So this has been getting a lot of attention in the press about how you need sponsors, not only mentors. I recently held a “lunch and learn” session with my real-life “sponsor”, and he told a great story that I think sheds light on what sponsorship means…
This is a tough skill to master, but absolutely critical. This is figuring out the right balance between “inspecting” vs “expecting”. It’s knowing when you need to ask the questions, and when you don’t. It’s giving people enough latitude without micromanaging, but not so much latitude that you’re an absentee manager. Continue reading
I can’t tell you how many people are relieved when I tell them this.
The impression I get is that people think senior people always knew what they wanted and how they were going to get there. That there was a plan.
Speaking for myself, there was NEVER a plan. I was a history major undergrad, and I thought I was going to be a lawyer. But I ended up working in banking, and decided to stay in financial services. I have held positions in marketing, operations, pricing, new product development, reengineering. I’ve worked in credit cards, private banking, corporate banking, retail brokerage, and high net worth asset management.
My point is that clearly I didn’t have a plan. But I did have two requirements: that my next job was always going to be challenging in some way because there were new things to learn, but I would also be able to contribute to the role immediately because of what I already knew. That way, I wasn’t walking into a job where everything was new.
When you’re starting out in your career, it’s perfectly ok not to know what you want to be. Here’s the analogy I gave to someone recently:
Imagine a huge buffet with 300 different dishes. Knowing what you want to be when you grow up is like me asking you “What is the one dish you want to eat for the rest of your life?” It’s reasonable for you to look at me and say “But I’ve only tasted this one dish!”
As you progress in your career, you’re going to try lots of different things. You’ll figure out what you like and what you don’t like, and hopefully, you find the dish you’ll want to eat for the rest of your life.
But in the meantime, relax. It’s ok not to know. Just make sure you’re doing what you need to do to eventually figure it out.
Someone I worked with in the past put some time on my calendar to catch up. The net net is that she was miserable.
Why? She was having a terrible time with her boss. She found him dismissive and sarcastic, he ignored her emails and requests for help. This has been going on for several months. What to do?
All of us have had the experience of working for someone you can’t connect with. Sometimes, it’s a very bad situation, where you are miserable every day you come in, overcome with anxiety about the future, and walking on eggshells that you’ll make an error.
Here’s the advice I gave:
1. Have a conversation with your manager and put your feelings on the table. I know this is hard, but it’s the only way to deal with the problem. The key is to stay factual about the behaviors you’re observing, how it makes you feel, and how it’s impacting your ability to work. Either your manager will be surprised and will try to change their behavior, or your manager will agree with you that it’s not working between the two of you. If it’s not working, think about whether or not the situation can change, or whether or not the relationship isn’t salvageable. If you don’t think it can be worked out, let your manager know that you think other options need to be considered, like looking for a new role. The key is to maintain the right tone: this isn’t about trying to address the sins of the past and leaving tomorrow. You want to deal with the problem and move forward, for both of you.
2. Once you ascertain the above, it’s time to take action. If your manager agrees it’s not working, you need to come up with Plan B. You’re better off looking for something else to do. Talk to people you trust, see if there are openings in other areas. You’re not looking to leave in a huff or make a statement, you’re just looking at other options. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.
3. Once you do find something suitable, let your boss know. You want his or her support: again, you’re not going for a dramatic exit here. They shouldn’t be surprised given that you’ve already had the first conversation.
4. Manage the optics: it’s important that your reasons for moving aren’t because “you and your boss don’t get along”. It’s better to focus on the positive..that another opportunity that seems a better fit came up. Don’t feed the gossip mill.
5. Don’t leave your boss in the lurch. Work on the transition plan, help train the new person. No matter how the other person acts, you always want your behavior to be above reproach.
When I hear this one, it tells me that you’re doing something that would make people think you’re more junior than you are. The good news is that it’s usually about how people perceive you, as opposed to your content. So a couple of things which may be causing this:
1. Immature behavior: you could joke too much, dress too casually, be perceived as too cavalier about the job, inappropriately oversharing…just doing things more senior people wouldn’t do. Great executives are incredibly consistent, always measured. They never curse, they don’t have outbursts in public, they have a sense of humor, but you know they mean business. Ken Chenault, the CEO of American Express is a great example of consistency. In all his town halls, he is clear, measured, in charge. He always wears a blue blazer with khakis. He always starts on time. He has a sense of humor. As an employee, you feel immense confidence in him as a leader.
2. You show your negative emotions publicly: you’re frazzled, angry, frantic from running from one thing to another and you show it to people indiscriminately. No executive ever shows panic…outwardly. They are always calm and collected on the outside. See my previous post on this here….
3. You have difficulty presenting to a senior audience. Practice, practice, practice. Make notes. What are the 3 points you want to make? Don’t read presentations line by line to senior people…as one managing director once said to me: “I’ve been reading since I was 12.” Ouch.
4. Your language is too personal, too colloquial, you use emoticons in your emails. “You guys” or anything overly familiar will not work. You emote on email….if people only knew how many times those emails are forwarded with a “Can you believe this?” message, they would stop doing this.
5. You’re too quiet. People aren’t sure what your point of view is. You don’t come off as someone who can make the hard decisions…worse you might come off as someone who doesn’t have a clue.
The good news is none of the above is impossible to fix. But it does require you to change your behavior…noticeably. Not just a little. You can’t be a little immature. I once read a great quote: “I don’t take myself seriously, but I take my job very seriously.” You need to make sure you’re not switching the two. But you’ll find that once you start focusing on your “executive presence”, people will start noticing. But it does take time to change people’s perceptions.
Why I picked the picture? You ever notice how lifeguards have absolute authority on the beach? I have never seen anyone debate with a lifeguard, who’s usually a kid with a sunburn and a whistle. They take their job seriously and show it. And people respond.
We come to work with a desire to perform, to excel, and to do the best job we can. Many of us have been trained: in school, by our parents, by our peers, by the media to be perfect. Perfection is the ultimate goal. Or is it?
I would argue that perfection is impossible and that it actually creates different kinds of problems for people, especially at work. So here’s what I’ve seen:
So let me clear…you can’t be at an unacceptable standard of performance. You have to be accurate. But getting to the next level of “perfect” burns a lot of calories…and the law of diminishing returns starts kicking in. Not to mention, the clock is ticking. Remember the professor who marked you down a grade when your paper was late? Well, that also applies at work as well. “Perfect” delivered late isn’t perfect.
No one expects you to be perfect at work…. you’re expected to make mistakes. Now, some mistakes it’s hard to recover from (see Lessons Learned number 1), but most mistakes you can, depending on how you handle it. No boss will ever tell you perfection is the goal…but continuous improvement is. That means 1) fix the problem, and 2) make sure it never happens again.
Here’s the analogy I often use: yes, we need a flight plan in order to take off. But if we spend all our time on the tarmac trying to account for every possibility that could occur, we’re just burning fuel and time. Once you get the plane in the air, you’ll have the ability to make inflight adjustments. You always want a plan B. But at some point, you have to go.
You are not perfect. You know that: so stop holding yourself to that standard. What you are is someone who can learn, and gain experiences to be successful in what life throws at you. What’s better than perfect? Peace of mind knowing you are doing the best you can do.
When things go wrong, it can be scary. Downright terrifying. But there are ways to turnaround those projects. A couple of things that have helped me.
1. Figure out what the problem is and tackle it directly. What is the issue that got you here? Make the hard decision, and get agreement. Most projects are a function of effort plus deadlines. Usually, when projects go wrong, it’s because you run out of time. The only way to deal with time is 1) get an extension, or 2) cancel or defer some of the deliverables. Figure out which path you’re going to take, and get agreement with the parties who will be impacted.
2. Encourage honesty with your team and make sure you have the right team in the room with you. Everyone gets to contribute, but you’re the leader. It starts and stops with you. Don’t expect a decision from your team: expect them to provide you all the information you need to make an informed decision and to tell you if you’re wrong.
3. Now is the time to micromanage. When things are not going as expected or when the margin for error is nil, I institute morning and afternoon checkouts. A lot of things can change in a day. Everyone’s expected to be either in the room or on the call…most times, they show up. Sometimes you can’t afford to wait till the next day to get a status.
4. Communicate: if your project’s in red RAG status, say so. Keep it in red even when you think it’s amber/turning green. Yes, you’ll continue to get unwanted attention. But I never like to flipflop statuses: nothing’s worse than going to amber only to go back to red. It raises the question “Do you know what you’re doing?”
5. Be factual and simple in your updates: sometimes it’s email, sometimes it’s a presentation, sometimes both. Overcommunicate. I often use monthly calendar slides for team updates: I’ll show the time we have left, and I’ll have what we need to do scoped out on the calendar. I’ll put in all the major deliverable dates, buffer time (for anything that might go wrong), and most importantly, the end date. It gives a very clear depiction of what we have to do and the time we have to do it: the two variables I need the team to focus on.
Crisis management isn’t fun. But you learn the most about how to get things done by running to the fires and knowing what to do when you get there.
This is one of those attributes which act as an early indicator for promotion.
An old boss said to me once that he could figure out whether or not someone had drive just by the way they walked around the office. If they had a slow pace, sauntered, “hung out”, he knew they were unlikely to be someone who was going to push to get things done.
It sounds arbitrary, but here’s the thing: it’s one thing to be relaxed and laid back from a style perspective, but never let that become who people think you are at work. There are very few jobs where being relaxed and laid back is cited as a job requirement.
Now, if your style is relaxed and laid back, but you know when to dial it up when you need to, you have acute attention to detail, you make sure things are right, are constantly looking for continuous improvement, it’s not an issue.
Just make sure your style isn’t conveying to your manager that you don’t care.
So basic, so simple. But it was (and still is) so hard for me to do. I am shy, an introvert…INTJs unite! I would get embarrassed saying hello to people I didn’t know. It just got easier to look at the ground and walk by. Except it’s not polite. It’s not nice. People interpret the absence of saying hi to mean something else: you’re not important, I don’t care about you, I have other things to do, I’m annoyed about something you did or didn’t do. Nature abhors a vacuum. So when you are at work, say hi. And smile.