Jules Walter: recommendation

Transcript context

…That's an awesome takeaway. One other thread I wanted to pull on is you mentioned focusing on strengths and how that ends up being really important. Something I'm a big believer in is focusing on strengths versus trying to make your weaknesses much, much stronger. Is there any advice you can share to better understand what your strengths are, why that's an approach to take in developing your skills? For the strengths, breakthroughs. For me, a lot of it was talking to my mentor, Lawrence Ripsher. And I organized this event for Black PMs at Pinterest, where Lawrence was speaking, and then we were talking about, "Hey, watch should we talk about, et cetera. " I don't know how, but in the conversation he talked about doubling down your strengths more than on fixing your weaknesses, and then he used me as an example. Then the fun part is he had this approach of how you actually find your strength. It's a very simple question, where basically he's like, "Hey, what is something that a lot of people say you're good at, but you think it's not a big deal or it's not that important?" And that's the key. I always that's what resonated with me. I was like, "Oh, a lot of people keep saying I'm really good at networking." I'm like semi-introvert, so I'm like, "Hold on, I don't know." [inaudible 00:52:32] not everyone or people will tell me, "Hey, you have asked great questions." And I'm like, "I asked basic questions." And then he helped me understand, "Actually, that's how you know it's a strength." Now, what you need to figure out is how do you get more out of that strength. An analogy, by the way, is imagine that you saw a fish and you were like, "Hey, you're really good at swimming." And then the fish would be like, "Oh. Duh, doesn't everybody swim?" And so, that's the key and I invite people to think about that question like, "What's something people keep telling you you're good at, but you yourself don't think is a big deal?" And that's how I was able to find a bunch of my strengths. ] For me, generally I'm thoughtful, ask great questions. I also simplify problems a lot. I mean, we work together on a product sense article, which is a very complex thing, made it more simple. And then once you identify the strength, then it helps to also think about why are you good at this thing? Because that's the underlying resource that you have. A big part for me is I'm actually quite curious. And fun fact, I don't think of myself as curious, but people keep telling me I am. And even my mom was telling me when I was a kid, I used to always try to unscrew toys to see how they work in the inside. That's one thing: being curious help me ask the questions and so on. And then the other thing, too, is once you have the strength, you want to understand the shadow side of it, and that's the connection between your strength and weaknesses. That was a key breakthrough for me, especially Lawrence helped me understand that. Strengthen and weakness, it's not a binary thing. It's like the same thing, but it's a dial. In some context it's good, in other contexts it's serving you. An example in my cases is... I talked about I ask great questions, but sometimes I ask a question without context, I might come across as less knowledgeable. good, in other contexts it's serving you. An example in my cases is... I talked about I ask great questions, but sometimes I ask a question without context, I might come across as less knowledgeable. Or another thing for me is I'm able to take very complex problems and then create a mental model that's much simpler, whether it's growth or other things. But until I come up with that mental model, if I'm in a meeting with you, I won't talk much about that topic. Basically, I'm more quiet than other people when people want to hear my point of view because I'm just listening and trying to create a mental model of the situation. You're seeing how the same strength is perceived as a weakness depending on context. And once you have that... For me, I feel more empowered. I'm like, "Oh, I just have to dial down a little bit here or dial a little bit here," and I also know this thing is serving me, which is why I keep doing the bad side of it.…

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