Monthly Archives: July 2015

How to Say No to Someone who Wants To Hire You

I spoke to someone today who had been approached by someone she had previously worked for about a job.  She felt conflicted because she’d only be in her job for 4 months…things were crazy, and they really needed her. Plus, she really liked who she worked with. But it sounded great.  Here was my advice:

1. You can always have a conversation, but you really need to love the new role and the new people….because there’s a chance you won’t be able to come back. People don’t usually want to hold people back, but if you’re leaving them in a lurch, they won’t want to be played twice.

2. As you progress in your career, what you say no to because more important than ever. When you’re just starting out, there are no real bad moves-you’re learning and adding to your skill set. As you get more senior, you have more to lose, so really think about it and don’t be afraid to say no. (“I’m really flattered, but I don’t think it’s the right move for me now” is one way.

3. Live with the decision for the day. You need to get past the adrenaline rush of someone wanting to hire you, the allure of something new and sparkly, and temptation of escaping whatever is driving you crazy right now. Once that clears, you should have a good sense of whether or not it’s right for you.

Improving on Performance

This is an interesting article called “Beware the Winning Streak”.  Essentially, it points out the obvious, which is that it gets harder and harder to improve performance the better your performance is.  As one of my people used to tell me… “Happiness is a low base.”

I see this concept come up often: it’s usually the reason why you don’t aim for 100% targets on your performance standards. If you’re at 90%, it gets very expensive and much more difficult to chase down the final 10% to hit 100%.

For people, I think you can keep striving to get it right. But you shouldn’t feel bad if you’re not perfect. Some things don’t matter as much as others.  Some things have to be 100% (responses to 911 calls for example). But not everything. Just make sure you pick the right things.

Practical Tips on Saving Money

This is a great article “11 Things I Quit to Get Financially Healthy”..written by Chelsea Fagan that’s practical and fresh.  She realized that she needed to take control of her spending, but what I love about her article is that it’s real…not vague statements that we all know like “Pay yourself first.” Huh?

My favorite? “A memorized credit-card number”. How many times did you end up just not buying something because it was too much of a pain to get up and go find your credit card?

Leadership

In your career, you’ll work on the one project that will change you forever. It will be something huge, your role will be key and terrifying, you’ll fight with each other, you’ll give up your entire personal life…all to make sure something happens the way it’s supposed to.

I got to be a part of something like that: what I call “living a real life Harvard Business School Case.”  We had a reunion the other day and here are my lessons learned:

1. You never lose the connections you have created with these people.  They will always mean something important to you.

2. You appreciate the bravery. Sure, it’s easy now that it’s finished for others to dismiss the effort. But you know how terrifying every day was as you were trying to complete the impossible.

3. You realize that people are NOT replaceable. Sure, you can put someone else in a role. But the reason why it all worked was because of who was in the role at that time.  Movies succeed or fail due to casting. It’s the same at work.

Most importantly, great things happen because there is leadership throughout the organization. It’s not just top down, it’s every person who’s involved exhibiting leadership in their own way.

 

Growing Up Asian

When people ask me how being Asian has affected me at work, I don’t have a great answer. I wasn’t aware that anyone was doing something to me because I was an Asian female, but I know that growing up in an Asian household affected me. Here were the things that hurt me at work: Continue reading →

More on Adding Value to Every Communication (LL#5)

As you progress, you’ll be writing emails to more senior people. Here are some tips and tells on whether you’re doing it right.

1. Your email has to be clear and crisp. If your email looks like one big paragraph, it’s probably a run on stream of consciousness, not a well crafted email.

Opening sentence: explain intent, context, the why. “As you know, the project is in amber status and I wanted to make you aware of what actions we are taking to mitigate the situation”, “You’ll see in today’s report, the following areas are flagging amber, and I wanted to make you aware….” Usually, it’s a statement of fact, and wanting to make the person aware of something related to that.  This sentence makes you credible.

2. If you are asking the person to do something, make it clear as a stand alone sentence. “As a result, we’d like to ask that you attend a meeting, talk to Tom, something.” What do you want me to do? This sentence makes you clear…”What do you need me to help you with?”

3. Copy those people who need to be copied. If it’s someone really senior, you need to copy your boss. And your boss shouldn’t be surprised that you sent the email.

Here’s the tell on whether or not you did it right: if the person responds back. If you get nothing back, chances are you didn’t hit the mark.