What we've learned from our mentors (and what not)

Long time no see. It's true. How's it going? Well, sitting here with my rented doggo. Another one. No, it's always the same one. But okay. We should have like a video podcast. So everyone could see this pure cuteness. I mean, you can see him. Yes. What about you? How's life? Exhausting. Really exhausting because I am about to finish my psychotherapy training. Oh, finally. This weekend. So yeah. When can I get my first therapy? There is a little bit more to do until I'm officially allowed to do therapy because I need also the license for that, which is the next step. But the basic therapy training is done, which will enable me to work as a therapist. So the craft actually. Nice. So how should I imagine? Is it like an exam similar to the ones that we took at school? Do you need to analyze someone? Kind of. Yeah. So I have to do a 90 minute session with a client and I have to write a five to 10 page summary of the process I made during that training because I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but it's like 70 to 80% of the training is self-experience. So you have a lot of work on your own topics with the certain tools that you learn. So you can imagine like this. So you have the trainers who are showing exercises to doing theory and showing exercises, and then you pair up in groups of two or three, and then you are working on each other. So which means you are always getting therapy on every weekend or you are the therapist. So which means you are always looking on from both sides and you are always in these processes of working with your own traumas, working on your own topics, which is like a heavy thing. And you usually need also a couple of days and weeks after because it's fully exhausting. Well, I appreciate that you still have the energy that you take the time to sit here with me today. Well, I think the training also helped me to gain more motivation for this podcast and to share my learnings here because I have changed a lot since I did that training. And by the way, there's one thing to answer your question if you can get your therapy. There's something new that I've learned, which is really mind-blowing for me because I've never heard of it before, which is constellation work. Have you heard of it? No, I have no idea what it is. Yeah, constellation work. It sounds like something with stars. No, I'm not even sure if I'm translating it 100% correct, but I think I do. Like the star constellations. No, okay, so there's no astrology in it. There are many ways how you can approach constellation work. There's also a spiritual way. There's a psychological way. And it's about bringing your thoughts and people or your environment you are confronted with on a paper and placing it in a room. And then going into interaction with role plays and stuff like that. And it's very interesting because my trainer told a story where a CEO was doing psychotherapy and I think it was he was writing down on paper each department and placing it in the room. And then the exercise was to go through each department and just go through how it feels. So how is this department feeling for you? What are the struggles you feel? What is coming up when you think about certain persons within a department? I don't want to go too deep, but it's a completely different way of approaching problems within your company, especially for a leader and the CEO. So yeah, I took away a lot of things from that story. And yeah, I'm just right now trying to establish that in my day to day business too. I think that would be quite interesting to see me walking through the different departments. Or different people in the department. Get my reaction. I think the emotional variety ranges from deep love to only deep love because I love everyone in my company. Well, if you love everyone, then something is not right with you, Alex. But I think it's good that we're talking about it because there's also something that I've learned because over the last couple of years, I spent a lot of time in self-training before I started this training. You read 300,000 books. Gazillion books. Yeah, absolutely. I read a lot, but I attended also a lot of summits, festivals, whatever. But having a trainer and a person who is directly working with you and who shares experience, I just realized how important it is to have a trainer, a mentor, a coach. And as you know, I'm doing psychotherapy by myself since quite some time because at some point I just wanted to give it a shot and now I'm addicted and cannot get away from it, as you see. So there's a lot of benefit in having people in your life who can share experience, who are mirroring your behavior, your thoughts. I think it's good to talk about it because not everyone has that. But if you look back, if you say it obviously is important to have trainers, mentors, and so on, did you have them in your career? Who did you learn from? I think the very first boss I had was quite a good one because he was like a genius when it comes to e-commerce and how to sell stuff online. So I was learning a lot. But afterwards, I was more learning from people how to not do it. It was more like learning through pain, to be honest with you. There was not that one person where I looked up and I said, please teach me. Unfortunately, how about you? Yeah, the same is true for me. I've learned a lot from peers. I've learned a lot from collaboration. But I see a lot of people really relying on mentorship networks and really having this go-to person as a mentor. I think while I had some chats also on that level, designers that reached out to me, I never really got fully into this concept of there is a mentor, there is a mentee. Obviously, I can see the benefits of having someone experienced who can stand by, give you advice, to help you navigate some of these painful things and challenges. At the same time, there is obviously massive value in learning by doing, learning by failing. But yeah, I mean, I've probably missed out on some of these things. I then try to compensate by reading a lot. I mean, I also was looking into working closer with a coach. I would definitely also pick it up again. Or even like a therapist. I mean, every once in a while, it's also very nice to go to a therapist and talk to them, right? It's maybe not like the direct mentorship that you would get from an industry expert, but it still helps you analyzing yourself. Absolutely. Which can have a positive impact on your business. Oh, yeah. I have no doubt about that. Yeah. So the only thing I forgot to mention is that in the companies I worked for, they were usually hiring coaches. So I had the fortune to work with HR coaches, leadership coaches a lot. That I have to say. So that was very helpful. But we all know what you think about HR coaches. I also said I've learned how to not do things, right? But here's the thing. Because you said you paired up with groups and you didn't have that mentor, the question is also if you are open for having one. Because what I've realized, many people are sometimes not open to getting – I mean, teach is now maybe a strong word – but having someone to reach out to and to also be vulnerable, right? By saying, hey, I am having a challenge and I cannot fix it. Yeah. No, totally. Totally. But I mean, that's where I think it becomes easier when you say, okay, I go get a coach. I know he gets money for it. So I know I can also bring all my problems, right? I think in a mentor-mentee relationship, there's also like, okay, I mean, you need to build up a relationship. I mean, you need to find a mentor. You need to establish a relationship with them so that they are willing also to invest the time needed to help you and to give you the feedback, right? I think that's probably something where is it because of time or lack of focus or putting the focus somewhere else and never prioritizing it. I also haven't really invested in building such an outside mentorship relationship. But I think, yeah, at the same time, the people that I met throughout life, I always try to get a lot out of every single short interaction. Is it a conference where I have the opportunity to talk to one of the speakers or, I mean, before COVID, there have still been a lot of conferences and so on. But then, and it's probably my nature, I just don't feel like I'm the most engaged person when it comes to communities and so on. I mean, I'm sitting in the Envision Design Leadership group. I mean, there are people who contribute daily and who write daily and who comment. I don't know. I just never did that. Yeah. But the thing is, do you need to do that, right? I mean, the question is, first of all, what should be the relationship that you possibly could have with, let's say, a mentor, yeah? I mean, the first thing you need is someone you are willing to learn from or someone you are willing to have an exchange with. So whether that's within the company or outside the company or within a certain community, I think the first thing it starts with is the one-on-one interaction, if we're talking about a mentor. If you're looking for exchange within a peer group or within a community, the game is completely different. I think today we should maybe focus on the mentorship part. And something I have to say and I have to admit, by the way, is I used to fall into that trap believing, knowing what is right, although I was wrong many times. And I mean, let's say, if I would have had someone who maybe in a nice way would have told me, hey, Christian, you should look at it from a different angle, I would have been open, but for some reason I wasn't. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't need to necessarily be a nice way. Yeah, it doesn't. You're right. Sometimes a kick can help too, yeah. I love interactions with people that are super straight up direct. So there is the feedback you want and there's the feedback you need, right? However, the reason I'm mentioning it and maybe it's inspiring or helpful for our audience is don't believe you can solve every problem by yourself. Yeah. To me, I think that's one of the most important things as a product manager to learn. Even though you have good intentions, even though you are 110% committed to what you're doing, there's always more than your point of view out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, even take our relationship, Christian, the way we, I mean, it's now almost two years that we meet weekly for these podcast discussions. The time in the podcast, the time before and the time after, I mean, all these moments are good learning opportunities where we both share some of the experiences and we talk about it, right? I think, I mean, maybe we took the conversation a little bit or it could be my fault. I went a lot into the rabbit hole of, okay, why do I never, like, why did I never have a mentor or how do I approach mentorship and learning? I mean, I think the bottom line is just the importance of learning and the importance of learning from the right people. And I think that that's also maybe a point to make, right? If you learn from the wrong people, that can almost have the opposite effect or it will have the opposite effect, right? But choosing the people that you trust with your development. Yeah. But also looking from the other angle, everyone, I mean, not everyone, but everyone wants to be a mentor or a coach, right? But just because of the fact that you have solved an issue that doesn't make you automatically a mentor. So it needs more. So it needs empathy. It needs also a certain calmness because a mentee needs also time to understand, time to make a process and also time to fail. So there are many, many things that are going hand in hand with that whole becoming a mentor and being a good mentor. But first of all, what's most important, and I think we talked about it last episode, is also listening to your feeling. How does it feel when you are talking to a certain person? Does it make you feel good? Do you feel hurt? Do you feel accepted? Do you feel understood? And do you feel that the feedback you're getting is helping you? Or is it triggering you and making you more nervous, more aggressive, more frustrated? I think, you know, it can help sometimes to maybe leave out the brain and just feel in, tune in. Yeah. Yeah. Feel in, tune in. But also try to not be defensive, right? Like if you're going to ask for feedback, and if you're trying to grow, and if you're opening up to someone, ideally you pick someone who cares about your development and who doesn't give you toxic feedback. And that's where you really need to also listen to what you hear. And I think what you're saying also about like empathy, it's on this. I mean, it applies for mentors, but at the same time, to me, this is also the fundamental layer of leadership wherever you are, right? And I think this is also where we can come back to a conversation of, okay, the right manager, right? Choose companies, roles, opportunities based on the manager and what you can learn from them or what feedback they can give you and how we can grow in that role. Unfortunately, like I sometimes also see people coming in through applications that have a lot of experience, but you can see that they have never gotten the right direction. And if you're maybe not like very focused on, okay, I can get information from all the different channels and I push myself constantly and you start getting comfortable in a position where no one challenges you, where people accept a low quality delivery, then it also means that the years pass by and you will simply not grow, right? So having a leader, a teacher or a mentor and having a good one is just like as important. And I think what you just mentioned brings us back to the topic that we have discussed actually in almost every episode in the, let's say last couple of weeks, which is the fundamental decisions that you need to make, right? I think the decision-making process in terms of making decision right and making the right decision is more relevant than ever, especially in these times. And I'm just thinking about maybe we should do an extra episode to talk about it because the fundamentals are, I think we need to start asking ourselves as human beings or also as product tech people, what are our core values? What are my core values? Let's not talk about company values. I don't give a shit about company values in the first place. What are my values? And based on that, I have the foundation to make a better decision where I want to start working, how I want to work, how I want to live with my job, what kind of mentor I would like to have. So I think it starts really on the ground, on the roots where, yeah, in order to make the right choices. So we should definitely catch up on that, I believe. Yeah, that's added to our list of topics for the next couple of weeks. Also, as usual, if anyone listening to us has some topics that we want to pick, that we want, that we should pick up, just drop us a message or use the comment function on our website and see you next time. I think you said everything that needs to be said, exactly. No, I didn't say. Ciao. Ciao, bello and bellas. Bye, Christian. Bye, Alex.