Leveraging mentors to uplevel your career | Jules Walter (YouTube, Slack)
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.