Horse Whisperer

The Security Director for my company was talking to me about people we knew around the industry, and the things we had accomplished because of those relationships. Also, how mentoring people to understand that was difficult. Then he said something that stuck with me.

“Talent is like singing in the shower. You can be a great singer, but if no one hears you it doesn’t matter.”

In technology I see a lot of talent that is unrecognized or unseen. This isn’t because of the “man” keeping the talented in their place. This is because talent doesn’t sing outside of the shower often enough. Therefore mentorship is important for our shower singers.

Many talented people rely solely on that skill to further their career and they forget that the audience is limited to the people who care for and use their specific talent. If you are a developer, and you are the most talented developer ever, you will be a developer forever if you don’t learn to create relationships outside of the shower.

It’s the challenge of explaining the importance. The talented individual that is being mentored doesn’t always understand since they have been singing in the shower and doing fine.What is this person trying to teach me?

“He/She doesn’t understand the technology like I do, what can I learn from them beyond basic management skills?”

On the other hand, we as mentors sometimes think, “What can I offer this talented person beyond basic management skills?”

The relationships that we build while we are growing in our career dwarf the talent thatinitially brought us to our executive status. Mentorship of an executive has more to do with teaching how to build and maintain relationships more than anything else.

I have mentored several people in my career and almost every time they begin to look at me with the same knowing confidence, like the green curtain has been pulled back and the wizard is nothing but an old man with a sack of parlor tricks. That look of disappointment that grows as they gain confidence, then the inevitable fall to the mat as they try to run before walking.

So many things in this life seem easy from the outside.

As mentors, we pick them up, dust them off, tell them more of what they can see with their own eyes, and they try to run again. Funny isn’t it, or maybe just strange. We have done this so long that it is just muscle memory, like driving a car. We don’t think about braking the car, we just press the brake. If we thought about it, we might just hit the car in front of us going through all the steps it takes to apply the brake. That is why I approach mentorship like showing a kid how to drive. Tell them the basics and put them behind the wheel in a parking lot with no obstacles.

I find the best way to teach a talented person to do what we do is to give them the basics. Networking is important, relationships are key, read everything, talk to anyone, listen a lot, prepare to swallow your pride, honesty and integrity are paramount, delegate tasks you know how to do, and the list goes on and on.

Then put them behind the wheel in a large parking lot without obstacles. Give them the easiest, most dedicated people to manage, and let them work on a simple win project.After that success, add some complexity.A tougher project with less resources. A better win, harder to achieve, build on that pride. The next one addsmore time pressure, remove a key resource, and tie their hands behind their back so they can’t step in and do the work.Let them fail a little, see how they react to it.  Help them to react properly for an executive.

That is how I teach someone to replace me. Just like teaching a kid to drive, eventually they don’t need you to drive them everywhere, but you still give them pointers. Talk them through their first accident, help them regain their confidence, and get them on the road before they get scared, all the stuff you would want from your teacher.

It's a simple formula that I came up with years ago, and it has worked well for me. The challenge is always the same, helping someone with talent in a technical field to understand how the job of being an executive works, is like teaching someone who can drive a race car to ride a horse.

It is a completely different skill set. Racecars go fast, have lots of switches and gears, you can feel the road, the 500hp motor that roars to life at the touch of a button, the response at the push of a button or the twist of the wheel.

A horse is a 3000lbs. creature that requires trust, respect, a strong relationship, feeding, care, negotiation, a willingness to take you places. 

Like the car, it takes you from place to place. Yet, the car doesn’t require a bond or a relationship, a horse does.

Being an executive is like riding a horse and being a technologist or another talented field, is like driving a car. The mastery of a product or a job that doesn’t involve people is not easy, but it responds the same most of the time. The clay bends to whatever shape you make it because you have mastered it. It can be challenging but X always leads to Y and the bumps in-between are handled with the skill and dexterity of a master.

A horse takes a relationship to ride and the type of person that can create that relationship. Not only is the horse built with a new set of controls for the same function, but those controls also change based on the mood of the horse. Most people don’t like to think of it this way, but being an executive leader is more like being a horse whisperer than a race car driver.

Never thought I would be a cowboy as I got older, I guess some childhood dreams do come true!

Giddyap!