Brian Balfour: belief

Transcript context

…It's fascinating. We're actually going to have Brian Chesky on the podcast coming up in sometime November, is the plan. So we'll talk about that. And my take there, is I just feel like there are many bad product managers that just come in and slow everything down, take over control. And so I think that's where a lot of this comes from. You ended up working with a bad PM, it doesn't help. My feeling is awesome product managers make everything better, they help you do the work you want to do, they unblock you, give you space to do the work you want to do. That's often what I find, is just great PMs make everything better, bad PMs create this sense of like, "Oh, get rid of product management." [inaudible 01:16:49]. All right, well we got two more lessons, our penultimate lesson. Brian Balfour, what do we got? Lesson nine, find sparring partners, not mentors or coaches. As you can imagine being in the L&D space, I get asked for referrals to mentors and coaches quite a bit. And I've had mentors and coaches in my career, I imagine you have too. But when I really look back and I think about, where have I gotten the most value? Meaning who has helped me progress the most? It has ended up not being one of those mentors or coaches, it's actually somebody who I would define as a sparring partner. And so I think about this in the boxing analogy. A coach, once again, is sort of giving you direction, yelling at you on the sidelines. But a sparring partner is somebody who's in the ring with you, kind of throwing blows back and forth. And the thing about that sparring partner is they probably share a common set of goals, they're probably also trying to get better at the thing that you're getting- Common set of goals. They're probably also trying to get better at the thing that you're getting better at. They are on a similar level, but maybe have some slightly different strengths to you as part of it. They're not afraid to push and throw punches to help you get better, which I think is often missing sometimes from a mentor or coach relationship. And they're playing the same sport, so a PM and a PM or however we want to take this analogy. But the most important thing is they are in the arena with you. When you find those folks that have that set of dynamics of the right shared set of goals, they're not afraid to throw punches with you, all of that kind of stuff, they are the ones that I have found have pushed me to a much deeper level than somebody giving me some advice from the outside. Most mentorship programs are extremely forced and not very fluid. You also tend to not share a common worker goal. You can pay mentors or coaches by the hour. They're trying to achieve something different in their career than the path that you might be on, even though there's some similarities. I think oftentimes those discussions just end up being discussions about generalities or how to get promoted or one of those things. Whereas a sparring partner is like ... I've found that person is helping me create and ship something better in the world, which is ultimately I think the thing that you're going to get judged on. So, I've solved this in a few different ways over time. At certain moments in my career, I had what I think a lot of people would call mastermind groups where I would get people at a similar stage of company as me together, we would meet biweekly or monthly and all those types of things. Those I think work for a interesting period of time, but inevitably some people evolve in a different direction, and so the group becomes less and less relevant over time to you. And so you basically almost always have to hit a reset button to blow the group up and reassemble it, and that can be a decent amount of work. he group becomes less and less relevant over time to you. And so you basically almost always have to hit a reset button to blow the group up and reassemble it, and that can be a decent amount of work. Oftentimes these end up being co-founders relationships and starting a company. A lot of times your co-founders are a sparring partner for you. Most recently though, I've been for the past about seven years, been organizing this yearly trip called Recatalyze to Mexico, which is this group of founders. We do it in December towards the end of the year where we're reflecting on the year and we go spend five days in Mexico not only getting to know each other, but inspiring each other with what all of us have been thinking about and accomplishing for the rest of the year. But most importantly is we have these dinner combos that just get super brutally honest and deep with each other and there's tears, there's laughing, there's yelling, there's all of these types of things. It's probably the most productive few days out of my entire year at this point. And so I think there's actually a lot of ways to solve this, but what I often find is that when somebody is looking ... When they come to me looking for a mentor or a coach, they are actually better served by figuring out how to surround themselves with somebody that looks more like a sparring partner. Those folks tend to just be the bonds and the relationships that really push you for many years throughout your career versus some of these other folks.…

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