Consult and Build Trust: Influence the Business and the People with Richard Russell (1/2)

Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

Have you ever felt a work task was boring or a waste of time? It might be because you didn’t understand why you were asked to do it in the first place. Richard Russell, our guest this week in episode 318, struggled with this in his early role as a programmer. All he wanted was to understand more about the business problem his work was intended to solve. In that role, however, Richard never got those answers, and he would later move into systems administration.
Richard has developed a pattern of pursuing the things which he finds interesting – a pattern that began in college and has continued over the course of his career as a programmer, a systems administrator, and as a consultant. Each of these roles combined with his interest in the business prepared Richard for the role of team lead in the banking industry. Join us as we explore the team lead role and why Richard progressed to it, how he built trust as a consultant and as a sales engineer, and his genuine interest in people. Listen closely to learn strategies that will increase your ability to influence others, ask the right questions, and build strong working relationships with colleagues and customers.
Original Recording Date: 02-17-2025
Topics – Meet Richard Russell, An Interest in Mathematics and Computer Science, Moving from Programming to Systems Administration, Consulting and an Interest in the Business, Combatting Ego and Building Trust, Sharing Your Priorities, Progressing to Team Lead
2:43 – Meet Richard Russell
* Richard Russell spends most of his time coaching leaders who work in scale-ups, big tech, and other corporate environments.
* Most of Richard’s clients have some executive responsibilities and come from a product or technology background. Many times, these clients are transitioning into product / tech leadership roles or CEO / founder roles.
* Richard made the relatively recent transition from doing consulting work to focusing on coaching.
* Richard resides in Luxembourg with his family.
3:29 – An Interest in Mathematics and Computer Science
* What prompted Richard to study math and computer science in school?
* Richard’s father was an electrical engineer and was very enthusiastic about that career path.
* Richard had a Commodore 64 as his first computer and tinkered with various others over time, even getting into programming.
* In high school, Richard did very well in the hard sciences – math, physics, and chemistry. When forced to choose a non-science course during his senior year, he chose economics because it seemed the most mathematical.
* Though he did start out studying engineering in college, Richard made some changes to focus on the things he found most interesting – mathematics, computer science, philosophy, cognitive science, theology, etc.
* Richard found applied mathematics quite boring at first (just solving differential equations, for example). It was more interesting to him when physics and engineering teachers taught mathematics because there was a need to solve a problem.
* Richard later went into pure mathematics and found it the most interesting of all.
* Richard says computer science was something he got into primarily because of his talent in mathematics.
* Nick remembers hearing physics majors in college echo the same sentiment as Richard. They learned more mathematics in physics courses than in their respective calculus courses.
* To Richard, initial learnings in calculus seemed to be solving complicated problems that were not applied to anything, and it was a sharp contrast to the way problems were presented in physics or engineering.
* In the sciences,