Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
John White | Nick Korte
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Probe and Discover: Coaching for Impact with Ramzi Marjaba (2/2)
What does it mean to coach someone? Is that the same or different from being a people manager? Ramzi Marjaba is back to delve deep into the process of coaching. This week in episode 308, we discuss the roles of mentors, managers, coaches, and how their skills might overlap. Ramzi will share the reasons he is passionate about coaching others and the qualities of an effective coach. We also talk about how making tasks look easy can mask the hard work behind them. Original Recording Date: 12-07-2024 Ramzi Marjaba is a returning guest and the man behind We the Sales Engineers. If you missed the first part of this interview with Ramzi, check out Episode 307. Topics – Making Things Look Easy and Keeping a Brag File, Defining Coaching through What Coaches Do, The Skills of a Coach, Managers as Coaches, Parting Thoughts and the Future of We the SEs 2:51 – Making Things Look Easy and Keeping a Brag File A software developer would practice building software every day. A sales engineer, on the other hand, is not practicing doing demos every day. They might do a dry run before a customer meeting to prepare, but that is likely it. Ramzi shares a story of preparing a customer demo to illustrate how salespeople and sales engineers might not truly understand each other’s roles and the work each requires. A salesperson scheduled Ramzi to do a “quick and easy” demo to show interoperability with other solutions a customer was using. Ramzi met with the customer before the demo happened to make sure he understood the customer’s expectation. “I went in. None of their products worked. So, if we’re doing an interop, and their product doesn’t work in the middle of a demo, whose fault is it? The sales team, more specifically, the SE.” – Ramzi Marjaba Ramzi did some interoperability testing with the customer, and they decided Ramzi would do a demo just to show how the product works and ignore the interoperability part. Ramzi prepared a demo based on the prep done with the customer, and it went great. On the way out of the meeting where Ramzi did the demo, the salesperson asked Ramzi why it took so much preparation to do a demo that was just a few clicks. Nick references David Zweig’s book Invisibles about highly skilled people who, if they are doing their job, you might not know even exist. Likely this is how workers in IT feel when they’ve put forth large amounts of effort to accomplish a task that seems simple. “That’s the big thing. If you’re good at your job, you make things look easy. And one of the things engineers or technical folks in general struggle with is letting people know about the work that they’ve done.” – Ramzi Marjaba Ramzi provides the contrast between former colleagues who would work on the hardest problems that came to the team and someone who would close the most tickets due to finding known issues. The person who closed the most tickets would send out e-mails to let people know how many tickets were closed and would also get all the praise. Ramzi was speaking with an SE manager recently who suggested keeping a brag file in which you document your accomplishments and the impact they’ve made on your company. This can easily be shared with your manager to demonstrate the work you have done and make a business case for a raise or promotion. John likes the emphasis on practice and quantifying the level of effort we put in to make something look simple. We can quantify the level of effort in retrospect for a career advancement file. It’s important to document how the work we’ve done impacted more than just us (our team, a customer, the greater organization, etc.). How did what we did help the team accomplish something? Ramzi says if we have trouble keeping the brag file or sense our manager might not value our work, we can CC our manager on communications about the work we’re doing. The CC is not to escalate to your manager but to keep them informed. “You can do both. You can make sure your manager is in the loop while at the same time figuring out how to say how great you are without coming off as an arrogant person.” – Ramzi Marjaba, on communicating our accomplishments to our leaders in multiple ways John calls this calibrating your self-promotion. You want to be informative enough to let your manager know what you’re doing so they can evaluate your performance without being someone who is looked upon as an arrogant self-promoter. Open communication with your manager and asking for feedback can also help. By keeping your manager informed, Ramzi says you are doing them a favor. A manager of sales engineers may be managing 12 people at the high end. Ramzi has seen support teams with 20-30 people under a single manager. “Support teams…we had 20 people, 30 people on the team. They are not going to know what everyone is doing. They are going to have feelings about what everyone is doing unless you show them exactly what you’re doing. If you make it easier for them to understand what you’re going through, they don’t have to feel about things. They don’t have to worry. They don’t have to wonder.” – Ramzi Marjaba, on keeping your manager informed of the work you do 10:27 – Defining Coaching through What Coaches Do How much of a manager’s work is performance management, and how much is coaching? Ramzi says he’s not really had a manager who has coached him. One manager did try but ended up being more of a mentor than a coach. Nick and John have both had managers who coached them. “I think managers should coach. The problem is there’s a power structure…. How do you differentiate between ‘John is saying this because he cares about me’ versus ‘John is saying this because he’s my manager at this company, and he has to tow the company line?’ So, there is that struggle, and lots of great managers can figure it out.” – Ramzi Marjaba From what Ramzi has seen, most managers don’t coach. A manager might use a 1-1 more to figure out if an SE is doing their job rather and for checking in on key performance indicators (KPIs) than making the 1-1 a time for the individual to own the agenda. “A coaching session the individual should set the agenda, not the manager or the coach. What is it that you want to achieve? What is it that you want to talk about today?” – Ramzi Marjaba, on coaching sessions Some individuals may not feel comfortable being vulnerable with their manager, thinking the manager may use it against them in a performance review. It does not mean managers will do this, but people will have that fear. Ramzi feels SE managers (and any managers) should try to coach employees, but there could be a limit to the effectiveness of a manager’s coaching. Employees may choose to keep certain things to themselves. John suggests we define coaching and shares the definition he was given from new manager training. When someone asks for help with something, coaching means you would talk the person through the process of learning how to do it rather than giving the answer. John gives the example of submitting an expense report and talking through what isn’t clear, what the person tried, etc. “The way I see coaching is…a form of guiding people to come up with their own methodology or their own conclusion or their own way of doing things or their own next steps based on the goals they provided to you.” – Ramzi Marjaba Does coaching have an overlap with mentoring? A mentor has specific experience to share who can provide guidance on going through the same / a similar experience. Coaching is more about helping someone envision the next steps they should take to get closer to a goal. Suppose someone wants to become a salesperson in the next 2 years. Ramzi would want to know why the person wants that in the first place. “Let’s come up with the steps. What are the steps that you need to take? And these are not things that I’m telling that person. They need to come up with the steps. If I think that they’re wrong, I can guide them or nudge them or ask them clarifying questions so that they can see what the right path is versus me telling them.” – Ramzi Marjaba, on the role of a coach compared to that of a mentor Ramzi feels mentors might not be trained to mentor or have an obligation to do it. Senior members of a team might be assigned by the manager to mentor less experienced members of the team. Does a coach need to have the same experience as a mentor and take a slightly different approach, does the coach not need the experience? Ramzi says the coach doesn’t need to have the same experience as the person is trying to get. “A mentor is someone who is right in front of me who can grab me and pull me up, and most of them just reach back and try to grab me. And if they can’t, they just walk away…because there is no obligation. The coach is standing next to you trying to ask you questions so you can pick the right path. And usually, it’s more of a formal relationship. If it’s not a manager, in external coaching there is usually money involved…. My success as a coach is related to your success as an individual. I don’t see mentors thinking that way.” – Ramzi Marjaba Ramzi says coaching is more formal between two individuals, and mentor is a best effort kind of relationship. “A mentor can tell the person exactly what to do to get to where they are. A coach’s job is to help the individual build the plan, their own plan, for success.” – Rami Marjaba Ramzi shares a common scenario of someone coming to him wanting to get a job as a sales engineer. He might let that person know one of the most common ways to get a job is through referrals and that they can connect to people on LinkedIn to build the relationships to ask for the referrals. But Ramzi would guide the person he is coaching through setting a target for how many people to connect with on LinkedIn per day. This all
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