Dan Erwin

Experience Rules in Today's Job Market

Even recent college grads had better be able to put experience on their resume and be able to talk about what they've gotten out of their experience. So says Katherine Brooks' latest blog. And she knows what she's blogging about. She has a most uniquely titled position at the University of Texas Austin: Director of Career Services for Liberal Arts Graduates. Don't concern yourself thinking she's just another ivory tower type. She wears the hat, but it doesn't fit her blogging.

When I first stumbled on Brooks' blog, Career Transitions,a couple weeks ago, her name grabbed me. I realized that she was the author of that fine book for graduating seniors with a liberal arts degree, grads looking for a job that'll provide a decent living. Her book has the catchy title, You Majored in What? And it gets right to the issues, deciphering the job market and relieving stress from grads in humanities and social science. I wrote a review of her still very timely book nearly two years ago. My blog, You majored in what? provides a bit more background for you.

There are a lot of things right about a liberal arts degree, if. . . you graduated from one of the most selective schools in the nation. Or, if you have the wherewithal and support to go on to graduate school. And if you fill in your liberal arts with a year of computer science, economics, communications, etc. If you were smart enough to get summer internships, work experience build a network. And if you got a STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) liberal arts major.

- - - - - - -

Many liberal arts faculty don't want to become vocational school teachers. That makes sense, but it overstates the case. As a nationally-experienced executive coach, I've learned that liberal arts grads tend to be the better thinkers in business, know how to learn, are adaptable and, typically, have solid communication skills. That means they can come up to speed quickly. Just exactly what firms are looking for. So if you're thinking about liberal arts, a recent liberal arts graduate or are not certain about your major's financial future, here's the jobs' blogger for you.

Prof. Brooks' blogs are filled with great stuff, solid research and spot-on recommendations. What I most appreciate about her blogs is not the intense relevance or even her smart use of statistics, but the fact that she has a bias toward evidence-based recommendations. Brooks blogs regularly on the Psychology Today site. Here are the titles of just a few of her most recent posts:

• Employers seek proof of your skills
• Five steps for improving your job search
• The question isn't "Are resumes dead?" The question is "Are resumes enough?"
• Are you T-Shaped? The most sought after candidates are.
• How to benefit from losing the lottery.

Brooks provides a fascinating stream of research on careers and jobs. She also has her own website, Wise Wanderings, filled with practical, highly useful stuff. Her website strategy is straightforward:

Welcome to CareerArtistry, my website dedicated to helping liberal arts students and alumni (and just about anyone who is seeking a new way to earn a living) navigate their way through the 21st century job market, where linear systems are fading away and chaos reigns.

Check out Brooks' blog. I'm certain you'll find it exceptionally valuable.

Even the CEO Needs Feedback, But. . . .

Over the last few months I’ve been conversing with several new managers about their responsibility for giving feedback. Two issues keep coming up. How do you go about really giving effective feedback? And when should you not give feedback? It’s that second issue that I want to talk about. Sometimes it’s more important than the how-to.

 

Giving feedback can be a waste of time. Especially to someone who’s not ready to receive it or incapable of doing anything with it. More significantly, the downside of giving feedback to someone who can’t do anything with it can create a mess of relationship difficulties.

Sometimes the feedback is simply outside the person’s knowledge base. In a previous blog, “If you need a mentor, forget the expert,” I warn that it’s often difficult for an experienced person to put the cookies on the bottom shelf. Rather than enhance the learning experience, it can frustrate it.

On a personal note
My own experience of being coached resonates. Years ago when I first began to get serious about popular writing, I hired a former editor-in-chief from Harper Collins to coach me. “Hire the expert,” I thought. I learned a lot about the publishing business from him, destroying many of my myths. But truthfully, he was too experienced and too much of an expert to put the cookies on the bottom shelf. And it’s tough for an academic like me to leave academic writing behind without a lot of direction.

Five years ago, I bargained for the services of a 22 year-old college grad in English, a Gen-Yer from one of our top schools. His ability to answer my most basic questions has been and remains phenomenal. I’m a “why” person, and he’s always ready to answer my “whys.” Furthermore, unlike the “expert” editor, my young friend is not fearful of being literally ruthless with a red pen. I’ve shown articles he’s edited to some of my cronies and they tell me the hair on their neck stands on edge just reading it. But it’s done in all kindness and care, with lots of suggestions and alternative ways of going at a subject. The “expert” was too far above me to be of more than cursory help, but my young friend was just what I needed. Though there are plenty of times when my writing isn’t the best, I’m certain his feedback has moved me a long way in those few years.

There are other reasons for not giving a person feedback. Some people are too defensive to gain from coaching input. They have to learn from the school of hard knocks. It’s a tough way to learn, and some never do. One of the delights of my coaching business is that when I’m hired, the client is ready for my services. After a couple sessions, there are no holds barred in the giving of feedback. These clients want to know specifically what the feedback means, why it’s important, and what to do about it. But it takes experience a degree of maturity to get to that point.

Still others think they have all the answers. They just want a quick response from you, and then they cut you off. Maybe it’s defensiveness, but maybe it’s just big ego. But one thing is clear. Just a little feedback often fails to go very far. Furthermore, when some say they “get it,” there’s not a chance in hell that they can do anything with such a small amount of feedback. They really need you to take them by the paw and lead them through the steps of development. At the least, based on the feedback, they need to be able to talk you through the next three or four steps they’re going to take with your feedback. And if you can’t get that much time from them, or they can’t respond with the steps, it’s all a waste of time.

How can you tell when someone’s not ready for feedback?
Of course, the easiest way is past experience. You’ve observed that person for months, even years, and you know it’s going to be a waste. Then too, if you pay much attention to the rumor mill, the difficulty of giving feedback to a certain person gets around.

Some people are obviously and openly defensive. If a person always wants to be right or have the last word in a conversation, you’re asking for trouble. And if endless explaining or rationalizing is the norm in his conversations, that too, is a sign of trouble for feedback.

But as a manager, sometimes giving feedback is required. Take the person to a private office. Ask him for permission to give feedback, or, if necessary, tell you’re going to be giving some feedback. Give the feedback in developmental form. Ask what he can do about the information and what steps he's going to be taking to resolve the issue. Offer your support. And just get on with it. Oh yeah, always check back regarding the change. Especially if it’s positive!

Flickr photo: by pamalamadag

A Hitman and a Saint

A questionable ethic?
A few years ago, after developing a relationship with the CIO of a major American corporation and successfully working with a number of his subordinates, I was faced with a challenge. Another consultant, call him John, was edging into my info tech territory from corporate marketing. As soon as I saw what was happening, I set up an appointment with the CIO. I assassinated John with truthful rhetoric and precise data. It was a barrage of sophisticated, critical, agitating rhetoric by which I intended to maintain control. By no stretch of the imagination did I wear my usual nice-guy hat. The next day, the CIO canned John’s ass.

While hard to accept and admit, on occasion it’s necessary to become hitmen because of threats to our career by others. Indeed, plenty of people go into business unprepared for a larger reality that can be supportive, constructive and fun, but occasionally requires them to work with somebody who is dangerous to their career. They may be highly deceptive rivals, indifferent and lazy assholes who won’t carry their weight on a project, or clueless incompetents who need to be brought to their senses.

Religiously ethical?
But my consulting experience reveals that a surprising majority of people hold an ethical and/or religious commitment to life that plays havoc with their feelings. Feelings that certainly would keep them from becoming the mean and calculating hitman depicted above.

As an ordained minister, a former parish pastor and seminary professor, it’s imperative to point out that these quaint religious ideas often sabotage not only your career, but also your life. And even more significantly, these “nice guy” feelings lack a rich understanding of what it means to be fully human. In short, the baseline of normalcy in the “religious” reality structure is often profoundly dysfunctional and false. A serious confusion exists between what people think they should be and what actually is. And it’s understandable that many haven’t come to terms with those differences given the predominant, though skewed, religious perspective.

In stark contrast to much I hear today about organizational “nice guys,” the biblical text paints the person of faith as a mix of saint, sinner and hitman (and, yes, hitwomen) taking on the competition. They are not lily-white, idealistic or naïve nice guys. They work in the same human, screwed-up organizations we work in today. Joseph, he of the “amazing technicolor coat,” engages in deception, manipulation and trickery. He frames his younger brother, tossing him (temporarily) in jail to demonstrate his cruel power. But Joseph also rescues his entire dysfunctional family, including his jealous older brothers who conspired to have him murdered. King David screws his general’s wife and has him murdered to cover his behavior, and engages in trickery and political skullduggery throughout his reign. But he also guides, loves and protects his people. Neither David nor Joseph could ever be considered innocent or naïve. David is punished for his murder, yet the biblical text affirms the godly faithfulness of both Joseph and David. Intriguingly, those ethics differ significantly from the religiosity I hear from many. These characters know how and when to become hitmen, willing to take on others to achieve their objectives.

The biblical ethic is about what business folk would call big picture stuff: radical justice, the common good and food for all, including the outsider, the poor, the widow, the foreigner and the sick and homeless. Its devil word is “oppression.” And the text doesn’t fool around with small potatoes. There’s little to nothing about such things as my trickery of another edgy consultant. Fact of the matter, the biblical text confirms trickery as the action of a person with entre to the establishment, a person who’s both fully human and powerful. I suspect, therefore, that Yahweh got a good laugh out of the whole comedy. And I laughed all the way to the bank, knowing full well that I’ll still win some and lose some.

Shifting the paradigm
At the heart of this blog is an attempt to shift the paradigm regarding business relationships and personal success. As my experience revealed, the reality is far larger and more complex than many are willing to admit. Talk about the current fad of servant leadership all you wish, but reality is not just about nice guys. So I emphasized the biblical reality, not because I’m especially religious, but because it provides a phenomenally valid reality structure: a perspective that can lead to mastery of one’s career, but more significantly one’s life.

In short, reality demands that if we intend to succeed in business and life, we must be willing to use our human power. Stanford’s Jeff Pfeffer has dealt directly with this issue in his classrooms and his consulting for many years. In his latest book, Power, he analyzes the resistance of many folk to even try to become powerful. His analysis is worth its weight in gold. Even in his Stanford MBA classrooms, students find the necessity of power tactics and strategies phenomenally difficult to accept. Why is that? Both Pfeffer and I think it’s because of the wacko reality structure subscribed to by most of the population. Most accurately, he writes that we

conspire in (our) own deception about the organizational world in which (we) live. That’s because people prefer to believe that the world is a just and fair place and that everyone gets what he or she deserves. And since people tend to think they themselves are deserving, they come to think that if they just do a good job and behave appropriately, things will take care of themselves. Moreover, when they observe others doing things they consider to be inappropriate, self-aggrandizing, or “pushing the envelope,” most people do not see anything to be learned, believing that even if those people are successful at the moment, in the end they will be brought down.

Pfeffer goes on to reveal that this naiveté keeps people from learning from difficult situations and especially from people whom we don’t like or respect. Furthermore, it anesthetizes us from the need to be proactive in building a power base and dealing with the inevitable competition. Pfeffer summarizes the research, and concludes that reality is far different than we thought. It demands that we engage in power-building activities, without which we are seriously limiting our potential for both survival and success.

The messy deed
Stanford’s Bob Sutton is another of those writers who takes on a full-orbed reality. But he narrows his focus to organizational assholes in his book, The No Asshole Theory. Toward the end he devotes a chapter to the realistic, but painful task of becoming a “temporary, strategic asshole.” Sutton writes that his book “would be naïve and incomplete if I didn’t talk about the upside of acting like an asshole.”

Unfortunately, even if you aren’t a certified asshole, and even if you despise people who deserve the label and avoid them like the plague, there are times when it is useful to play the part of a temporary asshole to get something that you need or deserve. Polite people who never complain or argue are delightful to be around, but these doormats are often victims of nasty, indifferent, or greedy people. There is much (research-based) evidence that the squeaky wheel does get the grease.

The victim, who Sutton calls a doormat, completely ignores reality.

Hitman activity
What this means is that at least 98% of the time my colleagues can be trusted not to knife me. I can be a nice guy working with other nice guys. But I’m also aware that there are times when I fuck up and when my colleagues fuck up and given half the chance, may fuck me, forcing me to become a hitman. Significantly, I’ve found that my lack of innocence about reality relieves me of all kinds of life and career anxieties. When you know what you’re going to be dealing with, you’ve got a leg up on the situation. But note also, that full-orbed, biblical reality of life and organizations inevitably keeps me from being jaundiced and terribly cynical.

The ethics of my decision to occasionally take on the activity of a hitman are not black and white, but gray. And this is highly reflective of reality. It demands of me that I stay alert for the sociopath while not becoming one. It reminds me also that sociopaths screw themselves over because people won’t want to work with them. So, when faced with a jerk, an asshole or an untrustworthy competitor, stand your ground. Draw several lines in the sand about work expectations, responsibilities and scope of authority and take him on. Don’t be afraid of rhetorical trickery. Otherwise, without those rather sophisticated activities, your rise in the ranks will come to a halt. That’s not only smart power politics, but it’s also appropriate ethically and religiously.

Picture fm flickr.com: by emorse04

If You Need a Mentor, Forget the Expert

Be very, very careful whom you target for your mentors. Especially if you’re in the early years of your career, there’s a tendency to go for the real expert, those people with a depth of experience. But that can be a serious mistake.

As a general rule, always add a slightly more experienced peer into your mentor and coaching network. If you’re a new manager and want management coaching, be sure to use at least one person no more than a single level above you.  

Why forget the expert?
I don’t mean this as a put-down, but too often the difference between an early career person and an expert mentor is similar to that between a kindergartner and a college professor who’s never had kids or taught them. The college prof has no experience putting the cookies on the bottom shelf, assumes language above the kindergartner’s vocabulary, uses abstractions instead of concrete, simple words, draws conclusions that make no sense and offers big picture insights that connect no dots whatsoever for the kid. He even lacks the good sense to get down on his knees and look the kindergartner into his eyes when he’s talking to him. And the child is not at the place where he can formulate relevant questions.

On several occasions I’ve observed HR putting a new manager into a mentoring relationship with a smart vice-president. The relationship breaks down quickly because the mentor and mentee are reading from different sheets of music. Inevitably, the VP views the communication failure as the manager’s problem rather than his own. So he interprets the failure as lack of follow-through, motivation, intelligence and savvy. Guess what’s just happened to that mentee’s future?

So, mentors can be so far removed from your day-to-day work that they are of little value to you. You want at least one or two with little more experience than you. Those are the folk who have recently walked in your shoes and can give you relevant, practical, concrete insight into your work.

Build the social contract
Once you’ve targeted a willing mentor, you want to deal with two very important issues right up front. First, lay out very specific, very concrete objectives and be certain you’ve got buy-in from your mentor. Your mentor will clarify those objectives and often modify them. It’s imperative that both of you get full agreement on the objectives.

At that same first meeting start building a social contract. A social contract is not a legalistic document. It’s simply an explicit, conversational agreement of what you expect from your mentor and how you’re going to work together. Social contracts typically need to be renegotiated throughout the mentoring and coaching process. But any social contract should enable you to behave authentically and get the kind of mentoring you want and need. So you should be able to ask direct questions, find out what the mentor expects of you, probe directly into the mentor’s orientation to confidentiality, get agreement on when and how often you’ll talk with each other, even how to deal with conflicts should they arise, and when the relationship is expected to end. And if you’re really gutsy, I’d ask the mentor how you’ll get in trouble with him. Mentors typically have personal, tacit rules that they don’t share unless asked. It’s not that they’re being secretive, but simply that it never crossed their mind to let you know.  And somehow, in all of this, mentees need to be effective listeners. That’s one thing that the mentor really expects.

Very often long-term relationships develop emotional connections. Nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s to be expected. But the social contract will protect both of you from future difficulties that might arise.

Mentoring is not only a key to organizational success; it’s also a key to personal success. If you check around, you’ll find that all top, successful leaders have been mentored. It should be no surprise that those who’ve been mentored are socialized into the organization, make more money, get more opportunities and are promoted--all faster than other employees. So use mentoring wisely. 

The Uses and "Dangers" of Authenticity

One of the more insistent cries from MBA faculty and many business gurus has been an emphasis upon “authenticity” in work and team relationships. Being authentic is pretty clear: it’s simply the willingness to be who you are and to tell the truth. It’s appropriate to think of authenticity as a personal characteristic, but it’s also useful to think of it as a “tool.”

Calls for authenticity seem to be cyclical, driven by both culture and context. In the sixties and seventies psychologists continually emphasized and even wrote books about relational honesty. But those discussions and experiences dried up in the ‘eighties and ‘nineties. It’s like the “authenticity grease” finally ran out and we need to go back to the garage and get all the parts lubricated again. Yet, the fact of the matter is that authenticity is a constant need in life and business. You can’t build partners without authenticity.

But authenticity can be a very slippery, even dangerous experience for consultants and especially for organizational managers and employees. What’s being authentic can be personally constructive to one and destructive to another. Indeed, one manager suggested that “many people who pride themselves on their transparency in fact have a mean, aggressive spirit which they excuse as being unusually truthful.  I doubt that they would respond positively to similar bluntness applied to themselves.”

Authenticity is like feedback. It’s a tool, not an innate characteristic that a person is born with. And like feedback, some people are comfortable using it and others are not. Just so, some people move quickly to authenticity while others tend to play their cards fairly close to the chest. Some people become experts in its use and others stumble with the process. Authenticity like feedback is best handled with care by a caring person. 

What authenticity can do
Both consultants and organizational members can find that authenticity is the most powerful tool for building trust and commitment from others. When your authentic communication demonstrates care, honesty and depth, those are qualities that can change the world. Authenticity has the capacity to deliver us from the doubts, reservations and unpredictability between people. It can make work not only great fun, but also very productive and satisfying.

Many people, especially in business, have an economist’s view of the human spirit: they think people can only be counted on to pursue their own narrow self-interest. This “economists’” view of life is so widely shared and frequently used that it has become the way people think about relationships, organizations and even how they design their relationships. This “economic,” suspicious view of life inherently rejects authenticity and full trust. It’s frustrating to realize that even if people do not regularly act in their own self-interest (and they don’t), the research clearly indicates that these same people believe that others do act on that basis. As you can imagine, that seriously limits teamwork, collaboration, and mutuality. It throws an axe into the middle of organizational work and impacts personal relationships negatively, limiting the potential for authenticity.

Building authentic relationships   
One way to understand authenticity is to view it in teamwork and collaborative experiences. In those contexts, building authentic, trusting relationships starts out like a dance with back and forth exchanges of personal background or experience. From there the discussion can move to work relationships. Authentic relationships inevitably flowers in the form of a social contract. In my business, I am very straightforward about building authentic relations (even though I rarely use the term), and I test those waters before we have a financial agreement. Development and coaching don’t work without a contract that either states or implies authenticity. I also don’t think there is such a thing as collaboration or teamwork without a level of authenticity. Clients are often starved for authenticity and revel in the relationship. Authenticity is the grease under all social contracts. I’m certain, also, that authenticity is the reason why clients and colleagues remain friends, long after the end of financial ties.

In team settings where authenticity is profoundly helpful, relationship rules emphasize authenticity. Typically, I recommend that the team begin its work with issues like the following:  

 How will we go about setting mutually shared goals?

• How will we ensure follow-through and completion of agreed-upon tasks?
• How can we best collaborate?
• How will we keep issues open for discussion and disagreement, and manage our conflicts?

If you can get buy-in from all team members on these rules which essentially create a “social contract” there’s a high possibility for authenticity among the members. But you’ll find that the social contract and authenticity will break down. That’s inevitable, so you renegotiate the contract--again and again. The straight-talk renegotiation serves as a real plus—celebrating authentic relationships.

Typically, in my client relationships I’m not aware that our contract has broken down until I walk away from the meeting and sleep on it. My clients are not at all surprised to get an occasional phone call the next morning to get the news that we’ll need to renegotiate. Serendipitously, the act of renegotiating usually results in an even better, more authentic relationship than the initial negotiation. The payoff can be phenomenal.

Flickr photo by tstaires

7 Behaviors That Keep Women From Getting Ahead

Over the past two years, this blog (published in April, 2010) has been number one in readership, reaping well over 25,000 unique visits. Numerous bloggers have referred to the blog, even plagiarizing the hell out of it (that’s fine with me). It’s also the most commented upon blog with extremely negative and even more extremely positive comments. The commenters engaged in several heated discussions with each other, positioning themselves within their own ideology.

Initially, I responded to some of the comments, but as time went on I realized that the discussion didn’t need my input.

So, I’m recycling it because of its popularity. . . and because of its obvious relevance to the workforce.

It strikes me that I need to explain why a male would write for females so directly. One of the reasons is that more than a quarter of my clients were women, many of whom stated that they wanted to work with a man who understood gender differences. The fact that our three daughters are also professionals plays into my personal interests. Still, as a scholar in the field of organizational and interpersonal communication, gender differences have been a hot topic for years, a topic that has always intrigued me.

You’ll notice that the blog is supported by a significant amount of research. Indeed, many of the topics have been systematically studied by many scholars. Second, I have tried to be as practical as possible, making the recommendations immediately useful.

_______________________

On numerous occasions over the years, I've coached women managers and execs. Recently, while going through my file on influence management, I stumbled on an old article by Mary Ellen Drummond entitled, Seven Things We Do That Keep Us From Getting Ahead, from a now defunct (?) magazine called Women Managers. Although these recommendations don't apply to a few female execs that I've worked with, they certainly apply to a large number. Drummond doesn't mention the basis for her conclusions, but because of my studies in nonverbal research I'm well aware that a number of the recommendations have a research basis. This information seems to go in cycles in business circles, but I've seen a number of recent articles on personal presentation. I'm also aware that the top business schools, including Booth, Kellogg, Harvard and Stanford give time in their program for personal presentation, usually in leadership development programs that focus on interpersonal communication.

I've found that typically, because of their socialization, women are not aware of these issues. The issues surface out of the assumption that business is a man's world, and that if a woman wants to succeed, she'll need to mimic some of the male behaviors. (Although I've seen and read all kinds of responses to that assumption, I recommend a great deal of flexibility in these issues. FYI: I've noticed more than a few men that need help with their business behaviors.)

Since what you don't know can hurt you, here are some things to think about and perhaps get some feedback on.

1. Women do not take up enough physical space. This is not a matter of size, but how you hold yourself when standing. If you expect to be perceived as a powerful person, stand with your feet apart, and perhaps your hands on your hips. Drummond recommends the steeple gesture, placing your hands so that just your fingertips are touching. This forces the palms apart and makes your arms take up more space whether standing or sitting. This is a classic negotiating posture, so watch for it when observing others.

Although Drummond doesn't mention this, it's a well-researched fact that when men and women all sit down at a large table, women take up far less room. Men put papers and books over as much as twice the space as women. I recommend that women spread out on the business table just like the men. Take ownership of a huge area of space. The difference often has a powerful impact on the discussion.

2. Women nod their heads when listening. A man nods his head only to show agreement, while women nod to show they're listening. Plenty of women in executive suites have been schooled to avoid this. Present yourself as a powerful person, not a nice lady. Just last week, I took my wife to see an endocrinologist at the university clinic. Prior to seeing the physician, the nurse took information and was nodding her head, encouraging my wife and me to talk. Then the physician, a nationally known woman walked into the room. The difference was shocking. Though smiling and warm, she was totally in charge from the time the door opened. She asked questions, but didn't nod. She interrupted me a couple times, probing for information. Once I acceded to her authority, the conversation became much more familiar. It was a hilarious experience for this communication scholar, but also a very powerful way for the physician to assert her authority. I had nothing but kudos and trust of her insights by the end of the session. Well done!

3. Women tilt their heads when they talk. Check this out and notice that women tilt their heads when listening and talking, without even knowing it. It is not a power position from which to speak. So keep your head up, chin forward and untilted, and relax your shoulders backward, not hunched tightly forward, when you want to speak. You want others to listen to you.

4. Women introduce themselves too soon. Research shows that no one listens to what's being said in the first 5 to 7 seconds of meeting new people. They're too busy visually checking you out, and they pay little to no attention to what's being said. That's why we forget the names of people we've just met. We weren't listening. So, when first meeting someone, explain what you do, the company you work for, and then, finally your name.

5. Women's voices rise at the ends of sentences. It makes a woman sound like she's asking a question and asking for assent instead of making a statement. There is a geographical component to this. Women from the Upper Midwest are terrible at this. Sometimes I just want to yell at the phone to get them to stop it. My wife, who's from Detroit, has never done that. My daughters? Not in a thousand years. I've seen them roll their eyes at a woman doing this. My middle daughter, in a playful mood, will mock someone doing it. When we moved to Minnesota and she was in the fourth grade, someone asked why she talked like she did--mouth open, and no questioning at the end of sentences. Her response? "Why would I want to talk like you?" Ummmm. Just to set you straight, she has a terrific number of friends, including a large number of Harvard, MIT researchers who think that when it comes to research protocols and animals, she's god.

6. Women fidget. Although I think this is somewhat dated, the research shows that when men enter a conference room, they make 12 major movements. Women make 27. Many of these involve pulling out a chair and sitting down, but then women start adjusting their clothes and jewelry. The more movements you make in business settings, the less powerful you seem to your colleagues. Beware what you do when you enter a room, and keep your movements to a minimum.

7. Women let men finish sentences for them. Fading out at the end of a sentence is more common for women than men, so is being interrupted. You need to complete your sentences and your ideas. So, keep talking, a bit louder and hold up your finger to signal you're not finished. Never, never, never let men get away with interrupting you. On occasion, you can also interrupt right back to make your point. And keep talking. As Drummond says, stick to your guns and your sentences.

These bad habits are all learned. They're not natural. The good habits can also be learned. So women, don't let the men take advantage of you. Frankly, I lose my respect for a woman who lets a man take advantage of her. I raised my daughters to know better! FYI: I was never interested in raising "nice girls." Our objective was to raise intelligent, achieving females who could make some serious contributions to this world. Abrasive candor is a given. I've always taken the comment that my daughters or my wife could be difficult to be a compliment. It was expected.

Photo fm Flickr.com

What a Real-Life Yoda Looks Like (Part I)

Mentoring and coaching have been consistently revealed as the fundamental key to career and life success. Nearly every manager will tell you about the mentors that made him or her successful. Yet mentoring, like counseling, lacks a sterling success record. Those of us with a psych background are well aware that in more than half the cases of counseling, the results pale in significance.

What keeps mentoring and coaching from achieving its promise? Certainly the fault might be that mentees fail to follow through, lacking motivation, adequate insight and/or organizational support. Also, mentors can be overly controlling, unable to create a motivational ambience for the mentee. But both of those issues are small potatoes. The real issues making for successful mentoring are rarely discussed. More than any other skill, successful mentoring is built upon two foundations: passion and perspective.

Mentoring anticipates a number of typical questions. What does it mean to have a career? Why do we work the way we do and do what we do? The questions rarely come out that way. Instead, it’s “What do I have to do to earn a promotion? How can I get along better with the jerk next to me? How do I get more productivity out of my team? How can I get the support and resources I need?” Or even, “Where do I go next with my career?” Passion and perspective underlie all those questions.

Passion
In one form or another, the beginning point of effective mentoring is passion, a lively, eager, compelling desire that insists that one’s career(s) can be a meaningful and fulfilling way of life. Passion is obvious with mentors in the arts like dance, music, painting or even law, architecture or medicine. But how do business mentors demonstrate their passion?

Passion is demonstrated not in the relating of specific, concrete processes—the mechanics--within a given competency, but in the telling and hearing of stories that are deeply rooted in business interactions. These are stories imaginatively told with many different scenarios, depending on need, possibility and other circumstance.

Stories told by effective mentors exude real life and business experience. And they are more than tales of well-being and success. The effective mentor wants his student to be aware of the potential for dangerous miscarriages. So they readily admit to organizational evils. His stories will also provide for a critical and evaluative assessment of one’s career and organization. The most brilliant stories are open-ended, begging for the mentee to apply them to his/her own career. They are developmental tales, allowing great freedom for their hearers to imaginatively interpret them into their own life and future.

Not naive
Assuredly, the mentor’s passion is not naïve. His stories equip people to talk about their frustrations and failures, the assholes and jerks that are a part of the business world. And yes, to bitch and agonize over work problems. But they also empower mentees to care about their organization and its objectives. To understand that business is not merely a profit margin, but that it exists to provide a livelihood for its employees, its financial stakeholders and the community. In short, they are disciplined confessions in conversation on a face-to-face basis: questions, complaints, agonies, ecstasies and all.

Abraham Lincoln talked about the story passion this way: “A good story has the same effect on me that I suppose a good drink of whiskey has on an old toper (drunkard); it puts new life in me.”

(Part II to follow)
Flickr photo: The Sergeant of Randomness

Passing the Books, But Holding the Oil

I spent a morning hour trying to organize my thinking about Fareed Zakaria’s ground-breaking work, The Post-American World and its direct relation to Sunday’s Tom Friedman’s column, Pass the books. Hold the oil. 

Friedman’s column was eye-catching, well-crafted and exceedingly relevant.  But a quote near the end of the column, by K. R. Sridhar, the founder of the Silicon Valley fuel-cell company, Bloom Energy, stopped me in my tracks:

When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.

Zakaria makes the point that countries with significant oil resources tend not to diversify and not to create jobs outside the oil industry. The long-term result, of course, is that unemployment in those countries is a terrific problem inevitably resulting in huge inequalities and social unrest. The pragmatic monarchies, like Saudi Arabia, buy off the population with their wealth. That, of course, will eventually come to an end. So rather than oil resources becoming an advantage, they will become an eventual disadvantage.  

Friedman follows Zakaria’s thesis, making it immensely relevant by focusing on two nations that have no significant resources, but became very resourceful: Taiwan and Israel. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exams test math, science and reading skills of 15 year-olds in 65 countries every two years. And, uniquely, it compares the kids’ results with total earnings on natural resources as a percentage of GDP.  In short, “how well do your high school kids do on math compared with how much oil you pump or how many diamonds you dig?” Obviously, these are correlations not causations. But they are damned significant correlations.

The results indicate a significant negative relationship between money extracted from natural resources and the knowledge and skills of their high school population. Israel and Taiwan, along with several other nations lacking natural resources, but high in educational resources, enjoy a standard living most of the oil-rich countries of Arabia are unable to offer.  That’s why, says Friedman, that the foreign countries with the most companies listed on the Nasdaq are Israel, China/Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, South Korea and Singapore—none of which can live off natural resources. So the CEO of Bloom Energy has got it right. When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.

The summary is telling:

Among the 34 OECD countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 23rd in mathematics.

The U.S. fell particularly short in the share of students achieving the highest level of math performance. Only 2 percent of U.S. students reached the top rung. By comparison, more than 4 percent of students in Canada, Finland, Korea and eight other OECD countries attained that level—as did 11 percent of the Hong Kong students and 27 percent of the Shanghai pupils. (Conversation with Lori Taylor, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas) 

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the PISA exams says that knowledge and skills have become the global currency of the 21^st century, not natural resources. But, he goes on, there is no central bank that prints this currency. So, Israel and Taiwan are printing a lot of their own currency. It’s great to have oil and gas, because they can buy jobs. But over the long run unless they’re used to build schools and a culture of lifelong learning, they’ll weaken your society. Exactly the point that Zakaria makes. Looks like the good old US has got some work to do.   

Flickr photo: Audubon Images

How to "Wow" Your Boss

Managing your boss and other execs isn’t just apple polishing, brown-nosing or sucking up. You need to wow your boss to get the resources to do the best job for yourself, your boss, your boss’ boss and your organization.

Your boss can either help or hinder your career: wowing him will help your career. With an effective relationship, your boss can give you all kinds of support, insight and linking to others in the organization. Actually, managing your boss is not manipulation, but forging ties based on mutual respect and understanding. Harvey  Golub, the former CEO of American Express, always told his people they needed the skills of influence management. “Wowing” your boss is nothing more than “upward influence management.” Managing your boss is so important that many of my senior clients ask me to teach their subordinates to manage them better. In short, they want their people to manage them because they can get “more done better.”

Four tips for wowing your boss.

1.      Manage your boss like he’s your client. Is he print-oriented or ear-oriented? Listener or reader? Detail-oriented or big picture-oriented. Strategy oriented or tactically-oriented? Play to his orientation when you give him information, but protect him when his orientation will get him into trouble. Decision-making styles differ significantly. If he’s highly involved, touch base frequently with him like some strategic clients who just want to be kept posted about important decisions already made.  

2.      Give your boss what he wants and needs, organizationally. Effective bosses lay out their business goals and objectives on a regular basis. Make sure you understand them clearly and that you demonstrate they’re important to you in your performance. Make your boss’ goals your priority. If they conflict with your own goals, communicate with your boss and get his help setting priorities. Don’t think you can read your boss’ mind about his organizational objectives. Ask him. Check in with him so he knows that you’re taking care of his needs. But find out how often he wants you to touch base with him.

3.      Remember what matters to your boss, personally.  Your boss’ personal life and career are just as important to him as his business objectives.  Find out his career objectives, keep him updated on related opportunities, and keep him out of trouble. Pay attention to his family and lifestyle objectives, and provide whatever resources possible for those wants and needs. You may know someone who can offer him insights for his kids’ college decisions, a unique developmental opportunity, a vacation location, or even an investment opportunity.

4.      Flatter your boss. The surest way to keep your position and build your future is to make your boss feel good about himself. As Stanford’s Jeff Pfeffer puts it, worry about the relationship you have with your boss as much as you worry about your job performance. Most people, not just the insecure, like to feel good about themselves. That means be very, very careful about criticizing your boss. If possible, get someone else to do it. Most people underestimate the value of flattery, and therefore underutilize it. The technical term is ingratiation and it has been thoroughly studied. An overall, meta-assessment of the research finds that flattery works and it works well.

Furthermore, a study by JD Watt (1993) found that ingratiators were thought by their supervisors as being more competent, more motivated, and more qualified for leadership positions than their nongratiating counterparts. Not too shabby results. But use flattery as a compliment to the other three tips, not solely. To the degree possible, be sincere. Most execs are clueless about many of their strengths—so take advantage of that weakness through the use of flattery.

I have little doubt that some, perhaps many subordinates resent that on top of all their other responsibilities, they also need to make managing their relationships with their bosses a work priority. These folk fail to realize the importance of managing their bosses, how they can simplify their jobs and build their own careers through this task. They think that if they perform well on the job their boss will take care of the rest.

In more than twenty-five years of consulting with leading American companies I’ve never met an executive who failed to make managing his boss a job priority. But I’ve met plenty of employees who failed to manage their boss, either because they don’t believe in it or don’t know how. But I never saw one of those employees become a senior manager or an executive.

Flickr.com: by Koulutus.fi

Carol Dweck and Greg Walton on Willpower

Is willpower about your biology or your brain? Are we constrained by the narrow limits of our biology?

After nearly a two-week hiatus from blogging--and Thanksgiving week in glorious Boston with my kids, spending some of that time going over my grandson’s list of potential colleges, I’m back home again. So I chuckled to see Carol Dweck and her associate, Greg Walton, reporting still more of their ground-breaking practical research in Sunday’s NYTimes. 

The Stanford profs have studied another important issue of human capital: willpower. And they’ve found that we can actually manage our willpower. 

The authors begin by posing two important illustrations of the problem, both depicting the popular belief that willpower is about biology not mindset. In one, they quote a recent nutrition book, arguing that because of how the brain’s hypothalamus works, it is a “myth” that anyone can will himself to lose weight. A second illustration from a just published book concludes that willpower is “limited and depends on a continuous supply” of glucose. Dweck and Walton’s assessment is spot on: these theories attribute our failures of willpower to our fixed biology—and wrong. 

The theories, as Dweck and Walton point out, have an obvious appeal: attributing failures of willpower to our fixed biological limits justifies our procrastination as well as our growing waistlines. Not only that, we also get to consume more sugar. 

In stark contrast, their research has found that what’s limiting our willpower is our mindset. And when people believe that willpower is self-renewing and work hard, they’re energized to work more. 

Recognizing that many people are skeptical about renewing willpower, their research found the following: 

When the initial task was easy and willpower wasn’t required, people did well on the tricky cognitive task, making few mistakes. But when the initial task was hard and involved self-control, people who believed that willpower was limited made almost twice as many mistakes on the tricky cognitive task as did the group that performed the initial easy task. This finding replicates many studies by Dr. Baumeister and others that have been interpreted as evidence that willpower is limited and easily depleted. But, strikingly, we found that people who believed that willpower was not limited continued to perform well on the second task, making few mistakes, even after facing the difficult initial task. They were not “depleted” and kept on doing well.

This study and others put the lie to our common notions about the limitations of willpower. They also reinforce the well-known research that shows that the more we learn, the better and the faster that we can learn.

You may contend that these results show only that some people just happen to have more willpower — and know that they do. But on the contrary, we found that anyone can be prompted to think that willpower is not so limited. When we had people read statements that reminded them of the power of willpower like, “Sometimes, working on a strenuous mental task can make you feel energized for further challenging activities,” they kept on working and performing well with no sign of depletion. They made half as many mistakes on a difficult cognitive task as people who read statements about limited willpower. In another study, they scored 15 percent better on I.Q. problems.

When faced with skepticism about this kind of research I remember that old dogma dies hard. Once concepts are deeply embedded, a superstructure of assumptions and ideas grows around it. Rejecting a dogma means that many ideas are now questionable, and . . . as a result a close read of a book or thoughtful analysis of a new and complex idea is impossible. As an acquaintance of mine said about these ideas: "I don't believe it. I can't believe it. Everything I've ever learned about intelligence and achievement would go out the window." He tuned out. It was a losing battle I chose not to fight.

This research reminds parents of some very important truths for their children—and themselves as adults, businesspersons and professionals.

At stake in this debate is not just a question about the nature of willpower. It’s also a question of what kind of people we want to be. Do we want to be a people who dismiss our weaknesses as unchangeable? When a student struggles in math, should we tell that student, “Don’t worry, you’re just not a math person”? Do we want him to give up in the name of biology? Or do we want him to work harder in the spirit of what he wants to become?