Leading With Insight Using Your Personal Brand To Innovate and Inspire
Discover how to leverage your personal brand to inspire others and catalyze innovation.
By Insight Editor / 18 Jun 2024 / Topics: Culture & careers
By Insight Editor / 18 Jun 2024 / Topics: Culture & careers
In this episode of Leading With Insight, Z and Rich are joined by special guest Mike Gaumond, senior vice president of portfolio global strategy at Insight, to explore the inspirational impact of personal branding. Together, they discuss how leaders can inspire and motivate their teams by leveraging their personal brands. Mike also shares personal experiences on how personal branding has played a crucial role in his career and provides valuable advice for listeners looking to refine their approach. Tune in to discover how to inspire authentic leadership, drive innovation and amplify your impact by sharing success stories.
To experience this week’s episode, listen on the player above, watch the conversation below or scroll down to read a complete transcript. You can also subscribe to Leading With Insight on Apple Podcasts, Pandora and Spotify.
Audio transcript:
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Hey everybody, this is Zee Tenoko and I'm Richard Reeves. You're listening to Leading With Insight. Join us as we explore the latest trends, insights, and strategies for people who love leadership. Get ready to unlock your full potential and take your career to the next level.
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Welcome back to another exciting episode of Leading With Insight. Today we'll go ahead and continue the conversation with personal branding and how you can use that to leverage and innovate and inspire your team. Zee, have you ever thought about how your personal brand has innovated and inspired your or others around you I guess I should say? Yeah, yeah I mean I think what we've been talking about so far in this episode is you know that's understand your strengths and what you bring to the table and then just leaning into it. You know we have you ever done strength finders, have you ever done any assessments? It's that self-awareness, self-discovery, and then just leaning into it man and then from there learning your team's strengths and what they bring to the table and now like any kind of superhero, right? Like Avengers and Justice League like now bringing it all together to get things done and it's such a such a fun place in the work environment to be a part of. So 100% man I think it's definitely something we can we can lean in especially as leaders. Very well said. So today what we'll be unpacking is back going back into the personal branding is how to leverage that to inspire and innovate also leading authentically and also just sharing some of those success stories along the way. But before we get into all that we do have a very special guest with us today. Zia I'll go ahead and kick it over to you so you can do the honors. Well yeah since I joined Insight you know it's been over 10 years ago I mean this is a leader that I've always looked up to I've always seen is always right and that not only in the trenches and getting things done but just like a lot of our leaders but more than anything this leader is anytime we're in an event or what have you he just wants to get to know you very very personable and it's my pleasure right to introduce Mike Gamont our SVP of portfolio to this episode so Mike welcome to Leading with Insight. Thanks for having me here it's I'm looking forward to it's gonna be fun. It is it is. So before we started we kind of just you know chatted about things that we like to do for fun and that inspire us and Mike was talking about you know he's into cycling and you know and one of those things that hey it I can imagine it takes discipline hard work persistence how does cycling you know just a quick little fun how does cycling relate to your leadership or how does that what's the correlation there between leadership and cycling for you? That's a great question people tend to think of cycling as an individual activity but I do a lot of group rides that are fairly intense so part of being successful in those group rides and being successful means don't crash by the way is understanding the the group how you're gonna ride there's signals and communication that we use to stay synchronized to let people know you're switching your position to let people know there's debris on the road so there's a lot of things you do to communicate and collaborate that like if you drive by a group of cyclists going down the road you wouldn't necessarily see or notice so I think that that's a big part of it and then most of the group rides actually have a designated group leader who's responsible for setting the route laying out how we're gonna rotate talking about you know reinforcing things like communication so there are there's that actual leadership roles in the in the groups as well. Yeah fascinating you never know I did not know there were so many different leadership elements in cycling I'm gonna have to try this out. So before we move on to the first question for those who don't know you and never listening and watching us can tell us a little bit about yourself in your journey and what you do here for insight yeah so I lead our portfolio team as you said and there's a couple of key building blocks of that so we have portfolio leaders and their charter is to leverage thought leadership to generate demand for our services and solutions in our in our top clients they do that in four of our kind of top strategic growth areas there's another team called solution engineering so they work on scoping and crafting and delivering wins for our large complex multi-line of service deals I coordinate the CTO organization so they're they bring all the latest technologies to bear and then we actually have an innovation team that is creating intellectual property or IP in the form of automation that makes our solutions more robust. Every time I hear what he does and what he leads I'm like I want to be a part of that team.
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So I don't have a couple questions for you so we'll kick it off with our first one. Yeah so you know just kind of going back to how your personal brand you know and developing your team with that are there any sort of you know maybe success stories that you've kind of been around with different colleagues how they've implemented their personal branding and it's really impacted and influenced their career. Yeah there's a there's a team that I've worked with that is a pretty impressive story she's a consultant or while she wasn't consulting she's she's switched switched roles but she has a really interesting background she has a multi-discipline background and a multifunctional background from both a work experience and education perspective she happens to be diverse as well so she brings a unique brand and a unique perspective to the table and I had the opportunity to kind of see her in action at a client and she led a project that was helping a veterinary hospital client of ours conceive of the ICU of the future so the the intensive care unit of the future for pet hospitals and she started the whole journey out with the client really by listening and learning and interviewing tons of people in the client and going to the hospitals and talking to technicians and clinicians and doctors and veterinarians and then brought all that to bear to help think of help the client think about what could this look like in a new world and they came up with a concept for kind of the ICU of the future I called it and she built an incredible personal brand with the client the client still talks about her today and you know as a result of that she got some visibility internally and it created the opportunity for her to take a to shift from being an individual contributor to leading a product management team in the organization so it's an interesting
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example of kind of personal brand and leadership and and applying it in this case in a client situation and then you know growing her career as a result Wow again that's an amazing story where you know you're not only showcasing and highlighting your strengths and what you bring to the table but then being able to say the word visibility yeah right that's powerful because I mean just talk about just you know the the change in how you know we see business or we see careers back then I grew up and I'm curious to know your upbringing as well but I was I was I was always taught by my parents work hard and you'll get rewarded yeah but I don't feel that's the case anymore right you have to have the right opportunity to visibility you have to be loud and proud of what you do there's another layer that I believe maybe back then and there you know my parents upbringing in their era was different but I feel for me I had to learn that over time and be like you know I'm working but I just I'm for some just not getting those taps on the shoulders I'm not getting the visibility and then finally finally click for me right like I need a network I need a you know talk to have the seek mentors and in your case I imagine you know not only a mentorship but it seems like more like an advocate you know somebody would be like hey I see what you're doing and I want to showcase that or tell people about it but what are your thoughts about you know work hard and you'll get rewarded is that was that something that you also learn about what your thoughts on that absolutely and if I didn't work hard I'd get smacked up side of the head but I still believe if you in the long run if you work hard if you do what's right for our clients and insight for our clients first and insight second and whatever your organization is third and yourself fourth in the long run it will work out you will get the right kind of visibility that said you're right as well you you know visibility doesn't just happen sometimes it happens by accident but you can't count on that yeah so it is important to network it is important to talk to your leadership and talk about hey how did I do on this
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right like I thought I did pretty well I thought this went really well I thought maybe this part I could have done a lot of better make sure you're understanding that and and and sharing those stories and seek out mentors you know mentors I happen to believe it's kind of personal you have to hit it off with the person that people have to trust each other yeah to be able to have the right kinds of conversations you as a mentee it's your job to go to the discussion with the mentor prepared and say this is what I'd like to understand better or work on or learn or develop you know give me some feedback and some ideas and then there's the notion that you pointed out which I think goes beyond mentorship of sponsorship which is one of the things I'm really trying to do is is spot potential and talent and then find ways to showcase and highlight it yeah that's that next level right yeah you know it's not only am I mentorship mentoring somebody but spotting like you know taking they taking that moment and it's easier said than done we can say it but we're so busy we know we get caught up in our day-to-day and everything else that it's really intentional you have to be intentional about it yeah my mind goes to sports analogies right you you find different players you know they this one might be good at shooting you know outside the perimeter and this one might be good at you know going in for layups so you showcase those things you know when you're when they're available pass them the ball let them highlight their you know attributes and shoot the ball make all the threes in the world and you know go from there and hopefully develop your team so yeah even the best players I mean I mean now you're not you open the box the best players or you know refer to as the goats right they can't do it alone right yes they're showcasing the highlighting but just like any leader you have you have a team and everybody has a role to play to get you that championship because you can be the best player but you're probably not gonna win championships if you don't have everybody around to work and collaborate and for sure you are right and what interesting thing and you mentioned basketball I'm the follow sports in that too but if you look at a lot of the games where one of the big stars had a huge game and scored 50 60 points they often lose those games yeah all right so would they rather have 30 points in the team wins or 50 points and I set a personal record right yeah yeah I mean at the end of the day like ultimately it's that championship right yeah I mean you hear all these times these athletes that have done so you know their personal stats are off off the chain but they don't have that ring that ring is just like dude that's like the next level right that doubt as a leader you're now hey I can I can play with others I know how to how to how to collaborate work together and highlight and all the things that are necessary yeah and you know leadership is you know a lot like a team sport right you have to leverage those skills you have to leverage people's opportunities kind of give them the chance to develop and grow you know give them the ball a couple of times maybe maybe they're not quite there yet but you can always still develop those skills so and kind of just going back to the example that you gave us you know with the whole personal brand and how that led itself to being so innovative you know and really developing in that aspect something else that you know it kind of goes hand-in-hand with leadership is well actually one of our four leadership commitments is inspire people how can you know our leaders continue to do that or even implement that and inspire and motivate their team what what will allow them to be able to do that or what's what's a good play on that yeah I think there's a there's a few things I think about you know when you want to inspire other people one is authenticity so
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just be who you are don't try to be somebody else second is respect and this is you know you talked about what you were how you were raised and I was raised like you were to work hard and it'll pay off but I was also raised to just treat everybody with respect doesn't matter who they are
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inclusion so we talked about you know inclusion and I happen to mention this person I was talking about was diverse but part of the power of diversity is that you get diversity of thought and that's what can lead to to creativity and then having a growth mindset don't get locked in on your ideas your innovation your creativity right unlock the team so you know question your own assumptions avoid confirmation bias which is hard to do but because we all look for data that supports our opinion but those are the kinds of things I think a leader can do that that creates an environment that allows for that innovation and creativity to happen yeah no going back to not the visibility part but then you talked about the growth mindset piece that that could be difficult to for some you know either leaders but also teammates as a leader you're probably seeing some of your teammates having a fixed mindset not on purpose right an intentional unconscious about it or what have you so let's tap into that a little bit Mike so do you have any examples or any ideas of like leaders that say hey you have some team members that might be displaying or showing fixed mindset tendencies how do you help them overcome that or give his ability to say hey let's think of it in a different way and not this way because a big part of fixed mindset is not taking risk afraid of making mistakes all the things that go along with it and that hinders innovation yeah so I think there's a couple ways to address it one is I think you actually have to have the one-on-one conversation with the teammate and the person on your team and say this is what I'm seeing and it's and it's holding you back and I think you know you could be adding more value to the company and to the clients you know by opening up your your aperture a little so part of it is making sure they're aware of it right so you owe it as a leader to have the conversation with with the teammate to do that and then I think the the other way to do it is show them right so put them in a setting so where you bring in some people who you know have the growth mindset get them in operating in a team like that so that they begin to get comfortable with that and they see people who are
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challenging their assumptions who are constantly learning new things or trying new things because you alluded to innovation and creativity can be risky right so if you're afraid of fail you're not going to take a risk you're not going to create you're not going to innovate it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy right so you you hone the current model which you know we need to hone our current models make them more efficient make them more a better experience for our customers make them more profitable for our company but all models wear out after time right so you have to make sure you're innovating and creating and adopting new things along the way yeah no definitely I mean having to mean that's by the first step that a lot of leaders have a hard time is you know giving being direct giving honest feedback but in a way that they know you're intent right it's not to criticize you to say you're horrible at this or what have you it's more like this is what I'm observing I love that you called out this is what I'm seeing this is what I'm observing and this is the the consequence or the the you know the long term the effect that it can have if it's continues if you want to continue to grow develop this is when you know here's some recommendations to showing is gonna it's gonna help tremendously so that's that's what you call it have you ever been in the situation where maybe you've been in a fixed mindset if someone give you some feedback or add it to your awareness absolutely had the blinders on you know much to how Mike said my leader pulled me to the side and said hey you know we need to work on X Y & Z this is what I'm seeing and I light bulb moment right and you're like oh wow yeah you're absolutely right I'll go ahead and correct that and you know it was a simple conversation it wasn't anything major it was just like okay I can absolutely see it coming from that perspective and I don't want it to be shown in a light like that so let's let's go ahead and change some things let's open the aperture as you said so yeah yeah and it all comes to me then even take it the next I mean pretty well we talked about for a lot of our episodes is you know have building that trust with your teammate getting to know them they know you the authenticity so they know that hey I'm a real person like I'm here to help you and once that once you build that that feedback is it can be easily taken and received if you don't if you don't have the interaction with you never talk to them you rarely talk to them and all of a sudden you get no feedback oh my gosh they're gonna think the word you know they're gonna think I'm in trouble I did something wrong right because you never give me feedback so I think it's important to add that layer too yeah well the authenticity of the leader is I think super critical in that situation that's why it's I think it's so important to be authentic as a leader and be who you are if if I'm not authentic I'm trying to be something I'm not you're gonna see through it and you're not gonna trust me because you're gonna see that I'm trying to be something I'm not so if you don't trust me you're not gonna listen to my feedback I'm not gonna take a risk on creation or creativity or innovation because I don't really know where the leader stands so it's it's a critical element and and we're all authentic in different ways it doesn't there's not a recipe for that in my view I mean there's you mean there's not a secret yeah there's not this profile that goes here it is if you don't fit this yeah you know you say these five things and you're authentic it's a lot of done so easily like we've met people that were like yeah that's there you know we just we just know and even maybe not in the beginning people may look successful in the outside they may speak successful and eloquent but the more we get to meet them are like yeah no that's not that's not really them right that's what I mean by people see through the yeah yes authenticity yeah exactly yeah well Joyce Joyce doesn't you know she's really good by we see the knuckleheads yeah exactly exactly and that you know that definitely lends itself to you know your personal brand being authentic and showing that authenticity through your leadership it creates all of the obstacles as you mentioned you know you have to now navigate around somebody thinking that maybe you're just trying to sugarcoat things or you know maybe you're just not as authentic or maybe you're trying to come at it from a different angle and maybe not straightforward and went into what you're trying to get out you know if you're not authentic they assume you have ulterior motives so as opposed to us being on a common page they're like what what are they trying to do exactly what's the what's your end game yeah agenda yeah so let's move into so some roadblocks right are things that we might want to be mindful of as leaders when it comes to helping our team and innovation so there are some things that maybe we're doing as leaders not intentional right but that we might be doing to hinder their growth or development sometimes they're called diminishers instead of accelerating their growth we might say or do something that can hold them back not intentionally so what what are some things we need to be mindful of and I know as leaders we've made mistakes and we've done a couple things so do you have any like you know any recommendations or ideas of how to you know identify those roadblocks and say mitigate or try to avoid them in their leadership yeah I think you know one tendency is you know to criticize things when they don't when they don't go to plan right this didn't work we were under goal we're behind whatever whatever the problem was and while we need to acknowledge it we need to be careful not to criticize or punish mistakes because that reinforces the mentality of never make a mistake which reinforces don't take a risk don't innovate don't create so there's a fine line between you know celebrating what success is and then acknowledging what's not working but doing it in a productive and positive way and say hey these three things went really well this part did not how do we need to do differently to make that work better next time as opposed to saying you screwed up that last part and you know this didn't work because it becomes a vicious cycle yeah it reminds me of those you know just going back to watching movies or you know shows and stuff it's always like who's at fault here and who's getting voted off the island type of deal yeah nobody's gonna want to step forward no one's gonna want to speak I'm like I'm a dude I'm afraid if I say something I'm out right and then they get the ax so definitely not a fun environment definitely and I remind this of a tool that we use right the after action review and we always talk about that that it's a learning exercise not a who's at fault or who's to believe you know who to point the finger to and I think if you can take that seriously and really look it as a learning exercise it can help with innovation right because you learn from like what went well let's duplicate it what didn't go so well let's be mindful of not going that route and it just goes on from there so yeah the power of the after action reviews it gives you a framework to do it in that positive way right because the fundamental structure is very simple what was supposed to happen yeah right what were we trying to accomplish what did happen you know and what are the gaps from what was supposed to happen and what went well what didn't what could we do better what are we gonna do differently next time yeah and that's the key how do you build it into what are we gonna do better next time nobody's perfect we all make mistakes 100% yeah I really like that tool because it's almost as though you're optimizing but almost after the fact right in paid media it works in almost real time you see things you see numbers and then you start to shift based on performance right so if maybe one group of ads isn't working you shift budget to another pullback levers and things like that so the after-action review is very similar in that aspect except the project's done and now you're reviewing it after the fact so it's that's really cool optimization tool yeah no again it's a tool that we're constantly talking about and it's just you know if done right like a learning exercise if you really are following that that that template that that framework if you're going to see those you know those results but you have to be have to do it you know a lot of times just talking about it you have to do it yeah so another pitfall that I thought about you know you talked about right now over criticizing or pointing fingers and not because people will then all of a sudden take a step back you talked to earlier about again you know highlighting those those teammates those individuals to bring up their their talents or highlight or really what was the word you use Advik no what was it sponsor what can you do real time when you're seeing like let's say in a team meeting and you know that some teammates have potential but they're holding back even though you've been encouraging and all that is there any other best practices that you've learned over time to get them out of the shell at least make them feel comfortable to speak up or and be part of the conversation yeah I mean first of all again you have to create the environment where people feel like they can have an open conversation because if they don't then then it's really tough but if you have somebody who's maybe holding back or maybe they're introverted right a lot of times the introverted quiet people have fantastic ideas they're just not the one who's gonna I'm pretty extroverted right I'll just blurt my idea yeah but you just invite them into the conversation and you know literally go Z what do you think and then I'll just wait and I'll keep looking at like going I want to hear what you think and you know I don't don't let other people say why think Z wants to do acts or whatever I'm like no I want to hear what Z has to think about this right and I just and and do it in a non-threatening way I'd really like to know how you think about this or what's your perspective or what do you see is the pros and cons there's ways you can invite them into the conversation that you know opens the door yeah for that I think that's very important too because you have those those teammates that are extroverted that comes natural and they just jump in but I think to that level too is even providing dumb feedback right it's like hey I really I really value your engagement your participation but hey can we you know I challenge you I love the word challenge for some reason challenge just puts people like I want to challenge accepted right say I want to challenge you in our meetings to kind of hold back or take a moment and let others and see if we can get their ideas and by that now you're giving them the opportunity to be mindful but then even giving those those the feedback for the introverts of the folks that are thinking like hey during our meeting I'm gonna call on you give them a heads up or even afterwards hey thank you for participating I really valued that the insight you gave me I want to hear more of that right that was really and then maybe that encouraged them right so I learned I learned to think well I don't even know if this is true or not but it works so I'm gonna use it but that you're familiar with the Quakers like Quaker oat yeah Quaker oatmeal right Quaker oats
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what I heard is that the term Quaker came from the notion that you should feel so compelling about what you have to say that you're quaking before you say anything so in other words don't think don't say anything until you're so compelled to do so that you're quaking right so for people like Z I know you a little bit right you're kind of like me you're extroverted you're not afraid to engage it's like you almost have we almost have to take the reverse course and say I'm gonna shut up and try and listen and hear other people yeah instead of just put my ideas on the table and create the space for someone maybe rich is you know is an introvert and less likely but he will but if you and I are just going back and forth the introverts not going to jump in the middle yeah no I agree yeah and it gets to that point where like you know why why am I even gonna participate they got it they're always gonna jump in exactly yeah so kind of creating that environment I love that word environment where we're in a position where we know hey like I can easily jump in even that's the hardest part I think is that we're we're uncomfortable with silence yeah but we have to be comfortable with silence because that is good and that's where those in you know those creative minds those thoughtful teammates that are just have a great idea now we give them that space because we've toned it down exactly so you wanted to work for Mike because of all the cool things he does I wouldn't work for Mike because of his leadership style no but really great insights here today Mike is there any final thoughts that you want to share with our listeners today no I think I guess one other one other thought that struck me when we were conversing back and forth before this you know I thought about innovation and creativity and people and I used to do this years ago because people a lot of times people think well I'm not very innovative or I'm not very creative so I used to do this exercise where I would like ask people you know go around the room and think of the most creative people who are they and you would invariably hear things like artists musicians you know those kinds of things but the other thing you would almost always hear is children right children are very creative so I'd be like awesome how many people here were one time a child right you know so my whole point was you don't have to be an artist or a musician to be creative and innovative you have to get a little bit childlike right which is what children are typically in a growth mindset maybe too much of the time all the time they assume away reality they don't hold a lot of history and baggage and yeah you know things that they're bringing with them so kind of just getting yourself back into that that mindset right like be a kid for a while when you want to be innovative and creative that is my that's a mic drop because I mean you're tapping into somebody who's I can't drop this it's on really heavy stand but I'm a big improv guy I love improv and that's really going you got to tap into that child mindset of just plain to create something out of nothing yeah and that's that's innovation right and they don't care if it's silly or stupid yeah that's where some of the best ideas come from yeah and it's interesting growing up how many times when you know that moment in our life when we stop that is when we got criticized yeah someone said that's dumb why would you think that don't be a kid anymore and usually it happens in that middle middle age so like teenage years we're like it what do you be playing with that or you what are you doing and then you then you start to hold back and that's where we start to lose you get it gets trained out of you yeah yeah right yeah your parents say grow up yeah your teacher says stay within the lines dot dot dot right and those are all the things that hinders that growth ability exactly yeah wow I mean what a good fun so I mean we learned a lot is definitely one of those great discussions so Mike thank you for spending time with us and just having a casual car being authentic being yourself having a conversation with us and you know again those listening I hope you took a lot of good notes and tidbits and we look forward to future episodes and future discussions with a lot of our leaders absolutely and if you enjoyed this episode please be sure to like follow and subscribe so you know when we drop the latest content and thank you again and till next time thanks for leading with insight
Host
Z Tinoco is a diversity, leadership & organization development manager who believes in building teams, inspiring minds and creating authentic connections. He helps people reach their goals and find success through humor, leadership and a diverse mindset.
Co-host
Richard is an experienced paid media specialist with a proven track record of creating and executing successful campaigns across various platforms. Richard has a passion for tackling new challenges, connecting with people and loves all things tech.
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