How to build a personal board for your career

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: You're listening to the Squiggly Careers Podcast.  Each week we talk about a different topic to do with work and discuss practical ideas and actions to help you find your way through our Squiggly world of work.

Helen Tupper: Before we get started on this week's topic, just a quick reminder about the Squiggly Career Advocate Awards, which have one week to go when this comes out; the application date for the awards closes on 31 March.  If you are somebody who is passionate about career development and you are committed to helping other people with their career development, the awards could be something that you might want to enter.

We are going to be recognising and supporting 100 people who are already helping other people with their careers.  We've got a really exciting 12-month learning programme designed for that community and also, we want to connect everyone together so that they can learn from each other.  You can find out everything you need to know about applying if you just go to www.amazingif.com/advocates and I've already seen lots of the applications and I'm very excited about them. 

Final point actually, you can nominate other people, that's the other thing when I was scanning through all the applications so far, I was just really happy about how many people have nominated somebody else for the award, which just feels like a very nice thing to do to support people.

Sarah Ellis: That's exciting; I've not seen any of them yet, so I'm looking forward to reading them.  Today, we're going to be talking about how to build a personal board for your career.  We've covered different topics before about things like relationships and networking and mentoring, but we've never really explored this idea of a personal board.  What is it?  Why does it matter?  How can you create and build and maintain one of these boards for yourself?

There's a great article from a lady called Dorie Clark, which will be in your resources, and she talks about this idea of the chief distinction between finding a mentor and creating a mentor board of directors is that there's less pressure to find one person who represents your ideal future self.  You can diversify your search criteria and learn from a variety of people.

I think that really sums up the essence of what we want to talk about when we think about this idea of a personal board.  Almost when you think about it, the idea of like one person.

Helen Tupper: The guru.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, the pressure if you're that one person, but also it just doesn't feel realistic in terms of if you're relying and overly dependent on one person, relationships change, you know people in different ways.  As you squiggle into different roles, different teams, different organisations, I think actually thinking more holistically about having the right people around you is really useful. 

The one thing I always think when I think about personal boards and networking relationships generally is there is so much uncertainty and ambiguity in squiggly careers.  There's a lot we can't control but I do think the relationships that you build belong to you, and that's something you can control, and they can be a continual source of learning and support.  Let's face it, it's also very affordable.

Helen Tupper: It's quite cheap to learn through other people and borrow their brilliance.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, exactly so I think it's a really smart strategy for all of us in our career and as Helen and I have been thinking about this over the last week or so, we've actually done some proper thinking about this one, it's really made us appreciate where we're doing this well but also when you start to think about this really actively for yourself, you start to spot gaps, you can think about the actions you can take.

Today we're going to talk about some principles for a personal board, and then we're going to really talk about what might it look like and then how might you go around building this board for yourself.

Helen Tupper: Let's start with the principles then, so there are three different principles which regardless of what you want to learn and who you're going to learn it from, apply to creating a good quality personal board.  The three principles are difference, distance and donating generously, so I'll talk about each of those in turn.

Sarah Ellis: We just about got a "D" for that last one then!

Helen Tupper: We worked really hard to find some kind of "D" that fits; it helps us to remember them!  The first one, Difference, the point here is that we really want to have people in our personal board that think differently to us.  They have different experience; they approach problems from a different perspective. 

This is really getting into the territory of what Matthew Syed talks about in Rebel Ideas, about the importance of cognitive diversity increasing collective intelligence; ie, if you've got quite a lot of people who think differently and bring different insights of knowledge on your personal board, you're collectively all more intelligent.  You get to use that intelligence in your Squiggly Career.  It's just about making sure that you don't have people that all think the same as you, and have the same experience; difference is a good thing in your personal board.

The second point is Distance, and this means that we want to get a bit of a mix of what we call strong and weak ties.  I think it's Mark Granovetter who did the work around strong and weak ties, Sarah, but the point here is that we often overinvest in our strong ties, so the people that we already know, the people that we've known for a while, the people that know us, and all of that is good; but actually, the research around relationships shows that a lot of our ideas and opportunities come through our weak ties.  These are the people that we don't know very well; that we don't work with closely; they're almost like some of the more random encounters that we get. 

It's not just the people that you might have worked with for a really long time or that might have managed you before that you need in your network.  You also need some sort of new stimulus, new thinking, new people and that can really help our personal board when there's an element of newness in there, not everybody who we might have worked with before or worked with at the moment.

The third principle, the Donate Generously, this is all about your personal board not being built on what you can gain from people, but actually thinking about how you build really strong relationships with people based on what you can give.  This is a point that came up in an interview that will go live soon for us, for our next Ask the Expert series with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, where she talks about sponsorship.  She talks about when you're trying to build really strong relationships with people, whether it's sponsors or people that you want to help you on your personal board, start by thinking how can you help them.  Think about what is it that you know, or the time that you've got, or the experience of expertise you've got that you could use to help those people and donate that to them generously.  It can be a foundation for a really strong relationship.

Sarah Ellis: It's not a "D" but I do think it's important when we think about personal boards; personal boards are not big.  If you think about any board of an organisation, it's probably between six to eight people, so there is no hard and fast rule in terms of exactly how many people you have on your personal board. 

Specifically, what we're talking about today is quite a small group of people and you want that small group to be really thought about in terms of are they bringing the difference, the distance; have you thought about what you can give as well as what you can gain from those relationships?  Almost put as much time and effort into who those people are and the roles that people play, as if you were a company.  I think that's why people borrow this idea of a personal board.  I think that's why it's useful just to remember why it's called that.

Just thinking about the roles that people play on a board, I find it really useful to start to be specific about thinking, "What's the primary role someone plays on my board in terms of thinking about my career?" and whether you think about this a bit like a football team or an orchestra.

Helen Tupper: I don't.

Sarah Ellis: I'm sure you don't.  Orchestra is my other example; I think both of those work, but you want people at their best playing roles and positions that they're really brilliant at.  People can obviously do more than one thing at once, but fundamentally there's often one thing that they're very strong at or that they can particularly give to you.

Helen Tupper: I've thought about my analogy, is it analogy, instead of a football team or an orchestra.

Sarah Ellis: Go on.

Helen Tupper: I think it would be like the kitchen crew.  You know you have the Head Chef, and the Sous Chef and then you have the Pastry Chef; I feel like just in terms of what I'm passionate about, I could use that as an analogy that I could attach myself to!

Sarah Ellis: I wonder how many we could come up with for teams.  I suppose they are teams that naturally have a lot of difference in them.

Helen Tupper: Yes.

Sarah Ellis: Then when you bring together, that's why it works so well.  When I think about this, and when I share this idea in workshops, I've come up with a number of different ways of describing the roles that people play in my personal board, then actually thinking about what names go next to these descriptions.  I thought I would just share these with you, then Helen's going to give you another way of thinking about this.

The first one is an inspirer.  Someone who inspires you is perhaps someone who's already where you'd like to be in the future, someone who really shows you the art of the possible.  I think all of these people will often give you energy, but particularly inspirers might make you think, "Oh this is just reminding me why I'm so passionate about this or really interested in this".  Think about who is your inspirer.

The next is empathiser.  An empathiser is somebody who understands your world.  They don't need to be in your organisation right now, but they've probably got similar experiences and a shared understanding of what you're going through in your job and in your career right now.  For example, Helen is my number one empathiser at the moment because she knows day in, day out, what I'm doing, what I'm spending my time on, what it's like to be running and growing a small business, what it's like to be doing that alongside having toddlers; so there's lots of ways that she can empathise with me.

Then it's good to have a challenger, so this is somebody who does not only think differently to you, but I guess is prepared to challenge you.  Sometimes those people are hard to find because people are worried about maybe being honest; sometimes these, I guess, get described as like critical friends.  But, someone who is just prepared to say, "I'd approach that completely differently", or, "Have you thought about doing it this way?"  Maybe it feels a bit left field to you, you just think, "Oh my brain just wouldn't work that way", or, "I would never have come up with that question or that idea".  Those people actually can be hard to spend time with because they're just so different to you, but really valuable in terms of their insights and their perspective.

Then think about who is your questioner, someone who just asks amazing questions.  They're always very open, really insightful; perhaps they ask the questions that you've been ignoring or avoiding for yourself in tough situations.  Often questioners are also very good listeners; I do think those things go hand in hand.

Then think about have you got an ideator, someone who is just full of ideas, options, exploring different possibilities, "Have you thought about this?" or, "How about that?" or, "This could be interesting", just that person who's always generating possibilities.

Then have you got a supporter?  This is maybe the one that most of us perhaps feel most confident in; this is the one whose primary role is they are just on your side.  They think you are the best thing, and they support you unreservedly.  You just know, if you're having a bit of a dip in your confidence, they'll remind you of your successes, they will celebrate you every step of the way, they will believe that you're as brilliant as you are and that you can be.

Then maybe a connector; often these people have got very good networks, build really good relationships, that's one of their super strengths or one of the skillsets they have; often quite influential and they're very generous with their connections.  They'll kind of spot opportunities to think, "Can I connect Sarah to Jeff, because I think they'll have a lot in common?", and they're very proactive about making those connections.

There we had inspirer, empathiser, challenger, questioner, ideator, supporter and connector.  Now, as I said, this is not what everybody should have, this is just something that I found really useful because I feel like each of those roles are different.  When I then go through those roles and think about, "What are the names?  What's the name of the person that goes next to inspirer?  What's the name of the person that goes next to empathiser?" I start to spot who I've already got, what gaps I might have and also can then start to look down that list of people and go back through that idea of thinking, "How different are those people?  What's the distance as well?  Are they all people that I know from the same organisation?  Are they all people who are very similar to me?"

Two people can actually play different roles in each other's personal boards.  When Helen and I did this last week, we realised that I'm an ideator for Helen, but Helen is an empathiser for me.  The primary role we play for each other is actually slightly different.  I think perhaps just a useful exercise to do is just to go through those things and really specifically write down the names of the people, look at it through different lenses.  Have you got people with enough difference; with enough distance?  What are you giving to each of those people; and what gaps have you got?

Helen Tupper: You can totally take those roles that Sarah said and almost write them down in your notebook or have your own way of tracking that stuff, but I have a free resource for you, which I think is really good.  It is called, my.personalboardroom.app.  We will put the link in the resources which will all go on amazingif.com and in the notes to this podcast.  Wherever you're listening to it, you should find the show notes and I'll put it there as well.

What this app does is it actually has 12 roles, so please don't get too caught up in Sarah's 8 roles or this being 12 roles, it's just about recognising that you need different things in your personal board and being specific about what those different things are help to define the right people for them.  But in this particular app, there are 12 things; several of the ones that Sarah has mentioned, it also includes like a sponsor and an anchor, a customer voice one, so they may or may not be right but that's the 12 ones that are on this app; I like them.

The really good thing about this app is you basically you type in people's names and then you can assign them to these roles, and it helps you to spot where you've got the gaps, it helps you to really quickly keep it up to date and it recommends next best actions for you.  So, it might say, "You could do with somebody outside of your industry", so you get to that point around the difference or the distance that we mentioned earlier on as a principle. 

I just think it's really helpful; it splits them into all those different roles.  So, it splits them into information roles, so like someone who's an expert or an inspirer; power roles, so somebody who might be sponsor and/or an influencer; and then development roles, so someone who could be an improver, or they call it being a nerve-giver, so that person who gives you that little push that you need in those moments where you might doubt yourself. 

I quite like that split as well, like the information, the power, the developmental roles; but I just really like that it's a simple free app that you can put people's names in, you can move them around and for me, it just takes some of the hard work out of this because I could just see what I've got and where I've also got some gaps.

Sarah Ellis: I think the other thing that's nice about it is this idea of your personal board also changes over time, because you could be tempted here to think, "This is what it looks like today", and then it stays still.  Just like you in Squiggly Careers, you move in different directions and there are a lot of transitions.  The people who do this particularly well are always very active in assessing the usefulness of these relationships and where you might have a new gap. 

I think that's something that I've got wrong a few times in my career where I've built really brilliant relationships and probably had quite a strong personal board and then my circumstances have changed, so I've gone into a new industry or a new type of organisation and I've actually not thought about the impact that will have in terms of the support that I might need for my career.

Someone's role might have changed, so someone might have gone from being an inspirer to a supporter, for example.  I've not proactively thought, "Okay, I've now got this new gap so let's think about who those people might be; let's start spotting where I might find those people; let's start asking some new people for support".  So, I think the other really important principle to bear in mind as you're doing this I, how can you prompt yourself to keep coming back to your personal board? 

Almost any time you make a change in your career, that should also be one of those moments where you think, "How might this also impact my personal board?"  I think I've only got better at doing this probably in the last year or so; I've almost kept my personal board too consistent for too long and not kept refreshing it as my squiggle has gone in different directions.

Helen Tupper: When you're thinking about these people and the roles that you need and who might fill them, at no point do I really ever say to anybody, "Congratulations, you've made it onto my board"!

Sarah Ellis: No, or, "You're fired"!

Helen Tupper: "Here's a job description", yeah, or, "My squiggle's changed so I've demoted you just to a friend"!  This never happens, this is a conceptual thing, but I think the structures of having these different roles help you to manage this in an effective way, but we don't say to people, "Sarah, you've made it to the board table at the moment".

So, find the way to identify the roles that you need in a way that works for you, but the most important thing, if we're going to move from this is the who you might need to how you make this happen, how you bring your board to life and how you build your board, there are four things that are really important.  The first one is: be specific about your gaps, so you have to get those roles down to be able to see, "Where have I got people who are helping with those things at the moment and where do I have some gaps?"  That is point one, you've got to know that.

Then it's about spotting who can fill those gaps and some of that you might be able to just pause and reflect and think, "I'm missing a challenger; who has been a brilliant challenger to me in the past?" or, "Who do I work with on a day-to-day basis who I think has that ability?" so that could be something that you could do.  

Or it might be that you just recognise you've got a gap and you just start scanning like in the meetings that you're in, the conversations that you're having, just looking for somebody with those traits.  So it might be that you don't know that person yet and that's absolutely fine, but just being more aware of that being a skill that you're missing in your board and you think you might be able to spot it in people when you're talking to them; so that's a good thing.

The third thing is then basically moving into, "How can I ask that person?"  Let's say I am missing that challenger, I've spotted somebody who just seems to be naturally good at that in a project that I'm working on and I'm at the, "Okay, how do I ask that person; how do I ask them to be on my board?"  Don't ask them to be on your board for a start but think about what are the points of connection that you might have. 

Maybe you've got a shared passion, maybe you're both managers, maybe you're both relatively new to the organisation or you've worked in a similar organisation before this one.  Try and think about what are our points of connection, because you can leverage those in building a relationship in the beginning.  Then think about, "How can I help them?  What is it they are working on; interested in spending timing on; and how could I help that person to do that thing better?"

The last thing is to be brave about asking; asking for their time, their input, their perspective.  It doesn't feel easy, but if you can start with how you can help them, that definitely helps to make an ask easier.

Sarah Ellis: And I think it's about remembering people do, in the main, in my experience, really enjoy helping other people.  Sometimes it's hard to know how you can help, I think, in the early days of a relationship because you think, "I don't know someone that well", or maybe you don't know their job that well.  It is okay to just very openly and specifically ask for some help and a lot of people, if you do that and you do in a way that's informal, you're not asking people to commit to too much initially, you're just saying, perhaps you really admire a skill that somebody's got, or you know that someone's got experience of something that could be useful for you; just asking someone for a chat, to talk about that, is a really good place to start.

That's all I would ever do to start is I would just think, "I really admire that", or, "I want to learn about that; that person's really good at it".  If they say, "No", that's okay too, because there's never only one person who can help you.  I think the more frequently we get used to asking for help, the easier it becomes, and we just get more confident thinking you don't always have to do the give and the gain in one conversation and in that same moment.  We've talked before about this idea of career karma.  I just always trust in the best relationships, you always feel like there's give and gain and it might not be exactly the same moment or even exactly the same year, but everything always works out in the wash, I think.

Helen Tupper: I never heard that phrase before, "Everything always works out in the wash", have you just made that up?!

Sarah Ellis: No.

Helen Tupper: Because sometimes my washing goes random, I mix the colour and end up with pink T-shirts!

Sarah Ellis: I don't know now, because I'd question it.

Helen Tupper: I like it!

Sarah Ellis: Then the last point we just wanted to make on personal boards is to really think about when you start to think about those people that you've got around your conceptual or imaginary board table, remembering you need to be adaptable and that one size doesn't fit all.  So, you will have different types and styles of relationship with each of those people and some of those people might respond better to, "Actually, I want to be very clear about how our relationship is going to work".  Is it half an hour every eight weeks via Zoom, and actually they want even a "what do you want to talk about" agenda 24, 48 hours before.  That is quite formal, very structured, you know exactly how that's going to work and for some people that works brilliantly. 

For other people they're really reactive and actually they're very happy maybe to communicate via WhatsApp.  Perhaps it's much more in the moment, something happens you think, "Oh, I've not got experience of this.  I'd love to just get someone else's perspective", and it's just a quick phone call, it's a quick WhatsApp message.

I've got somebody who's on my personal board who last week I just WhatsAppd about a quick question and he genuinely responded and was like, "I've got 22 minutes, do you want a quick phone chat?"  I was out for a walk, it was chucking it down with rain and I thought, "Yeah, do you know what, yeah".  So I hid under a tree and for 22 minutes, had a really quick conversation that was incredibly useful.  Now, I've known that person for a long time, we're really happy to talk to each other in a very informal way.  It doesn't need to be a zoom meeting, that works for him and that works for me.

Just thinking about that and also, sometimes asking the question as you're getting to know people, sort of say, "What works best for you?"  So, you don't have to assume things have to work in a certain way, it is just understanding the different roles that people play and how that can change over time.

Someone might have an exceptionally busy time and actually, go really quiet on you for three months, six months.  That's okay too and again, you can just ask the question say, "Are you going to be struggling for time a little bit for six months?  Don't worry, we can get back in touch".  You can always reconnect with people. 

A lot of the research on weak ties shows that a good way to develop weak ties, so people who you don't know as well and who perhaps aren't in your world right now, is to reconnect with people; reconnect with people who perhaps have learned similar things to you, been in similar organisations in the past and maybe someone who worked for you or you worked for them in the past.  There are no hard and fast rules of, this is how you must create a personal board for it to be effective.  Thinking about this really actively really helps.

Helen Tupper: I also think when you're reflecting on how best to engage people, what that point made me think is that sometimes I default to a certain way because it works for me.  So I'm quite a responsive, reactive person and I think that lots of people in my personal board are managed in that way.  A quick WhatsApp here, "Have you got ten minutes?", because that's my preferred way of working with people, but actually it might not be theirs

So I think, when you're building those relationships, asking them how best would your time be spent in these conversations or how to continue these conversations, "What would work best for you; would it be a quick text if I've got a question; or would it be let's have more regular meetings so that we can talk things through?"  Just asking them that question, make sure that they're spending time in the way that works for them, not just responding to a default way that might work for you.

I think I might be missing out on some opportunities just because I'm defaulting to one particular way of working with people.  That's my reflection on today's conversation.

Sarah Ellis: We had a chat, didn't we, and said that we would be very different?  So I said actually, I quite like the idea of just every 8 or 12 weeks or so, particularly with somebody like an inspirer on my personal board, making sure I've got the space to spend time with them; just no agenda, nothing specific, but just thinking, "I just want to regularly be able to spend time with that person".  I'd probably think of some questions to ask but straight away you were like, "Oh no".

Helen Tupper: No, no.

Sarah Ellis: "I don't want to do that".

Helen Tupper: No, I have this really big irritation of recurring meetings.  I feel like they just go in the diary and then you're like, "Oh God, that meeting's here again".  The recurring meeting loses energy for me, whereas the spontaneous meeting the, "I've got this thing coming up and can that person help me, or could I help them?", I've got loads of energy for a spontaneous meeting.  I think that's probably a bit of a difference in us, but again that's fine.  You've just got to work out how it works best for you and the second point is how it works best for the people that you're trying to help and get help from.

Sarah Ellis: The last point we just wanted to make today is, we've talked a lot here about you and your personal board and the people that you have around you for your career, but also think about the roles that you can play for other people as well.  Again, you don't need to ask someone, "Do I make it onto your personal board?"

Helen Tupper: "What title do you give me?"

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, "What title have I got?"  But I think you can spot what your natural role is.  So back to where I talked about inspirers and empathisers, you might play a different role for different people but when I go through this, I spot that I'm often an ideator because ideas is one of my values, it's also one of developing and creating ideas and spotting new opportunities is one of the things that I'm good at, is one of my strengths; so I just know that that's something I've got to give.

The other thing that I've got to give now that wouldn't have been true, say ten years ago, is being a connector.  Sometimes, not for everyone and not always but sometimes for people who perhaps I'm part of their personal board, who knows, I now want to start asking them, but I feel like perhaps one of the things that I know I can do for other people is connect people together and then move out the way quite quickly.  So, you can look at this from the other perspective of just thinking about what have you got to give, because inevitably the more you do that too, the more you will also gain.

Helen Tupper: I think a really good question, if you're brave enough to ask and if it would help you would be to ask people, "What role do I play for you in your career?"  If you just ask that one, you might see whether there are consistencies and inconsistencies; is there some help that you think you could give that maybe people aren't seeing at the moment?  It just might be an interesting question to ask some of your career connections.

Hopefully, that has been helpful for you.  We really wanted it just to give you a bit of a structure.  People talk about networking in this really sort of generic way sometimes about having all these relationships and the personal board thing is quite specific, because it is about a set of roles that you need and thinking about who plays those roles; but for me, whether you use the app or you just write down those roles, it just gives you a bit of structure around networking and that makes it a bit more helpful for where you invest your time and who you might want to maintain relationships with and build new ones.  Hopefully it's done that for you as well.

There are quite a lot of resources today, so articles that we've read, that app that I've mentioned, so they will be on www.amazingif.com.  If you just go to the podcast page, you'll find it or just put "network" or "personal build" into the search term and you'll find it either way.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you so much for listening today.  As always if you've got any podcast topics that you'd like us to cover that aren't in our list of 200-plus, please do let us know.  If you have two minutes to rate, review, subscribe, of course that helps every podcast that you listen to and everyone always says it.

Helen Tupper: Thank you for everybody that has responded to Sarah's appeal.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, we got to 500!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, the podcast appeal;, the 500!  Somebody who actually was like, "Here you go, Sarah, here's your 500", it's so nice.

Sarah Ellis: That is funny, so I'll come up with a new arbitrary number for us to aim for, everybody --

Helen Tupper: I can't wait.

Sarah Ellis: -- in the next few weeks, but for now we really do appreciate everybody who does it and we read every review.  It's really helpful for us to know the difference that we're making, what's most useful.  Always let us know what we can do more of, maybe if there's anything that's less helpful, if you've got any even better "ifs" for us, we'd always like to know those too.

That's everything for this week, thanks so much for listening and we'll speak to you again soon, bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.