064: Build Your Ideal Manager Avatar to Accelerate Career Growth

00:00 - 28:09 | Christopher Nelson: Ultimately, what I observed is that people that were effectively working for equity in building wealth, building a lot of personal wealth, they focused on two things equally, the company that they're going to work for and also their manager. Because what they realized is that working for a manager who is going to coach you, that's going to allow you to grow your skills, allows you to grow that asset so that even if this company doesn't work out the way you want it to, you have these skills that you can then go trade again for another company. So having a process to select your manager is just as important as having a process to select the company to go to work for. Welcome to Tech Equity and Money Talk. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson, and welcome to this episode. Today, I want to give you a specific framework for how to create a manager avatar describing who is your perfect manager. Yes, we're going to describe perfection. You're not going to get it, but you're going to describe it. And then how do you create an interview list of questions to support that? So why is this important? In trading your time and talent for tech equity, The most important partner that you're going to have in this, and I said partner because it's true, is going to be your manager. Let me unpack a few things here. As you are trading your time and talent for equity, in this exchange, you're the asset. You're sitting here as a talented individual that's bringing your talents to this team to help them achieve a goal. And so if ultimately the team doesn't achieve the goal, you need to be putting yourself in a situation where you are developing skills, getting exposure to good projects and the ability to deliver results so that if this doesn't work out, you get the opportunity to trade that somewhere else. If it does work out, you get the ability to continue to grow your career and take more shares off the table there. So you need to be growing as an asset where you are. And the partner that has the biggest impact on this is your manager. And this truly is a partnership. People may not have this framework yet, but I encourage you to adopt this because just like a sports team, if you are a gifted athlete that is coming with skills and talent, and you are going, you're looking to choose a sports team, you want to choose a team that has a great coaching staff. that's going to help you achieve on the field, that's going to provide you a great highlight reel, because if that team does not reach the championship, you're going to want to go somewhere else. Or again, if the team does reach the championship, you're looking to continue to get better and better contracts. One of the methods that I discovered was to create a manager avatar. So this was something in 2010, after I had a failed startup and I did a lot of choosing with my heart, my feelings, I made a decision to write out what were some of the key attributes that I really wanted and needed in a manager. This came after I'd spent plenty of time on the phone talking to people who had worked for tech equity and been very successful in building personal wealth. They really expressed to me that the key thing was finding managers who are also doing the same thing. And then we're helping them build their career. So I want to break this down for you today. The way that I shape this is as an avatar, which is a marketing term where you write down specific traits to identify ideal customers. We're using the same principles to identify who you want to go to work for. Okay, so buckle up. Now, you may be asking me, why is this important? This is important because the mistake that I've seen many people make, and as I coach people on a weekly basis, I constantly hear this, I really love the company that I work for. However, I'm having challenges with my manager. And when I asked them about how they selected their manager, they usually listed off one or two questions that they asked. However, they were more interested in positioning themselves versus interviewing the other side. And so we want to make sure that you can eliminate that. I want to give you the skills. I want to give you the tools so that you can eliminate that and you can get clear on what's important to you. When you execute this process, It's going to give you two things. It's going to give you clarity on what you're looking for. Clarity is going to reduce time in you achieving your goals. It's going to reduce anxiety. And it's going to essentially give you a framework to what we call reduce risk in the investment world. You're always trying to reduce risk because that increases your probability of success. And that's what this is going to do. And when you have clarity and you're clear on what you want, that's going to give you confidence. And you get confidence because you know what you don't want. You're clear on what you don't want. So then you can be moving away from potential opportunities with clarity saying, I don't want to get into that situation again. or I know that working for that person is not going to be successful for me. So with clarity, I can walk away. With confidence, I can walk away. And it's the same on the positive side as well. You want to get clear on why you're moving in a specific direction. So let's get into what makes an avatar, what is an avatar. And so when I look at a manager avatar, and I'm going to give you what worked for me, you can add in your own. The components that I put in there are these six components, character, management style, expertise, experience, network, and external presence. Those are the pieces that are important for me. Now, for you, depending on where you are in your career, some of those may not be important. You may be an individual contributor working for a team lead, and you're more focused on deep skills in engineering than you are whether this person is speaking at conferences or not. As your career ascends and whether that's as an individual contributor and you become a principal architect, you then may want to be working for somebody who has a deep network, who is speaking at different conferences because you are building skills as a thought leader. That's part of rounding out your particular experience. So those are the six categories. And so let's break down each and understand what they mean. So character is so often overlooked in interviews. However, this is where when you are sitting across the table and you're looking at somebody that you could be spending more time with over the next four years than your spouse or some of your friends, You want to know who this person is. You want to know how they carry themselves. And it's important that you know what is critical to you and what's not important. So, for example, I know for myself, it was always important. I wanted somebody who was honest. I need somebody who is going to tell me the truth, to tell other people the truth, that they are honest people. I also wanted somebody that was transparent, meaning that they're going to give me the truth. They're not just, you know, because you can have some people that are honest, but maybe they hold back. some things, but I wanted honest transparency, straight talker. And I also wanted somebody that had respect of the individual. It was very respectful in the way that they communicated and was also a coaching leader. That was important for me. And part of that can go into a little bit of a management style, but character is so important and there's different ways. And we'll get into that when you can ask questions, but it's important that you document what's important for you. There's some things that weren't as important for me. For example, I worked for plenty of people that were great at making money, but they were horrible at managing their own personal finances. They were great at managing the company finances, but they weren't. So I did not look to my managers to be an example of how to manage the money that we made. And that's just a for instance. And so this is where you get the opportunity to choose. I also worked for some people that did not have great work-life balance, where I did. And that was something that I was able to manage upward and I was able to manage around. And so this was something that I knew and I had confidence in my skillset of how I was going to manage that because I knew what I could bring to the table. Those were some of the things that weren't as important to me and some that were. And so this is important for you to know yourself and know what you're looking for so that you can list those out under character. Now, it's also important that you list out what is the management style that you're looking for. This can also depend on where you are in your career. Earlier in your career, you may want more guidance. You may want more oversight. Now that's not micromanaging, but you want somebody who is willing to critique your work versus somebody who's very hands-off. I know as people's career ascends, they're looking for managers that are less hands-off so that they can truly own the result. It's really important for them. So ask yourself, how do you want to be managed? Understand, do you want or need more direction at this point in your career? Maybe you just went through a promotion and you need more. That's important to understand. Are you looking for a leader who's going to coach you? Or are you looking for a leader that's just going to give you autonomy and you can find the coaching that you need elsewhere? What's important for you in the way that the leader speaks and communicates to you? What's important to you in the way that the leader values people? These are all important management questions. How does the leader encourage their people? It's so important that you feel comfortable in asking those questions. And here's the reality. When you start asking these questions, you're going to find yourself in situations where you're getting answers that you don't want. that means it's not the right fit. And that's actually a good thing. It's a good thing to understand upfront when this isn't going to be a right fit for you. And don't emotionally, you know, trip yourself into thinking that you can make it work when you know that it can't. That's why we have these types of processes. So that was character management style expertise. What technical skills do you want a manager to have? What level do you want them to be at? And these can also be soft skills as well. Do you want somebody who can create a presentation, go and present it to the board of directors and you want to learn that skill from them? I recently was coaching somebody who that was key and they had the opportunity to work for somebody. Then they started creating decks that went to the board of directors as well so that they could learn and understand that skill to a high level because they realize the more they understood that, in their role and could produce those, that would then create value to them for a C-suite. Now let's talk about experience. And experience has to do, so skill is the context of, you know, in your particular domain, how much skill do they have at something? Experience to me is what are the companies that they've worked for? When we're in this exchange of time and talent for equity, do you want someone who has big tech experience, who's worked for an Amazon, a Google meta, who has seen them through large periods of growth? Or are you looking for somebody who has taken startup companies through different rounds of funding and acquisitions, or somebody who's taking these through IPOs, but understanding what are the results that they have that you're interested in learning, or you're interested in being a part of? So I know for me, I really wanted to work for people who had experience going through IPO. My strategy was to look for companies that were 18 to 24 months from an IPO. So when you work for people who've done that, they know what that looks like. They understand some of the traits can give you the insights. And then as you go through one IPO, then went through a second, went through a third, and you start understanding what these things looks like. But this was dependent on people having experience or being surrounded by people who had that experience. Network. When you go to work for somebody, you want to understand what's the value of their network. Who do they know? Who do they learn from? Who do they regularly associate with that can connect you to future opportunities? If you plug into somebody's network early in your career, that can mean jobs and acceleration because you're in a group of high performers in a particular area that's been doing things. I know some finance leaders, I can think primarily of Dave Conti, who was at Splunk. He was an incredible coaching leader. Anybody and I had the opportunity to report to him for a short while. He was an incredible coach and helped people grow their careers, helped people get promoted. All the people who came into that environment worked for him or worked for other people who worked for him found the same type of results. And so that's really important to be able to ask your manager and understand what is their network? Are they a part of a formal networking group? Do they have peers that they regularly meet with? Understanding who do they get coached from? Who do they learn from? This is one that I think many people miss is they're so focused on the job and what's right in front of them. They don't understand that understanding what ecosystem and how this person relates in this very small world of technology is really important. And then there's the final one I said was external company presence is understanding if, you know, If somebody is building expertise and they're ultimately going to be building a brand and a business around this, many executives will start writing online, whether that's LinkedIn, whether that's blog posts, they will start speaking at conferences. And you understand as your career ascends, whether that's very deep skilled individual contributor or a manager, getting exposure out in the environment is really important. I know I was very focused on managers that were getting published in articles that were doing speaking and those types of events, because I wanted to do those types of things as well and had the opportunity to go and speak at some different keynotes, to be on stages at Dreamforce and other events as well. That gave me tremendous experience and allowed me to expand my brand. Let's bring it all together. Creating an avatar of your manager, where you're really looking at their character, their management style, their expertise, their experience, understanding the breadth of their network and their external presence. If you can understand those different dimensions about who you're going to work for, how valuable would that be? Be incredibly valuable because then you're going to understand the right fit. And I want to take this back to clarity and confidence. And I'll share a story. At one point, I was wanting to upgrade my vehicle. Did not end up doing it, but I was very smitten with the Toyota Tundra extra cab because it fit the three boys in the back and we'd be hauling stuff around here in Texas. When I became focused on the Toyota Tundra, I had the model, I had everything that I wanted, what happened? I saw them everywhere. When I was on the street, I'd see one over here. I'd see one over here. I'd see everything. Why was that? Because I had the clarity of what I was looking for, clarity. And then the more I saw them, the more I became confident of what did I really want. Now, it turned out it wasn't the right time for us to buy. Car prices started skyrocketing. I think this was in 2021, so put that on hold, but I sure know what I want now. But this is how this works for you is that when you have clarity on who you want to work for, you're going to start seeing those traits and understanding that in front of you just intuitively. And so how does this exercise work? Well, one of the superpowers of managing your career that is so underrated I blew it off for years, but I got into it later in the last, I'd say five or six years of my career, was journaling. Writing down ideas, thoughts, feelings, and data, things that you're experiencing, things that you're observing in your career. And so writing things down gives you what? Gives you clarity, right? You start or are able to unscramble things in your head that are just being kicked about in this processor. and you start storing some of this data of what you want to see. And so how you leverage this framework is you start journaling. You take those particular items, you take those, the six things, and you start documenting what's important for you. What do you want from a management style? What's important for you in character? What kind of network do you want this person to have? So what you want to do is list out all those attributes, and then you want to write down what's important for you. We've all had experiences. Write down what do you like? What has worked for you in the past? What do you need right now in the future? As you're evolving, are there different skills? I need somebody who has this skill. I need somebody who has more public speaking communications. I need to be exposed to somebody who is better at teaching people how to be a people manager. Where do you need? I want to get plugged into a professional network of peers. Who do I know that does that? Write those things down. Then you want to rank it in order of what's important to you. Depending on the time in your career, where you are in this trajectory, different things are going to be important. I know the later that I got in my career, actually, the more I was able to find managers who I knew who they were and finding people that had the right character, that had the right management style, were the most important because I built a network and I could learn and get the things taught that I needed. I didn't need somebody who was speaking conferences. Now, I ultimately found it. My last manager was a good friend of mine who had a lot of the, he was very similar to myself, who had a lot of these same skills. I was able to compliment him and what he was doing. And we saw the world in the same way. And while we were different, we had different roles. We compliment each other very, very well. This became apparent to me because I had this list. I knew what I was looking for. And it was easy to see that this person checked a lot of those boxes. So, list out the attributes that you want, rank it in an order of what's important to you, and you can do a top-level ranking and you can also do a sub-level ranking too. What are the most important skills? What are the things you need to learn today? And what's the help that you need to move forward? And then iterate on it. It's a living document. This is something that I do in a journaling process where, as I am continuing to grow as an investor, as I'm continuing to grow as a dad. I am looking for different people that have different experiences and skill sets and I use the same technique because it's so powerful when I'm able to identify them. I know what I'm looking for and I'm out at a networking event, I'm out at an investor dinner, I'm out at different places and I can just see and immediately I'm asking questions that align with that. So let's talk about that. So how do you create How do you create an interview document that can support this? So one of the things that you do, once you have clarity around these actual items, you can then create a list of questions that then it can validate those. So let's give some examples. And in some of these, and I want to encourage people, once you write this out, go and interview your own manager. It doesn't have to be all at once. It doesn't have to be awkward, but you could go in during a one-on-one and you can ask them some questions. So You know, character, I think is important. One of the ways that you get at people's character is you ask questions like, how would other people that have worked for you describe you? Or one question that I've, I've asked before is if, if we were sitting around with some of your direct reports and they were talking about you, what do you think are some of the things that they'd say? And one of the tells is how comfortable people are answering that question. If somebody's not comfortable answering it, question mark. Why is that? It could be just because they're an introvert and maybe they are struggling or they're a processor and they need some time to think about it. But it could also be because they're afraid of what the answer will be. And so this is where being able to ask these questions and getting comfortable interviewing people and getting to know who they are is critical. Let's think about management style. I think the easiest one is you're an interviewer. How would you describe your management style? If somebody was to write a book about your management style or a blog post, what would they title it? What would be the title of your management style? You know, or you can ask, what are some of the books that you've read that have influenced your management style? Like where did they get taught or who, who management style here at this company or another company? Who, who do you admire it most and why? Understanding that is so important of where people's frame of reference in their context is. And especially if you're in an interview and you're thinking about going to work with somebody, these first two sets of questions, figuring out a way to get comfortable, making the question seem fun and interesting and that I really want to get to know you and understand how we're going to partner together is really good. I think positivity, confidence, clarity, it's all infectious. If you go in there and you're asking serious questions, they're going to see across the table somebody is a mature employee who is clear on what they want. That delivers energy. I mean, to me, I get excited about that. And I have had those experiences where somebody has walked in and they're firing the questions at me and I realize, okay, I am sitting across the table from somebody who really wants to do business. Like they really want to negotiate. They want to understand me. They're vetting me. So then I realize they see value in themselves. Now I want to know, well, what's that value? And usually those interview processes take a little bit longer. But they are energetic. They're incredibly fun. And this is coming from somebody who has managed people for over 20 years. And I had a blast doing it. So let's talk about experience. I think always going into what are the experiences that shaped you? What is the biggest win that you can remember? What's also the biggest failure? Most people learn more from the failures than they do from the wins. So asking those questions and seeing how comfortable they're asking. What role, what level were you that you learned the most? And then trying to find some interconnectivity. So when you were at that role, who did you learn from? Are they somebody that continued to learn from themselves or continuous learner? They surround themselves. Now all of a sudden you're getting insight. Do they have a network? So as you start asking these questions and understanding the interrelation, you realize from one answer, you're getting multiple inputs. So let's go on to expertise. What are some of the key skills that got you to this role? Are there some skills that you consider yourself deeply skilled or an expert on? Or what skills do you have that you think that are the most advanced? What skills do you think you could go teach a college course on right now? And you on the other hand too, you're looking for confidence and clarity as well. One of the things that it's important for people to realize is the more you get educated, you're listening to this podcast, you're reading the newsletter, you're understanding more about how you're managing your career, you could end up managing up quite a bit. I know that happened for me later on in my career as I was getting so much clarity on where I wanted to take my career, what I wanted to learn, what was important for me. I found myself in situation where I had incredibly talented leaders, but they were just not, they weren't as introspective as I was. And they were asking me questions. Well, how do you do this? And, and, and some of them have gone to take those learnings, go to other roles and read back to me that, Oh, some of the questions that I asked them, they're now asking in interviews. And I'm saying this not because I'm trying to paint myself as some overarching genius, but just that these skills, the more you get intentional, the more you get focused, the more opportunity there is to educate technology employees in all different kinds of roles. And so let's keep going. So network, who are some of your peers? How do you stay current with them? Do you belong to a formal networking group? Interested in joining a formal networking group? Those are all key questions to ask. And then external presence. Do you write somewhere? Do you post on LinkedIn? Do you speak at conferences? Do you have a desire to? These are all the types of questions that come together and can support this manager avatar and help you identify the people that you want to work for, that have the traits that you want to work for. Getting started is going to feel awkward. It will. It may feel strange, or you may have the scenario. I've coached some people where as we started writing this out, they realized I have outgrown my current manager. That's okay. That doesn't mean you need to make a move tomorrow, but it may start setting a clock and saying, wow, I really need something else. Or you want to understand where your current priorities, maybe you're at a place where you are getting great equity. You're not growing your career that well, but you have some financial goals that you want to meet before you make a move. All of this teaching, all of these processes are to help you get more effective at trading your time and talent for equity and helping you reach your financial goals. And you have to figure out what is your immediate priority. Is it really building skills? You're early in your career, you want to keep building and be in the right positions. Or you're later in your career or mid-career and you're actually harvesting good equity and you just want to plan a next step that is six to 12 months away. And now you just want more clarity on what you need to get there. That's what this tool is for. And so it'll feel awkward at first, like most things. My encouragement to you is, is write it down, keep writing, share it with somebody else, ask them questions. Because the more that you look at this, the more that you shape this, you're going to get clear on what your targets are. The more I got intentional, the more it radically changed the game for me. And people do ask me, they say, Christopher, okay, after you had your first failed startup, you went to work for three out of four startups that went through IPO. That's an amazing win rate. How did you do that? Well, it was being very intentional and very focused. And in and really being an investor with my time and talent. Meaning there were a lot of things, a lot of deals that I threw in the trash can, a lot of possible employment opportunities. There were some that I missed out on that I just didn't qualify for. And ultimately it was being intentional and being very selective. And so that's my encouragement to you is don't be afraid to be intentional. Don't be afraid to qualify something out because there's a lot of opportunity. We're in a growing market. More and more tech companies, more and more tech roles are coming online every single year and there's more opportunity. So ultimately create a manager avatar, write down all of your attributes that are important for you, iterate on that, prioritize those, and then create interview questions and start asking your current manager some of those questions today. So you get familiar and realize like any other skill is going to feel weird at first, and then it becomes second nature. I mean, for myself now, I interview partners all the time as far as operators in private equity companies that I am going to invest in. So a lot of these different types of questions, I want to know their character. I want to know their experience. I want to know their network. Now, all of this stuff is second nature to me. I don't have to think about it. Do I write this stuff down? Yes, I do. but you can do it too. So thank you so much for joining this episode. This concludes, you know, building your manager avatar. And next week we're going to be, or the next episode, we're going to be talking about how do you identify the right company to work for? Because I want to, you know, we did a series before this on, you know, looking at different private equity investments. Now this is truly refocusing, taking some similar skills. How do you actually invest your time and talent and do a due diligence on companies? So we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you.