The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Leading leaders who lead engineers (Interview)

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

This week we're joined by Lara Hogan -- author of Resilient Management and management coach & trainer for the tech industry. Lara led engineering teams at Kickstarter and Etsy before she, and Deepa Subramaniam stepped away from their deep roots in the tech industry to start Wherewithall -- a consultancy that helps level up managers and emerging leaders. The majority of our conversation focuses on the four primary hats leaders and managers end up wearing; mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, and delivering feedback. We also talk about knowing when you're ready to lead, empathy and compassion, and learning to lead.

What's up? Welcome back. I'm Adam Stachowiak, and you are listening to The Change Log. On this show, Jared and I talk with the hackers, the leaders, and the innovators from all areas of the software world. We face our imposter syndrome, so you don't have to. Today on The Change Log, we're joined by Laura Hogan. Laura is the author of Resilient Management, published by Book Apart, and a management coach and trainer for the tech industry. She led engineering teams at Kickstarter and Etsy before she and Deepa Submaranium stepped away from their deep roots in the tech industry to start Wherewithal, a consultancy that helps level up

managers and emerging leaders. I've been a tremendous fan of the ideas Laura shared over the years, and I'm so excited to share this episode with you. The majority of our conversation focuses on the four primary hats leaders and managers end up wearing, mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, and delivering feedback. We also talk about knowing when you're ready to lead, empathy and compassion, and learning to lead. Big thanks to our partners, Leno, Fastly,

and LaunchDarkly. We love Leno. They keep it fast and simple. Get $100 in credit at leno.com slash changelog. Our bandwidth is provided by Fastly. Learn more at Fastly.com. And get your feature flags powered by LaunchDarkly. Get a demo at LaunchDarkly.com. This episode is brought to you by Influx Data, the makers of InfluxDB, a time-series platform for building and operating time-series applications. In this segment, you'll hear from Shinjandu from Cisco on how they leverage InfluxDB and Telegraph on their Nexus platform data center switches and Nexus dashboard.

For context, Cisco's Nexus dashboard provides full-stack observability for data center networking services, and InfluxDB plays a key role enabling Cisco to stream telemetry data in real time on the Nexus platform. In Cisco, we build data center switching, which is Nexus platform. And on top of that, we also have a software running called Nexus OS. In Nexus OS, we can stream in all kinds of data, including configuration and operation of data. So customers trying to moving away from traditional monitoring called SMP and to streaming telemetry. But in order to consume data they have to develop their own collector and to processing that. But we have a good solution out

there which is the InfosDB. They have a telegraph InfDB, and also the Chronograph and Capacitor, and to processing the data and visualize data eventually. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we can just simply build two plugins for Telegraph and to consume whatever data coming from Nexus OS and also the notification system on top of that. All right, learn more about InfluxDB and Telegraph at influxdataata.com slash changelog. Again, nice to have you here. The Change Log, finally. I'm a big fan of yours. I've been reading and paying attention to you for so long. And I think it was back when I logged Laura Hogan on mentorship and sponsorship.

This is the first time I heard the idea of sponsorship and really dug deep. We logged that through our news feed and then I think I subscribed your newsletter like immediately after that. So it was super cool. That's so nice. That's so nice. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah. And you wrote that post back in 2017. I didn't find it until 2019. So sorry about that. It's evergreen, you know, is the kind of thing that I could talk about all day long, every single day for the rest of my life. It's, it's the kind of thing where it seeps into everything that we do. This idea that by default, we all tend to give advice to each other, but actually that's not the most powerful tool in our toolbox.

And there's all of these other tools, for example, sponsorship that we can use every day. So yeah, I find myself talking about it. My poor partner is sick of it at this point. Like, all right, I get it, Laura. Well, uh, so you've teed it up. What's the difference then? Yeah, Laura. Well, so you've teed it up. What's the difference then? Yeah, totally.

So, you know, if we step into a room with someone and we're so excited to support them, we, you know, we really want to see this person grow and learn. We see so much potential. Instead of defaulting to giving them advice to sharing our perspective, sharing what we've seen work and not work. Instead, it's really important to consider what are the opportunities that we can basically put our name on the line for on behalf of this person? Where can we throw their name into the ring? Where can we give them an opportunity to do visible, valuable work that's connected to business goals? We often forget that we can do this because, you know, we already have

folks in mind or we have folks with more experience or, you know, we have folks that are friends that we're already thinking about, you know, whenever a new opportunity comes up. But when it comes to helping people grow, sponsorship is actually the one, you know, studies have shown it's correlated to career trajectory, not mentorship. Mentorship is just like, here, let me show you all the things that I know to help you avoid pitfalls in the future. That's not growth. That's getting unblocked or maybe that's avoiding major issues, but that's not growth. So in a lot of my work, I'm trying to help folks, especially engineers, get out of the habit of believing that the best that we can do, the value that we can provide is sharing our knowledge. And instead think about these opportunities and where can we sponsor people for these opportunities.

You said it was correlated to what? When you said that you said it was correlated to something, I didn't hear what you said there. What was it correlated to? I don't know. Career growth, I think you said. Career growth. Oh, career growth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yes, it's correlated. I wasn't sure if it was like a research or something like that. I wanted to make sure I didn't look at my brain because if I'm not, I'll forget if not. Yeah, there's a ton of research. I mean, sponsorship is one of those things that's been studied for decades. And all of the studies show that people get further in their careers. They have more opportunities to do even more visible, valuable work. They're more likely to get

stretch assignments. They're more likely to get raises. They're more likely to have other people higher up in the ladder, know their name, you know, be able to connect to more projects. There's just so much data that says that that's where we should be investing our energy when it comes to supporting other people as they grow. And that's also what we should be asking for when we're thinking about our own growth. Like who are the people that know our work and might be able to vouch for us for the big, juicy leadership opportunities that, you know, like I want to start public speaking or I want to write a company blog post or I want to open source this project. Who are the people that could maybe vouch for me and help me put my name in the ring for those opportunities?

In some ways too, it almost forces you to not be in your own way. Absolutely. Because so often do we just not nominate ourselves because we're like, well, I'm sort of an imposter here. I'm not actually that good. I don't really do this well. Some people pay attention, but well, let's just face it. I'm not that good. And then somebody close to you nominates you or suggests you or sponsors you or advocates for you or, you know, refers you however it is.

And you almost feel like you have to do better because they, you know, you love them or you care for them or you appreciate them or whatever it is, their position in your life. And you're like, I have to live up to what they believe in for me. So it almost makes you do better even. Absolutely. I have this like sneaky trick question at the beginning of my workshop on mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring. And my sneaky trick questions, I have everybody who's in attendance share one thing the manager's done for them that has skyrocketed their growth.

And I don't tell anybody the difference between these three skills before we have this little intro. And everybody, nine times out of 10, they describe someone who's been a sponsor to them. And when I get to the sponsorship part of the workshop, I'm like, guess what? Everybody, not one of you mentioned mentorship when you were describing something that a manager's done for you that has skyrocketed your growth. One person mentioned coaching. Everybody else mentioned sponsorship. Like Jared and Adam, like think about a time when someone's done something for you that skyrocketed your growth. What was that?

Well, I'm glad you asked. I have that earmarked for something to mention. I've shared this before on this show, I think at least once. Thanks for asking. I know we have a show called Backstage where Mary L. Reese, doctor of clinical psychology who I co-hosted Brain Science with, she asked me a lot of questions about my past. And then very specifically back in the day when I was in the military, I was in what they call my MOS training. It's training for my job in the military, essentially. And I just hadn't really considered being a leader. I mean, I had leadership qualities. I was a strong person in my friend groups. You know, I wasn't like this shy person, but I just never really considered being the leader. And so the drill sergeant says to Kovac,

your first squad leader now out of nowhere because i guess the other person was messing up and i kind of correlate that the sponsorship it's kind of by force really so i'm not sure maybe you can help me judge if that's truly sponsorship or not but my drill sergeant believed in me enough or just picked me by random number whatever it might be but he's like you're now a leader and i was like uh okay what did i do i didn't do anything special. And then from that day forth, I just started to like learn specific things to be a leader in the military and to, you know, all these things, because that person believed in me

and in many ways by force, I was suddenly a leader. You know what I mean? So I like, I had to live up to that. And that was many years ago. And I'm still, you know, I think since that moment, I was like, wow, I can be a leader. That's absolutely sponsorship. That is 100% the definition of sponsorship. And that's the kind of story that I hear all of the time in these workshops from people. Like, I don't know why this person believed in me. I don't know why this person had faith in me. Like, I didn't think I could do this thing, but they did. And that skyrocketed my growth. 100% sponsorship. Have you been on the receiving end of that in your career? Me? Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh my goodness. It's funny because I also participate in the interest too.

So I was trying to pick a new example and there's just so many, you know, I think about the difference, you know, between a time when my manager went on parental leave for six months and at the top of the doc for his like coup de contact in different situations while I'm out, he put, if you have any questions at all, ask Laura. He was a VP. I was not. And I was not prepared for what that was like. He didn't ask me first. It was sponsorship, as you said, Adam, by force, sponsorship by force. But again, it connected me to so many different people within the business. I didn't know what CapEx or OpEx was. I didn't understand how headcount worked. And it threw me in the deep end in a way that really, again, skyrocketed my

growth. Or I talk about the person who was my manager, actually the same company when I was on deck to get a promotion to director. I was leading a web performance team. I was leading like a product infrastructure group. And my director was in the meeting vouching for me. And all the other directors in the meeting were saying yeah but maybe she's not technical enough like front end i don't know is all this just i think we have to she doesn't have enough back and she doesn't have other experience and my director was like you know she wrote a book about web performance right like i think that we can say that she's technical enough to have the job of a director like you all you know and that's sponsorship too that was behind closed doors i didn't know about that till much later but but that's awesome. Like sponsorship can be invisible

to you also. Yeah. You know, the thing too, I think with any sort of opportunity comes with more connection or just, just blatantly, not even like, you know, in network connection, but just more connection whenever you're in conflict, you know, the recipe to, to, you know, sort of disperse and, you know, mitigate conflict is more connection, not less connection. So you would think that anybody in anything really would just thrive on more connection. So what you're providing with sponsorship is just a greater social network, a greater work network, more connection to more people that know whether you're good or not doesn't really matter. It's your chance to now show up and prove or showcase who you are. And that connection can pay dividends over time.

I could not nod more enthusiastically about that. Right? Because it benefits you as a sponsor. You look so good by sponsoring someone else that goes and kills it on whatever we're working on. And you're building a new leadership bench. The only way that your organization, your team or whatever is going to survive is if you have a group of strong leaders there to pitch in. And the only way to get them to the place where they can pitch in is to provide them with sponsorship opportunities. Well, the way I kind of discovered some of your work was through your

book, obviously, Resilient Management. And you wrote an excerpt for the A List Apart website, which we're super huge fans of. I'm like forever, basically my entire career. And you wrote an excerpt for the A List Apart website, which we're super huge fans of. I'm like forever, basically my entire career. And like, if A List Apart showcases it, it's awesome stuff. But you wrote an excerpt there. And I also want to mention that you voiced your own book, which is super cool, by the way. I didn't expect that. And then I'm like, oh, that's really cool. So, but I read that and it kind of frameworks a lot of this, right? Leaders, managers, you got the idea of mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, and then delivering feedback. It's sort of like all the different hats you wear as a manager. How did you come up with this framework? Was this something you observed? Was this something that you sort of like defined yourself? How did you kind of know what I know today from this person, Paloma Medina. She was the Etsy L&D, Learning and Development Director there. And so basically everything that I talk about today, I learned in some way or was influenced

in some way by Paloma's work. When it comes to mentoring and coaching, two of the skills, I definitely learned the difference between those from her. But really, I started getting interested in sponsorship when I was trying to help the staff engineering group at Etsy start to add people who are not men to the group. I was trying to figure out what are all of the different ways that we build really homogenous leadership teams? What are the contributing factors? And I started doing a lot of reading about in-group bias. I started reading about,

you know, all of the different ways that we might start to measure the success of changing the demographics in a group over time. And I came across the work of someone named Erminia Ibarra, who's done a ton of work about on sponsorship and research on sponsorship. And she had this quote that stuck with me ever since then. And it's about women, but I think we can apply it to any member of a minoritized community. Members of minoritized communities are over-mentored, but under-sponsored. And I started to realize if I wanted to try to enact change within this staff engineering cohort, I needed to help these folks understand the difference between the two things. Understand that what they were doing was taking members of minoritized communities out to coffee to teach them what they know, but that's not the way to make this group

more diverse. The way to make this group more diverse is to help make sure that the people getting the next opportunities to do visible, valuable work are those members of the minoritized communities and support them in that way. And that was really a pivotal moment for me in understanding the power of this work and also trying to spread the good word about it to folks who are in positions of privilege and authority who can do it. Yeah, that's a challenging position to be in too, like sponsoring folks is like,

it's almost like, do they need my help? Maybe, you know, or like, you know, back to that sort of self-doubt potentially or the imposter, do they need my help? Maybe they just need my advice. Maybe they didn't even ask for it. Should I even give it? You're almost to some degree can be paralyzed by the ability, but I guess if you know you can help somebody, you know, you can help somebody.

Right. And there's a fear there, right? Of what if this person fails at the thing that I'm sponsoring them for? And that's real, that's valid. There's always that risk. But then what I try to do is coach people through like, okay, what happens? Let's play that out. Like what's the worst possible scenario. And then what can we do to prevent that scenario from happening? What are the check-ins? What are the other forms of support that this person might need to be successful? How are we measuring success? You know, how are we making sure that we are making this an accessible leadership opportunity to those who don't already have the implicit power or privilege that we do? There's a lot to unpack there, right? But it's a reasonable fear.

And I want to make sure people understand that that's not, it's not an abnormal one, but it's totally surmountable. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you vouch for somebody, you're lending your reputation. And so if they failed and your reputation is harmed, the next time, you know, somebody turns to you for advice, maybe they don't turn to you anymore because they're like, well, you let me down the last time.

I like what you said there with regard to the support, because in order to hedge your own risk, well, what do you do? Well, you don't just provide the vouching or the opportunity, but you also, you know, you don't just open the door, but you also give them what they need to walk through the door, right? And make it through the other side. That's really powerful. And that might also be advice, but it's really important to ask the person what they need rather than just assuming that what they need is still more of your advice because that may not be it. Like one of my most mind blowing moments was realizing that what someone needed was access

to a meeting where decisions were being made. So I invited them to shadow me at this important meeting. And honestly, it opened up so many doors from just the act of being there silent with me. Like there's so many different ways that support can manifest and advice is just one. Wow, yeah. The one shadow I can see happen, well, actually I get to witness it firsthand

was when I sat down with Sid Sabrandage from GitLab and he is diehard on his shadows going everywhere. Nice. So my show Founders Talk is really one-on-one. And so we sell it as one-on-one. And so when you have more than one in the room, it just can kind of put some performance operations there, potentially, like you might perform because someone else is there. Changes the vibe.

Or act a certain way. Yeah, it can really change the dynamics. And so as a believer in those dynamics and the one-on-one, I wasn't trying to advocate that they shouldn't be there, but just for the reasons of the show and how we did it. And I understood where they were coming from. The shadows came anyways, and that was totally cool with me. I agreed to it before. I didn't just show up and I was like, oh, we've got to deal with this.

I agreed to it. I thought it was a good idea given what that CEO shadow program does. And I just think that's super cool to do that because you get to really, like you said, you get to open those doors and just being there silently, but you get to witness somebody doing their thing. Right. And sometimes you can just like learn something by just osmosis. Like you just sort of see that happen and boom, you've sort of like gained this new opportunity because you saw it happen. And now you think, well, I could probably do that too. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you get to see so many different ways that leadership manifests.

Like that's something else I think a lot about is there's not just one way to be a leader and to be able to have access to a diverse group of leaders shows you all of the different ways that you might want to hone your own approach to leadership too. And there's something really powerful. It sounds like in what they're doing, allowing them to not just witness them you know performing or being part of a podcast or being a ceo but all the way people that they're interacting with too yeah that's cool you can see a new side of that person too and gain or probably lose some respect from depending on that risk but yeah there is some risk there but i think you know one thing i love particularly about Sid is that he seems to be the same person no matter where he's at you know he seems to showcase the same values and that could be a filter I don't know because I only really see him in I suppose professional spaces but I've

never really and I've met him personally too I've never observed him in any way where he's like okay this is a different Sid or he like he's angry so now he's this way you know or whatever or there's pressure so he acts this way it always seems to be the same kind of cool, calm, collected, calculated Sid that thinks, but then also has empathy and compassion in his words and responses. And also seems to be a good person to admit when he's wrong and willing to change. You know, I think that's even witnessing that, you know, face-to-face in a shadow program is enough to change somebody. Totally.

I talk a lot about the idea of our default approach in a lot of my workshops and coaching sessions just because we all do have a default approach to leadership. How it looks to other people is a default approach. But it's really important to switch it up when the context calls for it. So I'd be really curious. Maybe it's a question I can ask him someday. It's like, okay, in what situations does that approach not work for you or not work for your team? What are the opportunities that you have to like switch it up based on what's needed? It's hard. Yeah. So you've mentioned the difference between sponsorship, mentorship, and coaching. I want to dive into the coaching bit a little bit, but put a pin in that first,

because you're also talking management and leadership. And I wonder if you differentiate those two or if you don't. And if so, what are the differences? What a time, you know, honored tradition of trying to define these two very broad, mixed up categories. Just like, honestly, just like mentoring and coaching tend to also be really conflated a lot of the time. I do find a distinction between them a lot. But just like a rectangle, a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle may not be a square. Management and leadership are a little bit like that. Where you can be a manager and also a leader.

And you can also be a leader and also a manager. But sometimes they're really distinct. So I think a lot about facilitators in meetings. Someone who's a facilitator of a meeting, they may not be managing anybody. They may not be managing the content, but they're probably leading the meeting in a way, even if they don't have any interest in what's happening. That's a pretty clear distinction to me. Every company is different in how they define it. Like in a lot of companies, staff folks, meaning staff engineers, staff designers, whomever, are leaders, but they

don't have distinct management responsibilities. But again, it's all kind of messy. When I talk about management, I talk about it in terms of like, are you supporting other people as they grow? That actually applies to people who are not managers too, which is why I like to use the definition of management instead. That way I can say, okay, these skills may apply to you, whether or not you have technical HR responsibilities in your role. Do you think leader is more on like the inspiration side of things than the doing of the details tasks thing? Because like management seems to be task-based-ish, you know, and then leadership seems to be more visionary, more, you know, that kind of way where you're sort of inspiring, you know, greatness in others, you know, or to go or believe in the direction. Like it kind of requires a bit of salespersonship to sort of say,

this is our mission, you know, whether you like it or not. Maybe they don't deliver it that way. Maybe it's more like this is our mission because, and this is why I believe in the mission. And so that seems to be more leadership. Maybe that's how I would break it down. It seems more like inspire versus tasks and do. Versus require, you know, organization. What'd you say? Oh, I said inspire versus require just because it rhymed. Sorry. So that was actually what I was going to say, but I thought

it was a little too cliche. I'm here for you. Oh, mind melt. I, so actually I've been a lot of managers and worked with a lot of managers that do that. And that's actually actually part of their job. Like they can't get everybody to row in the same direction unless they do that too. And leaders often have a lot of tactical responsibilities. So I actually more think of it as a spectrum between being empowering and being directive. And a leader and a manager can end up anywhere on the spectrum. And we all have a default on that spectrum. So my default is actually on the empowerment end. My default with, in the absence of context, I will ask everybody a million open coaching questions, which Jared, I know you want to talk about coaching, but that doesn't always work, right? Sometimes you need to be directive. Sometimes you need to mandate a desk move.

Sometimes you need to tell someone what their job is. Sometimes you need to give feedback. That's not coaching, but instead it's like, I need you to do this thing right now. That's directive. Again, some people default to the directive end of the spectrum. They're like, okay, here's what I need. Here's how it's going to happen. Here's how we're moving forward. But they don't leave lots of room for empowerment. They don't ask lots of questions. They don't find sponsorship opportunities. They don't ask people how they want to grow. So again, based on the circumstance, based on situation, we all have a default, but that default won't be useful to us in all circumstances. Strong leaders and strong managers need to know when to switch up their approach based on the given circumstances.

So I would argue that managers and leaders both have to do these things and just company specific responsibilities really just change. I like that you call it a spectrum, honestly, because I almost feel like you can take a test and see where you land on that. Or maybe you can even evaluate the thing you're doing currently and like, which direction is this? I have that. Is it sort of center in the spectrum? Yeah. In one of my workshops, we go through that. I give a bunch of example scenarios. I actually have people draw the spectrum and like mark on the line where they would end up based on the scenario. Like you found out that one of your direct reports is being mean to your

other teammates in meetings. Do you respond with empowerment or direction? A senior leader is talking over you, interrupting you. Empowerment or direction? One of your direct reports comes to you with a job offer, competing job offer at two times their current salary. Do you default to empowering or being directive? Again, like it's really interesting to see. And then in the workshop,

I have everybody hold up their lines so we can see kind of where people landed. At the time you know are really yeah so people are really close together and where they landed so people are all over the place and again i think it's just a way to say like we have to adapt based on the circumstance yeah that sounds fun it's interesting we have fun well i think you know it's kind of theory right to some degree where do you land so it's like you have to understand the mechanics behind things and the frameworks behind things to maybe even determine that. And I guess you could somewhat guess too, if you, if you weren't really skilled in the theory and the details behind things, but you know, it really does give you an idea of like,

okay, this is where I'm defaulting to, as you've said a few times, maybe that's not a good place to default to, but it's okay. It's the truth. And we can all sort of grow from the truth currently. Don't lie to yourself, basically. Right. Exactly. If you're defaulting here and it's like, and you're erring on the side of like, well, that's not actually, you know, optimistic or, you know, that's not a good way to be, then you got to change, but you at least know where you're at. Yes. You got to be honest about, and also be honest about where that default is most successful. What are the circumstances? What's the environment in which your default way of operating works best? That way you can start

to think about, okay, now when are the times when I might need to switch it up? And how can I experiment with that to know when it's time for me to switch it up? How can I know when to do that really effectively too? this episode is brought to you by retool retool is the loco platform for developers to build internal tools super fast and super easy. They have a ton of integrations and templates to start with. With a click of a button in seconds, you can start with a new Postgres admin panel application, kick off an admin panel for reading from and writing to your database built on Postgres. This app lets you look through, edit, and add users, orders, and products.

It's too easy to get started with Retool. Head to retool.com slash changelog to learn more and try it for free. Again, that's retool.com slash changelog. So, Laura, we mentioned your excerpt from your book, Resilient Management, on a list of part. I love that. And that's kind of where I saw this framework. I guess, full disclosure, I haven't read your book in completion.

I have listened to some of it. So to give myself a little pat on the back, but you laid out this framework quite well. I listened to a little bit of it. I listened to a little bit of it. I want to listen to all of it. Actually, I think I'd rather listen to it than read it now that I've heard it because you got a great voice. I think you speak very well through it. And I'm actually much more of an audible listener than a reader. I do like to read. I said this yesterday on, I think some outro of JS part or something like that, but

I do read, but I prefer to listen. So with that aside, you mentioned how leaders, managers, they end up wearing these different hats, four different hats distinctly, mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, and delivering feedback. Kind of go into the details of kind of what each of those mean and we can sort of go from there. Absolutely. So mentorship is all about sharing your perspective, sharing your advice, sharing what you've seen work and not work, suggesting pitfalls that this person can avoid. It's all about sharing your own knowledge and handing it over to this person. So mentoring is really useful when someone's blocked and just needs a little bit help getting unblocked. And it's also really useful for when someone's being onboarded to a new role, new company, whatever. Those are really the only two use cases where mentoring is useful and powerful.

The other three skills of coaching, sponsoring, and feedback are the ones that I try to emphasize that anybody who's supporting other people should really focus on and hone their skills in. So coaching is all about asking lots of open questions and helping this person reflect, connect their own dots, develop their own brain wrinkles. So it has nothing to do with your own knowledge, which is very hard for many of us that have been taught that our knowledge is the value that we provide. So open coaching questions, championing someone, reflecting back what you're hearing them say, these are all tools that we can use to help someone kind of sit back and say, all right,

am I actually looking at this from all different directions? Have I truly identified the problem statement in hand that's the real one that I want to tackle? What's hard about this? What's surprising about this? Sitting in that messy space unlocks so much more than we could have ever unearthed before. And that's where the power comes in is the ability to kind of look at something from all different angles, not just the rote surface level ones and figure out what we need to do specifically to move forward. Sponsorship is, you know, feeling on the hook to get someone to the next level by putting their name in the ring, giving them visible opportunities to do valuable work, you know, again, connected to business goals, ideally.

And then feedback, we all know feedback. Feedback is giving someone a steer, you know, as specific and as actionable as possible to how they could do something even better or why what they're doing right now is really working. I could go on all day about those last three skills and why they're powerful and how to do them. You know, as you were saying that though, about coaching, I kind of thought since I've got some experience with therapy and working with psychologists and co-hosting a podcast with a psychologist, they seem to really camp out in coaching.

Yeah. Because the thing I sort of grew up most from a therapist and somebody receiving therapy is they want to help them find the path by asking questions and let that person determine what's the right move. Because it's not about them telling, you know, the patient what the right move is or the determination or whatever it might be it's about helping them discover where they need to go because let's face it if you come to your own choices you have so much more power when you're an advocate in your own choice rather

than given the choice it's not really a choice so you can feel far more comfortable in that next step or steps because you came to that conclusion yourself. Absolutely. And you're unique. You're a journey forward. You might be pulling on information from other people to kind of help you shape that journey forward, but it's going to be unique to you. No one else can give you the answers that you need. So that's why I personally find coaching really valuable

is everybody is so unique. I can't assume that my experience is going to map to theirs or my solution could be useful to them. What's way more powerful that I can't assume that my experience is going to map to theirs or my solution could be useful to them. What's way more powerful that I can provide these days are open coaching questions and open coaching questions. You know, they're not closed. They can't be answered in yes or no or a number. And they're not leading like, what if you tried? That's mentorship. That's advice, right? That's giving a solution. So in coaching mode, which is really, really hard to stay in, in coaching mode, you're asking genuinely curious, open, broad questions. And I find that the best ones start with the word what. Like what's important about this? What's

hard about this? My number one favorite open question to use is what are you optimizing for? Because in any different situation, everyone's optimizing for something different, right? But we never think about it. Like whenever I ask someone, you know, let's say we're talking about a conflict that they're having and they can't figure out how to move forward. I'm like, all right, so in this situation with this relationship, what is it that you're optimizing for? Usually they'll sit back in their chair and be like, huh? And that's what I'm looking for as a coach. I want that moment of like actual true. Like I'm stumped for a sec. I need to actually sit down and process this.

That's where the magic of coaching happens. Yeah. I laugh because this is Adam's favorite statement, isn't it? What are you optimistic about? I mean, I think, you know, you, you have to know where you're going, right? You can't take the steps forward with any assurance if you don't know where you're trying to go otherwise you're just sort of haphazardly moving along your path and you think you know where you're trying to go but if you haven't really like consider what am I optimizing

for what am I really trying to do in this situation your list becomes so much more concise you can go from eight to four really easily or maybe eight to one because you're like these things are not important so they don't matter, at least today. And I think a lot of that comes from me reading, gosh, what is that book called? What is it called, man? It's called Essentialism. Essentialism.

You know, I think a lot of that book is really about the, you know, getting rid of the trivial many and the vital few. Like you have to whittle down to the things that really matter and you can't get to the vital few unless you get away with a driven many. And you can't do that unless you know what you're optimizing for. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. What's essential. Well, and you know, when I'm working with coaching clients and I asked them the, what are you optimizing for a question? And they give me two answers. I forced them to turn it into an even over statement. Like I'm optimizing for speed, even over quality. You got. Like I'm optimizing for speed even over quality.

Prioritize those two. You're right. You got to get down to just one. You can time box it like you said. Like in this season, I am optimizing for blah. Because you know it's going to change and that's cool. Another question that you have on your list, which I ask guests all the time on the show, which I really like, is what does success look like? That's a hard question to answer.

I think we get most people kind of stop and have to think for a minute. And that's really what you're trying to get them to do, right? As a coach is to think for yourself and then go along for that ride. Totally. Yeah. And we, we spend so much time talking about potential failures. It's hard to remember. We need to also think about what success looks like too.

Yeah. One of my favorite questions also on that list that I stole from Paloma failures, it's hard to remember. We need to also think about what success looks like too. One of my favorite questions also on that list that I stole from Paloma Medina, who I mentioned earlier is what is the worst possible outcome? And then what's the most likely outcome? Yeah. Cause we tend to focus on what the worst thing could happen, right? Which is the first part of the question. Cause it's worth knowing, it's worth thinking about that. But then also putting that in context of like, now how likely is it that that one happens, right? And usually it's like, the reason it's the worst is it's literally the

outlier of the statistical things that could happen. Doesn't mean don't think about it, but let's not give it so much weight in our minds, right? What's more likely to happen? Precisely. Yeah, we can honor it. We can honor it by by naming it and then we can focus on the more likely outcome. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So as I read through your different terms here, I guess the coaching was the one that's tripped me up. I think I don't want to get too much into like a semantic discussion

about words, but coaching, I just bring a lot of context to coaching, mostly in my life of sports where I've been a coach and I've also been an athlete on a team. And it seems like what I think of coaching is prior to reading this really actually what a coach does on a sporting team is actually all these things, you know, because they are instructive. They are giving you what you ought to do, but then they're also asking you questions and helping you grow. And they're also putting you in the captain's spot or, Hey, you're pitching today. They're sponsoring people.

So I think I just, when I saw coaching, I was like, is this really what coaching is? But I wonder if that's just like the difference between business or maybe like adult to adult coaching versus like sports. And maybe there just aren't lines that we can draw between the two. Totally. Yeah. I think that that's one of the challenges, right? Is that the term coach in specific context absolutely means a blend of all those three things. Like in sports, I think I might even call that out in the book specifically. Like if you have any sports background at all, you might think of coach as probably actually more of a mentor. Most, most people who I talk to when they think about coaching or being coached on a sports

team, they talk about mentorship, but you're right. It's not just mentorship. It's not just giving advice. A lot of feedback. Right. Exactly. Absolutely. And as you said, sponsorship too, right? So totally. When it comes to the term coaching, I think it's distinct from the role. And you're right. The role in a business context is like a leadership coach or a life coach, right? That's a particular kind of role that's distinct from, let's say, a sports coach. Yeah. 100%. So dive more into delivering feedback, because I think this is something that we all do,

and we all don't always do well. You mentioned actionable. Specific. Specific. Is there any other heuristics of like, here's how to give good feedback versus not so good? I mean, I could give an additional whole episode just about feedback. Originally, the chapter in the book had a whole different separate feedback chapter. And then I started to realize,

actually relates to mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring, because we can do those three things of mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring when we're giving feedback too. So when I think about good feedback, a lot of the way that I think about it is derives from SBI, Situation, Behavior, Impact, that framework, where situation, we've got to be able to talk about the facts. What's my observation of the behavior I'm giving feedback on?

Just the facts means not my assumptions, not my judgments. I'm trying to make sure I'm keeping my own opinion at first part of the feedback because what we want to avoid is someone receiving the feedback getting amygdala hijacked. So we want to avoid their fight or flight response kicking in. And you all know, same is true for me. If I'm getting feedback or if I even smell feedback is coming, my whole body freezes up, right? My amygdala, the part of my brain that's responsible for trying to keep me safe, be on the lookout for threats. It senses a threat that's headed our way. A lot of how I think about

feedback has to do with trying to keep that amygdala chilled out and keep our prefrontal cortex, the rational, logical, practical part of our brain online. So just the facts means let's make sure that this person's amygdala is like, yeah, that's true. That's all happening. What you just described is real and I can attest that that is a real thing. So start with the observation. Next, though, we can talk about the impact that this person's behavior has had. Traditionally, we've been taught to frame the impact of the behavior based on what we as the feedback giver care about. So let's say someone's writing really terse emails to me. I'm mad that all the time they write like four to five words. It's a waste of my time. I always have to respond, you know,

and get more information. I feel like they're mad at me all the time. Those are all my perspectives and why I want to give the feedback. I challenge everybody who's giving feedback to instead of saying why you think that this feedback is important for the person to listen to, why do they care about it? What do they already care about? And how does this feedback relate to that thing? Like in the example of the person writing really terse emails, they probably care about getting this project done on time. So I might say, Hey, listen, when you send me emails at this length, I need to respond and ask for more information, which adds time to the process, which means that the thing you want to have done

takes three times longer than it normally would. So you see what I'm doing? I'm distinguishing between why I want to give the feedback to my boy. It's really hard to put ourselves in their shoes. But again, we want to keep their amygdala chilled out and their PFC online. So by describing it in terms that they care about, it's really, really useful. And then the final thing I like to do is close with an open coaching question. So again, we've been taught to make a request. Like, therefore, could you please send longer emails? But if you have hit the nail on the head with the facts, like they're on board, and you've also hit the nail on the head with what they care about, they're already thinking about

what they want to do next. You don't need to tell them. That's mentorship mode, right? It's just saying, therefore, could you please? And usually you won't come up with as good of an idea as they will. So instead of making this a one-way feedback dump, ask an open question, which turns it into a two-way dialogue where you're brainstorming together about what we could do going forward, what this person needs. Again, what are you optimizing for? When you write emails, what are you optimizing for? Steal any of the open coaching questions

and see what that does for your feedback conversations. And hopefully you are lowering the chances of an amygdala hijack of a fight or flight response happening in that feedback conversation. Yeah, that could be like the bomb going off, right? Like, oh, come on now. And next thing you know, you're fighting. There's a conflict instead of a resolution, which you really want the resolution. Yeah, they've shut down. There's no more communication. There's no more connection.

No one wins. Yeah, they've shut down. There's no more communication. There's no more connection. No one wants. Yeah, exactly. I like that, that you lead with what you assume, though, what they're optimizing for. Like, you're assuming because of certain observations,

the length of the email, their characteristics, you know, their behavior in meetings, whatever, that they care about time. Right. And so, you know,

you're sort of capping on that and saying, if you really care about time, you know, here know, you're sort of capping on that and saying, if you really care about time, you know, here's how we can, here's the challenge together. Here's how it impacts you and me. And you're finding

common ground as well. Absolutely. And you might get it wrong, right? You might get the impact part wrong. You may totally mistake what they actually care about. In which case, you're gonna have to try again,

but only after you do some more digging. And you could do this work, this pre-work up front. You can spend time asking questions about what they're optimizing for or what's most on their mind. What are they focused on the most right now? Or what's worrying them?

What's motivating them? Any of those kinds of questions can help you get the data that you need before you give the feedback. And sometimes I like to actually open feedback with the impact that they care about first. Like, hey, I know you care. We've talked so much about this. I know it's really important that we ship this by Tuesday. So I've got some feedback I'd like to give

to make sure we can ship this by Tuesday, right? So you can see how by kicking it off with what they care about, their brain's like, oh, huh. I still hear the word feedback. I might get a little bit tense. Like, you know me, you hear me, you see me. Like, maybe I'll be open to hearing this feedback

because it seems like we maybe care about the same thing. And you're also kind of identifying the reward, which is kind of leading into the habit loop even. Totally. You know, because the habit is the email and the habit is the length or lack of length of the email, you know. And so the reward really is like, OK, I get back to work. But maybe you shift the reward to say, OK, well, you get back to work, but we delay shipping because X, you know? But wait.

And so you're sort of like identifying their reward, or I suppose the team's reward. There's a lot of psychology really in this process. Like, I mean, that's the thing I'm learning more and more, especially as we look like your chapter titles, you know, setting clear expectations, communicate effectively, and then building resiliency. That's a lot of things that happens, you know, in from a psychologist to a, you know, a patient in therapy. It's very much a lot of this. When did you begin to study the brain? I suppose to know the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, you must've done some digging into research and which books did you read? How

did you get curious? Where'd you dig? I can tie all of this again, back to that same person, Paloma Medina at Etsy, who has done a lot of research on organizational psychology, but also just the neuroscience behind why humans behave the way that they do. Since she's worked at Etsy, she's done a number of incredible things, including starting a shop about productivity tools for our brains and the neuroscience behind productivity at work, you know, psychological safety, all of these things. She's just incredible. So a lot of what I initially learned was from her. And honestly, like you all know, engineers, we just get so hooked on the data and the science behind things. It's easy. It's an easy way in to get people to start to think about, okay, what are all the ways that we humans are behaving the way that we are? One of the things that she

taught me very early on was this framework, this acronym she calls BICEPs. And BICEP stands for the six core needs that humans have at work. And again, this is all like neuroscience, but also anthropology and a lot of social sciences trying to study why do humans behave the way that they do and what do we need? What do our amygdalas try to secure and ensure for us to keep us safe at work? And it's things like a sense of belonging, a sense of community. You know, if we feel othered or left behind, our amygdala considers

that a threat. A sense of improvement and progress, a sense of choice, fairness, predictability, you know, these, all of these things in the biceps core needs list, you know, it's all neuroscience backed. Thanks to Paloma, I have learned so much more about all of the surprising ways that humans behave and deal with each other at work. How about any particular books that you've read recently? I can mention for me, Atomic Habits has been like, so on my prefrontal cortex, I'm thinking about a lot, you know what I mean? I'm always thinking about like habits and habit loops and just how the 1% improvement can change things.

I'm curious what you're reading. Go-to is always Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. It's all about how do I influence change in any context when I don't have power or authority or control over the situation itself. They include a bunch of studies, a bunch of anecdotes, real case studies about how you all must be familiar with don't mess with Texas slogan and where that came from. Yeah. I know the slogan. I live there. Yeah. Yeah. Don't mess with Texas. Do you know where it came from? No. No. I also didn't know. I learned it from switch. I'm going to butcher this story. So apologies to everybody involved. Go read the book to get the real story. But

the end of the day, there was too much littering. There was a bunch of littering happening in Texas. And so the government tried to brainstorm, okay, how do we get littering to decrease? And they made this ad with this cowboy picking up litter off the road and putting it in a trash bin and saying, don't mess with Texas. And that's where it was born out of. And you know what? Littering decreased significantly after this ad campaign kicked off. So again, it's all influence, right? It's all a lot of psychology that you mentioned. It's a lot of neuroscience-backed stuff.

It's fascinating. How do we influence change to happen, positive influence, when we don't have complete control of the situation? Well, I think that may have worked. I'm going to assume a lot because I haven't read the book. Because Texas seems to be very prideful about their land, you know, the size of things, you know, everything's bigger in Texas, you know, things like that. And I think that probably, you know, and a cowboy is like a significant. Yeah. It's a model. I guess model for a lot of people in this space. The cowboy hat, we have the rodeo here every single year. It's massive.

I'm not from Texas originally, so I can't claim these things as native for me. I came here as quickly as I could, which is a common phrase to a transplant to Texas. But, you know, I'm from the Northeast. But long story short, you know, I didn't grow up with cowboys. I didn't grow up with the things I see here in Texas all the time. But I can see that's probably why it worked well, because it took this common model and the pride of the land and the respect for the space and the desire for it to be the best it can be and attach that to something that really matters, which is stop littering. Right. Yeah. And that comes back to the Biceps Core Needs List. The B stands for belonging. Like we are a part of a community,

right? We identify with this role model. We, you know, we, we want to support each other as a community of Texas and significance is the S. So in the hierarchy, like we have a lot of pride in our land, in our state, you know? So like, again, there's two core needs. Again, the book goes into this in so much detail, but those two core needs, again, that our amygdala is working really hard to secure and to ensure for us, they're present. And it's a huge way to get people to listen, to get people to care, to get people to be motivated, you know, to do something. This episode is brought to you by Sentry. Build better software faster. Diagnose, fix, and optimize the performance of your code. Sentry just shipped their SDK for Next.js. Now, in your Next.js apps, you can capture errors, measure performance, manage releases, configure suspect commits, and automatically upload source maps to view unminified JavaScript

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century.io and use the code, the change log. so Laura a lot of our audience are engineers or were engineers and now are managers and leaders and it's always a difficult thing deciding if that's a move for you once you've decided that it is making the transition like what does success look like in that case? You've done the transition a while ago and now you're succeeding and teaching other people how to be managers and leaders. So advice for us and for our audience about how do you make a decision like that? And once you do, how do you navigate that successfully? I love this question. I talk to and work with a lot of people that have made the transition multiple times.

One of my former colleagues, Dan Na, has written a bunch about how do you choose? How do you make decisions? How do you know when to go back and forth? You know, when is it right? There's just so much good stuff out there. The way that I like to think about it is the same question we've been talking about, like the what are you optimizing for question. Get really clear on that for yourself because that's a precursor to knowing whether or not you can actually achieve

that thing you're optimizing for in a different role. If you're optimizing for gaining more power, for example, and you're thinking about becoming a manager, you may not actually get more power. It'll be really important for you to like do some research, talk to some other managers to ask about what they have influence on, what they have authority over, et cetera, because it's often a bad surprise. If you're optimizing for making a new team charter, a new vision, giving the team purpose, maybe that's a possibility at your company. If you're optimizing for a change of pace, I guarantee you management will give you a change of pace. But then I would ask, okay, what are you optimizing for with the change of pace?

And that could also breed additional questions. So getting clear about what you're optimizing for will allow you to figure out whether or not you can have success in the other role in either direction. People who skip this step of asking themselves, what am I optimizing for when I'm thinking about changing roles, often change roles and then hate it because they find out that they can't achieve the thing that they were optimizing for because they were working under a bunch of assumptions or that's just not how it works. So the role doesn't have as much authority or power as they thought it would.

When I was experimenting with leadership and management and thinking about that, I just really, really, really wanted to support the people that I was working with day to day. I was working at a really small startup and we were basically the UI UX front end site performance developers. And we didn't have a manager that knew any of that stuff. Our manager really only knew Pearl. And as much as we could spend all day talking about Pearl, I really want to be able to provide a little more structure, a little bit more career progression for folks that were experimenting at the time with like CSS 2.0. Oh, my goodness. You know, I think about those sorts of things.

So for me, it was about providing a team environment where we could, you know, kind of self-identify as this front end slash UX group. And so for that reason, becoming a manager worked. Like I was able to achieve the thing I was optimizing for with that role change. There've certainly been times when I've thought about other kinds of role changes and I wanted to figure out, could I be as successful in that new role based on what I was optimizing for? And the answer has always been different. So yeah, I would definitely suggest thinking to yourself and getting really clear with yourself about what you're optimizing for before making a switch. Yeah. Something that I learned while doing the show Brain Science, which I've mentioned before

with Dr. Meryl Reese was a thing she had said was try it on. So any new big decision, like anything really in particular. So in this case, this transition, try the thing on, you know, how could you sort of get a feedback loop quickly?

So I guess step one would definitely be what are you optimizing for? Okay, sure. I do want to think about this decision or consider it. How can I first take a step to try it on? How can I try this decision on temporarily? How would my drive to work change? And maybe in these times, there's no drive to work. How would, you know, my interactions with my counterparts that I really care about, like in your case, I want to step up and help in these ways because I care about this team and what we're trying to do. How does my relationship change as a result of this? How does my relationship change at home? You know, beyond just simply

work, because sometimes we make work decisions or professional decisions and kind of forget that like we have other constraints that don't map to that opportunity. And like you had said, if you don't consider what you're optimizing for, you know, in our case, I know for us running this business, Jared and I, we have certain personal constraints that help us navigate choices we make in the business. Things we just definitely probably will never do. And I have a hard time saying absolutes. Jared, you probably know me to do that. So that's why I say probably never, but maybe not. But the point is that we have certain things that give us structure and constraints to say, okay, well, when we make that transition or we do that kind of thing, how can we try it on? Or know what we're optimizing for to do that.

It's such a key phrase. What are you optimizing for is such a key phrase in so many places. Really, it is. Absolutely. You're at the grocery store trying to decide between different apples. What are you optimizing for? Chris? Yeah, absolutely. It is. Really, it is. Absolutely. You're at the grocery store trying to decide between different apples. What are you optimizing for? Crisp.

Or small. Absolutely. Hold the whole thing in. Price. Freshness. Bulk. But back on that point of trying it on, Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path, is just so brilliant in so many different ways. And one of the ways is that her first few chapters are all about before becoming a manager, what are the different ways you might try on some of those responsibilities? So in what way can I be a mentor?

In what way can I be a tech lead? You know, trying it on before you actually go in. So if folks are trying to figure out how they could try it on, definitely check out Camille Fournier's book, The Manager's Path. Yeah, it's great. So we're a fan of Camille, and she also wrote the intro to your book, right? The foreword for your book. And then she also obviously wrote her own book, The Manager's Past.

And I think as part of her story too, a blog post you had written while she was writing that book was so influential to her. Like she had to kind of incorporate some of your ideas. So I definitely want to give a shout out to Camille. She's awesome. Hey, Camille. Do you find, and I'm asking you to generalize here. Do you find that engineers make good managers? That is an impossible question to answer. I like it.

Give us a shot. terrible managers. I find that one of the hardest parts about transitioning to management from any individual contributor worker work is the lack of measurable progress. So in engineering, you're shipping things, you've got code reviews, you see things launch, like you actually have observable progress forward. In management, a lot of your work is invisible, or there's a long lead time between when you do a thing or say a thing, and you see the results of that thing. If ever, you might do a thing or say a thing and think it's incredible and then nothing ever happens. One of the ways that I coach managers struggling with this is to start to think about celebrating wins, tiny, tiny, tiny wins that might have to be confidential with a supportive group that you trust to keep those wins confidential. Like somebody could be like, all right, that reorg, it's done. I can't tell if it's good yet, but it's done.

Let's celebrate, you know. Find some way to kind of basically measure and observe progress in yourself and your work as a manager. It's challenging, certainly. Yeah, I like celebrate the wins too. We said a lot around here. You know, even one time, I think we were in a call.

I can't remember how far back, but Jared was just sort of like down a little bit and he's like i just need to win i just need to ship something and get it out there and like and like just know it's done you know like he's very task oriented very list and if there's a list in front of him it's not done like he's fretting about it like he wants that that list to be done i feel that and so celebrate and that's a different context but you know celebrating the wins is something I like to say a lot too for us even because I think too often you just forget to like, if you waited to celebrate, it's almost like a process over goals. Like if you only celebrate the goal and not the process, right? That's kind of the thing. Like that's a process.

Getting the reorg done was part of the process. It may have been the goal too, but, you know, if you don't celebrate the the little steps parts of those processes happening getting done then and you wait to the goal the goal is always moving almost always moving right it's always sort of changing and you sort of camp out in this process land and just celebrate those wins yeah i wrote an article for increment on this exact topic for anybody that has invisible work how do you start to identify where you can measure or even just mark those wins? I borrowed a lot of research about microtasks and how our brain gets that sweet, sweet dopamine hit from the act of checking something off of a list. And that's what we crave, that dopamine.

Yeah, it is. It's all for the dopamine. Dopamine is a, I'm sure everybody knows what it is, but it's basically this chemical in your brain that you love to get that is a reward factor. I'm paraphrasing terribly, of course, but it's this thing in your brain that occurs when you do things that you like. It's feedback to say that was good. I like to do more of it, basically. And sometimes your brain even releases it in anticipation of checking something off of your list. It's great. And then what happens if you don't get the thing checked off?

Does it like go back? It's a bummer. It teaches your brain that like maybe we don't need to do this. Maybe this person's failure. So is that article

called Your Brain on Progress? It is indeed. All right. We'll put that one in the show notes along with all the other things. Thank you. I want to read that too

because I haven't read that one yet and I'm all about progress. What about stories? I'm sure someone like you have got tons of stories. We didn't well define, I think, some of your past history. You mentioned sort of somewhat where you've been before, engineering director at Etsy, VP of engineering at Kickstarter.

You mentioned a couple. I'm not sure if like Etsy was that startup in the, I think you were there a while back. No, I was at a DNS company before Etsy. So at Etsy, actually, when I think about stories, a lot of them are from Etsy because it was such a formative time in my career, just being at that kind of organization under the leadership that I was under. You just learn so much about being a human around other humans that care about humans, you know, a lot of the work that I do today can be directly tied back to that time. And when I think about war stories, horror stories, I think about the relationships that I formed there that have carried on today. Like what did I survive? What did we all

survive there? And I think about a time when I actually had to fire someone for the first time and I wasn't getting support that I needed from my manager at the time. He was checked out. He was unavailable. He just couldn't help. And I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know if I should fire this person. I didn't know, you know, was I making the right decision? What's the process? What do I need to make sure I do? How do I make sure that I'm supporting this person? I ended up basically hanging out with a bunch of other managers in this program called Dents that Paloma had created, where it was a confidential kind of like support group for managers across the company. So it's a cross-functional group, really small groups. I think there were maybe eight people in my group. We're

all kind of baby managers. And I was sharing with them confidentially the questions I had and how challenging it was and how stressed out I was and just how sad I was about it. And even though we were all baby managers, they all had different experiences before of going through something like this within different organizations even. So one person offered to role play the difficult conversations with me so I can get practice and really hone what I needed to say. One person helped me really get a good gut check on how to make this decision and, you know, make sure it was good for everybody involved. One person had experience with working with HR, so she gave me advice on that process and connected me with someone to talk to. And by their powers combined, they got me through, right? Each of their different experiences, different skill sets

were so, so, so incredibly helpful and powerful, you know, to help me survive this. They took me out for drinks afterwards, so I can just kind of cry a little bit, you know? And I realized this power in this group was so important because your manager can't be your everything. Your manager has one particular set of skills, right? One particular set of places that they can sponsor you for or types of feedback they can give. Maybe they're even bad at feedback. Maybe they're bad at mentoring.

Maybe they're bad at coaching. It could be anything. You need a group. You need, you know, a collection of people that I like to jokingly refer to as a manager Voltron, not just one manager, but who's in your manager Voltron. I don't know if listeners are familiar with the concept of, of a Voltron. Any of you want to give a definition? Go for it, Adam. What's the definition, Jared? Are you a Voltron fan?

I'm just checking out Voltron for the first time. I'm trying to grok this. Amazing. What does Wikipedia say? Voltron, of course, everybody knows, is an animated television series franchise that features a team of five space explorers who pilot a giant super robot known as Voltron. Voltron. Yeah, bingo.

If you're familiar with Captain Planet growing up, very similar vibes. Biopowers combined, Earth, wind, fire, air, heart, or whatever. Captain Planet. Same thing with the Care Bears too. Absolutely, same vibe.

And you need all of them. You need all of them to have a supportive, whatever, powerful being to support you going forward. And so I like this idea, as we go forward, who are the people in your network that can provide the different kinds of support that you need? Who can provide good mentorship, good coaching, good sponsoring, good feedback, a good eye for the politics of your organization, you know, a good person to shadow at company meetings, a person with completely different leadership style than

you are. I actually made a little worksheet, a little bingo card for everybody to kind of brainstorm who is already in their Voltron for these variety of different skills and where are the gaps? Where might you want to find someone to kind of fill that void for you as you grow and learn? That way you can collect a supportive group of people that can continue to level you up as you grow together. Yeah. You know, listening to all this, it seems like there's really just such a wild framework to be a manager. Like I never really understood that it was like, maybe I thought you were born with it, right? You know, like you all this, it seems like there's really just such a wild framework to be a manager. Like I never really understood that it was like maybe I thought you were born with it, right? You know, like you were born with the ability to manage, the ability to lead.

But it seems like it's such a learned skill. Like most things you just sort of discover more. The things that you can do well in life tend to be things you can really learn, not just simply like, oh, that person is good at it because they were born with the skills. It's probably somewhat true. They've got some assurances and maybe a certain personality type. I tend to be very forward thinking. I tend to be very self-assure. I have self-assurance, you know, that was when I score on like, what's that?

Like the something finder, the strength finder, I believe it was, you know, and that's almost wonder if you have something like that where you can sort of take a test. Like, am I fit to be a manager or, you know, like you mentioned the spectrum before, if you have anything like that where you can sort of take a test like am I fit to be a manager or you know like you mentioned the spectrum before if you have anything like that I'm curious but you know that's that's something like for me is is that you know this is something you can learn you can go to a course like you might have or read a book like you've written or Camille's book or other books that you can suggest but this is something you can sort of study there's theory behind it there's framework behind it and so just because you don't have those skills today doesn't mean you can't, you know, bury your head in a book or take a course and learn this kind of thing.

Because it seems like there's a lot of do's and don'ts and framework to it that waiting to be found, basically. Yeah, I would argue that anybody can be a manager. It's actually important that we have a diverse set of approaches to management and to leadership. It's important that there's not just one archetype. Of course, we all have an archetype in our head of what a manager looks like or what a leader looks like, but that's not going to serve all populations, all organizations, all companies at all stages. So I've always approached this from here's a set of skills, here's a set of tools that you can have in your toolbox that you can learn how to apply based on who you are, based on the organization you operate in, based on what your team needs.

And that context is going to keep on evolving. So like you as a manager, you as a leader need to keep on evolving your toolbox going forward. Because again, it's not one size fits all. It's definitely not one set of like do's and don'ts. It's, oh no, here's a new one I haven't seen before. How do I adapt? Who do I, who can I learn from to figure out how to approach this one in a way that works for my style and also works for the environment?

Yeah. I mentioned before, I thought I would throw this at you. You weren't much of a fan or you haven't read much of Seth Godin. Is that right? I have not read much of Seth Godin. Are you familiar with the book Lin Lynchpin at least? No. No. Okay. Not at all. Okay, good. I'll give you the paraphrase of the book and we'll see if I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. Lynchpin is essentially that you are indispensable,

that you have to be so good that they can't ignore you essentially. And so I sort of bucked at that. I really thought that's what I had to be as a leader. You know, I was a product manager. I felt like I had to be the linchpin. I had to be indispensable. I couldn't be replaced. And then I thought, well, that's just super arrogant, super self-centered. And aren't we all truly indispensable? Aren't we all truly replaceable at some point? And I thought, you know, this question I want to share with you or ask you is cog versus linchpin. You know, should someone aspire to be a linchpin or should someone in a leadership aspire to be a cog? Because a cog sort of fits in

and helps everybody else move, right? They're very helper, very servant potentially even. Whereas a linchpin is like, I'm the only one here that can do this. And, you know, at least to some degree. So I'm curious what you think about cog versus linchpin. Based on your description, I think I could not be further diametrically opposed to the idea of linchpin.

Just because, you know, our job supporting other people as they grow, it needs to continue to evolve and change and we cannot be the only one. Personally, this is, again, based on the short description. I cannot imagine a world in which having a bunch of linchpins is a healthy way for, what's everybody else then? And when I think about COG, too, certainly servant leadership has its pros and cons. There's definitely times when we need to be a servant leader and other times we need to be, I'm going to say, more directive maybe than that. Again, pitfalls to every approach, which is why there's definitely not one one-size-fits-all approach to leadership. But I'm all about understanding what the needs are, figuring out how you might be able to support them or understanding when you can't, and finding out where else can we get the support that I or my teammates or my organization needs to move forward. I personally landed on this

idea that I need to be a cog. I really studied hard and I was like, you know what? I read the book. I thought the book was actually very influential to me and helped me gain confidence. But over time I learned that that's not really what I need to be. And this is, I'm going to share something I wrote on the subject just to see if it resonates with you.

It says, and this is me sort of coming to this conclusion essentially. And so this is my words. I'm a very sharp, highly specific, purposely purposeful cog. That's part of a much bigger, much more grand machine. I play a very specific role. I highly need a part of this so others can do the same. I serve the unit, the team and its mission, not myself. And so as a leader, I felt like that's what I needed to be as a leader.

I needed to serve that mission and less of myself, not so much completely not myself, but I need to think about my team's motives, my mission, the unit, et cetera, rather than just simply saying, you know what, Adam, it's all about you. I love that. And many organizations need exactly that. They need someone who's going to come in and understand the dynamics, understand what's needed and support in that way. Other organizations need some version of a linchpin at some, you know, moment in time. And I think that's the important part about understanding the context and also

understanding who we are, that we can make sure that even if we can't fit the mold of what an organization needs, we can help make sure that that cog gets fit sometime. Yeah. Well, Laura, it was awesome talking to you. It's years in the making. Like I'd mentioned at the top of the show, I'd found your post in 2019. Don't ask us why it took us so long to invite you. Maybe we were, I don't know. I don't know what it was. Now's the time. Yeah. So reached out via email. You said yes. Here you are. It was awesome. Is there anything we didn't ask you? Anything we didn't sort of bring up that you love to share in shows like this when you do podcasts or whatever you speak to audiences anything left unsaid essentially honestly i i'm just so excited to talk about all of these things

with you i think i could go on for hours and hours so much is left unsaid for another episode all right laura well thank you so much for your time today it's been awesome talking to you thank you both appreciate you all right that's it for this episode of The Change Law. Thank you for tuning in. We have a bunch of podcasts for you at changelog.com. You should check out. Subscribe to the master feed.

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