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How to Help Your Boss Help You

One of my favorite movies is Jerry Maguire. I mean, how could you not love that movie? I love it because it’s about standing up for what you believe in, figuring out what’s important, living a life that’s authentic to you.

The greatest line is when Jerry is telling Rod “Help me help you.” My favorite scene is here.

Many of you are starting to think about your next role…but you don’t know quite how to figure out what that next role is. After all, all you know is your role.  So you have a conversation with your manager….and he/she is equally perplexed how to help you find that next role too because they are also limited to what they know.

So here’s the question I would ask your manager:

“Who are the three people you think I should meet with who could help me figure out what my next role might be?”

Every manager knows three people who can be helpful in this capacity: either because the person has been at the firm a long time (the Guide), or because the individual has had lots of mobility moves themselves (the Mobility Whisperer), or because the person is trusted and respected (the Sage).  Once you get the names, send an email to each of them separately that says something like “Hello G, my name is Sue, and I’m currently working for Joe in x department in Marketing. I’ve been thinking about what my next step might be, and he suggested that you would be a good person to talk to. Can I set some time up on your calendar at your convenience?”  It might take some time to set up, but most people love to share their experiences and help someone else.

This way you can move the ball forward, expand your network, and figure out what your next move might be.

Feedback Decoded: “You need to work on your executive presence”.

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.

Busy vs lazy (freedom?)

I am lazy. My parents would point this out to me when I was growing up.  What that really meant I was doing what I wanted to do, not what they wanted me to be doing. In my head, I would be thinking “Can’t I just be left alone?”  I like lazy. I like not having things to do, places to go, people to see. I love empty spots of time, where I can choose what I want to do because I want to do it.  Because being lazy to me, means being able to be a kid again: to not have people scheduling meetings on my calendar (curses to Outlook), asking to do something, see something, say something.

Sometimes I just want to be on my own. Like when you’re a kid, waking up on a Saturday with the whole day ahead of you. Or when you go to college, and realize you can do whatever you want on the weekend, other than study. Or when you’re on a plane, and people can’t reach you so it’s ok to watch 5 movies in a row. Or when a meeting is cancelled, and you realize you just got time back.

Supposedly, the opposite of being busy is being lazy. I would say the opposite of being busy is having freedom.  This article gives great perspective on the perils of being busy.

23. Always take the tough assignment.

Remember in school when you had easy teachers and hard teachers? The easy teachers didn’t really push you, everyone got a good grade. The hard teachers were the ones who gave you a tough work load, kept you on your toes, had you try harder.

When I was a freshman, I was taking a history class and submitted my first paper. When I got it back, it was a C-. Now, it had been a long time since I had gotten a grade that low. I was convinced that my acceptance into school was a mistake, and that I would definitely be flunking out.

So with each paper I tried harder. Slowly, I worked my way up the letters: C, B-, B’s.  My last paper….I finally got an A, but I knew that my grade for the class would be the average of all my papers, so I knew I would, at best, get a B-/C for the course.  This was a big disappointment for me: history was my major, and I started questioning whether or not I could make it.

When I got my grades for the semester, I was completely shocked that my professor had given me an A for the class. So I went to see him to find out why. He looked at me and said “You did the work. I know how hard it was for you. But you did the work, and finally got to where I thought you could be.”

That experience was a million years ago. But I still remember it, because it taught me that you learn the most about yourself and you gain some invaluable skills with the hard assignments. You don’t learn if it’s easy. And the goal is to learn, gain skills and confidence in yourself and what you can do, so you can tackle the next thing.

I didn’t love my professor while I was going through this process, spending late nights at the library. Often, you resent the people who are pushing you and holding you the higher standards. Here’s what I realized: they hold the higher standard because they believe in you.

Make your bed

Many of you probably saw the video of Admiral William H. McRaven’s 2014 commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin.  If you didn’t, take a look.

His key message was “If you want to change the world, start off by making the bed.”

By making your bed, every day, you accomplish something. You are rewarded with immediate satisfaction, as well as coming home at night to the pleasure of a bed well made. It starts off the day with doing one of the many things you’ll need to do: some will be completed, some will feel like a small step. This one is small, complete, and solely for you.

Much of what we aspire to is accomplished by taking those small steps every day: of how we want to live, what we think we should do, and what details we pay attention to. Yes, there are huge decisions in life: what career you choose, who you marry, having kids. But most of them really get made through all the small steps leading up to that moment. So pay attention to all the small steps. And make your bed.

Feedback Decoded: “You need to be more detail oriented.”

This is a new series I’m starting, which is translating what people might say to you in performance reviews, but what they really mean. I was having a conversation with someone, and she told me she got this feedback.

So here’s what it means:

It means that your manager is looking for consistency from you that they’re not seeing. Now I know everyone makes mistakes. But nothing gets more frustrating to a manager when you make lots of little mistakes, or when you make the same mistakes over and over again. It makes them feel like 1) you’re not listening or paying attention, or 2) if these things are wrong, something else is wrong with the presentation. The saying “The devil’s in the details” is absolutely true.

Here’s what helps: a checklist. Simple, but effective. Make a list of all the things you’ve gotten wrong in the past, and when you do your next whatever, make sure you check your checklist. At the least, you’ll know you’re not making any old mistakes.

Some things to put on a checklist for presentations:

  1. Spell check and grammar check. I know basic. But still see this.
  2. Font size consistency across the pages: titles always the same.
  3. Page numbers.
  4. Numbers tie: meaning a number on one page matches it on another page. Lots of time people forget to update all the places where the number is used.
  5. No slang, colloquialisms. Try not to use acronyms.
  6. Check dates: if the dates have past, the status is usually completed, but people miss this because they just cut and paste from the last presentation.
  7. If the presentation is a big one, do a table top exercise prior to submission. This is when you bring a few people into a room to read the presentation, page by page. Often, you’re in the process of making lots of updates: that’s when you start losing sight of the overall deck. Take a moment and look at the whole presentation with fresh eyes.
  8. Give the deck to someone you trust who is detail oriented to review and read before you submit.
  9. The information has to stand on its own. If I need you to explain it, it doesn’t.
  10. Label clearly: simple colors and legends. Be consistent. If orange means legal expenses, don’t make it blue later in the deck.

When details get missed the first time, it’s usually brushed off as a one time mistake. The problem happens when it becomes a pattern: then it’s not a rare occurrence, but who you are.