Posted on by Nick Korte

Upward Focus: Manage, Coach, and Create Value in the Space that Fits You with Richard Russell (2/2)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | TuneIn | Youtube Music | RSS | More

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 about providing business value to the company, and this is something which is very important to Richard. There are 2 things Richard struggles with as a manager:
      • The first is putting the value delivery ahead of the people. Richard is very motivated by and cares about people, and it makes him a soft manager. He would rather primarily be developing people.
      • Secondly, Richard finds some aspects of delivering results very difficult such as delivering projects, plans, or documents.
      • “What I found is that when I was a people manager, when that pressure comes down on me or the team…I am not a good people manager in that I can’t care for my people. I can’t do that well. I can’t be the servant leader when I’m under pressure. I did not have that capability…. My shift first of all from being a people manager and wanting to be an executive to realizing I’m not sure I’m motivated to do that. I’m not sure I’m capable of doing that – deliver results through people and put the results first and still care for people…. I think the best way of delivering results is to care for people. That’s one of the best mechanisms to do, but when I’m under pressure, my way of dealing with pressure in those situations…I don’t have the capability to do the caring for people that’s going to get the results to deliver them. And that’s a characteristic about myself that I’ve learned that I’ve found very difficult to deal with because I fundamentally deeply do care about people. And when I’m under pressure in that management role and I’m pushing that pressure onto my team or doing whatever I’m doing, I’m not getting the results. And I’m not making them better. And I’m not happy. And I’m stressed. It’s not a good place for me.” – Richard Russell
      • When Richard realized management was not the right place for him, he went down the path of doing consulting. It was a lot of teaching, helping people solve problems, and doing some delivery work. Based on his characteristics, Richard found consulting was still too far down the path of delivering results.
      • “That’s why I’ve moved to being a coach because actually my job is to care about people…. I can do tough love when my job is to care about you and to help you grow, and I can do that really well in those situations because I don’t have the stress of making sure you’re delivering a result that I need for my success.” – Richard Russell
  • Richard’s success as a coach is aligned with the things he actually cares about. He cares about his clients and helps to develop them into better managers and leaders (i.e. clients get better results, are more capable as managers, have happier teams, etc.).
    • Richard gets a great deal of energy from these conversations, whereas being tasked with delivering a strategy or a plan makes him stressed.
    • “I’m quite passionate about this for people who are listening. Where you get energy from and what motivates you, if that’s really lined up with what success in your job is, that’s a wonderful place to be. And if when you’re doing these things you are the person you want to be, that’s great. If it’s not, maybe look at what change needs to happen. Quite a lot of people I know are just deeply motivated by operating and by building things and by creating things and solving technical problems. And that’s their motivation. …That’s fantastic. And if you can do that and you can care for people and you have those skills of managing and leading people and influencing people and understanding the business…then you’re capable of being an executive. You can get to any level, really. And that might be great for you. That might be the right thing. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t care about people, you can still get there. You’re just going to cause a lot of pain along the way for other people, and it’s not going to be good. But you can get there…. I wouldn’t recommend it.” – Richard Russell

18:39 – Comparing Coaches and People Managers

  • We’ve spoken with others about coaching and being a people manager and some of the similarities and differences. What does Richard think the comparison looks like based on his experience?
    • Richard believes each person who wants to be successful as a people manager needs to be a great coach. This is non-negotiable. There are 2 main differences between coach and manager according to Richard.
    • The first is relationship – people managers coach their teams in certain situations and during 1-1 meetings, but there is a manager employee relationship still in place. The same manager who is coaching you is assessing you and doing reviews of your performance. A manager can support a promotion, a transfer to another team internally, and make the call to end your employment if that needs to happen.
      • “There’s a whole lot of perceived agenda. A good manager…can coach in those contexts without agenda. It’s about the person and developing the person, and I have had great managers who’ve been able to coach me and help me figure out what’s going on / find the right place while also not holding that as a threat or having that affect their assessment of me. It’s hard to do, but it’s possible. Being a great manager, you need to be able to do that, and it’s really, really important.” – Richard Russell
    • The second difference is that a manager’s job is to deliver results.
      • Part of delivering results is developing a competent team.
      • If a manager has a team member who would like to transfer to a different team, it creates a conflicting agenda. The manager still wants to deliver results and may be losing top talent, but they also want to support what is best for that team member. Richard says good managers should support what is best for a team member, even if that means leaving the team.
      • “If you’re really good as a manager, one of the things you do is you develop a reputation for identifying, hiring, attracting good people and developing them and seeing them move on to greatness. And then people will really want to come to you as a manager. Then you get the best people…. When you have these great managers in big companies and they move around, the first thing that happens is they bring along 4 or 5 or 10 of their best people from around the company and gather them together…. There’s a massive talent in that, and that’s partly about coaching and how you invest in your team and how you invest in their skills…so coaching is super important as a manager. And it is in many ways the same set of skills except that it’s in a context which is different.” – Richard Russell
      • Developing a good reputation for fostering talent as a manager can be helpful in companies of various sizes. This is partly about how you coach and develop your people and invest in their skills.
    • As a coach, Richard’s only loyalty is to his client and their interests.
      • The only real conflict that could come up is if Richard as the coach had a moral or ethical qualm with something the client is doing.
      • Richard works with his clients to improve what they are doing, which can mean the person wants to get promoted, for example. Richard is there to help the person do that and thrive as a person.
      • “Everyone I come across…it’s never just I want to get a promotion, or I want to get more money. There’s a deeper why…. Figuring out how to get people in touch with that and what’s going to make them happy in their careers is really important.” – Richard Russell
      • Listen to Richard tell the story of a fisherman who gets an unsolicited suggestion for creating a fishing business from a banker visiting the area. But creating and selling a business (what the banker thought success would be) wasn’t the definition of success the fisherman really had for his life.
      • Richard once defined success as being a successful executive. At one point he had a team of 100 people reporting into him. When Richard told a friend of his from Google about having a team of this size, his friend said, “wow, you’ve really made it.” Richard would later come to realize the role was not for him, and it was not who he wanted to be.
      • “Can you not create something that’s more like that now? Can you get more control over your life now about your work life balance? You’re traveling 4 days a week. Is that what you want to do?” – Richard Russell, on uncovering the deeper why behind what his clients want to do
      • Richard uses the example of his wife. For her, is a promotion really the right thing? A promotion involves more travel, more pressure, and more stress.
      • “I think most people, myself included, adopt definitions of success and failure from our context and our environment and from other people, and we internalize them. They’re not always beliefs that serve us. The people I’ve seen who are the happiest in their life, most fulfilled, and most successful in ways that matter are people who’ve managed to figure out what success means to them.” – Richard Russell
      • Some define success as the ability to tinker with hardware and software without the need to have direct reports or manage a team. Richard gives the example of an extremely talented individual at Amazon in this category. While we might say the person could be way more successful, the life this person has is the one he wants / chose. It goes back to how this individual defines success.
  • Does the coach have the ability to be more transparent with someone than a manager can be without feeling conflicted about the level of transparency?
    • Richard says yes because there is usually only one agenda. It might seem like a conflict of interest if Richard wants a case study or referral or testimonial, but it’s fundamentally aligned with what a client wants.
    • Managers have things which can pull them in other directions like HR rules, employment laws, corporate risk, etc. A manager’s need to deliver results and the desire to retain someone on their team (even if the person wants to leave the team) creates a conflicting agenda. Richard says it is possible to not be conflicted about these things, but it is difficult. It requires courage, confidence, and experience as a manager.

28:11 – The Space That Fits You

  • What are some of the interesting conflicts or interesting differences between being the owner / entrepreneur of a coaching business and actively coaching clients?
    • Conversations with coaching clients are very personal and confidential. If these could be shared, they would make great marketing materials. Any kind of marketing materials must be sanitized / obfuscated so as not to be personally identifiable. This seems like a conflict of interest, but one can simply learn to develop marketing materials without violating client confidentiality or trust.
    • Doing marketing, administrative work, and content creation is a different kind of work. Richard made a shift in his business over the last few months (which is how he and Nick connected originally). He was spending a lot of time on LinkedIn producing content for brand awareness of his business and at the same time doing consulting work, and he found it to be consistently difficult.
    • “Let’s try and move my own marketing to things that I feel are more natural for me and more energy productive, so I spend more time on longer form content on Substack. I’m creating something that I think is valuable for people, so I’m motivated to do that…. Now sharing it becomes not such a piece of hard work.” – Richard Russell
    • Richard also likes to be a guest on podcasts like Nerd Journey. He feels engaged in these kinds of conversations and does not feel the need to produce a sound byte. It’s about providing value and making the audience think.
      • Richard is also interviewing people for his own podcast. He finds it interesting to learn from the stories of others and share them with other people.
    • The realignment of Richard’s efforts makes the work easy because they are aligned with who he is and what he wants to do.
      • “When I’m doing good marketing, I’m kind of doing the stuff that I’m doing when I’m doing good coaching. It’s the same stuff with a slightly different context…. That’s really deeply aligned with what I believe in as a coach and what I want to do for my clients and how I want to help them.” – Richard Russell
  • Nick likes the process of continued iterative alignment with Richard’s interests and the things that give him energy. The ADHD brain can drop things once they become uninteresting. But once Richard got interested in people, he never found it boring. The focus remained.
    • Richard has always been interested in people as well as business, strategy, and marketing. A topic can be very interesting (business, strategy, marketing), but the work of producing the value in that area can be quite difficult.
    • Richard will continue to find these topical areas interesting, but he realized the need to ensure the production of value is in way that gives him energy.
    • Producing a book, a training course, a project plan, or some other thing that requires very long periods of intense focus can be difficult for Richard. He loses interest in the thing he’s working on but not the topical area in which it resides.
    • Richard tells us some of the realizations he has shared came from working with his own coach. When originally asked about what gave him energy, Richard wasn’t sure how to answer. He needed to think deeply on it and iterate a little bit.
      • “I was quite convinced that being a consultant was the right path, and solving strategy problems was the right thing to do. But I realized after a while that what gets me going there is those conversations, especially helping them get a breakthrough themselves…not producing a piece of strategy or teaching them how to do strategy or creating content that helps them do that. Maybe consulting is not for me because if I do that…the more successful I am the less energy I have. And I’ll get down about it.” – Richard Russell, on why consulting isn’t the right path
      • Listen to Richard describe the process of obtaining and helping a consulting client and which things gave him energy compared to those that drained his energy (writing proposals, setting up meetings, producing an artifact as a takeaway, etc.).
    • Richard talks about his original move into systems engineering and how getting trouble tickets gave him energy. They were problems he would get to solve.
  • Nick says it sounds like Richard is encouraging us to break things down to a task level to analyze what gives us energy, but we should keep in mind the topical areas that get us excited. For Richard, it seemed like it was the intersection of people, business, and technology.
    • “You can’t always be 100% on I only do things that energize me. There’s always washing to do…. There’s always some of this. I do think that figuring out where your fit is is partially about…you’ve got to be realistic about what people want and what demand there is…. Figuring out what demand is and figuring out what I’m good at and where I get my energy from…that’s the whole Ikigai thing, right? What people want, what the world needs, what I am good at, and what I enjoy doing – in the middle of that is…your sweet spot.” – Richard Russell
    • Richard remembers going through school and choosing his degree / looking at the careers guide. It seemed like making a selection was putting himself in a box that would define who he was for the rest of his life. It took Richard a long time to realize it’s about his ability to relate to people and how he makes people feel which is in the intersection of all the areas we discussed.
      • Richard came to realize that what he does with people is valuable.
      • “It’s not everyone who does this. And not everyone has this motivation. And not everyone is interested like that…. I find it interesting, and I find it motivating…. I get value from it. Just getting comfortable with who I am and where value really is, and it’s no longer defined by phrase on a paper or degrees or doing things that people think are clever. It’s a really big change. For different people it’s different…what fits you but finding that space is really important.” – Richard Russell
    • Nick believes it takes some sampling and iteration to understand where you need to be. What Richard has found is similar to the concept of area of destiny.
      • Richard felt like early on he was in a technical box, and he was proud of it. He encourages us to be proud if that is the box where we fit.
      • Over time, Richard met people whose background might be different than what they were doing. He cites examples like a systems administrator colleague with an arts and music degree, a doctor who became an agile and scrum trainer, etc. Seeing people make these changes and shifts helped Richard understand he no longer needed to define himself the way he had been (in a specific box).
      • “I don’t need to define myself by that box anymore…. You can move boxes, and it’s fine. And there’s lots of value in lots of different boxes or spaces or whatever you want to call them.” – Richard Russell

39:26 – Finding the Right Coach

  • How would someone recognize they have found a coach who can help them?
    • Richard says see if they help you. For context, his sales calls are coaching calls.
    • Part of this is determining if you and a potential coach can speak the same language and understand each other. Richard remembers meeting some coaches who didn’t have the right background to help him.
      • “I can’t feel like I connect with you because I don’t feel like you’ve been where I have been or anywhere like I’ve been. I don’t think you understand my world. I’ve had other coaches who haven’t had those lists on their CVs. But at least they speak the language, and I understand that they’ve had the exposure to other people to figure it out.” – Richard Russell, sharing thoughts on coaches who were not right for him
    • Richard’s background helps him connect with product and technical people. He has been in big tech companies and in startups and can speak the same language as others in them now. No one needs to explain what a sprint is to him, for example.
      • When you know the person coaching you understands where you are coming from it creates trust. It fosters a conversation about a problem so a coach can help you work through it.
      • Richard says there is a blurry line between coaching, advising, teaching, and consulting. The coach has to caution against giving too many answers. Coaches can give some answers, but part of the work is understanding the person and what they are trying to do.
      • “Did I get value from this, and would I want more of that? Do I trust this person? Do I feel like they understand me in a way that matters to what I need to do? And, are they helping me? …Did they help me come up with answers? Did I get the change that I want? Do I feel like I’m making progress on these things? If it’s literally just they told me things and they answered questions, it’s probably not going to be deeper change for the long term. But at the same time if there’s none of that, do they even know my world? Do I trust them? You have to have a bit of both of these things.” – Richard Russell, on how to determine if a coach is the right fit for you
  • This brings us full circle back to building trust. Some of the things Richard shared in finding the right coach could also be things we use to determine if working for a specific people manager is right for us.
    • Richard feels like technical managers need at least some context, even if it’s not the same degree of experience as the people they manage.
      • Richard shares the story of a manager he had who came from marketing and law. This person asked all sorts of questions when he onboarded and wanted to understand what systems did and how they interact. Knowledge of the systems and their function empowered this manager to have conversations about them in an effective way.

43:41 – The Greater Context

  • Nick feels there is a nuance to communicating with executives that technical people do not always understand.
    • Richard says this happens with people who are functionally skilled in whatever function it is (technology or some other area).
    • “Your manager may not know the same level of details that you do about things, and that’s normal and that’s ok…. Some of their judgements might not make sense to you…. The real thing is to spend the time to learn how they think or why they’re making decisions…how they’re thinking about something, how they’re prioritizing…. Largely this is about understanding the broader context that they have because by nature of the position in the organization they have broader context. They have much more connection with up – with managers above and across as well…. They should be able to help you understand at least the pieces of that broader context that you need to know. When you’re relating to them, whatever level you’re relating to…first of all spend time to understand their needs and what’s going on and what they need from you. I made this mistake early on in my career with my own manager of basically not having interest in what he wanted and having my own opinions on everything.” – Richard Russell
    • Richard says it’s important to understand the metrics and how your manager prioritizes things. Be open to learning the greater context. It is extremely important to be coachable and open to learning.
    • Richard shares the story of a CTO who would ignore non-technical topics in executive meetings. Richard then encouraged this person to pay attention and ask questions when other executives were speaking about their own functional area (i.e. when the Marketing person was presenting their plans, etc.). As it turns out, the CTO knew about an upcoming software release that could help a marketing initiative, and because he was engaged in the conversation and willing to understand the greater context, both executives built trust and benefited from sharing their respective knowledge.
      • Richard encourages us all to take the time to understand the context from areas outside our own.
    • “This is the big difference between executive and junior, and this is the thing that executives notice about juniors. You’re paying attention. You actually care about the context in which you’re working. The thing that defines the value of what you do…you’re caring about it. You’re someone I can teach.” – Richard Russell
    • Much of the job of an executive is getting the context and figuring out how to communicate it downward in a meaningful way.
      • A CTO, for example, has to build a competent technical team and then has to give their team enough context to be able to make deicisions that are useful. The CTO would be the main communication conduit for this team.
      • “Somehow through the mechanisms that you use to communicate with people in this larger organization, you have to give them enough context such that they can then be empowered to make decisions without then having to come back to you…. So, this is all about empowering people, and this relates back to that whole topic of servant leadership and doing it well by serving teams…giving them enough context so they can make a decision and then coaching them to make better decisions. And, then understanding what misconceptions or errors are they making and where and why and then figuring out…how do I influence that? What other context do I need to get, and how do the decisions they’re making actually fit into the rest of the organization? And where else do I need to influence? …This is about empowerment. You can’t be empowered unless you have the context. And in fact, the context in some ways constrains you, so you have to give the constraints. And that empowers people.” – Richard Russell
      • Managers must learn how to communicate context.
    • Nick loves the fact that Richard’s illustrations show that we all have gaps and need to get better.
  • If you want to follow up with Richard…

Mentioned in the Outro

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *