
  • John remembers hearing stories about management training for GE personnel being almost like going to graduate school. We have replaced a lot of in-person training with computer-based training, and there seems to be a gap.
  • Dale was at one point a corporate trainer for Dell, and most of the courses he taught were 1 week in length.
    • “There’s an interaction that takes place inside the classroom in a face-to-face setting that you’re never going to be able to replicate with computer training.” – Dale McKay
    • The social aspects of what happen in and around the classroom setting can’t be replicated virtually. Dale highlights the side conversations we might have with folks in person or things like going to lunch or dinner with someone.
      • John refers to the above as the creation of a cohort, a unit that learns and works together. Maybe this is true for remote work vs. in office work too?
      • Dale would agree with this and mentions he has worked remotely for a lot of his career. But too much remote work can make you feel like you miss out on some of the camaraderie.
      • Dale gives the example of a particular team of people he worked with who planned to go to dinner and to see a movie premier together.
      • “We don’t have to necessarily like everybody that we work with, but we do have to work with them, so if you can do something with them that pulls both of you together, I think those are all good things. And that’s what we used to have in the classroom.” – Dale McKay
      • Reflecting back on week long training courses in the past, Dale feels attendees would walk out of that experience respecting one another and feeling it was a week well spent.

7:37 – The Consultant’s Role

• Does a mentor have something to teach not so different from a classroom instructor? Nick thinks so, and Dale agrees.
  • John mentioned earlier that we cannot go to school and get a degree in consulting, for example. Dale has held a number of consulting roles during his career, including being a TAM (still a consulting type role).
  • “Consulting is what you make of it, and if you want to be that consultant that teaches as part of that consulting role, then I think most customers embrace that.” – Dale McKay
  • Dale gives an example of a teaching conversation he had with one of his customers about NSX and just how much the customer appreciated it.
  • Dale says we can forget that these teachable moments exist when we get into too much of a transactional nature. The time Dale spent with this customer was what that person needed at the time to fill gaps in understanding so they could work together to accomplish something. Dale shares this as an example of working within the guardrails a mentor provides.
• It seems like a consultant is a gap filler who meets the person they are working with where they are, much like the instructor and the mentor would do.
  • Dale says that is a consistent theme throughout his career and something on which he prides himself.
  • “In every consulting case, people are paying money for you to help them with a problem. If you go in there and make it a very transactional thing…you’ve missed an opportunity for your company and for yourself to further both your company brand and your own brand. Stop for a minute, and don’t make it so transactional. Have a conversation…. Let them educate you for a little bit so that you in turn can take that knowledge and help them be better. At the end of the day, that’s what I think every consultant should have on their mind….leave the situation you came into better if it’s at all possible.” – Dale McKay
    • A consultant should take the time to learn about what the person they are helping wants to accomplish.
  • John thinks Dale is interpreting the role of a consultant as someone who can be a catalyst for change within the organization, which could be a small change or perhaps a large change. Maybe being a catalyst for change should be in the job description for a consultant?
  • Dale would lump being a Technical Account Manager into the consultant category.
    • Many people call themselves consultants. Some are very good, and some are just mediocre.
    • Exceling in consulting is really about a willingness to go the extra mile and a focus on having the customer feel like you’ve made them better.
  • Does being a consulting mean you have to do a ton of traveling?
    • Dale says we should expect some travel to be involved when working as a consultant.
    • Listen to the story Dale shares about finding a common interest with his customer because they had a conversation over lunch. That kind of thing is not written in a statement of work.
    • “If you allow yourself to play that role of a consultant, play that role of that gap filler, play that role of someone who is here just to make things better…then you’re going to have some of that interaction that’s going to further your brand.” – Dale McKay

13:26 – Personal Brand

• The phrase personal brand should not be new to us.
  • If it is, check out other episodes from our catalogue discussing personal brand.
  • “That’s what a career journey is all about…establishing and enhancing your own personal brand.” – Dale McKay
  • If we leave places better than we found them, our personal brand goes up (kind of like a stock).
  • Dale thinks most companies are aware of people’s personal brand.
  • “Your personal brand might be great. It doesn’t always mean that you’re going to get the promotion. That also is not reason for you to give up on enhancing your personal brand…. Your personal brand is yours. You take that with you wherever you go.” – Dale McKay, on the nature of work in corporate America
  • When we choose to leave a company, we leave some sort of legacy behind. Was what was left behind a good legacy or a bad legacy? That’s the kind of question we need to consider when working to enhance our personal brand.
  • Dale says if personal brand is not important to us, then likely our career is not important to us.
    • John says these are connected (personal brand and career), and it is important for us to think about and understand that connection if we want to have a career.
    • We often have a me-centric view of the world and do not stop to think about how others might be perceiving us or the messages we could be giving off with our actions. For example, if you are extremely effective, are you perceived as extremely effective? Those are different things.
    • It may be as simple as whether you have a positive mindset or a negative mindset.
  • Nick says usually it is the people we work with who know what our personal brand is (co-workers, boss, etc.), and that is how the company knows what our brand is.
    • “Does your boss know your personal brand? Does your boss know what your ethos, what your foundation is?” – Dale McKay, on perceptions from others
    • Dale would encourage us to put ourselves in our boss’s shoes and think about how they perceive us.
    • Dale feels he would be perceived as responsive, factual, and always willing by his boss. These would be the foundational elements of his personal brand.
  • John says we can ask each other to articulate what we’re trying to put out as our personal brand. Then we can ask if other people are perceiving us as those things. If there is a gap, think about what can be done to bridge the gap.

24:54 – Asking for and Processing Feedback

• While he worked for VMware, Dale had the chance to work with a coach through BetterUp for 3 consecutive years.
  • Each year when coaching sessions would begin, Dale’s coach (who was the same for all 3 years) would ask him to do a 360 evaluation. This involved sending a feedback form to his boss, people on his team, and even to customers he supported.
  • The most important thing during this process is for people who are giving the feedback to be honest.
  • This method is one of the best ways to understand how people perceive you, especially if you are trying to change how you’re perceived in certain areas.
  • Dale wonders if more organizations might benefit from implementing 360 degree evaluations. With annual reviews maybe becoming less common, there may be a gap in how we want to be perceived and how others perceive us.
  • “I think that’s where there’s a gap in how I want to be perceived and then how you perceive me because if we never have that conversation, I don’t know what the answer is.” – Dale McKay, on feedback
  • Nick says we don’t think to have those conversations very often because we make an assumption that others are perceiving us in a certain way.
  • The feedback in a 360 assessment could be anonymous. Dale says people would say things in that feedback that they would not or could not say to your face. But each time he went through one of these there would be a new piece of insight he would gain.
  • “You can’t fix what you don’t know is wrong. If you know something is wrong and you don’t fix it, that’s on you. If you don’t know that it’s wrong, then maybe that’s on someone else that they need to tell you. I’ve had mentors through my career that didn’t hesitate to tell me when I did something wrong. And while that may be perceived as harsh or any other word that we would want to assign…the reality is I was probably better off for that criticism or that correction.” – Dale McKay
  • Nick says there is ego involved, especially when you receive feedback that you are not doing something as well as you thought you were.
  • “You’re asking for somebody to evaluate your work, and it’s very difficult for us in our society to distinguish between evaluating our work and evaluating our person.” – John White, on the difficulty of removing ego when receiving feedback
    • We might hear a criticism of our work to say “you’re not a great person.”
    • Being able to take criticism without getting an attitude about it is something Dale feels he struggled with earlier in his career.
    • “Once I got past that and saw that most of the time the criticism I was receiving was not intended to be tearing down criticism but it was intended to be constructive criticism, then I could take that and use it to make myself better.” – Dale McKay, on accepting criticism
    • We should also consider the source of criticism because there is constructive criticism and destructive criticism. It is ok to reject destructive criticism, but it’s a big problem to reject constructive criticism.
    • Constructive criticism may provide us something we really need to work through, but the end goal is that it will make us better. We have to understand and interpret it, and then take action on it.
  • People managers like John get engagement surveys submitted anonymously by employees. John says it is an interesting process to get the results of that feedback and make a plan to get improvement. He is early into his career as a people manager and ok with having several areas in which to improve.
  • Dale emphasizes the criticality of asking others for feedback. We might think we are doing great, but it’s only our perception until we solicit feedback from others.
• How should those of us not used to asking people to provide feedback approach the conversation?
  • If Dale was giving advice to a mentee, he would encourage them to go and solicit feedback.
  • “And that conversation may be as simple as…‘there’s a few areas I’m trying to improve on. I would really appreciate if you could just give me some feedback on this.’” – Dale McKay, on a suggested way to ask for feedback
  • We can use e-mail, a face-to-face conversation, or a phone call as mediums to ask others for feedback.
  • Dale suggests we be specific about what we want feedback on, emphasize the need for honesty, and give the person time to think about it (i.e. don’t make them answer on the spot).
  • We are going to feel vulnerable asking others for feedback, and there’s really no way around that part.
  • “You have to evaluate that feedback with a very unbiased view of yourself.” – Dale McKay

26:59 – Feedback through Role Transitions

• Did Dale have to ask for feedback during functional and job role changes in his career like the one he made moving from Technical Account Manager (TAM) to working in Technical Marketing? These roles are functionally quite different but have some similarities.
  • The technical marketing role would require more 1-to-many interactions, requiring more public speaking and content creation (videos, presentation slides, blog articles, etc.).
  • Dale says it was a little bit of a natural shift to move into technical marketing, and he got plenty of feedback along the way. Not all of it felt great when it came at him, but after looking at it as unbiased as he could, Dale believes it made him better.
    • Nick suggests just as we would give someone time to formulate feedback for us, we should give ourselves time to process once we receive feedback.
    • Dale gives the example of creating a video and sending a request for feedback to his boss and greater team. Upon initial examination we might think others are being nitpicky if they suggest changing the color of a line or decreasing use of filler words, but Dale tells us to remember each bit of feedback is likely going to make what you are trying to produce better (whether it be a presentation or something else).
  • John says the things we want to improve might seem perfect if we are the only audience. We need to find out what other people see as needing to improve, especially when the audience for something we are creating will not be just us.
    • Dale was a bit surprised at getting so much feedback on some of the presentations or videos he created and thought were very good. He encourages us to step back from our work and let go of the emotion as we digest the feedback.
    • “It makes it more appealing to people other than you, which was the whole goal anyway.” – Dale McKay, on the value of receiving and incorporating feedback to make our work better
    • John says we have plenty of opportunities to create content that only we will see like a knowledge note about a process. Maybe we can learn to be more honest with ourselves when we revisit something we previously created. For example, can we still follow it? If not, maybe we needed feedback from others.
  • Dale says our understanding of a problem may not be accurate because we are not infallible. Validating our understanding is the same as getting feedback.
  • Annual reviews are just another way to provide feedback from sources outside ourselves.

32:14 – Closing Thoughts

• The thing John is taking away from this conversation is positive feedback loops. There are so many ways we can get them – mentorship, coaching, peer reviews, etc.
  • “It’s uncomfortable to engage and solicit and uncomfortable to listen to, but it is really the only way that we improve.” – John White, on feedback
• “Hopefully there are people out there who will listen to this and will take it to heart because at the end of the day, your personal brand, your career is all up to you…. This is yours. You’re the one that’s driving. Find that mentor that’s going to help you establish that set of guardrails, but you’re still the one that’s driving your own career. And you have to take responsibility for it no matter what point you are in your career. Even if you’re laid off…you have to take responsibility for keeping yourself on track, moving in the direction that you need to move.” – Dale McKay
• To follow up with Dale on this conversation, contact him on LinkedIn here.

Mentioned in the Outro

• John mentioned a consultant as being a catalyst for change within an organization. The consultant can be a catalyst for change in a specific person or even multiple people. It’s a result of the teachable moments.
  • You can do this kind of thing in a lot of roles and be a catalyst for change in other people. But we need to be mindful and look for these opportunities. Think more about the people you work with and what they need to get better.
  • This sounds a lot like what a technical lead should seek to do. For more on that topic, check out these episodes:
    • Episode 279 – Change Management: The Hardest Leap and Developing People with Marni Coffey (2/3)
    • Episode 286 – Succession Planning: Delegation Skills and Technical Ownership with Max Kanat-Alexander (2/3)
• If the only feedback you’re getting is you are doing great / fine, Nick feels this is a red flag. It could mean…
  • The people you’re asking may not feel comfortable being completely honest with you. Perhaps you haven’t built enough rapport with them or they have not seen enough of your work to be able to give a good piece of feedback to you. Maybe we should seek to build better relationships with others before asking for feedback.
  • You haven’t been specific enough on the feedback you want. Are you seeking feedback on a behavior, an attitude, or on your work?
    • If it’s your work, do you want to know about your presentation contents / the slides you made, your energy level during a presentation’s delivery, how well you explained something, etc.?
    • Emphasize the intention of the feedback is to make you better through their honesty, and give people time to provide the feedback.
  • You may need to ask some different people who can give a different perspective / viewpoint. Maybe you’ve been asking the same people for feedback too often.
  • It would be so much better to receive some constructive criticism now compared to a year from now or 6 months from now so we can take action.

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