Eventually, I realized the people around you can accelerate your career and your life, but only when they’re actually in the boat With you. I call this your life raft, and there are 4 situations I see engineering leaders stuck in. So let’s figure out which one you are in, and then I’ll show you the 5 seats that you must fill in your boat so you’re not rowing alone. My goal for you today is that you walk away with specific clarity on what action to take next. To make that easy, there’s a worksheet that you can download in the show description so that you can walk away from this conversation. With a plan. Growing up, your life is more like on a cruise ship. You’re going wherever the boat takes you, you know, and you get to run around and play as a kid on the Lido deck and have a great time, hit the pools, go down the slides. It’s really fun. But at some point, you enter the real world, and the real world is like an ocean that you have to navigate on your own. There’s no more first grade, second grade, third grade, all the way through graduation into college, one semester, a set number of courses. Like, all of our life is laid out for us up until we enter our career.

And then you hit this ocean of decisions and you can go anywhere you want to go. And I think about it, a picture kind of like this, you know, here you are on a life raft and okay, my life raft looks Kind of like a donut. It’s not very pretty, and you got kicked off the cruise ship because you don’t get to just ride on your your parents’ ship anymore or the ship of your college anymore. You’re on your own, and you’ve got to row to what I call Vision Island. You know your goal, the vision that you have for your life. Where is it that you want to reach? And so you get in this life raft and you start rowing, right? But the problem is that it doesn’t really matter how hard you paddle.

By yourself with all of the, the waves and the winds and the tossing and turning of being in that ocean. What really matters, it has everything to do with who else is in the boat with you and which way they’re paddling. And so just ask yourself, you know, if I was out at sea, the sea of my career, and I needed to pick who was in that life raft with me, well, who do I want? And once they’re in the boat, what do I want them to do? And the answer is obvious. You want them rowing towards land, the land that you see, Vision Island. You want them rowing in that same direction. And so the reason networking isn’t just about knowing more people is because you’re not going to put 1,000 people on the life raft. The truth is there’s just a few people who matter the most, and that’s what we want to focus on for you. It’s not about filling your cell phone with 1,000 more contacts at the next conference or beefing up your LinkedIn network to 30,000, the maximum connections you can have.

That’s not the point. It’s about curating those critical few who are going to get in the boat and row with you. So, let’s talk about the 4 situations, the 4 kinds of life rafts that I see with engineering leaders Who I coach. So let’s jump back to my fancy drawing here. And by the way, if you’re just listening to the podcast, you may want to go over to YouTube and you can see how beautiful my life raft drawing is. But the first kind of life raft is what I call the empty life raft. Here’s you. And yeah, you’re rowing. Right towards Vision Island, but you’re in the boat alone. You got a lot of people who you know. There’s plenty of people you’re in relationship with at work, outside of work, in your neighborhood, in your church, in your family, but none of them are actually in your boat. You’ve got an empty life raft. You feel isolated, and isolation is the enemy Of excellence.

So that empty life raft, when people are missing from your career, they’re not supporting you, they’re not sponsoring you, they’re not helping you. That’s the first situation that I see a lot— an empty life raft when people are missing. The second kind of boat is when you’ve got people, so you’re no longer alone, There’s some folks in the boat with you, but they’re not rowing. They’re not rowing. They’re just riding. They’re passengers. They’re in the boat. They love you. They care about you. They want to see you succeed, but they’re not actually contributing to your success. And so in a sense, it actually makes it even harder because now the boat is heavier. There’s more relationships for you to maintain, but those people are not contributing to your success? And I hear this from engineering managers who I coach all the time. Yeah, I’ve got mentors, I’ve got peers, I’ve got a lot of folks I’ve met at different events over the years or from a past company that I worked for. So yeah, my life raft is full, Zach.

But then when you ask the deeper question, you know, how are they supporting you? How are they helping you? What’s the way that you leverage that network to your success? Well, it’s like, well, I’m not really doing that. In fact, It actually feels really hard to maintain my network because I’ve got all these people that I’m trying to stay in touch with and it’s hard to stay in touch. And when they’re not contributing to your success, it makes it even harder to want to invest that time. So the second kind of boat, the first is missing, it’s empty. The second kind of boat that I see a lot is where you’ve just got passengers. People are riding. You don’t want that to be you. If you’re gonna row hard, I can see why people stop networking. It’d be easier to row alone than row with a boat full of people. People who aren’t helping you get to Vision Island. Now, this third kind of boat is more common than you think, and it’s actually the worst.

When you have people in your life raft but they are not rowing the same direction that you are, they are Actually pulling in their own direction. They’re rowing back out to sea. You want to get to land. You’ve got a destination in mind, and there’s people in your life raft who are rowing you back out into the open ocean. That is not okay. And you might think, no, Zach, I don’t have anybody in my life who’s actually going against my goals or actively sabotaging my success. And I would challenge you to look more closely. Are there people in your life raft, people who you spend a lot of time with, who you ask for advice from in creating career success, who are pulling you back into a culture of complaining, a culture of blaming? Maybe they’re always looking at the economy and saying that’s the reason they haven’t gotten their promotion. Maybe they’re looking at that boss or that senior leader who’s created a toxic culture or who has got it out for you.

They don’t want to promote you for some reason. Maybe Maybe it’s ageism, maybe it’s sexism, maybe it’s some other ism. Whatever that is, this person is poisoning your mind and pulling you into a fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset. And those kinds of people may not to your face say, I don’t want to see you succeed, but the direction that they’re rowing is certainly not aligned with the direction you want to go. Every step forward, every Paddle, rowing towards what you want. It takes twice the energy to make progress when you have people like that in your boat. Don’t allow your boat to get filled with people who are resisting the direction that you want to go. The 4th, and of course best type of life raft to have is when people stop being just a part of your network, and they become a part of your crew. They are actually rowing in the direction that you want to go.

So here we are in the ocean of our career, rowing towards Vision Island, and now you have a whole crew full of people who are actively aligned and rowing in support of your vision. These are leaders. Mentors, sponsors, peers, folks around you who are actually aligned with helping you create the success that you want. They’re invested in you. They’re committed to you. You want people who are rowing the same direction. And when you have this, oh, it’s like a whole new experience. Those oars in the water. Creating momentum even when your oar is not in the water. That’s the difference of having a life raft that is full, not just full of people, but full of a crew rowing in the same direction as you. So ask yourself, which of these 4 describes you the best? Is your life raft empty and People are missing? Are people just riding along? Are they actively resisting? Or do you have a life raft that’s full and people rowing? I’ll tell you, in my own career, it began with missing. Like I said, I was the 4.0 valedictorian. I had the full academic ride to Purdue, and I prided myself on being the smartest guy in the room. I had it all going for me. The problem is, when you see yourself as the smartest guy in the room, Well, the smartest guy doesn’t ask for help. You see, I gave all of my life to my career.

I wanted to succeed, but I didn’t want to ask for help because the smart guy figures it out on his own. And that’s what I did. I began in this missing category. That was me. Well, as I pushed for success, I started to see the trend that everybody who was talking about career success was talking about networking, networking, networking. And so I Decided well, I better jump on the networking train too. So I moved from missing and I graduated to riding. I just filled my boat with as many people as I could. I started connecting for networking coffee chats and doing all of those things. But that just added even more weight to a career that was already consuming my life. And then my marriage fell apart, and I ended up divorced, and it totally broke me. And I was super embarrassed because I thought I had this perfect life and this. You know, huge potential to step into. But next thing you know, I’m divorced and depressed and really feeling like this just isn’t working for me. And sure enough, when you end up in that kind of a state, you find yourself surrounding by surrounded by people who really aren’t helping. You know, folks who want to pile on to that sense of pessimism, pile on to the fact that yeah, it just doesn’t work no matter how hard you try career success. You know, the man is out to get you. The company doesn’t care about you, and they’ll take these. half-truths, and they’ll resist your vision and your success.

And I experienced all 3 of those states. But coming out of my divorce is when I hired my first coach. I emptied out my boat and I started paying attention to who was rowing with me. And I, for the first time, got into this 4th category of rowing. I put a coach In my boat. I kicked everyone else out and I said, hey, you and me, let’s figure this out. And that’s when my career began to turn around. Then I added better mentors, I added sponsors, I added the folks who I’ll tell you about in just a moment who supported my success. And that’s when I saw the promotions come easily. That’s when I saw my income increase easily. I had more fun at work than I’d ever had before. More success while working less, and that’s what I want for you too. And that’s why this life raft is so, so important. Now, before I give you the five seats that need filled in your life raft and people start rowing towards land, let me remind you of a couple quick things.

Number one, there’s a prerequisite to this supporting your success, and that is that you actually know. what direction land is in. If you don’t have a clear vision to row towards, if you don’t know what you’re asking for support on, then how can people support you? So if you don’t have that, reach out to me. Let’s talk. You need a clear vision. But I also want to warn you about 2 excuses that come up all the time with engineering leaders from IC to VP. It honestly doesn’t matter what level you’re at. I hear it all the time. 2 excuses that we need to get out of the way before you start taking action. The first excuse is that you’re an introvert. Zach, I’m an engineer, I’m an introvert. I just don’t really like networking or reaching out and asking people for help. That’s just not my personality. Well, I want you to understand that being an introvert is not the same as being shy. And being an introvert does not limit you from being able to build really deep, powerful connections that can support your success. In fact, I have seen that many introverts are even better at this than extroverts because a lot of extroverts have lots of connections at a shallow level, and introverts like to go deep with fewer people. And that’s the whole principle of the life raft. It’s not about having 1,600+ contacts in your cell phone. It’s about having a few people rowing the right direction. Don’t let a personality trait become a limited mindset, a fixed mindset to your success. It’s not. The second thing is a bit more subtle.

The excuse that I’ve heard before is that as you move up the ladder, The old phrase, it’s lonely at the top, will come in. And for some reason, we believe this story that because we’ve been promoted to a high level, now we’re the ones expected to have all the answers. And we stop filling our life raft with the right people who are supporting us because we have this belief that we’re supposed to do it on our own. I have an amazing client named Andy who started his own company. And when Andy was CEO of that organization, he caught himself in this exact pattern of thinking that, well, now I’m CEO, it’s up to me to figure out all the answers. And I challenged him on this, said, Andy, who’s in your life raft? It’s even more important now than ever before as you’re growing your company that we put the right people in the boat. And he found someone who he had worked with in the past, was a leader of his in the past, who he would have loved to have supporting his success in his company. But he was really concerned. He said, Zach, I, I left the company where this leader worked. I left them to go start my own business. And there’s no way that this leader will want to support me because in many ways, like, I made his life difficult by leaving that company. And I said, hey, have you had the conversation?

Have you used the tools and the scripts and the things that I’ve shown you in order to go reach out? And so Andy had the courage to go ask that person, will you mentor us in our company? And guess what happened? This leader said absolutely yes. And any of that perceived bad blood from Andy leaving the prior organization was water under the bridge. Water in the ocean, and Andy was able to fill his life raft with somebody to support him. The same is possible for you. It doesn’t matter if you’re junior or if you are the CEO. Putting the right people in your life raft is non-negotiable. So let’s get clear on who the 5 seats that we need to fill are. Let’s go out and look at our life raft. You are in the life raft, of course, and there are 5 seats we want to fill. The first, I just think of as your peers. Peers. Now, each of these seats, by the way, you can put more than one person in these categories, but let’s at least start with one. Peers are people who are at the same level of the organization as you. So if you’re an engineering manager, these are other peer-level engineering managers.

It could also be people who report To your same leader, even if they’re not at your same level. I like to think of this as same level plus or minus 1 or 2, because we’re looking for knowledge from the trenches, people who have done the job, who know what living this week in your shoes actually feels like, that you can get support from, and of course give support as they’re rowing their own life raft. So the first category is peers, but the second seat is one that I call breadth builders. A breadth builder is a little bit different than a peer to me. And to be fair, you might have a breadth builder reporting to your same leader, so don’t stress about the org chart. But generally, a breadth builder is someone outside your immediate function in the business outside your department, including functions far away from engineering like finance or sales. But for certain, if you are in the deep technical engineering work, getting people on the product side, getting people in project management and operations, understanding what it takes to collaborate across the whole system of the company. Because if you aspire to leading at director, vice president, a C-level role, That means understanding the whole business. That means understanding how your function contributes to the success of the organization.

And so breadth builders are helpful to have in your life raft so that you are not only getting the help you need now to succeed in your existing objectives, but to prepare you for the longer-term future. Now, the next one you’ve all heard of, but you may not be activating The way that you need to, and that’s mentors. Do you have a great mentor? I think of a mentor this way: it’s a person who has walked the road you want to walk. They have the results that you would like to have, and they’re able to now compress decades into days by sharing with you what worked on their path. And what did not work on their path so that you can model and repeat many of the successes that they have accomplished. A mentor has the results that you want. Another key seat that can be shared with mentors, but it’s really important that you distinguish this, is a sponsor. Sponsors, you can have more than one. Most people will have one at a time.

A sponsor is that level of relationship where the person isn’t just sharing with you how they succeeded. They’re not just giving you insights and actions to take to accomplish your goals and reach Vision Island. A sponsor is someone who actually says your name in the room that you’re not in. They go to bat for you. When you’re not there to defend yourself, they will put you in front of the decision-making body, whoever that is, and say, this leader, they’re ready for the next level. I will put my reputation on the line in staking their readiness. I will sponsor them for this role, and I believe they’re the right decision for the hire. If you’ve never had that talk about Wind in the sails of your life raft. It’s like turning your, you know, hand-oared life raft into a sailboat. It is amazing. So building sponsorship, and let me just tell you this, mentorship and sponsorship, these are such important roles for your life raft. I’m going to go ahead and dedicate 2 more episodes of the podcast, one specifically on how to get mentors. And how to leverage that relationship, and another on how to promote somebody in your life to the level of sponsor, how to make that ask, and what do you need to do to be sponsor-worthy.

We’ll talk about that in a future episode, so look forward to it. But who’s the 5th and final? It is your coaches. A coach or multiple coaches. I have multiple coaches. I would encourage you to think about any area of life that you want to reach your full potential, achieve excellence, accelerate results. Get a coach. The best players in every sport have the best coaches and the best career professionals, the best engineering leaders have the best coaches. Now I get asked a lot, what’s the difference between a mentor And a coach? What’s the difference between a great boss who’s supporting your success and a coach? Well, a coach’s role is to help you maximize your performance. They’re there for accountability. They’re there to provide you with systems and strategies and tools. But it’s not about the coach having the same result that you want and giving you the exact advice of how they got it. A great coach can help you walk Any path that you need to walk, but a mentor can only share from their own experience.

Could a mentor be a coach? Of course. Are mentors in your career typically good at coaching? The truth is, in engineering, unfortunately not. There are very few clients I’ve ever worked with who say, yeah, this mentor that I’ve had also serves as a great coach for me. And if for no other reason, it’s that the coach is far more committed in terms of their time and energy to your success because you’ve invested in that relationship heavily to make sure that they do. So make sure that you have all 5 of these seats filled. Who is the peer that’s supporting your success? Who do you have building breadth across the organization and across the industry? What about outside of your company? Breadth builders. Who’s mentoring you? from their success to support yours? Who is sponsoring you for that next step in your career journey? And who is coaching you along the way to ensure that your success hits the peak and the pinnacle of your potential?

These 5 seats are critical. So let’s talk through what you need to do if they’re empty. How do we get them rowing the right direction and the next steps to ensure that your life raft is a huge, asset to your success going forward. And let me remind you, you’ve seen the 5 people you need in your life raft. So now map yours, because it’s really easy to hear this and think, yeah, I’ve, I’ve got people. But it’s different when you have to put the actual names in the seats specifically. So I made you a simple career crew map. It’s a download that will help you see who’s rowing with you, maybe who’s just riding along, who’s even actively resisting you, and which seats are completely empty. So don’t leave this as a good idea. Grab the map from the link in the show description and write in who is in your crew. And If it’s a mentor seat that’s empty, that’s going to be the next episode that I launch in this series. So go check that out. If you’re watching this right as this releases, it’s coming soon. If you’re watching it in the future, don’t worry. I’m going to put the link to that video at the end.

Okay. Back to your career crew map. First thing that you’ll do is point to land. Write in your destination in one sentence. What is the role, the scope, the vision that you’re moving towards? Just put something that captures it for you. By the way, if you don’t have a complete, full written vision for your career and for your life, like I said before, that’s a big gap. But I want you to write that in so we know where we’re rowing to. The second step is for us to count, do a roll call on who’s actually in the boat right now. Again, this is not who’s on your team or who’s in your contacts on your phone or your LinkedIn network. I want you to specifically list the 5 to 7 people who you’ve talked to about your career in the last 90 days. All right, not a casual chit-chat at happy hour, people you’ve actually talked to about your career.

Okay, write those names down. And for those names, mark in which seat do they occupy. Is it a peer, breath builder, mentor, sponsor, or coach? And perhaps more importantly, are they rowing? Are they riding? Or are they resisting? Right? Are they actively supporting your success? Are they helping you get to land? Are they just in the boat, but the truth is it’s more like a venting session every time you’re together and they’re not really adding any value to you getting where you want to go? Or are they actively resisting? You know what? Being around this person actually makes it worse. Be honest and mark the truth about that person. Then step 4, name the empty seats. When you looked at that roster, that roll call of who’s on the boat today, Are any of the seats empty? Are any of these missing completely? You don’t have a coach. You don’t have peers who you could talk to. You don’t have a sponsor. Make a note of which seats are empty. And then step 5, I would encourage you to make a move this week. Don’t delay. Download the Career Crew map, and I’m going to give you some tips on how to do this, but we want to invite— One new rower to join your boat this week. Pick an empty seat, send the message. Let’s begin asking for advice, 10 to 15 minutes, no more, so that we can begin to advance that relationship and get them in our boat. I’ll give you full scripts and more detail in future episodes around mentorship and sponsorship in particular, but whichever seat on the boat is empty for you, I want you to take an action on that this week.

If you’ve got people in your network who are just sitting on the beach watching you row, now’s the time to invite them into the boat with you. I walk through all 5 of these steps in that download, so go grab a copy for yourself and put pen to paper to bring this into an action plan for you. One final thought before you go. This is a practice, not a project. Filling your life raft is a practice. It’s something that you’re going to continue to do as you move through your career, because the waves of the ocean of life are gonna knock some people out, and the direction that you want to row is going to change who you need in. So for example, if you change companies, you’re going to need to put new people in your life raft. For example, if you go through a reorg, you may find yourself needing new people in your life raft. I’ve got a client right now whose mentor just left their organization and now they don’t have access to that person anymore. She needs to put someone new in her life raft. This is a constant practice. It’s not something that you do once and you’re done. So turn this into part of your career building toolkit. And if you Need more than just a life raft. You know, this is one of many things that it takes, especially if you want to succeed at a high level in your engineering career. It’s not a game that you play by yourself, and it’s not a game that only involves your life raft.

There’s more to the story. And if you want to see that complete picture, I will also put a link to our Director Promotion Roadmap, how to begin driving your career into those executive levels. And what it takes as an engineering leader to do that. So if that’s something that you aspire to, then go check out that video. We’ll give you the complete picture of what it takes to succeed at those levels. Let’s get into action. Fill your life raft, row hard towards Vision Island, and I’ll see you there. Let’s do this.