A friend of mine is so good,
she’s being considered
for two different positions.
She really wants one of those positions.
Has she spoken up
about her preference?
Nope.
She’s waiting to be asked.
I doubt anyone will ask her.
Managers are not mind readers.
They don’t know what you want.
They don’t know what you need
to be happy in your career.
They EXPECT you to tell them.
Ask for what you want.
Not everyone wants a promotion.
Not everyone wants
to progress to the next level
or to progress… period… in their jobs.
That’s not a bad thing
for a manager
as long as that position remains needed.
I have a junior analyst
who never wants to be a senior analyst.
She is great at her job.
I don’t have to worry
about opening a senior position for her
or about her looking for another job.
She is happy doing her current job.
I’m conscious about keeping her current.
I am slowly cross training her
so she has a wider skill set.
I am also careful
about changing her job
too drastically
too quickly.
She doesn’t want that
and I’m happy keeping her happy.
It is difficult for ambitious people
such as myself
to understand
but wow, is it a relief
as a manager.
If your employees are happy
in their current positions,
ask yourself
why you’re pushing them to progress.
Is it what they want
or what you think they SHOULD want?
A manager was venting
about her problems
with a shared junior analyst.
That surprised me
because I was overjoyed
with this analyst
so I asked how she was coaching her.
Her reply was
“I tell her things again and again
but she doesn’t get it.”
“But how are you COACHING her?”
I repeated.
Telling is quick and easy
and oh so tempting to do
but it is NOT coaching.
Telling is pointing “Go there!”
Because the employee
doesn’t know why or when she should go there,
she ends up having to ask
if there is any variation however small
in the process.
Coaching is creating a map together
and then walking beside the employee.
The employee then has a map,
she can refer to it
when other situations arise.
Telling is quicker short term.
Coaching is quicker long term.
If your employee is a long term investment,
coaching is usually your better option.
James Cameron is known
for being a real bastard to work with.
“I have my bad days,
and on my best days I’m no Ron Howard.”
He works hard
and expects everyone else to do the same.
But people like to work with him
because he gets results.
His people win Oscars.
His movies make money.
Rebecca Keegan has some great snippets
about his leadership style
in her book
The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron.
“”It’s Avatar, dude,
nothing works the first time,”
read a whiteboard
in the spare Los Angeles warehouse
that served as
the sci fi film’s motion capture soundstage.
Breaking new ground
is Cameron’s raison d’être
— nothing interests this man
unless it’s hard to do.
But innovation has also become
a way of bonding his teams,
both on Avatar
and on his deep sea expeditions.
“We’re out in the wilderness
working far beyond
the borders of the known,”
Cameron says,
comparing his CG and undersea projects.
“We’re doing extraordinary things
that outsiders would not even understand.””
Are you doing extraordinary things?
One of the new hires
at the company I am working with
left after a week.
No, she isn’t now unemployed.
She is back
to working with her old company.
You see…
she never quit.
She took a 3 week vacation
to try out the new job.
Turns out,
she wasn’t impressed
so she went back to the old job.
A friend of mine
took a leave of absence
from her current employer
to try out a new employer
for a couple months.
Again, she wasn’t happy with her move
so she returned to her old job.
A week,
a couple months,
a year,
companies are willing
to wait for good people.
Just because you hired that good person
doesn’t mean she’ll stay.
If you want to keep her,
you need to ensure the reality lives up to the hype.
An author buddy received requests
for partials (first 3 chapters)
for the same manuscript
from two different agents this week.
(Very exciting times for my buddy)
She debated whether she should send
the partials to both,
worrying that she’d waste one agent’s time.
(Yes, yes, we convinced her to send to both)
This is a very… well… female reaction.
We pride ourselves on being nice,
on thinking of others.
Really, what we are doing
is making decisions for others.
By only submitting to one agent,
my friend has made the decision
not to allow the other agent access to her work.
The other agent can’t even negotiate
to represent her.
She has also decided
that the preferred agent will be so blown away
by her manuscript,
she’ll offer immediate representation.
That’s pretty damn arrogant.
I try not to intentionally harm others
in my pursuit of success
but I let people decide for themselves
what is and isn’t good for them.
A new Catalyst report
uncovers that
three times as many women (19%)
as men (6%)
lost their executive level jobs.
The Wall Street Journal
felt the difference was due to the small sample size.
Ilene H. Lang, president and CEO of Catalyst,
stated that
“gender-based stereotypes about
leadership during tough times and
limited access to informal networks and mentors
may be partly responsible for the disparity.”
I’d be extremely curious to see
what those executive positions were
(this was not examined in the report).
Human resource and marketing executives
are more likely to be consolidated
with other departments
than say…
operations or sales.
Studies by Catalyst
reinforce my first hand experience
finding that
“women often choose staff jobs,
such as marketing and human resources,
while most senior executives and board positions
are filled from the ranks of line managers
with critical profit and loss responsibility.”
Is it gender that is driving the job losses
or responsibility?
I spend $10 a week
participating in the office lotto pool.
Playing the lottery
doesn’t make sense financially.
The odds of winning are very, very low.
So why am I part of it?
Because participating
in the office lotto pool
DOES make sense… for me.
It is a quick way of announcing
that I am part of the team,
that I am one of them.
Normally I don’t get asked
to participate
until months into a contract.
It is a signal
from someone on the list
that I’ve gone from an outsider
to being one of the team.
So I don’t shrug off that signal.
I participate
and amplify that belonging
to the others.
My author buddies and I
have multiple names,
multiple identities.
Many people on the internet
have these split personalities.
And sometimes it gets people
into trouble.
A buddy of mine
recently got nailed to the wall
because she gossiped about an author
to the actual author.
The author was using
her reviewer pen name online.
The gossip was not based on fact
and my buddy not only ruined a relationship
with that author
but with many people who witnessed
the confrontation.
Don’t gossip (period)
but especially don’t gossip online.
You don’t know
who you’re talking to.
This week,
I directed two beginner writers
to a call for submission
that I, myself, was targeting.
Another writing buddy
claimed I was nuts.
Why would I encourage someone
to compete with me?
Because…
A) Many will be encouraged,
few will actually do.
Dreaming is, yes, free
but doing is very rare.
and
B) Doers are rarer than projects.
If I did encourage someone to DO
and she snagged a spot
I had my eye on,
I know there will be other spots.
It isn’t the end of the world.
And I’ve increased the value of that contact.
I know the beginning writer
and she now knows even more people.
Encouragement may cost in the short term
but in the long term,
it is free.
Encourage someone today.