Leveraging mentors to uplevel your career | Jules Walter (YouTube, Slack)
Jules Walter, a product leader at YouTube and former Slack growth PM, shares essential PM skills (IQ & EQ) and actionable strategies for developing them. He emphasizes the power of deliberate practice, effective feedback, and strategic mentorship to accelerate career growth.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Jules Walter's Background and Career Journey
Common Paths into Product Management
Becoming the First Growth PM at Slack
Founding Black Product Managers Network and CodePath
Distinguishing IQ (Hard) and EQ (Soft) Skills for PMs
Strategies for Improving Interview Skills
Challenges for Underrepresented People in Interviews
Developing EQ Skills: Communication and Self-Awareness
The Role of Mentors and Coaches in Self-Reflection
Overcoming Communication Blockers Through Self-Awareness
Outcome-Driven Approach to Learning New Skills
Learning Strategy, Execution, and Product Sense
Effective Methods for Asking and Receiving Feedback
The Difficulty of Getting Honest EQ Feedback
Identifying and Leaning into Your Strengths
Qualities to Seek in a Mentor
Building and Nurturing Mentor Relationships
5 Key Concepts
IQ Skills (Hard Skills)
These are intellectual or technical skills important for PMs, such as execution, product sense, strategy, and interviewing. They are often learned through mental models and practice, and tend to show clearer, faster progress.
EQ Skills (Soft Skills)
These are emotional intelligence skills like communication, leadership, management, and self-awareness. They are generally harder to learn, require continuous practice over longer periods, and are often highly specific to an individual's unique patterns and blind spots.
Deliberate Practice (Interviewing)
This refers to actively engaging in numerous mock interviews, ideally with experienced interviewers, rather than just mentally preparing or practicing with peers. This focused, feedback-driven practice helps individuals improve their performance faster and ensures they are 'good enough' even under stress.
Outcome-Driven Learning
An approach to skill development where you first define a concrete, measurable outcome you want to achieve (e.g., 'drive activation by X%'). You then work backward to identify the necessary skills, frameworks, best practices, and experts to consult, using the desired outcome as a guiding force.
Shadow Side of Strengths
This concept suggests that a personal strength, when overused or applied inappropriately, can manifest as a weakness. Understanding this allows an individual to 'dial' a behavior up or down depending on the context, recognizing that the underlying trait is still a strength.
12 Questions Answered
One common path is to join a startup and start doing product work, gaining experience and a PM title. Another frequent path is to switch into product management internally at an existing company, especially if you have relevant domain expertise.
PM skills can be categorized into IQ (intellectual/hard) skills like execution, product sense, strategy, and EQ (emotional intelligence/soft) skills such as communication, leadership, management, and self-awareness. Early in a career, IQ skills are often prioritized, while EQ skills become increasingly important for advancement.
The most effective way is to do dozens of mock interviews, ideally with people who are good at interviewing, to practice deliberately. It's crucial to practice actual interviews, not just read about them, and to seek out communities for practice.
Beyond potential bias, underrepresented individuals often face high pressure, stress, and ambiguity, coupled with self-talk about belonging when they don't see others like themselves in the company or interview panel.
EQ skills are harder to learn and require continuous, deliberate practice over years. Strategies include reading foundational texts (like Minto's Pyramid Principle), saving examples of great communication, seeking honest feedback (especially subjective feedback about how one comes across), and working with mentors or coaches to identify blind spots and behavioral patterns.
Adopt an outcome-driven approach: define a concrete, measurable outcome you want to achieve, then work backward to identify necessary frameworks, best practices, and experts. Engage with experts by asking specific questions, apply what you learn, and iterate, continuously seeking feedback.
Identify and reverse-engineer best practices by studying great artifacts (memos, decks) and observing experts in action. Attend meetings or presentations of highly skilled PMs, and ask to see their iterative process rather than just final products.
Make people comfortable by asking specific questions about a particular behavior or skill, sometimes by offering self-critical feedback first. Most importantly, respond with enthusiastic gratitude, even if the feedback is difficult to hear, to encourage more honest input in the future.
A good way to identify strengths is to reflect on what many people consistently tell you you're good at, but which you personally don't consider a big deal or particularly important. These often feel natural and effortless to you.
Look for someone who is not only excellent at a specific skill or area you want to improve but also good at explaining it clearly.
Make the smallest possible ask, such as a quick email question that can be answered in a couple of minutes, rather than immediately asking for a call or a long-term mentorship commitment.
Always come prepared with specific problems or contexts where their input would be valuable, take notes during conversations, circle back to show how you've applied their advice and the impact it had, and actively look for ways you can be helpful to them in return.
32 Actionable Insights
1. Be Grateful for Feedback
Respond to feedback with enthusiastic gratitude, even if it’s difficult, to encourage others to provide more input and accelerate your improvement.
2. Define Learning Outcomes
When learning a new skill, set a concrete, measurable outcome to achieve within a specific timeframe, creating a forcing function for improvement.
3. Work Backwards with Questions
After defining a learning outcome, work backward by asking targeted questions about frameworks, best practices, and examples to guide your learning.
4. Read Little, Talk to Experts
Read a small amount on a topic to refine your questions, then seek out and engage with experts in the field for deeper insights.
5. Apply Advice, Report Back
After receiving guidance, apply the pointers, execute, observe results, and then circle back with your mentor to share progress and seek further advice.
6. Seek Blind Spot Feedback
Actively seek out coaches or mentors who can provide honest feedback and help you identify your blind spots and behavioral patterns.
7. Reverse-Engineer Great Work
To improve a skill like strategy, identify best practices by asking for examples of great work or artifacts from skilled colleagues, then reverse-engineer them.
8. Observe Colleagues’ Process
Ask to observe skilled colleagues during their process (e.g., outlining strategy, drafting updates) to understand their thought process and iterative approach.
9. Save Communication Templates
Maintain a personal archive of well-written emails or executive updates to use as templates and learn from effective communication examples.
10. Ask Specific Feedback Questions
Make people comfortable giving feedback by asking specific, targeted questions rather than broad, open-ended ones.
11. Offer Self-Critical Feedback First
Initiate feedback by offering self-critical observations about your own work, then invite others to agree, disagree, or add their perspective.
12. Seek Subjective Feedback
Actively seek subjective feedback on how you make others feel or how you come across, as this personal insight is crucial for emotional intelligence.
13. Cultivate Vulnerability
Cultivate an environment of trust and vulnerability by being vulnerable yourself, making others feel safe to share honest feedback.
14. Focus on One Skill at a Time
When developing PM skills, focus intensely on improving one skill at a time for a dedicated period (e.g., 3-6 months) to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
15. Implement Weekly Skill Routine
Establish a weekly routine for skill development, such as studying a new example and dedicating daily time to practice the skill towards your outcome.
16. Practice Different Listening Styles
Develop varied listening patterns beyond problem-solving, specifically practicing creating space for others and actively ensuring they feel heard.
17. Identify Your Core Strengths
Discover your core strengths by reflecting on what many people praise you for, but you personally don’t consider a big deal.
18. Understand Strength’s Shadow Side
Recognize that strengths can have a ‘shadow side’ (weakness in different contexts); understanding this allows you to adjust your approach.
19. Find Topic-Specific Mentors
When seeking a mentor, prioritize finding someone who is currently an expert in the specific skill or topic you want to improve.
20. Make Smallest Mentor Ask
When first reaching out to a potential mentor, make the smallest possible ask, such as a quick email question, rather than requesting a meeting.
21. Demonstrate Advice’s Impact
After receiving initial advice from a potential mentor, always circle back to them later to demonstrate how you applied their advice and its impact.
22. Gradually Increase Mentor Asks
After successfully demonstrating the value of their initial advice, gradually increase the ask for a mentor’s time, such as requesting a short call.
23. Bring Specific Problems to Mentors
When meeting with a mentor, always bring a very specific, current problem or decision you’re facing where their input would be directly valuable.
24. Take Notes with Mentors
Always take detailed notes during conversations with mentors to capture their advice and demonstrate your engagement.
25. Build Continuous Mentor Relationships
When following up with mentors, reference previous conversations or personal details to foster a continuous relationship, not just transactional interactions.
26. Actively Offer Mentor Help
Actively seek ways to help your mentors, even if they are senior, by asking ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’ at the end of conversations.
27. Be Patient with PM Learning
Be patient with the challenging process of learning PM skills, especially later in your career, as it takes time to see significant improvements.
28. Adopt Continuous Learning Model
Adopt a mental model for continuous learning in PM skills, understanding it requires consistent practice, feedback, and iteration, not just passive consumption.
29. Practice with Mock Interviews
Perform dozens of mock interviews, ideally with skilled interviewers or peers, to significantly improve your interview performance and manage stress.
30. Form Interview Practice Groups
Create small groups (3-5 people) with peers undergoing the same interview process to make preparation more enjoyable and effectively manage nerves.
31. Practice Until ‘Good Enough’
Practice interview skills extensively so that even on your worst day, your performance is still good enough to succeed.
32. Consider Startup or Internal Switch
To break into product management, consider joining a startup as an early PM or switching internally within a company where you’ve developed domain expertise.
9 Key Quotes
If you give me feedback, I'll be like, hey, thank thank you so much. This is super helpful. Because people are like, oh, he actually likes the feedback. Now, inside, my heart might be melting. You know, I'm like, oh, I thought I got better at this. You know what I mean? But externally, I'm like, hey, thank you. And I mean it.
Jules Walter
You want to basically practice so much that even at your worst, you're good enough.
Jules Walter
Most things you do, people give you some feedback so you can get better at it. But interviewing, you never get any feedback.
Jules Walter
The EQ stuff, it's what you need to focus on is specific to you.
Jules Walter
You need someone to put a mirror in front of you figuratively.
Jules Walter
A lot of learning happens through the iterations and not by seeing the final product.
Jules Walter
What is something that a lot of people say you're good at, but you think is not a big deal, you know, or it's not that important. And that's like the key.
Lawrence Ripsher (as quoted by Jules Walter)
You should make the smallest ask possible, which is the opposite of what 95% of people do.
Jules Walter
The key is to circle back with them at a later point and show that you've actually made good use of the advice. I think that's the thing nobody does.
Jules Walter
4 Protocols
Skill Learning and Development Protocol
Jules Walter- Define a concrete, measurable outcome that, if achieved, proves you're better at a specific skill.
- Work backward from this outcome to identify necessary frameworks, best practices, and questions.
- Read a small amount about the topic to refine your questions.
- Find and talk to experts/mentors in the field to get answers and pointers.
- Apply the learned concepts by driving initiatives and running experiments.
- Go back to the mentor with results (good or bad) and new problems, continuing the learning loop.
Building a Mentor Relationship Protocol
Jules Walter- Make the smallest possible ask initially (e.g., a quick email question that can be answered in two minutes).
- Implement the advice received.
- Circle back at a later point to show the mentor you've made good use of their advice and the impact it had.
- Over time, you can make slightly larger asks (e.g., a 15-minute call) as trust and the relationship build.
Effective Mentor Meeting Protocol
Jules Walter- Bring something very specific you are dealing with where the mentor can provide input.
- Take detailed notes during the conversation.
- In follow-up communications, refer back to older conversations and advice.
- Actively try to identify ways you can be helpful to the mentor.
Asking for Feedback Protocol
Jules Walter- Make people comfortable giving you feedback, especially constructive feedback.
- Ask specific questions about a particular behavior or skill you're working on (e.g., 'Did you feel I showed executive presence?').
- Consider giving yourself critical feedback first, then invite them to agree or disagree.
- Respond with enthusiastic gratitude to any feedback received, even if it's difficult to hear, to encourage future honesty.