556: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career with Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta

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Read to Lead podcast episode 556.

We all jump on the online boards when we're thinking about the new job and like think we just have to fire out our resume to hundreds and hundreds of these things and I say stop it. Just talk to people.

Every year an estimated 1 billion people switch jobs worldwide. A lucky few stumble into the role of their dreams, but hundreds of millions of people are disappointed. What if when looking for a job, you could make more informed choices to better select the opportunities that you seize? What if the power to move along your career path lies within you as opposed to hiring managers for the market? Hi, I'm Jeff and this is the Read to Lead podcast. It's the podcast that's dedicated to your personal and professional growth. Where I believe famously that if you want to achieve true success in your business and in your life, then intentional and consistent reading is a must. The Read to Lead podcast is designed to not just help you narrow your ever important reading list, but bring you the key insights and main ideas from some of today's most successful and inspiring authors and their books. Today we're going to be joined by not one but two authors. Michael B. Horne and Bob Mesta, who along with Ethan Bernstein have written seven Job nine Steps for Making Progress in youn Career. I'll be asking Michael and Bob to share about how analyzing past job transitions can illuminate patterns and provide valuable insights for present and future job searches how to effectively leverage your existing network, including weak ties, to gain valuable insights into the realities of specific jobs and uncover hidden opportunities Tips on navigating the often delicate balance between self promotion and humility during interviews and lots more as you no doubt know, episodes each week of the Read to Lead Podcast are published@readtoleadpodcast.com in addition to a multitude of podcast apps, including the one you're listening to.

This on right now, of course, but.

Have you visited my companion website? That's at Jeff Brown. There you'll find courses you might find interesting, like my flagship course, Note Making Mastery, but also more information on how to become a member of the Read to Lead Community. Once a member, you get access to a library of business book summaries, content from ME that is published nowhere else but Inside the Community, monthly, Ask Me Anythings, plus guest expert sessions, and much, much more. And membership, by the way, is pretty inexpensive. It's just $9 a month and you can even try it out free for two weeks to see if you like it again. Just go to Jeff Brown Me to find out all about it. That's Jeff Brown Me. Michael B. Horn strives to create a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. He's the author of several books, including the award winning Disrupting Class, Choosing College, Blended, and From Reopen to Reinvent. He is the co founder of and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, a nonprofit think tank, and teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also co hosts the top education podcast, Future you, Writes, the popular substack newsletter the Future of Education, and is a Regular contributor to Forbes.com Bob Mesta is a founder, maker, innovator, speaker, and professor. He is the president and founder of the Rewired Group, as well as an adjunct lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern and a research fellow at the Clayton Christian Institute. He is the author of Choosing College with Michael Horn, Demand Side Sales 101, and Learning to Build.

Well, in the case of today, two.

Heads are better than three.

Perhaps.

We've got three authors working on this book. Ethan Bernstein is not here, but those.

Who are here are Michael Horne Michael, welcome.

Thanks so much.

And Bob, pronounce your last name for mesta Mesta. Bob Mesta. Guys, welcome. Glad to have you here on the show. And this is a book, I think, that is much needed in today's fast pace. AI influenced, among other things, landscape. And everybody's concerned about the future and how jobs are going to be impacted and change and all of that. I want to start with you guys where the book starts, and that's understanding these quests. You've identified the four main quests for progress that drive people to change jobs. How can understanding these quests help us.

Make more informed decisions, even if we.

Feel like we don't neatly fit into a single one?

What I'd say, first of all, the big shift in the book is that individuals get to hire their next job. And if they don't understand what progress means for them, what they're trying to optimize on, what their priorities are, then we misfire. And traditionally, we've sort of built the world for one of the four quests that we found in our research of over a thousand individuals. Which are these Take the next Steppers. But the challenge is, if you're in regain control, regain alignment, or get out. Frankly, then a lot of the advice just doesn't a land well, but actually will mislead you actively into making a bad choice. And the way, you know, the research works, each of these quests is actually made up of many different forces underlying them that are pushing and pulling people to make a change. And so we actually would be surprised if any one individual fit perfectly into a single quest. It's more like polls on a map. What are you closer to? What are you further away from? But understanding directionally where you are among those four quests helps figure out, okay, this is the advice that makes sense for me. This is the things I really have to pay attention to when I'm analyzing what has driven my energy, what capabilities do I want to lean in on, and so forth.

Yeah, the phrase I use is context creates value and understanding the context you're in. So the phrase I would say, do you like steak or do you like pizza? And ultimately you start to realize that the fact is that at some point people say they like both. But if you think about the last time you had steak and you'd pull steak out and put pizza in it, it's like, it's not so good. And so you start to realize that context really creates a lot of important signals for you to understand what you should do next. And so part of it is this quest is quests start with very different, different contexts. They're in, but then they have different outcomes. And so part of this is to realize, like, how do we actually balance that and know what you want? And so to me, when we set out to do this book, it was really about helping people figure out who are they and what do they want, as opposed to let me go morph myself to fit into some job description that somebody's put up there that is maybe a place I want to work. And so it's becoming very, very specific about what does progress mean to you.

Why then is it important to revisit past job transitions, even if the current job search feels completely different?

Yeah. Yeah. So. So I always say, like, I don't know anybody who can predict the future. And the reality is, is that what. What you find is the things that give you energy are. Will continue to give you energy. And so you start to look at the past to say, what are those things that, you know, when I walked into the room, like, I actually walked out with more energy than I. Than I did when I walked in. Like, those are moments where you're doing what you should be doing. And conversely, it's the opposite, is like when. When. When you walk into a room and they feel like somebody just sucked the life out of you, you start to realize, like, okay, this is stuff I probably shouldn't be doing. And it's that aspect of understanding those things, because what drives you and who doesn't want a job when you walk in every day, that you actually get energy from it. That's what this is about. And most people are ignoring this, and they're trying to go like, well, I'm an electrical engineer or, you know, and I should be only doing this kind of thing. And you start to realize what. What drives you is what actually the places you should be working. And so this is helping you start to uncover what you're really about. And it's not about what you did, it's what you do. And so it's about the doing that's the most important part.

Yeah. And the only thing I would quickly add on that, because I think that's all right, is that when we talk about our past switches or even our current switches, we're very unreliable narrators. Bob would say sometimes we even lie around it. It's not because we're bad people, but. Right. Because we actually don't know why we're doing the things that we're doing. And if we can help you understand past job switches, then we can help build, you know, in my world of learning sciences what's called metacognition, but basically a deeper understanding of why do I do the things that I do and how do these forces sort of play with each other. And I'll give you just a quick story on this because Bob actually did this on me, around why I had left an organization I had founded to enter the gig economy and I got another job offer. And he, and he had interviewed me about the pass switch. And then we started talking about what it would mean to be what would I actually be doing in the day to day of this new job offer I got. And by helping me understand the forces at play. When I left, all of a sudden I was like, whoa, this sounds great. On paper it was a president of a new university. But the day to day would be terrible because all of a sudden I realized that the forces that caused me to leave my previous job were still in play. And I would never have seen it if Bob hadn't taken me into the past.

I want to go back to the quest map for a second. One potential pitfall with using a FR like a quest map for a lot of people is this thought of feeling constrained rather than empowered. How can we effectively use that as a tool for exploration and understanding rather than feeling pressured to fit into a specific box?

Yeah, it's really not about trying to fit into a box when we actually do the test. It's almost like the probability that you're in one of these three or four different quests. And so it's more about trying to understand like, what are the big things that are driving you to leave and what are the outcomes. Outcomes that you're really looking for. And so what happens is you start to realize that get out, for example. Get out is one of those where you're micromanaged. Right. And the fact is you just got a new boss who's going to micromanage you more. And it's like. And they're pushing you to work almost like bond your abilities or like you don't, you don't have any time for yourself. And so you start to realize, like, okay, I don't really know what I want, but I know that this is not what I want, so I need to get out. And so that's very different than it's like something like alignment, which is like, I'm challenged, but I'm not doing the things I want to be doing. And so you start to realize that it's more about the weighting of it. When we deconstruct it, there's like 14 pushes and 16 polls, which are 30 different variables that help describe your context and your outcome. And ultimately those, you know, those combinations together. So there's, there's, there's millions of combinations of it. But what we found is that when you talk to people who really switch, not people who want to switch, but when you interviewed somebody who said, today's the day, I'm leaving this job and going to that job, it turns out that they were one of the four patterns. Right? And so, like, I could actually look at that. Once it came up, I literally reflected on my career and go like, oh, my God, when I was at Ford, I left for this reason. Oh, when I was here, I left for that reason. And you started to realize, like, my whole life I've been in every single quest. I'm 60 now, but I've been in every single quest a couple of times. We keep thinking it's about the people, but it's more about the context you're in that actually drives you to make new behavior or to change your.

And Jeff, I love the question also because, yeah, I had a student, former student, who read the manuscript early on and she got super worried because she's like, you're telling the forces, you're telling the quest, it's going to alter what I'm doing. And I was like, no, we actually want to build your awareness just as a tool to help guide you. This is not an academic exercise of like, oh, you'll corrupt the results somehow. It's just, look, this is. This is additional information that can help guide you as you go through the other steps of the process. It's not set in stone, frankly, until you actually make the job switch. And then retrospectively we can say, oh, this was the quest you were in. But I think the whole idea is it's a useful set of forces to help guide you, number one and number two, to feel as Bob did, which is you're not going to be like, you know, when you take the Myers Briggs test, for example, you're all of a sudden labeled with these four letters. And somehow if you're in another context, you're not supposed to act differently. Well, I will tell you, there are certain contexts where I'm extremely extroverted, and there's some where I'm extremely introverted. It depends on the context. I think the cool thing about this framework, at least, is that it is malleable over time, like, you will go through different of these quests is the better way to say it. And even in a. A given search, you Might say, God, I need to get out. And as you sort of work through it and look at the possibilities on the other side, you might realize actually I'm more in regain control. For example. That really fits what, what driving me right now. That's great. If it helps you make progress, we're all for it.

The other thing is, is the, the research method has been built on 40 years of experience. I'm, I'm an innovator and I've worked on over 3, 500 different products. And the whole notion is, is how do I turn you into the product? And where do you, what job do you want to go get hired for? And so it's ultimately, and what pro. What does progress mean for you? And so this whole aspect of we did over a thousand interviews just to make sure we understood kind of like how to make sure. And we talked to people who were, you know, working at Chipotle and going to McDonald's or people who are lawyers becoming, becoming judges, people who were engineers becoming, you know, entrepreneurs. Like all these different things and what you start to realize is like the pushes and pulls are common across all of these different, very diverse kind of situations and roles. But the reality is like this is almost down to human behavior. Like these are things that basically would say like this is not helping me. And it's about, is this part of your story or not? And it's about just to Michael's point is like, really is like just making you aware of that you're in this situation because at some point in time it's like you're just like, I want to find the next job. And you don't really spend the time to realize why do you want a new job? It's the why that's really important. And, and what are you going to actually go pick and what are the trade offs you're going to make? So one of the things, you know, Michael and I have taught and Ethan we kind of wrestled with is this notion of an ideal job. There is no ideal job. It's trade offs you have to make. And so ultimately, you know, would you rather make more money and have to commute or would you rather make less money so you don't have to comm. That's a trade off. And so ultimately it's framing those kinds of things as you start to look at your future to literally be able to prototype what does your future really look like because you actually cause it to happen.

So we've talked a bit about motivation and identifying energy drivers and maybe drains. I Want to shift to the capabilities access of the quest map. How can focusing on capabilities rather than strengths and weaknesses empower us to make more proactive and intentional career decisions?

Yeah, so the big idea is that strengths and traits and personality and all those things that we've had at our disposal, it's a very fixed mindset, right? It's sort of this is who you are, this is, you know, this is who you are regardless of context. But the reality is, you know, we know from Carol Dweck and others about growth mindset that we actually have agency, that we can make choices that build up up certain of our capabilities and that, that we are dynamic as individuals and we're dynamic depending on context and circumstance. So the big idea of the, of the capabilities exercise, and we took it from Harvard professor Boris Grossberg, who has this notion of the career balance sheet and he basically said, look, you have assets in your career. These are, you know, skills you've developed, degrees, maybe you've hold credentials you've had or even jobs frankly that you've done in your past. And then on the other side to get those assets, you have liabilities, right? These are the investments in time and money you make to develop those assets which are then, you know, useful. They have an economic return to them over time and they depreciate is the other important piece of this. And so the other really, I think to me, one of, you know, one of the things is we want to say, look, strengths, finder, all those things really helpful tools to figure out what you're going to get excited by and what you want to invest in. You still got to do the work and develop those skill sets. And, and number two, they're going to have a useful life, right? If you just sit on your network, for example, that that's a great asset. But if you don't keep developing it, that network atrophies over time. You have to keep investing to keep it current. Technical skills, coding, all those things, right? Fall in that bucket. And so we just want to help people understand what's it really going to take to keep a certain asset up to date, number one. And number two, maybe more important to Bob's point around trade offs is are you willing to invest that kind of time and money in this? Because that means you probably won't be able to invest in something else.

Let me give you a very real example is I love to model things. I've been, I'm an engineer, electrical undergrad. I've studied mechanical and chemical master. I like love all of it. Right. And I love to build things, but the reality is, like, there's certain analysis and programming skills that, like, if I, if I. So I have a side gig that is literally helping people analyze certain designed experiments. And so it's this, this aspect of I. I literally tell my partner, like, I need to do this as a hobby because at some point in time, it's how I keep. Make sure that I continue to have skills in this area and I stay up to. Up to speed on these different things. So. So I like, have this little side gig where literally people shove me a whole bunch of data and I get to go analyze it, model it, and bring it back to them. And to be honest, I do it because I just, I love to basically make sure I have that skill and, and that it's. That it's staying relevant because if I know if I let it go for too long, I'll forget how to do it.

One reality I want you to address is the challenge of self assessment. What advice would you give, maybe to someone who struggles to pinpoint their current quest even after completing some of the exercises and assessments outlined in the book?

Yeah, so we've not only interviewed a bunch of people, we've coached well over a thousand people between all three of us. And the whole thing we would say is doing this with a partner, having a friend go along a ride with you, because then you can tell each other what capabilities you have. And because again, you. You tend to actually downplay some of the things you're really good at. And part of it is. Might be. Is you're good at it, but you don't like to do it. And so you gotta be able to wrestle with those kinds of things. And so part of this is, this is not a, you know, you can do it by yourself, but it's way better if you either do it with a mentor or you do it with basically a peer and you have a chance to actually start to talk about it. So there's this. In the book, we talk about Alex, where I was coaching Alex along the way. And one of the things I had Alex do is I said, I need you to go talk to your boss about what you're. Because at some point he had been given a severance and he basically had another nine months before he had to leave and the whole company was relocating somewhere else. And so as he went through the process, he'd go back to his boss and go like, okay, this is what I'm doing, this process, and here's what's going on. And the more he talked about it, his boss not only helped him, but the reality is his boss all of a sudden saw a new job for him that was something he never thought he could do because of where it was at. And so part of this is by bringing people into the process and being able to say, here's what really gives me energy and what I want to. It's like, oh, we could use that. And so you start to realize. So. So we would say trying to socialize it is really important, but doing it with your tight network and being able to kind of make sure that you can get somebody who gives you honest. And what I would tell you, the more brutal the feedback, the better. Because at some point we, you know, one of the things we talk about is, you know, there are things you suck at. Like, it's just true. Like, I know there's things that I suck at, but, like, so one of the things I suck at is. Is what they call harmony. Basically getting everybody on the same page and making sure everybody gets along. And part of it is because I think innovation is a contact sport. We have to argue to get better. And when we argue, we actually get. Neither one of us is right. We end up with something that's even better than that. And so you start to realize the more you actually make me work on that weakness of harmony, the reality is you actually strip me of one of my superpowers, which is the ability to debate. And so all of a sudden, this notion of being able to actually understand that is really, really important. And again, Michael helped me understand that.

Well, and I was gonna say, having friends like Bob that can call you on your own BS or put the mirror. The mirror to you. Right. I think it's super valuable, Jeff. I agree completely. Like, we're unreliable narrators. We're often not good at self assessment. And again, like, having a friend like Bob who can put the mirror up and say, you know, you just said one thing, and then the next sentence, you said the other thing. Let's double back. Yeah, what's going on here?

You introduced the concept of creating prototypes for potential future jobs. How can we approach informational interviews?

So I just helped somebody who basically was in the consulting world, and they liked the aspect of helping people, but they didn't really like kind of the industry they were in and what was going on around it. And so basically then started to find all these different roles where you can help people. Customer success, to be honest, sales, these different things. But they knew nothing about it. And so Part of it was to go find in your network somebody who has a customer success role and next thing you know it's like, oh, I didn't even know that role existed. And so they started to just have an information interview or prototype the role of like, if I wanted to be in customer success, like what would that be like for me? And you can go look at the job description, but it doesn't tell you about all the other work you have to do that they don't talk about. I'll say the crappy work. And so part of it is to be able to understand. And what they were able to do is they realized they wanted to get the customer success, but they realized they talked to somebody who worked at Google and somebody else at Microsoft and then they talked to somebody who lived in a, worked in a, a mid tier company and then somebody has started and they realize like, I like the startup world because it's going to help me actually, I can actually form it myself, I'll learn a lot more. And so the prototyping allowed them to kind of realize like, okay, here's where I want to focus in customer success in the startup world. Let me go find a job there. And within a couple weeks they actually found a job. Specifically in that segment when Bob talks.

About the help people, right? One of the things I love about this book is how many times growing up did your parents say, go have an informational interview with so and so they were my roommate in college or whatever. And like no one teaches you how to have that conversation. What the heck is an informational interview? Show up and you're like, okay, how'd you get the job? You know, awkward questions ensue. We're giving you a very clear roadmap in this book for how to do an informational interview, which is to literally understand what someone does day to day, week to week. There's that notion again. What, what are they doing, actually doing in the job? And how does it line up with the work you've done to understand what gives you energy and the capabilities you both have and want to develop? So you get a really realistic picture, you know, where does this line up and where doesn't it so that I can start to compare different prototypes to each other and make an informed choice about where I'm going to make my trade offs? Last thing here is Bob mentioned earlier. Contrast creates value. He said contrast creates meaning. Contrast is what's so important here in an informational interview, allows you to really dig into that and identify those.

My frame is always context creates value and contrast creates meaning. And I need both of those to actually understand. And so you, you want to prototype jobs that you don't necessarily want, but you don't know. And as you discover it, like, ooh, you know, big corporation, lots of meetings, lots of this. Okay. It's, it's, it tends to be a little bit too slow. I'm not sure that that would resonates with me. I think the other part is the prototyping and where it comes in. You've already done kind of a retrospective on yourself. You understand what, what, what are the themes and what are your, your key drivers and drains? And ultimately now you know a lot more about yourself. So when you talk to somebody about their job, you can actually start to realize and place yourself in that role. Most of the time, most people are doing these informational interviews, like, how do I get this job? And it's not really thinking about kind of who they are and what they really want want.

And so eventually you're, you're, you're ranking the prototypes. Right. Even those that might be less appealing for your initial research, at least.

That's right. That's right. And, and, and so what I say is you want to go divergent. You want to diverge and find a whole bunch of really different things in different industries. And ultimately, when you look at the prototypes, you want to then converge on kind of the area. And again, you might, you want to look at four or five really different career paths. But when you start to look at it, when you start to narrow, you might actually pick one that you didn't explore in the first round, but you understand it's this and this and this. And then you do another round. And so it's, there's some people I've, I've seen do three or four rounds of, of these informational programs. By the way, the, the, the, the real effect of this is that most people who haven't interviewed in a while get actually really comfortable at having conversations with strangers. And so what you start is, is they start talking to their friends, and then eventually, like, do you know somebody I should talk to? And then they're talking to a stranger. But now when they get in front of somebody to actually interview for the job job, they're way more comfortable because they know who they are, they know what they want. They're used to having conversation in small talk, but now they're interviewing the company. The company's not just interviewing them.

Yeah. And if you check out jobmoves.com we have a tab there, resources where you can literally jump on for free. And once you have these prototypes, we have a tool there to help you rank it by your energy drivers and buy your capabilities so that you can really start to see very clearly through the math where the contrasts are, where what's really lining up. Frankly, does my current job actually outpace a lot of these prototypes? All really helpful information, free resource also for, for folks listening.

What's really interesting is, is, is I, I, in my experience, I had almost like 47, 48% of the people that I, that I worked with who wanted a new job. After going through the process, they actually were able to reframe their current job and actually make it more satisfying because they realized what they were actually doing and they just hadn't made the trade offs. And so all of a sudden it's like, yeah, I can go here, but oh, I got to give up this and this and this. You know what, this is actually a decent place to think, but I have to realize like this is just not part of the deal. So all of a sudden it's like they're, they're trying to get to the ideal job that doesn't exist and they start to realize like, oh, if I frame it this way and I actually start this hobby or I do this other thing, I can actually fulfill these other pieces. We keep thinking work is supposed to satisfy us all the way around, and the reality is it doesn't. And so we have to actually understand what are the other things we have to do. And so we talk about side gigs and hobbies and other aspects of volunteering to basically supplement the thing that your job might not be giving you at this time.

And you mentioned gaining valuable insights into the realities of specific jobs and uncovering hidden opportunities. How can we effectively leverage our existing network to do some of that, including even weak ties?

Yeah, well, the biggest opportunities are actually through weak ties. And just to go deep in the research for a moment, right. Social capital basically thinks about strong ties, which are the people that know and love. You can call your BS and you know, sell you when you needed all those things. But then weak ties are those people, you know, friend of a friend, right? Someone sort of outside the network, you remotely have a connection to them. A couple degrees of separation, maybe, maybe you're connected on LinkedIn, but you never really had a conversation. And what the research consistently shows is that we don't really find out opportunities through our strong ties. And the reason that that makes sense, like you're talking to them all the time. There are no surprises, right, in your tight network or in your family. But your weak ties are where they know of opportunities that you would not have otherwise known about, and they're the ones that can help uncover those. And the big idea, I think, also of the informational interviewing, you know, we said it's to flesh out these prototypes and really understand what is a better or worse F for you. Well, it's also, as Bob said, getting you reps, practicing interviewing. The other thing it's doing, though, is it's helping you start to tell your story to all these individuals who are like, oh, wait a second, call timeout, Bob. That's what you wanted to do. You know, my friend across town is starting up a new company and boom, right? And now we're going to make a connection or something like that. Similar, frankly, to the story that Alex told or, or that Bob told about Alex, where Alex told his manager, and there the manager at some point was like, wait a minute, we can create a role for you. Like, I never thought about it before, but boom, this is something we need done. It lines up with what really you want to do as well. That's how opportunity gets created. And one of the biggest piece of advice that I tell my students every year, because we all do it, right? Like, we all jump on the online boards when we're thinking about the new job. And, like, we should think we just have to fire out our resume to hundreds and hundreds of these things. And I say, stop it. Just talk to people. Because most jobs are filled by someone you know or your network. They are not filled through these online processes, have these conversations, because people will create things, or they'll tell you something's coming down the pipeline in a month from now, or they'll refer you over. That's how opportunity gets created.

One of the things that happened in the last couple weeks for me is like, so I, I, I have two startups, I run a design firm. I do a lot of different things. And I just, I was getting overwhelmed, and it got to the point where I'm like, okay, maybe I just gotta, I gotta go get it. Like, go get a job. So I literally went and took the assessment that we have for myself, and it basically came back and said, you know, you, you need to be realigned. And so what I did is I then looked at all the things that I was doing and I said, what's misaligned with me and what I'm doing? And all I did was delegate it off. And next thing I know, I'm having fun again. So you start to realize, like, sometimes we just take too much on, and the reality is we. We don't say no enough, and ultimately it causes us to kind of be in the wrong place. And so part of this is to realize, like, it's not just for a, you know, your. Your big move, but sometimes it's just to give you a fact check to say, like, you know, you have this feeling like it's not working to, you know, reflect on it and answer some questions. And you start to realize, like, you can actually, you can, you know, attune your. Your job to be able to fit some of those things.

You guys mentioned, crafting your story. How can we ensure that. That our career story is both authentic to our experiences and effectively tailored to resonate with a potential employer at the same time?

Yeah, so my thing is, to be honest, if it doesn't resonate with the employer, then that's probably not a place I should work. Right. So part of this is the thing is, what I would tell you is you want to be able to tell your stories well enough that when it does resonate, they go like, oh, my gosh, I want to bring you in. The second part is we don't talk about what we did. We talk about what we do because the people are hiring us for what we can do do. And so a lot of times we'll talk about, well, we worked at this company. But the fact is, then they make all the assumptions, oh, if you work there, that means you did these things and you can help with this other stuff. And the reality is you can say, like, here's what I love to do. Let me give you an example of when I get energy and how it helps me do it. And so part of this is most employers aren't used to people even telling them those kinds of stories. Right.

It's funny, Bob, that you give that example, because I was literally just coaching another former student, and she got to the final round of the interviewing process for the. At the startup for this project manager role. And then they discovered that she didn't have the technical chops for the role. And she was like, what. What the heck? Like, how did I make it through three rounds to the final interview? And then only. Only then they discovered that I didn't have the technical chops. And so to, you know, the point of your question, Jeff, but also Bob's story, you just, like, you knowing what you're looking for, the prototype, you're out there and trying to find fit for that as opposed to melding yourself and misleading, you're doing no one any favors. And so look, in the book we obviously teach this Pixar story spine to telling your story, but it's all built ultimately like the insights in that story are all built on the reflection that you've done in the prior steps around, you know, what do you want to drive your energy? What are the capabilities you have that you can put to work? Right. Where are the trade offs you're willing to make coming into that shaping of that conversation, that, that 30 second pitch, that one minute story that you're very clear on who you are and what you're looking for and then you can figure out those trade offs as you start to go down the line when.

In the interview process, it's something that so many people stress over. What's some practical guidance you might have for navigating what is often a delicate balance between self promotion and humility?

I think the reality is you can do both if you actually have stories about where you actually get energy and where energy gets sucked out of you. So they'll say, well, what's your greatest weakness? Well, here's a situation where I actually don't. It takes me three times as long to work because it's very hard for me. And you then go, so I was working here and I did tell stories. And so the first thing I would tell you is the more you can turn your abilities into stories and examples, people can remember that. And so ultimately being able to tell the story of where you actually love to do something and it was really energizing and it was the kind of work that you want to do and it's the kind of work that they want. All of a sudden they're going to remember that. But the other thing we do is we're trying to get people to also talk about the things that they suck at a little bit. They'll always say like, I need somebody who's really creative and really organized. And the reality is what happens is it's very hard to find somebody who's both. And so what you do is you end up getting somebody who's mediocre at both of them or you get somebody who's really creative or somebody who's really organized. And so part of it is to help them understand that you might have to split the job. Because the other thing we realized is that job descriptions are made up. And the fact is that it's literally a laundry list of what everybody wants you to do. And they're Trying to take all the bad stuff off their plate and say, hey, could you do this? But if you push back and go, like, I can do these things really, really well, but these things I don't do very well. Well, it's then shaping the job description to be actually your best job. And so you start that. That's when I knew we had something here is when it was coaching people. And they, they came back and said they want me to write my own job description. I'm like, perfect. How do we make sure that you don't have to do the daily weekly, you know, reviews or the annual review stuff is like, how do you actually give that to somebody else? Because you're really good at this part. But that other part, you know, that's going to take you 10 times as long to do it because you just, just, you're not good at it. And so part of this is looking in the mirror and understanding not only the things you're good at, but also the kind of the things you suck at. And that actually is a really good inventory to help you then shape the job you are.

One of the things Bob has taught me over time in terms of product development is that when you're developing product or building a company, it's not just enough to figure out this, my value proposition. You gotta be super clear, this is what I'm going to suck at. I think that's true with individuals as well, that, you know, there's no false advertising here, because if you do, you're going to end up somewhere where you're disgruntled, disengaged again. The other piece of that comes back to those informational interviews though, which is this is the big hack, I think, which is you walk into that interview knowing what the job is already about and not just like the job description, which is, as Bob said, like a fake laundry list of things, but what the actual day to day and week to week is like so that you can really tell your story. But in the context of what you would be doing in this role, that to me is also a superpower from, from this process that I think is a big deal. Because I think like early part of my career, how many interviews I showed up to, having no sense of what the day to day or week to week would, would be like and sort of casting about as I was answering these questions blitzed at me. So I hadn't done the reflection on my end, right, to understand what I really wanted. And I didn't understand going in what the supply side that job would actually be like in, in reality, not, not in, not in a fairy tale. And to me, that's the other hack in terms of the interview, which perhaps is not a hack. It's to really understand in depth what is this going to be like? So that my answers are going to be much more tailored and appropriate. And, and frankly I can say like, look, look, this is a concern of mine. I know this happens on a day to day basis and it's not my strength. If I were to do this role, I'd love to think about, you know, how we, you know, offloaded it to this person or whatever it is, right? Start to craft that job more intentionally.

One of the other things that's very useful for this book is for, for managers, right, for managers to actually understand what causes people to leave the company. Because at some point in time, what are those things that are happening? And the fact is if there are no pushes, there's no nothing pushing them to leave, believe the fact is they're not going to go. And so part of the review process should be, is there anything here that, that, that you have going on? Like, are you being micromanaged? You, is there somebody that's, that you don't trust? Is there like, what is going on? Because ultimately you can start to actually get help people understand and actually get rid of it. Because a lot of times the funniest part is when you talk to manager, like, oh my God, this person just quit out of the blue. And the reality is when you talk to that person, it's like, like, yeah, I've hated my job for seven months, right? And so it's like this notion that they've been able to fake it for so long. And so part of it is starting to open the communication about what does progress mean to your employees, the people that you're managing ultimately to realize that when you can't fulfill it, they will go somewhere else. And so the reality is, which is then be explicit about it and help them go find something else and help them recruit basically somebody who will fit, right? The whole aspect is the average person, you know, switches jobs every four years. And so the reality is, like the notion of working at the same place forever is usually not, you know, going to happen. And the other part is we end up offering people the open job as opposed to the job that they're actually trying to get that makes them progress. And so a lot of times when somebody else gets the promotion, the reality is they go somewhere else because nobody actually even knew they wanted that promotion. To be in that place.

Jeff, I'm laughing as Bob is telling this just because another individual that I'm coaching right now, now he was telling me that and I'll try to cloud the details a little bit, but he was like, man, I, I entered this country, he's from India originally and like doing it work I love, like he clearly loves the coding and the chops around, so building software and being an individual contributor. But he's drifted into management, which is not great. But he was willing to do it.

More money.

But now he's working for a client that doesn't appreciate software. So it's like a double whammy. And he's like, so man, like I've just been sitting there thinking, just make it five more years and then I can retire. But like, oh God. And I'm like, okay, if, if they realize this, right, they, they'd realize A, he's already gone or B, if he's staying, he's effectively gone because he's totally disengaged and unhappy. Like he's not doing his best work. Clearly this is not the right client for him to be working for or the right role. That's a double whammy that there.

And I like that. Toward the end of the book, speaking to what you're addressing here, that you dedicate a chapter to help organizations move beyond the superficial perks and benefits, to create an environment that genuinely supports employee progress and aligns with their individual quests for meaning and fulfillment.

What advice would you give to someone.

Who feels maybe hesitant or unqualified to offer career advice to other people despite.

Wanting thing to help?

Yeah, well, I. Look, the last chapter of the book, chapter 13 is Pay It Forward. And I would say we live literally give managers, mentors, whomever, right. The very clear advice, like, hey, if someone is in this, you know, context or if someone's dealing with this friction in their lives, here's some advice you can give that sort of points them or pulls them through the different steps in the process. To me that's really important because, and I, I think, I think Bob and I agree on this, but we'll find out in a moment. Is that like, yes, we have our nine step process, but I actually don't believe every single individual needs to go through nine steps, nor do I think it's linear. I think it's more like the right step at the right time to help unlock a step forward for the individual. And, and I will tell you, and I think we've, we all felt this. I know Ethan certainly did because that was the genesis of him and Bob starting to work together was we would be coaching people all the time and we just sort of give generic advice or whatever else. And I don't think we, you know, we thought we were helping them, but I don't think in retrospect really were. And so for us to really have dug into the causality, done all the coaching cohorts and hundreds and hundreds of individuals, now we feel like not only do we have a solid understanding, so our advice is better, but frankly we think we've created a, a cheat sheet, if you will, so that anyone now can, can offer good advice at the right time.

The other thing to me that's really interesting is I have people now coming back so like, they, I help them. They've now been at that job for four or five years and now they have the same feeling as like, oh, I misaligned. So like they, they want something else and so they don't have to start over. It's one of these things where they've like started the Miro board that they had and they basically have been building on it now that they, they've updated it. And now all of a sudden the second and third time, it's actually easier for them to actually figure out, okay, what is the next step for me to basically make. And you start to realize, like, I, I envision this as kind of a lifelong thing of, of kind of teaching people how to actually find the next thing. And ultimately every time you start to get that feeling of like, I think it's time, it's like, you've got a process to do this. And so it's really about actually doing it that way. And, and the more that I'm finding that people help other people, they then actually become way better at judging themselves because they actually, because they've had to judge other people. And so they have that, that notion of being able to do it. So one of the things I say is if I'm going to coach you in this, you need to help 10 more people. And I haven't had anybody turn it down. And the reality is like, and everybody knows somebody else who's looking for a job or like, hates their job, I.

Should take that on. Bob, that's good advice.

Well, looking back on your research and the experiences of the people that you've worked with, what are the most significant takeaways or maybe unexpected insights that has come out of applying the job moves process?

So the one that I would tell you that I was just Most surprised with is something like 52% of the people who said they got more money did not get more money. Money. Right. And in the pushes and pulls, it's not about money. It's about, I have bigger obligations, I want to do a startup. You know, I, you know, there's other things around. I want more respect. A lot of times money is a very, it's what I call a pablum word. It's a word that has multiple meanings, and if you don't actually understand the root cause of what they mean by that, so they'll say, yeah, I wanted more money. Why? It's like, because it's respect. I'm like, wait a second, second. It would be nice to have the money. But really, it's like I, I should, you know, I've done this. I just got my, my master's. I should this, and they're not going to give it to me. I, I want more money because I want to, I want to be seen as respected in this position. I'm like, oh. And so you start to realize that all of a sudden, money, which tends to be the, the big lever for everybody, but they don't actually know what, what, when they pull it, what's the outcome that they're actually causing with it.

Yeah, that's a good one. By the way, part of this, I, I Jeff, in the research processes, we try to go in without many hypotheses or any at all, because we're trying to learn.

Sure.

But I guess I would say one of my biggest ahas was that like at least 75% of job switchers are moving because their definition of progress is completely misaligned to how organizations think of progression. And so we've been, for as long as I've been alive, coaching and counseling people to, you know, as Bob just said, go get more money. Get the bigger title. Go from an individual contributor to a manager to a director, on, off, on. And at least 75% of people are switching with a totally different set of desires and outcomes that they want on the other end. And we haven't let either side know that. And so that, that, that's one. And I guess the corollary to that is something we, we hammer home in the book, which is stop focusing on what you'll be instead of what you will do. And those, I think of it as the ings. What are you doing? As Bob said, I think that is so, so important and something I guess I intuitively knew but, but had not focused on, on how big it would.

Be one of my bigger AHAs comes from the employer side. And it was the aspect of realizing, like, I thought that HR had a standard list of job descriptions. And it turns out they're just made up. They're just made up. And to be honest, they're made up in a way that they actually form a unicorn, like, to try to find somebody who can do all those things. So. So almost everybody starts behind the eight ball because there's nobody who can do all those things. And so the AHA was, to me is like, the job should actually be more shaped to fit the people than trying to find the people to fit the job, because the job is literally just imagined, right? So part of this is to realize, like, if I find a good person, maybe I have to take a couple things off the job description because it makes them better. Like, I was. I think, Michael, you were sitting next to somebody who said, like, they just ended up firing a VP when they hired him, and they knew they didn't have the skills. They literally would do it. Everything else well, but they couldn't do these two things. And two years later, they end up firing for the skills they knew that they didn't have. And ultimately they. Instead of taking it off the plate, they literally just tried to say, oh, we can get them to do that, and they really didn't do it.

Yeah, you see this over and over again, right? And I think that that's the other piece of this that I think recurs, frankly, which is from, you know, Peter Drucker said this decades ago, right? Which is that the tendency is to hire for, oh, they're average and all these things, and we'll build them up and their weaknesses and so forth. And it's just. I don't think I realize how misinformed it was. Instead of leaning, hey, like, I want Bob on my team because he's awesome at these three things. And like, like you said, he. He is certainly never going to harmonize anything. So I'll have, you know, I'll have someone like me on the team that just wants. Wants to be overly liked to sort of to. To figure that out with the other departments once we've really nailed the prototype. Just as an example, here.

Here's the crazy part.

I'm.

I'm dyslexic. I can't read, and I can't write. I have to listen to everything. And the reality is I'm an author of five books, maybe six now. I don't know. But the reality is, like, who would ever, like, who would ever think that a dyslexic person could write a book? It's about building the team and being able to do the research and being able to have the right people around the table. And so ultimately I don't feel like I need to be perfect. Me being dyslexic created a superpower in me of being seeing patterns that nobody else can see. And so ultimately that's what Michael counts on me for doing. He doesn't count on me to write. He's the writer, Ethan's the writer. And then between all three of us, that's how we're able to create an amazing book is because the fact is we're not actually trying to make everybody do the stuff that they suck at, but actually just leverage the things that they're great at.

That is so good. Well, the book again is called Job 9 Steps for Making progress in your career, written by Ethan Bernstein. And our two guests today, Michael B. Horn and Bob Mesta. Did I get that right, Bob?

That's correct.

Guys, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciated your time and the discussion is a fascinating one for sure.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having us. Jeff. Yeah, this has been a blast.

At my website, I've included links to connect with Michael, Bob and Ethan on LinkedIn as well as X. Just go to readtoleadpodcast.com 556 there. Of course, you'll also find a link to their book one more time. That's readtoleadpodcast.com 556. You'll also find information there on how to become a member of the read to lead community. Or you can go directly to the site when you visit. Jeff Brown.com membership is just $9 a month and you can even try it free for two weeks. Again, Jeff Brown me if you have questions, comments or suggestions regarding the show, you can write me anytime. Jeffeadtoleadpodcast.com that's jeffreadtoleadpodcast.com well, that does it for this week. Hope to see you next time. Until then, as always, remember, leaders read read and readers leave.