Feb. 27, 2024

043: Building a Strong Team Not a Network: Unlock your Career Cadre

Building a Strong Team through intentional networking is a powerful tool for building career success. By strategically assembling a team of mentors, mentees, peers, opportunity creators, and innovators/challengers, individuals can create a supportive network that guides them towards their career goals. 

Embracing reciprocity, seeking balance in the team, establishing standards and metrics, understanding dual roles, and fostering positivity and support are essential components of intentional networking. 

Through intentional networking, individuals can enhance their career development, expand their opportunities, and achieve long-term success in their professional endeavors.

In this episode of "Tech Careers in Money Talk," host Christopher Nelson shares his unique approach to networking called the Career Cadre. Born out of personal challenges in his career, the Career Cadre method aims to revamp traditional networking strategies that often fall short. 

Nelson emphasizes the importance of building a strong network and offers insights on how to navigate the world of networking effectively. 

In this episode, we talk about:

  • Reciprocity: The first rule highlighted in the episode is the principle of reciprocity. The speaker emphasizes the importance of giving and receiving in equal measure within the career cadre. By investing time, effort, and support into the network, individuals can expect to receive valuable guidance, opportunities, and feedback in return. This mutual exchange forms the foundation of a successful career cadre.
  • Balance: Another crucial rule is the need for balance within the career cadre. It is essential to maintain a diverse mix of roles, including mentors, mentees, peers, opportunity creators, and innovators/challengers. Balancing these roles ensures that individuals have access to a wide range of perspectives, support, and opportunities within their network.
  • Embracing Abundance Theory: The episode encourages listeners to adopt an abundance mindset when building their career cadre. This mindset involves believing that there are ample opportunities, resources, and connections available for growth and development. By embracing abundance, individuals can approach networking with optimism, openness, and a willingness to explore new possibilities.
  • Establishing Standards and Metrics: Setting clear standards and metrics within the career cadre is essential for tracking progress and ensuring accountability. By establishing specific criteria for success, individuals can measure the effectiveness of their networking efforts, identify areas for improvement, and maintain a high level of performance within the team.
  • Understanding Dual Roles: The episode emphasizes the concept of dual roles within the career cadre. Individuals are not only recipients of support and guidance but also contributors to the success of others. Understanding and embracing these dual roles allows for a more dynamic and mutually beneficial networking environment where everyone has the opportunity to learn, grow, and support each other.
  • Ensuring Positivity and Support: Lastly, the rule of ensuring positivity and support underscores the importance of creating a supportive and encouraging atmosphere within the career cadre. By fostering a positive environment where members uplift and motivate each other, individuals can cultivate strong relationships, build trust, and navigate challenges together effectively.

 

Episode Timeline:

[00:00:31] Networking challenges and solutions.

[00:03:41] Building a career cadre.

[00:09:35] Building intentional career teams.

[00:11:43] Building with intention and clarity.

[00:17:48] Mentees are critical for growth.

[00:22:35] Opportunity creators.

[00:23:49] Building relationships for career growth.

[00:27:01] Rules of engagement.

[00:33:44] Establishing standards and metrics.

[00:35:18] Dual roles in career development.

[00:39:01] Building professional relationships.

 

Connect with Christopher Nelson on LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophercnelson/

Transcript


I was in a job that I didn't like. The environment was becoming toxic. I knew there was not going to be an equity exit there and I needed to get out. And what I discovered at that time was I had a lot of loose connections. My network wasn't there.

The result is networking is fundamentally broken in the way that we're taught to network in that I needed to come up with something that was different if I wanted to get a different result. Welcome to the podcast for financially focused technology employees. Are you working for equity? Do you have questions on how your career and money work together? Then welcome. Every week we discuss strategies and tactics for how to grow your career, build wealth and reach your financial and lifestyle goals. Welcome to Tech Careers in Money Talk. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson.

And today I'm going to be doing a solo episode on my intentional style of networking that I call the career cadre, building a career cadre. Now, like many things that I have created, and share with you, it was born out of a failure. It was born out of a challenge in my career where I ultimately realized something was broken and needed to be fixed. And networking, by far, is one of the most important skills that you need to build. Unfortunately, a lot of the things that were spoon-fed through a lot of different media resources and outlets don't work. A lot of things that we read online, they don't.

At least it didn't work for me. And I had to create my own flavor of it that I'm excited to share with you today. So let's dig into that. What's broken about networking? If you go online and you look at networking and what that is, what that means, number one, the definition is you're creating a network is, you know, a series of different connections that you have surrounding yourself. sort of your network that you can tap into.

I think that that concept in and of itself is a little flawed because there's no focal point. There's no intention for this network. It's just this thing that exists. I think that that being taught, like when you don't know the intention of something, it's hard to understand, well, what should my standard be? And how should I gauge whether it's working or not? So Fundamentally, I think just this concept of calling it a network is broken.

The other thing is, when you read a lot of this anecdotal or recommendations of networking, you're going to events, you're meeting people that you don't know, and you are looking to create connections with them, showing what value you can bring to them, and there's some type of a value exchange, but there's not a lot of details of how do you actually follow up and how do you actually grow within these networks. And ultimately for myself, I found that I did everything that people told me to do.

I went to different networking events. I created a lot of different connections. I gathered business cards. I would follow up. I would follow up with people. We'd have very interesting conversations, but this creating of connections, this lack of what was the goal and the purpose was really what got me into a bad situation. So luckily, I had a great example. I started my career at Accenture. Accenture, because they are in the business of people, right? It's a consulting company.

Their job is to create these highly valuable skilled assets of people and then go and trade their time for money and they're creating a margin off of it. They also do other services now as well, but that is essentially their main resource. So because of that, they have this concept of a career counselor where you have an official mentor that helps you as you continue your career. And then as you grow, you then get career mentees that you mentor as well. What that does is two very valuable things.

Number one, starts creating some deep relationships and understanding a framework of having somebody provide you insight into career growth. You get a view to what does good look like. The other thing it provides you is then the opportunity to lean in and teach other people as well, which again, a highly valuable networking skill when you're mentoring and you're teaching somebody else how to advance their career that creates really good relationship, deep relationships, and again, in both directions.

So I had that foundation. Then in my career, I made the decision to leave Accenture because I wanted to go trade all of this talent and skill that I built. I wanted to go trade it for equity. If you're a fan of the podcast and you listen, you realize that the first company that I chose to go trade my time and talent for equity with, I chose with my heart. I didn't choose with my head. So ultimately, it didn't go well.

And a little over a year into it, I realized I had to get out. I need to get out of there. The Great Recession was changing the culture of the company. It was no longer fun to work there. And it was becoming toxic. Also, I realized that the big payday, everything I was looking for wasn't going to happen. I needed a change, but I felt incredibly stuck and I was stuck. I had moved geographically.

I was in Southern California where I had been working the previous eight years inside of San Francisco, the Bay Area for most of that time. And so I didn't actually have people that I could walk in and talk to. So I was geographically outside of my network.

And again, going back to what I was taught, I had a lot of these loose connections. I mean, I networked there in San Diego, but I didn't have anybody really knew me. in my skill set, and also knowing that I really trusted. And that those are key components of having a valuable network. I do believe that having a network is valuable. I think the way that you approach it needs to be different. So what happened is I was able to reconnect with one of my old career counselors and mentors.

And I actually reported to this gentleman for a while, too. He's a manager of mine. From the Accenture days, he was the person that was able to help me validate my skill set, create opportunities for me. And within two weeks of that connection, I was out of that situation. It was then moving forward that I realized I never wanted to be in that situation again.

I did not want to be in a situation where I felt backed into the corner and I didn't have any options. And I knew that I was moving forward into this new world of working for equity. I wanted to build something that was going to help support my career, help move me forward, help me grow. So this is where this concept of creating a career cadre or an intentional team came from.

So it's important that you understand that what I built and what I'm going to share with you today, this concept of building an intentional team or a career cadre, let's talk a little bit about the results. Here we are. I started doing that in 2010. We're here in 2024. So it's 14 years later. What I built allowed me to ultimately get to where I am today. I would not be here where I am today, financially independent, having worked for four companies since that moment, three of them went through an IPO.

The other one was a good, successful company, just did not get the traction to get to an IPO. And I consistently had opportunities around me. I was never at that moment where I felt stuck. I always felt that there was something, even when there were periods where I took a sabbatical that I ended up walking away from a job intentionally because it wasn't the right fit.

There were always opportunities. I felt courage and I felt the ability to take action because I had this team surrounding me. It was also this concept that allowed me to transition from the success that I had working in tech into private equity, into real estate, because I applied the same principles. Because this technique, this career cadre works in your career in whatever direction you want to go. This is why I'm excited to share it with you today. and ultimately allowed me to achieve the financial growth that I had and create a team and a network around how I actually manage money and then get me to where I am today, building a lifestyle by design. And I'm continuing to leverage this technique.

So let's talk about what's broken and what this solves. I think with traditional networking, there's this lack of clarity and purpose. So you're building a network, why? There's also this, the connections, right? If you're building a big network, the risk is you're building connections that are too superficial. They're not deep enough so that when you need them, it's there for you.

There's also no clarity of roles. So if I'm going to network with somebody, how do they fit into my network? What is their purpose? Why I'm making a connection, how does this all fit? And so when you build without intention, it's hard to get the value out of what you create. This is why I pivoted this whole concept to say, instead of creating a network, build a team, build a very intentional team. Career Cadre is the name that I gave it. And I gave it that name not while I was building it actually, but when I was doing some writing in and around 2019, I was capturing a lot of this there.

But what a cadre is, is it's a team that comes together around a specific goal. Another definition of the word is a group of people having a unifying relationship. And so ultimately, The intention is to build a team around you that is helping moving your career and your goals forward. That's what it is. It is a team that has specific intention. And you want to create. I created mine. It was clearly focused on career advancement. I wanted to be moving my career forward.

I wanted to have deep relationships. So I had a lot of opportunities coming to me. And I'm going to explain to you in the second half of the show how this works so that you understand that it's not like you're going to get out of your career cadre what you put into it. So it's not that you're surrounding yourself with people and they're just doing stuff for you. It's not how it works. You have to give to get because that it truly is a, you know, open handed networking where you are giving and then you're going to receive. And I'll explain to you how that works. But then everybody has a defined position and role.

So you are saying that you have a role. You're listing out the roles that you want to then go and fill. And then you have fewer very intentional and deep relationships. So you're not looking for something that's broad. You're looking to create something that you're going deep with a set of people. Interesting thing about it though is as you go deeper with people, you're then plugged in deeply to some of their connections so you do actually get the breadth of connectivity that you want out of it.

And so when you go and you build something with intention, you go deep. And you're very specific on the positions that you want. And this is something, this is a principle that I found that has played out in my career is that when you are very intentional with something in the way that you build it and you're clear on why you're building it and what you want the result to be, you are going to get closer to the result that you want and sometimes sooner than you can ever imagine because you're moving with intention. This is the power of this. And so the benefits of this career cadre is that it will create career opportunities, will abound.

And this is a way that you can be attracting a lot of inbound instead of going and pursuing them. It's going to offer you insights into a lot of diverse companies, their cultures, leadership styles. There's going to be a huge diversity of ideas that come back. Creating an intentional team and being clear on what you're putting into it is also going to sharpen your skills, allow you to become a teacher, to actually harden your skills through teaching, we'll talk about that too, and develop coaching abilities.

It also helps you set standards for your roles. When you surround yourself with a great network, you're going to help set standards and understand what it means to be good, great, and excellent. It's also going to allow you to build some followership so that you can start having mentees and people that are following you that want to go where you're going, the companies that you're going to, the opportunities that you're working on. It creates that followership.

And ultimately, it provides you this board of directors, this group that is going to give you direction and support as we're doing something that's really difficult. I mean, let's face it, working in technology is hard. While we're excited and we get a front row seat to the future, We work this 24 by 7 lifestyle. And if we're not surrounding ourselves with a very intentional team that's going to be incrementally helping us develop skills to work in this environment, to survive in this environment, to find the right opportunities to help us accelerate career and financial growth, it's just going to be a very long and hard journey.

So that is the overview. What we're talking about is let's move away from traditional networking, which is loose connections. A lot of them, no real goal, but let's build a team. Let's build a cadre around our career, around our goals to move us in a very specific direction. We're going to have specific roles on the team. And then we are also going to have fewer, deeper, intentional relationships.

That is the overview of the career cadre. In the second half of this show, we're going to take a quick break, and then I'm going to come right back. And in the second half of the show, I am going to break down what are all of the roles in the team, and then also what are some of the core rules of engagement that you need when you're building your career cadre. Stick around, we'll be right back.

All right, welcome back to the second half of Tech Careers and Money Talk, where we are talking about building your career cadre. How do you build a team around you where their main focus is helping you move your career forward? First, let's break it down. Let's talk about what are the members that you have on the team. So the positions that I've laid out for my team that I built are Number one, mentors.

They are the compass. They are helping you set a direction and understand what are the landmines going there. You have number two, mentees. Mentees are your greatest teacher. And we're going to talk about that in a moment. Then there's peers. You need to have peers to help you set standards and to encourage you. And they're going to be people that are with you along the journey. You then have opportunity creators. Opportunity creators are out there to help generate different opportunities coming your way as you're building and growing your career.

And then you have innovators and challengers. And so I want to go deeper into each of those roles. So those are the high level. You have mentors, mentees, peers, opportunity generators, and then you have your innovators or challengers. And so what is the value of each role? What does each role bring to the table? Mentors are the compass. When you are in your career, you're trying to look two steps ahead. I would encourage you, don't just look one step, look two steps ahead. Because many times, you need to make sure that your next move is setting you up for the move that you want to make after that. Because otherwise, you can unintentionally be limiting your career.

And I learned that from a mentor. Go figure. But these are the types of things that you need to have mentors for that are going to show you the course. And you're going to want to pick mentors that not just that you don't just want to have a work life similar to them, but you also want to pick mentors that they have a life outside of their vocation that you want to be like, because they will then give you a lot of the directions and things to avoid. And how do you actually plot this journey to get where you want to go? And they've already been there, done that. So this is where mentors are the compass.

And as I was managing the career team, and even now, I try to have two or three mentors that I'm in touch with once a month, twice a month, that I'm pulsing and having contact with. as well. And we'll talk when we get to the rules of engagement, we'll make sure you understand what you need to be doing to build this out and make that happen. But let's stick with the roles right now. So mentees are critical to your career growth. If you haven't heard that before, you've heard it now.

You need mentees. Let me tell you why. As you are ascending in your career and you get to that critical juncture that you want to go from being a senior manager to a director, The director is a set and forget role, meaning that they're going to bring you in as a director, and their expectation is that you can go hire and bring in a team. And you're not going to be over-relying on recruiting, because great directors have people that are already following them. They're junior executives.

They should have some type of followership and people in their network that they can bring on to the team. So to do that, you need to be starting to develop mentees as soon as you have something to teach them. I would advocate for you, if you get two years into your career, you should be able to turn back to people that are just starting and help them out. And when you help them out, you want to be teaching them different skills. And the more you teach, the more you learn. In medical school, their philosophy is watch one, do one, teach one. Because the sooner you can get teaching some type of a technique, whether it's taking blood or whether it's intubating somebody with a tube, when you get to the point where you're teaching it, that's where you're actually really learning.

You learn a lot of the different subtleties. You also learn a lot when you're a mentor of how to listen, how to influence, you know, somebody when you're not a direct report, how do you actually communicate to them in ways where they're going to take your advice, you're going to move in that direction. Those are all critical skills that the sooner that you can learn those by developing mentees early in your career, that's going to accelerate your career advancement. Mentees are the greatest teacher. I would say that peers are the most important in the journey because peers add incredible amounts of value.

When I transitioned out of the role in Southern California back to the Bay Area, I found a brand new mentor there who was well-versed in working in startup companies and well-established companies in the Bay Area. He had an established network himself, and he got me into a formal networking group with peers, and that changed my life. It changed my life because as I was part of this group that met regularly every month to learn something new and then have social time together, I was able to connect with people that I would always, I was always joke to people when they asked me what this networking group was like. I said, you learn, you socialize, but there's also a lot of therapy.

Because when you meet peers who are experiencing your challenges and at the pace that we do and the complexity that we manage, it is just a great safe space to just get things off your chest. Number one, I think that they are amazing companions that you can walk in your journey together with. And the important thing is to seek out people who have higher standards than you do, that are executing at a different level because they will help move you forward in your career. And so, besides the therapy aspect, learning new things, having peers that you can call on and get back channel references to, whether that's to candidates that may have worked for them previously that are now applying for roles with you, whether that's vendors that you're partnering with. whatever it may be, having a strong network of peers is essential.

And this is where I call them companions on the journey because many of those peers that I met in 2010, 2011, we're still great friends to this day and we communicate very regularly. This support system becomes essential because when you need to vet ideas, whether that's, I'm going to make this career move, I'm going to take on this risky project, I am going to go and work for this particular executive, you then have a counsel that you can go solicit feedback from, and they will give you their wisdom that allows you to not make mistakes, understand how to come up to speed quickly and move forward faster.

It is true when you think about groups like this that we can go farther together than we can alone. And it's really your peers that help you accomplish that. The next one are opportunity creators. So if you listen to my episode with executive recruiter Sam Hooley, that episode is all about opportunity creators. Executive recruiters are opportunity creators for you when you are in the workforce. They're going to be somebody that will do two critical things. If you establish good relationships and you continue to nurture them with executive recruiters, they will continually bring new and interesting opportunities to you.

Number two, they will also give you feedback on what are skills and soft skills, hard skills and experiences that you may need to help get you to the next level. Having that kind of advice when you are in the middle of executing your career, and you may not have the time to do a lot of research to understand what's going on. Again, they can help you go further faster in understanding how to build deep relationships with them. they are incented to place people like you in new roles.

So when you develop good, healthy relationships, they're going to be bringing you a lot of different new roles and ideas that will help you move your career forward faster. The last one are innovators and challengers. And so these are founders, professors, anybody who is, and it could be somebody else who's in your network, who you get inspiration from. What I found in my career is that when I went through spurts of growth and I was putting a lot into it, Like I would feel burnout, especially I had a very young family at the time. And so you have kids, you're not sleeping well, you may not be taking care of yourself physically.

I could be absolutely drained. It was important that I surrounded myself with people that could speak into me, that could give me, that could take ideas that I was interested in and help me see their future vision. because maybe I was too tired. I didn't have the juice for it. But there are these thought partners, these inspirational people that help you move forward.

And I am so blessed to have people like that in my network today that I will go and now spend a weekend with them and you know, work on some creative ideas I'm having, talk about technology and just come back with wind in my sails and feeling invigorated. It's important that in this hard charging, grinding environment that you have these roles.

And so taking a step back now that you understand these definitions, when you see, okay, I have mentors, in my mind, the mentors are up front, they're your compass, they're pulling you forward. Then you're in the middle. You're surrounded by your peers. Your peers, again, are here. And some of them are helping you with offense. Some of them are helping you with defense. But they're surrounding you, and you're moving with them. Your mentees are people that you're teaching.

They're helping you skill up and become a better leader and create followership and understand how to influence and develop your soft skills. And they help, again, move you forward. And then, again, out front with the mentors, you have these opportunity creators. You have these innovators and challengers that are help pulling you forward. They're pulling you.

When it gets tired, they help move you forward. That's in my mind how I visualize it. But this is a team that you intentionally build and you build out those roles. And if you can just understand that with all of these positions filled and in your life, participating in, different sessions and in different engagements, this will ultimately move you forward in your career and give you a ton of fuel and a ton of opportunity. And all of these roles are translatable into different things that you want to work on too, which is very exciting. Now that you understand these roles and now that you understand the value that each of them gives, let's dig into a little bit of how do you engage? How do you engage in this?

Because it may not be entirely explicit. So there's really six rules that I think are really important, these rules of engagement. The first one is that it's this whole relationship, it's built on reciprocity, right? When you're building out these roles and you're going out and building your network, you are going to get, you're going to receive as much as you give.

So this is reciprocal investment in benefit. Remember that going into that, that the value is going to be received on what you're given. And so it was just making me think is that as I started to get mentors and I wanted to get outside, one of them was, one of the ways was I tried to understand how I could help them solve some problems that they were struggling with. Some of it was as simple as I had come from Accenture. I was very well versed in PowerPoint and creating presentations. So there's a few mentors that I made great relationships with because they wanted to do some speaking outside.

I helped them put together some presentations and The more time I put on the presentation, the more time that I was helping them iterate, that helped build a deep bond. And they saw that I was invested in them. So they, in turn, wanted to turn around and invest in me.

This is the example of the reciprocal. Same way with mentees. As I saw people coming up in their career, and I would offer, let me take some time and show you how to do that, make you better, as I did that, for different people, whether it was in Accenture or as I was outside of Accenture and I was working in these startup companies, people then saw the value and I had a number opt in and say, may I come to work for you? Can I apply for this role? And it was, would be a great fit. And we would continue to work together from a mentor mentee to now is actually managing them.

So it created this followership. So remember, mutual support and growth and ensuring that you are able to contribute to be able to receive, that's rule number one. It's reciprocal investment and benefit. You also want to seek to balance this team itself.

You want to make sure that you are not over rotating in having too many peers and not enough mentors. I think that there is a good balance to the team. In my mind, I always want to have two to three active mentors at a time. Active meaning that we're in communication monthly or quarterly. It's a regular touch point. And I don't mean that it's on the calendar, but I am taking the onus to check in with them and see how they're doing, see if they have anything that they need that I can help with. I'm always leaning in with how I can help. And so two to three mentors. I think you want to have a few more, five to seven mentees, especially when you are in roles inside of technology. And I think you can get mentees. You can manage some of that stuff together. You can bring people together and have different calls.

And it can be very informal and just coffee talks. And what are you working on? And how can I help? And what are your challenges? You definitely want to bulk out with peers. I think having good five to seven peers that you're staying in regular touch with and having formal networking groups, meaning that you intentionally get together, spend time, ask each other questions, what's going on in the business, building deep relationships is really important because that is where I got tremendous value. Opportunity makers, I think, keep that balance having two to three recruiters, executive recruiters. And one of the things I didn't mention before is another type of opportunity maker could be serial founders that are always going to an exit. There are a ton of people I know that have done very well going to work for serial founders that continually position companies for acquisition. And those can be opportunity makers as well.

And then I think for one to two, when you think about the challengers and innovators, you don't want to go too heavy on that because sometimes that can actually be distracting. But having one or two that are solid that can really help you expand your ideas feel visionary and move in that direction, feel very positive are really important. So seek to balance that out. Make sure that you're not overweight in one area or the other. If you're too heavy on mentors and peers and you don't have mentees, that can inhibit growth going in one direction. If you don't have opportunity creators, you get to a point where, okay, I'm unemployed. Maybe unintentionally, maybe there was a division that dropped or my company lost funding.

If you don't have those, you're going to need them. And it's better to have them in place before you need them, hands down. So seek that balanced membership, making sure you're filling out all your roles. Embrace the abundance theory. It is so important that you give and pour into this network freely. You're not holding back because, you know, going back to to principle number one is you're going to get out of this what you give. And so it's so important that you have an abundance mindset. It's also meaning from an abundance mindset that if one mentor relationship doesn't work out, there's more out there.

There's more like this team will grow and change. Just like any type of sports team that you see, oh, I had this great position. Well, they left. They've moved on. They've retired. They're no longer in this space. things are going to change and evolve over time. And so having that abundance mentality of, oh, if that person wasn't meant for my team, somebody else is out there for me. And that's then the intention of now you can go to networking events with intention because you're understanding what type of roles you're trying to fill, right? All of a sudden it starts making sense is, oh, I'm looking for some mentees. I want somebody that has maybe this skill where I can learn that from them while I'm teaching them some more soft skills. It can work in multiple ways. Establish standards and metrics. So that's number four is you want to make sure that you establish standards and metrics across your team. Why is this important? Well, ultimately, if you and your network and this team, this career cadre gets so comfortable. It's a comfortable network and nobody's moving forward. That's going to cause your career to coast.

You're going to be coasting. And what does it mean when you're coasting? It means that you're going downhill, right? And so setting standards and making sure that you understand what your standards are and surrounding yourself with people that are constantly pushing is really important. And this is where, when you set standards, what this also means is that you will, at some point, potentially roll some people off your team, in the sense that maybe they're, they're not opting into higher standards. And it could be, you know, life happens, and maybe they don't want to push us hard, and they're in a, you know, rest and vest type scenario where they're not looking for a lot of challenges or other things.

So then you may need to go and pick up other members. And so setting standards and having some metrics, meaning that you want to understand, you know, what time you're putting into what you're getting back. You don't want to get yourself upside down where you're giving a lot, but you're not getting, you know, and so you don't want to get into that trap.

So measuring and managing all these things is so important. It's so important too to understand that there's dual roles, right? Is that the way that this concept works, the career cadre is, if somebody else is mentoring you, then you're the mentee on their team. Or you could be the innovator. I mean, one of the things that's happened to me is I have become an innovator for other people's teams because they see the ideas, the things that I'm thinking about is I can speak into them on how things they're doing with their career, things that they're doing with their money, how it can get together to get them to a lifestyle by design.

I am innovating. I am moving forward in lifestyle by design. Some people don't have that in their networks or arguably a lot of people don't. So this is a role that I play for people that I know. And then ultimately, and so this means that you are a leader, you're also a learner, and trying to understand, and this I think helps out in this, when you understand the role that you're playing in somebody else's team, play that role for them. Be that. Also understand that things can change over time, right, and you can move to other positions. But understanding this duality of roles is really important. And then ultimately, you want to ensure positivity and support. This is something that is for everybody, and this is to put positive energy into. This is to create a great and healthy supportive environment.

So let me just go through those one more time. So remember, the rules of engagement when you are building out your career cadre is that there is reciprocal investment in benefit, meaning that you are going to get out of it what you put into it. You want to also seek balance in the team members that you have in the different positions. Don't be overweight in one area. Look to balance out that team membership. And this is the value of now having roles and positions because you know, OK, who do I need to fill? You also then want to embrace the abundance theory, meaning that people are going to flow into the team, people are going to flow out of the team, and that's totally fine.

There's more members for you that are going to be there. And then also continuing to give openly to the team. Establish standards and metrics, right? You don't want the cadre to be too intense or too lenient. You want to make sure that there's clear markers and metrics for progress. And you want to understand if you are getting out of it as much as you're putting into it. That's very important. Understand the dual roles, that while somebody is a member on your team, you're also playing a role on their team. Know what that is. Speak into that role, because that will make you more effective member of their team, because you're going to know who you are and what role you play.

And then ultimately ensure positivity and support. You want it to be positive, right? And so look at this, like most things, right, that you hear me talk about in my solo episodes and then in a lot of my teaching is you have to think of this as an investment. This is an investment that the more you put into it, the more value you're going to get out. And if you invest with intention, if you have a strategy, you have a focus leveraging this technique and saying, I have roles that I want to fill.

I have then a a way that I am going to strategically build out that team and continue to stay in touch with it, the better. And ultimately, what this will do is the benefits are you are going to have guideposts and compasses that are gonna help guide you along the way. You're going to harden your skills by being able to lean into people and teach them, building followership, understanding what it is to create influence, ultimately making you a better manager. surrounding yourself with peers that are companions on this journey, opportunity makers that make sure that you are always seeing opportunities in front of you and you understand what you need to get to the next step.

And then you have these great innovators and challengers to give you new ideas and help you see what's possible and what's the future. That is so much stronger than just this obtuse network and you're going out and making it. When you move with intention, When you're clear on what you're trying to achieve, what somebody else is trying to achieve, you're going to go get so much more out of it. You are. And this is a long-term strategy. I think that everybody can start early in their career and you can start by building mentors, mentees, and peers. as soon as you are, you can get peer groups right when you get started, you can start picking off mentors soon after that.

And then mentees when you get a couple years into your career, and then understanding how do you pick up some of these other team members. All of this lays a foundation for you being able to grow your career very effectively and very productively.

I hope you enjoyed that. This is another framework that came out of my experience, and I'm excited to share it with you. And if you enjoyed today's episode, I just have one single ask, and that is, please leave us a review. Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts, on our webpage, Tech Careers and Money Talk, you can leave a review there. Reviews really fuel our growth, and we'd appreciate your support. Thank you so much. See you on the next episode.

Christopher Nelson Profile Photo

Christopher Nelson

Host

Navigating the vast seas of Cloud Computing and Digital Transformation, Christopher Nelson emerged as a force in the technology space over two decades.

From setbacks in early startup ventures to pivotal roles in the IPO successes of Splunk, Yext, and GitLab, Christopher's journey was anything but linear. Today, he predominantly focuses on speaking and coaching, sharing insights from his dynamic career.

As the co-founder of Wealthward Capital, and the voice of "Tech Career & Money Talk," he guides tech professionals towards financial independence. His diverse path, including global travels, entrepreneurial ventures, and eventual triumphs, serves as the backdrop for his teachings, soon to be encapsulated in his book, "From No Dough to IPO".