Ross Saunders (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome to This Is Not What I Signed Up For, the podcast for new managers teaching you how to swim so you don't sink with your new responsibilities. Now, today I am joined by Randall Craig. Randall has founded several successful startups. He's held a long time position at a big four consulting firm. He was a senior executive at an American public company and Randall is currently the CEO of the Brain Trust Professional Institute.

where he helps organizations build, grow, and solve some of their most challenging problems. Now, I met Randall through the speaking association that we're both part of. And he's been absolutely wonderful to me over the years as a sounding board, as an all-around great guy, and someone to chat to about these subjects that I chat to you about. So I'm very excited to have him on board. Randall, welcome to the podcast.

Randall Craig (00:54)
I'm pleased to be here. Thanks for having me.

Ross Saunders (00:56)
Great stuff. So I start every episode with the same icebreaker question, and I want to find out from you, what is the worst piece of management advice you've ever received?

Randall Craig (01:07)
The worst piece of management advice I ever received was ⁓ I had a boss who said, you you're just doing things too good. You know, the clients don't expect excellence. They expect just slightly more than what they expect. so don't do an excellent job. Just do a job slightly better than they expect. And, I was personally insulted by that because why wouldn't I do if it takes the same amount of time? Why would I deliver something that was like halfway?

Ross Saunders (01:37)
Wow. Yeah.

Randall Craig (01:37)
And

at that point, realized that, what I've learned from this particular manager isn't really something that I really want to be learning. It's great lesson for how not to ⁓ conduct your career.

Ross Saunders (01:51)
Yeah,

I find that there's a lot of managers out there that are great examples of what not to do. But this is to try and prevent people from being in that bucket. So I think what you've just mentioned here as well as a great introduction to our topic today. So today we are going to be talking about personal branding for professional success. And I think this is a very, very

key topic for us to discuss because I think folks are often aware and coming from a lot of our listeners come from a technical perspective where they've been really good in the technical space and have been promoted into management. And I think in that space, you're very aware of having a reputation for yourself. ⁓ But what we're going to talk about now is how does that become an actual brand? So Randall, what is exactly a personal brand?

Randall Craig (02:47)
Yeah, there's two definitions that I actually quite like. One is what people say about you behind your back, right? Because if people are saying, you know, gee, so-and-so is great to work with, they always deliver, they do all these other things. Well, that's your brand, right? ⁓ Second definition is a little bit different. It's a combination of three things. It's what people see, it's how you act, and it's what you represent.

And the interesting thing about this definition is that you can work on the first two and then everybody else for themselves decides the third, right? You know, there's a lot of brand consultants that focus just on the ephemeral, you know, what you look like. you should wear this color or you should coiff your hair this way, or you should do this or that, et cetera, in terms of what people see. And I think that's important, but you know, what people see is everything from the reports that you write.

Ross Saunders (03:26)
Mmm.

Randall Craig (03:46)
right, to how they observe you with other co-workers. If you're a first-time manager and you think about somebody else who's treating somebody else disrespectfully or it's not the way you do it, guess what? That's impacting their brand. has nothing to with what they're wearing. It's just how, you know, it's what you see. So what you see is one part of it, right? The second part of it is, and by the way, I should mention also, it's what are your socials?

you know, LinkedIn, know, Facebook, etc. All that has an impact on it, not just what the clothes you're wearing. The second part is, is, is what you do, you know, your actions, for example, you know, ⁓ are you the person that pours coffee for everybody? Are you the person, for example, that takes somebody out for lunch, or just talks about saying, taking people out for lunch? Are you the person that ⁓ speaks respectfully?

Or is curt end quote, to the point. ⁓ By the way, those aren't opposites. just those are examples of different ways people talk. All these things are observed behaviors that impact how you represent. Now, you may have your own self-conception of what you represent. ⁓ Fair, hardworking, insightful, smart, go-getter, I don't know, whatever it happens to be, that's fine. Right? But what

people see in what you do, impact how other people define that. And it's that gap, that lack of authenticity, if you will, between the self-image of what you are and what you see and how you act that causes the problems. So number one is figure out what you represent. And then say, is everything that I'm doing congruent with that? Am I a plastic person trying to be something that I'm not?

Ross Saunders (05:17)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Randall Craig (05:38)
Or is there this authenticity that says, yes, if people see this and if I act in a particular way, yes, people come to the conclusion that this is what I represent.

Ross Saunders (05:51)
Yeah, I really like that definition. I mean, just been thinking as you've been talking through that of different ways that kind of relates to sort of the brand I've built over the years and things like that. I think one of the things with you talking about how you look way back in the day, probably 15, 20 years back when I started discovering whether I called it that or not a personal brand, I had spoken to someone who was a brand consultant and it was about

what you wear. ⁓ I remember being told no suit and tie, like three piece suits is what you need. And you need to look like really proper all the time. And, and that was not authentic to me and advising cybersecurity and privacy in a ⁓ suit and tie with a ponytail, just it's this incongruent kind of look. And eventually it became my t-shirts, which I wear now.

That's how I consult and that's authentic to me, but that speaks to, think those other values that you were saying in that brand is that's me there as well.

Randall Craig (06:57)
So I had met this younger person. I was working at Schulich ⁓ School of Business in Toronto, which is where I'm from. And ⁓ one of the students who was an MBA student came in. She was thinking of changing her career from one thing to the other. And she wanted some advice, some career advice. And so finally, we sat down at the appointment. And what distinguished this person was that she had bright blue hair. And she wanted to go into management consulting.

And her question to me was a very simple one. ⁓ What do you think about the hair? There's also a bunch of piercings and the whole bit, et cetera. And I said, well, ⁓ I think you've got to be authentic to who you are. If this is already your identity, the blue hair and the piercings, then that's what you should do. And anybody who's not willing to sort of accept you as you are and see the value that you can add, if

If you don't match their brand, then you probably won't be successful there. You don't want to be there. And then I said, you know something. But on the other hand, it could very well be that because you're wearing ⁓ your statement, if you will, is ⁓ fairly out of the norm for people in the world of management consulting, is it possible that your potential future employer may make value judgments based on what they see?

Ross Saunders (08:02)
Mm, very true.

Randall Craig (08:25)
And you might not even get a chance to have that second interview. You might be screened out.

Ross Saunders (08:31)
Hmm.

Randall Craig (08:32)
Is it possible that when you go to a client that for whatever reason, somebody might be distracted by the way you look as opposed to convinced by the strength of your ideas? So I said, those are the kinds of things only you could figure out sort of, gee, do I sort of tone it down a little bit and on the weekend I could do this and during the week I could do that. And is that authentic to you? Or is it a question of saying, well, gee, if I really want to go in a certain area, right? ⁓

Most doctors and dentists wear a white lab coat. What if instead they wore a bathing suit? Would you find it distracting? Would that take away from the professionalism? Nurses at one time wore those little white hats. They certainly don't anymore. So things change over time. And certainly different generational managers and new managers, mature managers, new managers, will all bring their biases and their

Ross Saunders (09:21)
Hmm.

Randall Craig (09:31)
and their history to it. But you've got to realize that yes, you've got to be authentic to yourself. But you also have to recognize that other people make judgments about you based on that.

Ross Saunders (09:41)
Very true, very true. I think that's something I've learned as well over the years, like with my brand and kind of speaking to, I'm lucky, I think in the position I've become or come to over the years ⁓ is I've kind of gravitated to the companies and folks that kind of match my brand as well. It's almost like a value match that we have.

I'm not working in, you were part of the big four. I'm not working with big four consultants anymore. I'm working with small scrappy startup IT guys and things like that where this is the order of the day and what's expected. But yeah, you make a very good point. I probably wouldn't look great going into an executive meeting at a bank ⁓ with a ponytail and a shirt covered with opossums screaming.

Randall Craig (10:25)
Yes.

I'll just add one other thing before we move on from this specific part of the topic, which is this. There's an interesting mirror that happens between the personal brand and the company brand. And if you think about the company brand as the external face of what the company represents, the internal face is actually called something else, which is called corporate culture, company culture.

Right. And if we think about where we're most successful is where our personal brands are amplified by the internal culture and the internal culture is strengthened by the foundation of your internal brand. And when there's a little bit of a space, a growing space between the two, that's usually your clue to move on. And when you seem to get a lot of promotions because you're able to accomplish an awful lot, that usually means that there's something

Ross Saunders (11:28)
Hmm.

Randall Craig (11:35)
you know, synchronous between the corporate brand, the corporate culture and your personal brand, why they feed on each other. Yeah, so

Ross Saunders (11:46)
Great. Now, talking about the brands and I think we've hit on it a few times in different ways and aspects here is talking about trust and professional trust. ⁓ Tell me a bit more around professional trust. How is professional trust built? How is it lost? ⁓ What are we exchanging here?

Randall Craig (11:56)
Hmm

That's a

yeah, so this is a great topic, especially for newer managers. And the reason why it and most people realize this, but let me state it bluntly. People do not care about you. They don't care about you. They care about how you can solve their problem. As technical ⁓ contributors, you kind of know that they come to you with a problem, you solve the problem, you're on, right? You're gone. Okay, but as a manager, it's the very same thing.

that the nature of the problem is different. So that's the layer one. Layer two is this. Whenever problem, they think of you to solve that problem, right? Okay, let me go to Ross because I know that if I go to Ross ⁓ and it's a very transactional thing, Ross will solve my problem, right? Go to Randall, he can solve that problem. Excuse me, but eventually this transaction of me help you, you help me builds a relationship.

And that relationship is something that is very, powerful. And the reason why is the relationship is based on trust. know, and my clients know this, if they come to me and they say, Randall, can you, I've got this problem. Well, it could very well be that I can't solve that problem. It's outside of my area. So I say, well, here's some perspective, you know, A, B, C, D, E, but you know, I know somebody whose specialty is precisely in this area. Let me connect you.

And eventually I become this almost trusted advisor. You know, for you as a new manager, the question is, how do you become that? Not that you're kind of the repository for everyone's problems that you can solve it, but you've built the trust by virtue of this transactive relationship becoming a ⁓ real relationship that people say, you know, can you chime in on this? Okay, or let me socialize an idea with you. Let me know what you think.

It's not that it's just because you know how to do a particular technical thing or that you're as a manager responsible for a little area, but it's because they value your acumen. It's because maybe you've helped them out before and it's no longer a question of keeping tabs. But it's also a question of saying, yeah, they can set me right. By the way, this happens in the real world. We all know this. You know, when that person that you haven't seen a long time says, hey, Randall, can you help me fill in the blank?

The first thing that goes through your mind, if you do not have that strong degree of trust and a deep relationship is, hmm, well, they did this for me, so yeah, I guess it's my turn to do that for them, right? But for your best friend, they ask you something? Yeah, absolutely. Right? Same thing, somebody takes you out for dinner, right? The next time you get together, who picks up the tab? Okay, and both of you are thinking, well, whose turn is it to transact here?

Ross Saunders (14:51)
Hmm.

Randall Craig (15:05)
Okay, the last time that you went with your best friend, is it really, you know, that calculus? No, because the relationship and the attendant trust is very high.

Ross Saunders (15:17)
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Haven't thought about it in that kind of aspect, but it makes a lot of sense. So I think speaking to that and kind of building that trust from what we've spoken about before and everything, it comes to the interactions that you have in every interaction that you have. Because I would imagine you you mess this up. It's that trust cracks.

Randall Craig (15:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, I say all the time at every single touch point, trust either goes up or trust goes down. Every single touch point, it never stays the same. Right. And so the question is, what are you doing at every touch point with every person that you're managing, with your peers and your managers to improve the trust? You know, the answers that you give, are they insightful? The decisions that you make, do they tend to be right?

Ross Saunders (15:55)
Yeah.

Randall Craig (16:15)
⁓ you know, who do you serve by making a particular decision? Right? Is it for you personally, self-aggrandizement, for example, or are you putting, ⁓ are you doing stuff to rise all the boats? Right. Are you making everybody to be the hero? Excuse me. ⁓ when somebody makes a mistake, are you a coaching manager or are you, ⁓ are you going to hold them to account and do a slap slap? Right.

Ross Saunders (16:29)
Hmm.

Randall Craig (16:44)
all these kinds of every single time that you have an interaction. By the way, sometimes you have to do that slap slap, figuratively. Okay, people have to be held accountable. But is it the focus on the thing that was lost? Or is it a teachable moment? Right? And those are kinds of things. you objective? Are you independent? You know, or do you have some sort of bias in the decisions that you make or how you treat other people at that particular touch point?

Ross Saunders (16:50)
Yeah.

So it's interesting with you talking about this. It takes me back to some of the stuff I learned from some of the sales professionals that I worked with previously, ⁓ which is around the customer journey and the customer experience. And I remember ⁓ one of the nicest sales guys I'd worked with, ⁓ Nick Saunders, no relation, but hey, Nick, hope you're listening. ⁓ He took me through a

Randall Craig (17:26)
Hmm.

Ross Saunders (17:41)
the customer journey on a scale where you've got the zero point and then you've got happiness above the zero point and you've got ⁓ discontent underneath the zero point. And every step of your customer journey is one point on this graph. you highlight what makes the customer happy, what makes them despondent or unhappy.

or what makes them neutral. And you can actually map out all your interactions on this wonderful graph. And you really want the graph to stay in the positive. And if it dips, identifying how to get it to the positive as well. just this kind of brings me to that kind of, this is an ongoing thing that we can look to improve and bring up all the time.

Randall Craig (18:26)
And so and so let's take a look at that model then. If you're oscillating between ⁓ build trust, lose trust, build trust, lose trust, build trust, lose trust, what does that say about your brand on one hand? What does that say with respect to their ability to trust that you will follow up with whatever you say that you're going to do, that you're going to deliver what you're going to deliver? Right. It has this sort of long term kind of issue when there's a chronic up and down, if you will, in terms of

Ross Saunders (18:40)
Hmm.

Randall Craig (18:55)
of what happens at each of these touch points. I think it's absolutely fascinating and ⁓ sad because we don't realize we are, in a certain sense, the sum of all of our actions in the eyes of all those around us.

Ross Saunders (19:09)
Yeah, that's great. I think I want to do a little drawing of that now of interactions. So Randall, think one of the things I want to get onto, and I spoke a bit about it earlier, with the professional brand, and I know this was very much when I had been in management for a while, and maybe this is speaking to folks kind of hitting perhaps even more than mid to senior management ranges.

Randall Craig (19:15)
Yeah.

Ross Saunders (19:38)
⁓ you know, there's, think, and something that happened to me, bit of a risk in that your professional brand gets its own legs, ⁓ and, and kind of may go into a space where what you're portrayed as, what you've built up and things like that, that doesn't necessarily match up with your values, or, kind of your personal brand. So professional brand being

one thing, personal brand being something else. And think we touched on it in little bits and pieces. If you had to say how someone should deal with that, because I know for me, I actually burnt out from that. I was in my professional brand, part of multiple associations, multiple boards, and all these things to put that professional portrayal out there. But it was wrecking me personally until I hit complete burnout.

Randall Craig (20:31)
No

surprise. It's no surprise. It's no surprise that that happened with you Ross and with many people. It's easy to be me. It's easy to be you. It's very hard to be something that you're not because if you're something that you're not it takes an extreme amount of effort and at a certain point you start wondering what is this facade here? That's not me, right? And so what happens even worse?

Ross Saunders (20:48)
Yeah.

Randall Craig (21:01)
When you get success based on that facade, for me, ⁓ you know this, I do team retreats and I speak in front of big audiences as a keynote speaker. ⁓ You know, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a friend, I'm a son, I'm all these other kinds of things, but I'm actually the same person no matter where I am. The way I am in front of 2000 people or in front of, ⁓ if I'm facilitating a team of six or 12,

is exactly the same way I am with one on one with my business colleagues, the same as I'm one on one with my friends and with my family. There's no two Randall Craig's. Now I'll tell you something. It's so so like we all aspire to something. Right. So we all try and be what we aspire to. You know, we've got all kinds of expressions fake until you make it. Right. Think about this for those who are happen to be parents. Okay, you got this baby.

Ross Saunders (21:54)
Yeah.

Randall Craig (22:00)
that's there. Do you speak to them as a in baby talk? Or do you speak to them as a person? Right? Why is there a different there? There's only one of you. You're the mom or dad, right? What? Why is it different? Okay, why do we feel the need to be quote, professional, okay, at work, but not professional with our family and friends? You know, why is it that we feel this need to be personable and real and authentic with our friends and family?

But not that. When we deal with our colleagues, with the people that we report to, it doesn't mean that we've got to be vulgar. ⁓ It doesn't mean that we have to be anything other than who we are. But I think that this divergence is terrible. Just be you everywhere. It becomes a lot easier.

Ross Saunders (22:50)
Yeah, don't lose yourself in it. So I think ⁓ lastly on that while we're wrapping up, ⁓ so with building your brand in the long term, how does one build it presuming it's going to be a long term? What is the way to approach it?

Randall Craig (22:52)
No, no, not at all.

Well, first of all, you answered the question yourself when you said long term. It's consistent, consistent performance. It's doing, but also sharing about what you're doing, right? You know, you don't want to be the world's best kept secret. And it's not a question of blowing your own horn so that it's this self aggrandizement and you go into this like weird sort of kind of thing where nobody thinks that you're for them because you're only for yourself.

You know, as a coach and as a retreat facilitator, as a speaker, know, part of the way I do that is I've got a blog, I've got a podcast, you know, I've got a newsletter, I've got a whole bunch of other things so that people can consume how I think, right? I'm a guest on superb podcasts like this, right? Right, right, but it's the doing over and over and over again, over a long, long period of time.

Ross Saunders (23:55)
Hmm.

thank you.

Randall Craig (24:08)
I think that for me, think writing is helpful. Most managers don't think about that. What if you, for example, had a bit of a blog for yourself where you can start to codify your knowledge, the lessons that you've learned or what you know about your particular sector, industry, et cetera, right? ⁓ The reason why, the leadership lessons that you notice from people around you. Here's the one that I often say to my coaching clients is,

Ross Saunders (24:13)
Hmm.

Randall Craig (24:37)
What if you looked at everybody as your teacher? What if at the end of the day, you wrote down three or four bullets as to what your teachers that day, whether it's your peers, the leaders in your company, your staff, maybe somebody at Starbucks, who knows? What if you wrote down the lessons those leaders taught you? Even if you don't share them with other people, I bet that just codifying them would help lock them into your brain. So when you actually are acting,

out your, not acting out, but being that manager, what you've already codified, it's close to the top of mind. And therefore it's an awful lot easier both to build that brand in the long term, keep consistent, be a better manager and so on. And by the way, ⁓ what you see, what you do and what you represent, you're actually demonstrating that by example.

Ross Saunders (25:17)
Hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. think that was the biggest thing for me, was writing for my brand. I'll definitely credit that to where it started. I started writing many, many years ago, just thoughts ⁓ on a blog. And yeah, it came to be something I could refer people to.

Randall Craig (25:53)
And look where you

are now.

Ross Saunders (25:57)
Yeah, Randall, thank you so much for your views here and your thoughts. This has been great. ⁓ In closing, what are you currently busy with? ⁓ Can people get in touch with you? Tell us a bit about what's floating your boat.

Randall Craig (26:14)
Well, you know, what I would say is go to randallcraig.com. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles on management and leadership ⁓ in my weekly tip sheet. ⁓ You can go to braintrustprofessionalinstitute.com, my company. There are hundreds of hours of management and leadership videos that probably can answer almost everything there. It's all free. It's all there. Okay, please enjoy it. There's a few courses there if that's what your interest is in.

You can reach me through both of those. Love to talk to anyone and ⁓ connect on LinkedIn as well.

Ross Saunders (26:51)
Wonderful. Thanks, Randall. And to our listeners, those links will be in the show notes. So you can grab them right there and give Randall a follow. So Randall, thank you so much. To our listeners, thank you for being here. Until next time, keep swimming.

Randall Craig (27:07)
Thank you.