Key insights from the conversation

Personal development

• The importance of continuous learning and embracing personal challenges.

• Public writing, content creation, and active engagement on LinkedIn.

• Balancing a full-time job with personal interests through efficient time management and organization.

Communication and relationships

• The beauty of newsletter writing to share knowledge on topics like leadership and management.

• The role of content creation in structuring knowledge and facilitating connections.

• The value of audience feedback in validating and shaping content. Desire to produce impactful and valuable material for the audience.

• The significance of knowledge exchange and mutual learning in relationships.

• Importance of mutual respect and benefit in professional connections.

Leadership and management

• Viewing leadership as a service to others, focusing on team empowerment and success.

• Advocating for transparency, obstacle removal, and fostering team independence.

Future goals and exploration

• Interest in exploring new formats for knowledge sharing and community engagement.

• The Hybrid Hacker: utilizing a combination of skills and knowledge from various fields to innovate and solve problems.

• Encouraging the application of diverse skills to create unique solutions.

• The importance of learning, sharing, and experimentation in both personal and professional growth.

Full transcript

Here is the full conversation transcript, edited for clarity and conciseness. Here's also the link to the conversation on LinkedIn live.

Nicola

Great to meet you. It's so strange. It's already so strange to speak in Italian. So it seems like a joke. There are two Italians on LinkedIn speaking English.

Roberto

Yes, exactly. This is already going to be so much fun. And I'm super, super excited to do this today with you. And I'm very curious to see what we share today. So, to start, there is one anecdote that I would like to share as a token of how excited we are to do this. And we were discussing this. We were saying, "Wow, I feel so excited". One reframe is that we are excited because we also think this is a brilliant space. We want to share valuable things and ideas with the people investing their time on a Friday afternoon to watch a LinkedIn Live with Roberto and Nicola.

So, to start, I would like first of all to thank you, Nicola, for doing this. We have known each other for six months and had many conversations. I greatly admire you because you are a very creative and fast learner. You are a great person always, always experimenting and trying new things. And jumping into new things and tests with all enthusiasm and curiosity. And this inspires me. So thank you for that. Also, thank you, Nicola, because one of the things that struck me was your generosity with your feedback and all the things you shared with me. You inspired me.

Nicola

Thank you very much for your kind words. But now stop telling me all these compliments because, as I told you, this is the first time I do live video streaming. I probably made my first-ever video with Omar that went public. You probably remember it two months ago, and for me, this is one of the biggest challenges of my life because I don't feel comfortable. Still, I thought, first of all, I mean, there is always something that I like to do, I mean, I like to challenge myself. And I thought it was an excellent idea to do this with you because it's fun to have two Italians talking in English again. It's really fun.

Also, I admire you even more probably than what you do because I mean, you are one of my biggest inspirations, especially in terms of visuals, but not only this because I mean, I really, I don't know how you can keep track of all the information that you share and the valuable information that you share with everyone every day on LinkedIn or social network with me. So, thank you also for inviting me and pushing me to have this challenge.

Roberto

Thanks. And what you say is also brilliant because you said, OK, It's the first time I'm somewhat scared, and still I'm here, I'm having fun and doing this. And this is the spirit. So this is another source of inspiration for me because we constantly try new things. And this is the way just to jump and play and have fun. And I would like to ask you for those who don't know you. What do you want the listeners to know about you?

Nicola

I'm Nicola. I'm from Italy. I'm the director of cloud at Namecheap, which is the second domain register in the world for those who don't know. I manage four teams. I manage an entire department in Namecheap. Four teams for a total of approximately 40 people. I also have two kids who are way harder to manage than my teams, but they give me a lot of satisfaction. In the last year, I also approached public writing and content creation with my newsletter, the Hybrid Hacker, where I write about engineering leadership management, productivity, career growth, and other things.

I'm also very active on LinkedIn, where I post my visuals from the last months, a newly acquired skill. And again, thanks for your inspiration and everything. And whatever, I don't have much free time, but in my free time, I love to go hiking and skiing. I mean, I love the mountains. I spent five years of my life in Berlin, a big city, very nice for many things, but no mountains, no nature. I mean, not the nature that I like. So I moved back to Italy, in the middle of the mountains, and this is where I love to spend my free time.

Roberto

Wow. And I can imagine the surroundings from the beautiful background that you have. I see the roof of the house. They have to be amazing. So now that you talk about it, I heard many things, and it's amazing how many different and connected things you are doing here. And I'm curious about everything that you do. What currently fulfills you the most?

Nicola

That's a tricky question because, I mean, generically speaking, I could tell you learning. So, for me, learning is the first thing. For me, learning new things is everything. I'm a natural-born generalist. I'm curious, and I continuously need more input. And this is why learning new things is incredibly powerful for me. And this is what gives me energy. I mean, when I learned and acquired new skills, like visuals, I was super satisfied. It was super fulfilled. And I know it's generic, so it's not something specific. Probably today, it's doing visuals, but it could change tomorrow, which doesn't mean they will stop doing visuals.

Roberto

It is something that I also feel a huge affinity for. It reminds me that we have tons of amazing things that we could do. And the time is so limited. And, for example, even if you are a super fast learner, I feel you don't have the time to do everything. So, how do you manage the infinite curiosity that you have?

Nicola

The biggest secret is I sleep just a few hours per day, which is probably not healthy, but it's something in the DNA because my father is the same, so I sleep four or five hours daily. Sometimes, a bit more, but I don't sleep much. And so this is how I usually find the time because I have a full-time job. So, it's hard to keep up with all my hobbies, passions, and this need for learning. And yeah, I also wrote this publicly for my newsletter a couple of times. I wake up at 2.30 a.m. on Thursday to write it, and I also like it; it's not too hard for me. Even if this year, I want to find a better way. I also try to be very organized. I'm a bit obsessed with organization, scheduling things, and everything.

Roberto

It sounds like what you do is like play for you. And not only because you have the Lego in the back.

Nicola

No, that's not. This is 3D printed because 3D printing is another passion of mine. So, I'm constantly 3D printing. So I have a small office here under the roof of my house, which is half mine and half of my wife, Monica. And the 3D printer is in Monica's office. And so she's not happy because they love all the days of printing, 3D printing, and everything. But it's also pretty fun with my kids because they love it. Because of them, I build a lot of stuff for them.

Roberto

Finding some common ground between the things we love or experiment with and our families is also beautiful. For example, when you say that, I remember how my daughter, Valentina, helps me sometimes with the illustrations, and I ask her for feedback.

You said that you're a person who is super organized. I know you use obsidian as a way to manage everything. I feel that, at least for me, the more I optimize the time, the more I squeeze five minutes from here and five minutes from there; there are still many more things I would love to do. So I free up five minutes. And then I think, OK, I want to do other things for 10 minutes. So we always have more things we want to do at that time. Even if we were genetically engineered so we don't need to sleep, it would probably be impossible to do everything. So this is perhaps one of my challenges also. And we must accept something that we cannot do in the end.

Nicola

I believe it's only a matter of priorities. Accept that you can't do everything, and obviously, and so you have to understand what makes more sense to you and what makes you happy. And this is how I usually choose when I can.

Roberto

Nicola, connected to that, of all that you are doing, what's the thing that excites you the most?

Nicola

Today, I believe I'm in my newsletter. I try to share my knowledge content from the beginning. I did it first on newsgroups and then blogs; I can't count how many blogs I had. I love the newsletter format, which I believe is becoming essential for sharing knowledge. And this is probably the thing that satisfies me because I could write for one entire year.

Roberto

So it looks like you were experimenting with different formats, trying one thing or the other, and now you find a way to keep on. So this is something that you love. I'm super curious: what are your learnings, and what do you see?

Nicola

It's pretty simple. It helped a lot in fixing my knowledge and also, at the same time, giving names to what I already knew. Why? In the last ten years, especially with my job, not only the current one but also with the other experiences that I have had, I have always led people. I managed people, processes, and so forth. But I was always so busy that I never gave names to things I was doing, for example, or I never had enough time to read what the others were thinking. I had a lot of exchanges with people, but I never had a lot of time to know what already existed in terms of theories, literature, and so forth. So this is the benefit of writing: first of all, to fix things and also to learn new things because when you write, if you want to do it the right way, you have to study, you have to find new things, you have to ensure that you're not writing, excuse my French, bullshit. So you learn a lot. This is the first benefit.

The second benefit is how many people you meet doing something like this. How many new people do you meet doing something like this? I met you indirectly because of the newsletter. I wanted to improve how my illustrations look. If you go to the first, ten articles in my newsletter were terrible because I can barely keep a pencil in my hand. OK. And so I said, OK, I need to learn to do better visuals because I want my readers to understand things better.

Roberto

You have summarized it brilliantly. On the one hand, you have some intrinsic motivation for me to learn and remind me of the conscious, unconscious, competent, and incompetent: I am unconsciously competent about this. And now I put a name to that.  

Plus, as we are doing now when you put yourself out there, you share something, you have to be very sure of what you're saying. And what you said also speaks about the extreme respect I think you have for the people who invest the time in your content. Again, connected to the beginning of the conversation, you want your visuals to be impactful. You want to be helpful to people. You want to give value. You want to improve yourself. So the first motivation is for me because I like it. After all, it gives me some benefit, even if no one is reading it. It's useful because it helps me fix it in my mind. So, this is already a win.

The second win is the connection because when you put something out, there is a phrase that I always like to say: your vibe attacks your tribe.

What does it mean? If you share something you love, probably if someone else likes it, they will say something or not, but there's a chance, and if they don't like it, they will not say anything. There is nothing to lose in a certain sense. And there is only one upside: you've got to connect with people who love what you do and share the same interests. And by doing that, you learn. I met you this way: you shared one thing while trying to reach more people with your newsletter. I found your exercise very interesting. Then we started to have a conversation. And from the conversation, now we are learning from each other, which is terrific.

Nicola

Absolutely.

Roberto

And there is another thing that is perhaps very connected to that. You talk about the recognition of your work and something that we talk about sometimes, which are the audience, vanity metrics, or whatever you call that. And I feel there are two ways I have to see it. And I would like to ask you, Nicola, what your view is on this?

Nicola

I believe there are multiple stages of judging the work that you are doing, especially when it's an early stage. What do others think? I mean, I have a powerful ego. OK. And at the same time, I believe that when I start to do something, I love to show it to someone else. But I love to show it to someone; I love to show it to someone else when it's not really at the beginning but when it's almost ready. OK. I know that I mean recognition, at least for me, it's so, I mean, recognition in the end, it's essential. And this is why you mentioned vanity metrics. And I often read many people saying, OK, vanity metrics are unimportant. It's important to note that what I was saying before is true. The important thing is what you do that makes you happy while having some recognition.

Roberto

What I hear is that for you, it is somehow a way to see that what you share has value and an impact and that it's worth it.

Nicola

Exactly. For example, you mentioned the top voice. When I got the top voice, nothing changed; technically speaking, I still have the same number of followers daily and the same reach. It was not a significant change for me, technically speaking, but someone noticed what I do and what I write and probably found it insightful. It's not everything because I would still write and do what I do, but it makes me happy; obviously, I believe it's pretty standard, pretty human.

Roberto

I feel the same. And at the same time, it raises the bar for what we share to be in the same line and, if possible, better. Again, to show by example, if we can, what we like, and so what we would like to see more. Again, it's also a responsibility to respect the time of the people and do things the way I would love to see them. So this is also one thing that resonates very much with what you say.

Nicola

Absolutely. It is raising the bar. It's also a way to measure your growth if something changes.

Roberto

I see it's the balance between the internal motivation. We still do it because we like it and will do it anyway. And at the same time, it's good to see that someone also likes it because then you can start the conversation. This also reminds me of another thing that I would love to ask you, Nicola: What do you value most about the relationship in general on this platform? What's essential for you?

Nicola

I will probably sound repetitive a bit, but what I value most in relationships is, again, learning knowledge. Knowledge sharing is everything to me because I love to learn stuff. So, what is a relationship between two people? You search for other people because you want to share something with them and exchange inputs. So, you share inputs, you share knowledge. And this is what, for me, is more important in a relationship. It's not what is more important, but it's what makes it a solid relationship. You can love someone; you can enjoy staying with someone. But at the end of the day, I believe an exchange should be made to solidify a relationship. And the exchange usually is about information, knowledge, and what you can learn from someone. So, like we are doing now, OK? Like we already did. So I give you feedback, and you provide me with feedback. Now we are talking about things, and we learn more from each other. And I believe this is the most potent thing about relationships. I don't want to sound too robotic, I don't know how to say it, too artificial, but I believe this is the true meaning of relationships.

Roberto

Absolutely. And perhaps there's a different meaning for every one of us. So this is also a beautiful thing. At the same time, what I hear from you when you talk about the exchange of value and, learning, inspiration reminds me of a beautiful way to see a relationship: when each one of the two people thinks that they are the one who is getting most out of the relationship. So, for example, I say, I'm the one who's learning the most, and you think, oh, I'm the one who's learning the most.

Nicola

Yeah, that's funny. That's funny, and I believe it's very healthy. It's very healthy when it's so because it means that we both respect each other.

Roberto

And it also brings me to another thing: we didn't talk about work, even if we probably were talking about values and things that are always related to work. I also believe that everything we do outside our jobs, hobbies, and relationships has an impact and vice versa. So we are not, OK, this is my job. This is who I am outside. We are the same person. And connected to that, you said that even without entering details, you're managing quite a big distributed team. So, I would love to hear the definition or your view about leadership and relationships in work and in this new scenario of work that we have today.

Nicola

What is leadership? It's serving and serving other people. First of all, for me, leadership, being a leader, being a manager, it's a job, OK? Most of the time, at least in our field, it's a job. Often seen as something like, I don't know, it was a sort of, you were like a sort of shaman or, oh, you are a leader, you are a manager. No, I mean, it's a job. You are dealing with people, and your job is to make these people happy, to have a vision, to make them successful, and to empower them. Again, it's a job that you can also learn. See me: I'm a super introvert. And I'm still leading a team. I'm doing my best. I learned a lot of stuff. I still make tons of errors, and I admit them. For me, a leader is not more than a developer or an individual contributor, OK? So first of all, this. And yeah, I mean, serving people, empowering them.

Roberto

I love your definition. And also, again, as with relationships, there is probably no single definition of leadership. And what I hear from you is absolute honesty and humility. And you, as a leader, you're not better than anyone. And you are, as you said, doing a role. I'm doing a job; it's like a facilitator. It reminds me of one of the models; perhaps you heard about co-active leadership. There is the leader in the leader within the leader in the front, and what you're talking about reminds me of the leader in the back. Or in the middle. We're supporting the team and making them grow. And what I loved about what you said is that you make people happy. So, I'm super curious about this. What's making people happy for you? How do you do that?

Nicola

That's a very tough question.

Roberto

I'm sure you're doing this every day.

Nicola

Yes and no. I believe it's a bit more challenging and a bit different to make people happy, especially engineers.

Roberto

You are an engineer, so you know something about that.

Nicola

To make them happy, make them independent. So make them live their lives and do their job. So give them maximum responsibilities, again, empower them. Let them fail, do their job, and take their responsibilities. This is what I believe makes engineers happy. I tried many times to engage engineers in funny things, probably the most challenging. So just let them do their job. Just let people do their job; they will likely give their best. And this, again, connects to what I was saying before. So my job today, OK, I'm leading a department. Today, my job is more about removing obstacles or ensuring that these people are happy, that they are happy to work, and that they are happy to do what they do. So, for me, this today is my job, and I believe this should be the leader's job, what every leader should do.

Roberto

I love what you say because it looks like you're not trying to make them happy. You're trying to let them be happy, each one in their way. You, I hear that you listen to their problems. You listen to what's happening. You try to remove the obstacles and leave the way free for them to do what they love, which is whatever.

Nicola

Exactly.

Roberto

And it's different for every person. So you probably find the best in everyone, and you see, OK, this is an obstacle. My job is to take it out so you can do your thing, and your thing is different from the other colleague's. And your job, as you said, is to know each other, perhaps, and see what makes one happy. And so be sure that they have that.

Nicola

Absolutely. Help them, support them, support them. And if they have any obstacle, try to remove it. But don't, again, don't push them to do super funny things. That's, I mean, I also tried this, to be honest, but maybe it was just my team. I don't know, but yeah, I believe people want to do what they know, and they will succeed if you leave them if you let them do their job. So, what I try to do is to observe. We always talk about active leadership and active listening, sometimes just observing and listening to issues and problems. You must remove these problems or issues, but listen more; I believe it will work.

Roberto

I love this. I love it. This is also connected to something that we say in coaching, for example, in the co-active coaching model, which is the model that I'm training in. All people are naturally creative, full of resources, and whole. And I see that you also live this because if you thought people needed to be taught what they must do, how, when would you not say this? It also looks like it frees you from the responsibility of being right, of knowing everything. You look more like a facilitator who listens, sees, and brings out the best in everyone and lets them do their job. And by this, the side effect is that they will be happy because they will be doing what they like.

Nicola

I, again, believe this is the way to work with people. I don't want to go too much into the details, but I think data supports this theory if you wish to. I also have proof of this because my team's retention is pretty good (I'm not too fond of the word retention). Because people love what they do, and if they don't want to, if they don't like what they do, there's no way to change this. I believe the best way is always to let them go.

So, to summarize all of this, transparency. So this is what, for me, is also a good part of leadership management. It's complete transparency with your people. Don't play politics. Don't, I mean, you can tell someone something challenging. But it will be way better to say something challenging than not saying it because it's terrible for you; it isn't good for them. So yeah, I mean, for me, I strongly believe in full transparency. And Monica always tells me, yeah, that's why you have just a few friends.

Roberto

A few good friends.

Nicola

Yeah, a few, but very good, very good ones.

Roberto

It reminds me of some of the visuals you did about the uncomfortable conversation about having a one-on-one. And it feels like it comes from a place where I respect and care for the person. And because I care for the person, I engage in this conversation. Because if you didn't care, why expose yourself to uncomfortable conversation? Why? The most selfish thing to do is avoid conflict because we usually avoid it. It's not pleasant. At the same time, it's where you probably grow more. Also, my experience is that when we have some uncomfortable conversation from a place of respect and care for the person, in the end, we almost always end up with a better relationship. This transparency that you were talking about is something that you show. So what brings my mind is that the person knows they can trust you.

Nicola

I mentioned before the few very good friends that I have, and these friends are friends with whom I had a lot of conflicts, probably the most significant conflicts of my life.

Roberto

What are your next steps, as the following things you will do? And also, how can people connected to this reach out or connect with you if they're watching the recording or live?

Nicola

You will probably find me on LinkedIn since we are on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to add me. And OK, what is the next big thing? I still love my job. I still love to have a full-time job. So probably my most significant work-related challenge is to deliver new things, to bring new ideas, not at the product level because we have many and so on, but more at the leadership level. Again, this connects to the newsletter and connects to having more contacts with the community, other leaders, and other managers. This was the different purpose of the newsletter: writing a newsletter and being more active on LinkedIn.

It was born because all your teams are doing well after ten years of working in a company. We have issues and conflicts from time to time. We have, I mean, like everyone, but everything is going pretty well at the end of the day. Everything works, and the processes are sound. And so, what can I bring to help those who are already pretty good to grow and improve even more, who have been with me for years? So they are like some old friends or something like that.

So yeah, again, this is probably my biggest challenge, professionally speaking. So, bringing your ideas regarding leadership, improving relationship teams, and so forth on a personal, more personal level, but always connected, is to start doing videos. I like the idea, and it's the next big thing I will at least begin exploring. I mean, this is already an excellent way to explore. I want to explore more ways to deliver my knowledge, the new knowledge I acquire, reading, studying, and having contacts with others. So, I will explore videos, video productions, or small productions, maybe podcasts.

Roberto

Wow, this is brilliant. And also, again, it speaks of your eagerness to learn and to give value. So what I hear is that whatever you do outside, let's say of work, even if we are never separate compartments, whatever you do, it somehow helps you to be a better person, to be a better manager, to bring this new idea to this new thing, to experiment with things, to bring insight to your day to day, be a better manager, better leader, and also learn again and have fun. And so again, you connect with more people, they give you input, and then you take something, you try it. And with this experience, you also bring this out and explain again from your competence or now conscious competence. You talk about that and what you live in day to day, and this helps you again to learn more. So it's like everything is connected.

It also reminds me of an anecdote from this week. I'm a member of Management 3.0, a fantastic community of people. We all talk about management and new ways of working and have a lot of fun. There was one person, Jacqueline, who, in one of the sessions, shared a laughter yoga warm-up of 10 minutes. And I liked it so much that I proposed it at work, in a team meeting, and convinced my manager to do it. And we did it; there were 40 people live, we put our clown noses, it was so fun.

And what happened then? I shared this in a post here on LinkedIn. And I thanked the person because it was thanks to her that I discovered this practice. And she offered publicly to have a session with whoever I wanted. So I thought about it and thought, why don't I propose this inside my organization? So, I proposed this inside my organization. People liked it, and now we're organizing the session live; it will be remote. And there are a lot of people already signed up. So this is something from the outside: you take it, you experiment, you bring it, and it's precisely connected to what we're discussing.

Nicola

That's it. I have another example: during the last year, I did this many times. I did templates. I remember I did this for one of my articles; I did this template. We already had something, but it was not good enough. So, I did a lot of research. I wrote an article about this and created a new template for 30, 60, and 90 plans, which I then shared with my team. And now they are using it. Now they have evolved it, so it's even better. Again, this connects your hobbies, what you like, and inputs from any point or anywhere; I believe reusing things in different fields is essential.

Roberto

And also the combination.

Nicola

This is the concept of a hybrid hacker: it comes from technology and bad things that happened in the past, but it's all about taking inputs, knowledge, and many other things and being able to put them together to shape them in different ways, to add new outcomes, to find new results. So that's the point. And I believe it's powerful if you are good at doing this, not only with your job but also in personal situations.

Roberto

Wow. And again, it's a reminder of your Lego. It's like a Lego. You put the pieces and come up with the combination; you do amazing things.

Nicola

By the way, I didn't put it there just for the call, so I worked a bit with the lights, but this is always there. That's the Lego and the X-Wing on the other side.

Roberto

Oh, big Star Wars fan, too. OK, we could go on for hours again. I also feel this is a beautiful way to wrap up this session with the definition of a hybrid hacker, which I will also take. I love it, and I will make it mine.

Nicola

It's free, it's open source. So I'm an open-source fan, so take it and use it, and you know.

Roberto

Nicola, it was super fun to do this with you this Friday afternoon—and a fantastic way to end the week with a smile. Thank you to everyone who is still connected, who connected, and who watched this recording. I hope this is useful. And for us, it was super fun, and I learned a lot from you. So, thank you again.

Nicola

Thank you very much for inviting me. And it was great. I have to admit, I was very nervous initially, you know, it's my first time, but again, it was exciting. Again, it's one more thing that I've started to learn. And thank you for pushing me. Thank you for giving me the input and for organizing this. And also thank the people who have listened to us until now.

Roberto

Thank you again, and bye to everyone. Have a fantastic weekend, and see you soon.

Nicola

Thank you. You too. Bye bye.