Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
John White | Nick Korte
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Upward Focus: Manage, Coach, and Create Value in the Space that Fits You with Richard Russell (2/2)
If you think the job of a manager is to serve their team, think again. This week in episode 319 Richard Russell returns to make the distinction between how to manage well and the specific job of a people manager. As part of our discussion, Richard shares his transition into people management and how he later determined it wasn’t the right fit, his decision to pursue consulting, and the way he landed on coaching. We also highlight the importance of determining the definition of success in your work and finding the space that fits you. Listen closely for tips on how to find the right coach who understands your world. Original Recording Date: 02-17-2025 Richard Russell spends most of his time coaching leaders who work in scale-ups, big tech, and other corporate environments. If you missed part 1 of the discussion with Richard, check out Episode 318. Topics – Pursuing People Management, The Job of a Manager is Upward, A Transition to Coaching, Comparing Coaches and People Managers, The Space That Fits You, Finding the Right Coach, The Greater Context 3:02 – Pursuing People Management Once you become a team lead you can go to maangement, stay team lead, or just be an individual contributor again. What made Richard want to move into people management? Richard’s biggest realization was that people who were really good at specific technologies were better than him and getting even better at it faster than he was. “Relatively speaking to people in my peers, I’m going to continue to fall behind, and the reason for it is because I’m not actually that interested enough to get really good at it…whereas they are…. I followed things that I was interested in, which was people.” – Richard Russell In his early days, Richard was quite interested in Linux and programming ang got very good at it very fast. But then he lost interest in it because he got interested in other areas like business strategy, how people think, what management is, etc. Richard remembers a teacher in high school commenting that he was a natural leader people would follow. Richard didn’t see himself in that light at the time because he was “the nerdy one.” Over time, as Richard was able to influence people (even before his role as a people manager), he began to recognize it was the result of an interest and care for people. Richard shares a story of what motivates him using the example of a colleague he was able to help improve. “These things stick in his mind – that care, that coaching, that attention that he got…the explanations that he got that were patient…and the trust that I had in him then moved him…. That interaction, that fundamental interaction with a human is the thing that continues to motivate me.” – Richard Russell, describing his impact on a colleague Richard is always interested in technological bits and pieces, but eventually he will lose interest and move on to something else. When it comes to people, he’s never lost that interest. Richard went into people management because he felt the topics related to it were and would be deeply interesting long-term. These interests might include topics such as people and how they think, how to influence people, how to solve communication challenges between people, aligning people with a business strategy, how to create value, what a good product is, etc. How did people look at Richard’s experience as a mentor and team lead when he was trying to move into people management? Were those experiences as relatable as we think they are? Richard was a team lead at Deutsche Bank. He then became an individual contributor at Google with roles as a Technical Account Manager and Sales Engineer. The first people manager role came 4-5 years after he began working at Google. “In various situations you express leadership in formal or informal roles,” – Richard Russell At Google Richard did a number of things that were acts of leadership, such as: Running an event called TGIF and doing some public speaking / discussion moderation Working closely with a team of engineers in India to develop software to get public transport data into Google Maps (not formally responsible for the effort but providing leadership and guiding people) If Richard were interviewing someone now for a manager position, he might ask the following: Tell me about a time when you got results from people, got them aligned on a problem, or solved an interpersonal problem with people Examples of mentoring and growing junior employees Tell me about a time when you got a group of people headed in the wrong direction to go in the right direction. “A lot of this work is about people influencing and connecting the people to needs of the business and management. To answer it, yes, all of that work as a technical lead or a team lead or whatever it was in various situations…it’s all massively relevant.” – Richard Russell 8:07 – The Job of a Manager is Upward How can listeners decide if people management is the right choice? There is a debate about whether leaders are made or born. Richard thinks anyone can learn the skills of people management, but it’s important to consider your interests and motivations when thinking through it. Richard made an error when going into people management that he sees a lot of people going into people management make now. “The error that I made…in fact, I alluded to this earlier…the error that I see a lot of people making is they see people management as being going to bat for my team. My job as a people manager is to look after my team and to defend my team and to be a servant leader. But often we look at our managers and think they’re not quite defending us enough or they’re not representing us well enough…or all the problems come downwards and so on…. So, I’ll do it differently. And I’ll get up there, and I’ll make it better for my team. And that’s a good thing in many, many ways. However, the job of manager is not to serve the team. That’s the how. That’s how you do it. That’s how you do the job. That’s the best way to do the job. But the job is to provide value for your business, your organization, and your management. The job is upwards….” – Richard Russell Technical people especially who go into management may disregard the fact that the job is upwardly facing. At one time Google questioned whether managers were even needed, and when they tried operating without very many and it failed miserably, they started to look at what was really needed from managers and overhauled some of their management theory. Servant leadership, mentorship, and guidance are certainly part of it. Managers need to understand what the business really needs so they can help their team understand what the business needs and get the results. “This is the big thing which I think is the misunderstanding I think a lot of first-level managers, especially in technology have – what the job is.” – Richard Russell, on the job of a manager What is the difference between a first-level manager and a second level manager’s job in terms of providing business value? First-level managers can make the mistake Richard highlighted, but in most companies, this will not get you to second level maanger. The second level manager is responsible for providing value but also for developing first-level managers. Some of this development is helping the first-level managers re-orient from previous experience as an individual contributor to focus upward. In addition to helping first-level managers learn to be upwardly focused, second level managers need to be even more upwardly focused. “Management is primarily an upwards focused job. This may be counterintuitive, and it may be controversial among some people. But the job is not to serve your team. The job is to deliver the value, and the how is to serve your team…because you don’t get results unless you do that. That statement is the reason. It’s not because it’s a good thing to do. It is a good thing to do. It’s not because it’s the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do. But it’s not because of that. It’s because as a business, what businesses do is they make money, and they provide value to customers. And they sell things, and that’s what defines a business. You’re hiring people in order to eventually make more money and sell more things to businesses and have your teams create more value. And, if I want to do that with knowledge workers, I’ve gotta have managers who serve them well and do well. But it’s so that we can make more money so that we can run a business.” – Richard Russell Richard says in the past, people managers didn’t really understand the “how” of the job and didn’t care about teams. There has been a big movement toward servant leadership over time. Nick says it sounds like there is a difference in the overall goal and mission of a role and how someone performs the duties to fit that. Richard says this is not a subtle point. The manager’s job is managing situations to get the best results and not necessarily to make the team happy. It’s a tradeoff that can at times be difficult to navigate. Sometimes a manager will need to be unpopular, even if trying to serve their team. Richard gives the example of putting a poor performer on the team on a performance improvement plan or getting them off the team. 13:29 – A Transition to Coaching Did Richard want to keep going to higher levels of management after his experience as a first-level manager? Richard had ambitions of being a founder, a CEO, or some kind of executive after stepping into management. At the time, his definition of success was actually what other people expected of him or what he thought other people expected. It took a long time for Richard to realize these were not the things he wanted to do or where his energy came from. We said management is
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