Editor’s Note:
Emily Bennington, the co-author of “Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job,” has authored a new book called “Who Says It’s a Man’s World: The Girls’ Guide to Corporate Domination.” Launched in early 2013, this new book provides guidance in avoiding corporate pitfalls for career women, including steps to enhance your reputation, first-person narratives of hard-learned lessons by other successful women executives and templates, worksheets and tools for accelerating your personal growth. This is an excerpt from “Who Says It’s a Man’s World.” For more information on Bennington, her work as an author and speaker or where to purchase her books, visit www.emilybennington.com.
Having worked in both small businesses and corporate environments, I can tell you there’s a huge difference between the two. Small businesses typically have more wildfire cultures where everyone is expected to do 20 things at once, such as write the proposal, bind the doc, package it, and call FedEx to pick it up at the same time. There’s no such thing as flying under the radar, and if you don’t have the answer, well, you figure it out.
I learned this lesson firsthand just a few months into my career while working for a small business where one of my first jobs was to help our team manage a large conference. On the day of the event itself, I watched in mild amusement as our team leader—I’ll call her Brenda—strapped on roller skates—yes, roller skates—to make speedy trips from building to building. Small business employees reading this may not agree with the tactic, but will certainly recognize the scrappy ingenuity you have to display when things need to get done and there’s no extra money or help to do them. And while I have to tip my hat to Brenda’s creativity, I can tell you that she wouldn’t have lasted long in corporate life.
That’s because big business is more of a controlled, slow burn. This isn’t to say things don’t get busy (ha!), only that it’s easier to shuffle the ball under the coconut … to find someone else to mail the package—and to blame them if it doesn’t arrive on time. In large organizations, there are usually lead characters and supporting cast. The stars themselves can’t hide, of course, but their shadow is often broad enough that others can take cover.
Two Different Cultures, Two Different Games
When I transitioned from a series of small business employers to a corporate position, it was like sliding into a pair of skinny jeans. Tight, yet oddly comfortable. I loved the fact that my coworkers used terms like v1 (translation: the first draft), processing in real time (translation: thinking out loud), and under development (translation: this task is totally behind). I had a courier service, mileage reimbursement (without the guilt at least), two monitors, and a personal conference call line. It was awesome. Still, I quickly realized there were some adjustments to make for anyone transitioning to corporate life.
Six Ways to Earn Respect Under the Corporate Umbrella
1. Pay attention to your title. A few years ago, the accounting firm I worked for was merging with a much larger company. Naturally, there were a million and one details that went along with this transaction, from ordering signage and stationery to informing clients and media, combining records, introducing staff … the list was overwhelming. Still, there was one “tiny” detail that caused major gridlock: the org chart. “You’ve never seen anything like it,” said one of the partners. “Everyone was absolutely consumed with where they fell on that document.” At the time I remember thinking this reaction was over-the-top and totally egotistical. In my small biz role, no one had the luxury of worrying about pecking order—which would have been ridiculous anyway, since there were so few of us. I’ve since learned that in the corporate space your title and position really do matter … a lot. Right or wrong, it’s how other people judge your value to the organization which, right or wrong, does make a difference in how they treat you. That’s why I hate it when I hear women say things like, “I don’t need a fancy title—I just want to be known as the person who gets the job done.” Bullshit. You need both.
2. Know what you’re responsible for now. Before I signed on to join the accounting firm, I met with the managing partner for breakfast. A week earlier he had sent me an e-mail saying that if I ever wanted to leave the small marketing agency I worked for, he had a “nice, cushy job” waiting. He wasn’t kidding. The hostess had barely seated us before he was offering me a new position at double my current salary.
“What would I be doing?” I asked.
“Marketing,” he said.
“Great,” I said. “So what does that mean? What are the responsibilities of the job?”
He didn’t know. It was a new position and everything was still up in the air. While I was still wildly tempted to scream “Yes!” and jump out of my chair with a celebratory fist-pump, I kept my cool and accepted the offer under one condition: I had to have a job description. At the time, my chief concern was that “marketing” could be secret code for “admin” and I’d wind up being his de facto executive assistant. I wanted to protect myself by making sure that we were on the same page about what I was responsible for (and what I wasn’t), who I would report to, and how my success would be measured.
This was—without question—one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my career. If you don’t have a job description in place right now, don’t wait until your performance review—bring it up with your supervisor ASAP. (Yes, even if you’ve been in your position for years.) Assuming you want to move up, you need to be clear on precisely what your current role is so that you can make a case for a promotion when you’ve mastered it. Make sense? Likewise, never accept a new position—even an internal one—without getting your responsibilities and reporting structure in writing. Better to be smart now than sorry later.
3. Know what you want next. Recently I met a program manager at Microsoft who has managed to make herself reDONKulously valuable in a short amount of time. First, she spearheaded a high-profile volunteer project for the company—and masterfully promoted it by getting senior leaders to write about it on their blogs. Then, to capitalize on her increased visibility—she created a 15-slide “Career Development Plan” PowerPoint that outlined her values, passions, achievements, competencies, future goals, and testimonials from other employees who had worked with her. She said she regularly sends the doc to execs within Microsoft with an invitation for a brief chat. To date, she has never been turned down. But more than that, her development plan initially outlined her desire to move to the United States from her native Australia and—you guessed it—she is now enjoying the view from her new office outside Seattle. “All I had to do was prove myself, then make it clear what I wanted,” she said, “and things started lining up for me in that direction.” Amen, sister.
4. Watch your image. In the corporate world, you are expected to look the part. So look the part because when your appearance is a wreck people automatically assume your whole life is a wreck.
5. Keep the “confidential” confidential. While serving as marketing director for the accounting firm, I found myself responsible for the logistics of our big merger announcement. Imagine the scene: You show up in the morning on what you think will be a routine work day only to find a series of trolley cars outside your office. You and all of your colleagues aren’t given any information other than to jump onboard where everyone is driven to a nearby auditorium. Next thing you know—surprise!—your firm has a new name and—surprise!—you now have new offices throughout the Southeastern United States and—surprise!—your career track looks totally different. (Yeah, that’s really how it went down.)
As you can guess, it took a ton of moving parts to make this happen without tipping anyone off, and the fact that I was able to quietly work on the project without any I-know-something-you-don’t-know hints to colleagues scored major points with my boss. Coming from a small business environment where everyone knew even the tiniest details about everything, I learned the importance of discretion within large companies. Our merger—which had been in the works for months—was emphatically denied right up until the point we made the announcement. This wasn’t about duping people—it was about controlling the message. And to earn trust, you have be someone who can do that well.
6. Have patience with the process. I worked in my first job out of college for exactly two and a half weeks before I was promoted. One day, while casually passing my boss in the hallway, she stopped me and said, “You have a degree, right?” I said I did and that was that. Poof! I was the new account coordinator.
But things don’t typically go down like that in corporate environments. When you’re hired, you’re usually in your position for at least a year before you would even be considered to move up. I once interviewed a young woman within a Fortune 50 organization who said she was frustrated with her career path because she was in a position that had a two-year promotion track. “Two years is like a decade to me,” were her exact words. I had to laugh at that … but I get it. When you’re ambitious, it’s frustrating to appear powerless over the timing of your own success. Not to mention, it’s easy to feel as if you’re falling behind when we’re all surrounded by tales of 27-year-old CEOs.
That said, any decision made out of impatience usually turns out to be the wrong one—especially major career decisions. This doesn’t mean you should become complacent by any stretch, but it does mean that you should have a modicum of respect for the established protocols within your organization and be willing—again—to see the bigger picture. There are a lot of circumstances around a promotion that you may not be privy to just yet. For example, if you are a new grad and were hired in a wave of other new grads, how would it look to everyone else if you were promoted in six months? Even if you deserve it, there still needs to be a plan in place for how managers will handle inquiries from everyone else wondering when it’s going to be their turn. Get it? It’s not just about you.
Seven Ways to Royally Screw Up Your Reputation
1. Making stupid excuses. “But no one told me … But I never received any guidance … But no one got back to me.” Ugh … work victims suck. If you don’t have answers, ask questions. Ask for clarifications up front and feedback along the way, and be open to any and all critiques without getting your undies in a bind. Maybe even turn in a rough version of whatever you are working on to your supervisor while it’s in progress to see if you’re on the right track. Then check in, asking questions like, “How am I doing? Does this meet your expectations? Is there anything I can improve upon?” You don’t want to bird-dog your boss or clients to the point of annoyance, but you do want to get answers on the front end so that you don’t have to make lame “but I didn’t know how” excuses on the back end.
2. Missing deadlines. If you want to earn respect, be the person who doesn’t need an e-mail reminder to get your work done. That means if the deadline is on the 24th of the month, you deliver by 5:00 p.m. on the 24th, not before midnight on the 25th or!—worse!—after the client emails you to see what’s up.
3. Poor meeting prep. Can we all quit sending review docs and slide decks 60 seconds before the meeting starts? Thanks.
4. Being tit-for-tat on time and money. I once had a manager tell me of an employee who had a 5:00 p.m. flight to a regional sales meeting. Since the flight was two hours long, she figured her workday would end around 7:00 p.m. Therefore, she felt completely justified in her request to show up that morning at 10:30 a.m.—not because she had something important to handle, mind you, but because she considered anything past 5:00 p.m. overtime and, even though she was salaried, she thought the company owed her those two hours. Now … this is a person who worked in a showroom where anyone’s absence meant the rest of the team had to work harder to pick up the slack. So here’s how the story ends: Not only did her manager flatly deny her request to come in late but—in that instant—any leadership equity she had built with him was damaged. (Note: If you can’t see a thing wrong with the employee’s request, you’re probably reading the wrong book.)
To be clear, I’m not telling you that regular 60+ hour workweeks with no added compensation from the company (a promotion, raise, extra vacation hours, or even all three) is acceptable. It’s not. You have a life. But I am saying that—as with everything else—you have to give to get. If you want to advance in your career, you have to see beyond what’s most convenient for you at any given time and consider what’s best for your team and the company overall. This also goes for turning in an expense report every single time you pay a toll or buy a stamp. Yes, that $1.65 is owed to you, but it’s another one of those “little” things that scream I’m-only-here-because-you-pay-me. If you have a worthy report, by all means file to be reimbursed. But if you just spotted the client a coffee last month and that’s all—let it go.
5. Unresponsiveness. Good grief, people—ignored e-mail does not mean no. It only means the sender has to wonder if her e-mail is in your junk folder, if you haven’t made a decision yet, or if you’re just avoiding her. Either way, it’s rude. Obviously, this advice doesn’t apply to messages where you’re cc’d or messages that don’t require a direct response; even so, if someone has taken the time to reach out to you personally, for Pete’s sake respect the person enough to respond—even if your answer isn’t what she wants to hear.
6. Being the center of your own jokes. Self-depreciating humor is exactly that. Self-depreciating. It makes you small. When you tell a joke at your own expense—about your weight, your abilities, your “blonde moments,” whatever—you may think it’s harmless or that you’re just having fun. Nope. What you’re really doing is affirming that negative perception in your own mind and in the mind of others. That’s because every thought you think and word you say has energy attached to it. High-level thoughts and words have high-level energy while—you guessed it—low-level thoughts and words have low energy. Each will become like a magnet in your life.
In order for others to respect you, you have to respect yourself first. If that’s too “woo-woo” for you, just remember my friend “Amy.” (And, no, that’s not her real name.) Early in her career while trying to be “one of the girls,” Amy made a joke about meeting up with her boyfriend for a red-hot lunch special (yeah, it’s what you think it is). That tryst earned her the nickname “nooner,” which, unfortunately, spread like wildfire through the office gossip channels. Poor, Amy. What started as a tiny joke ended up putting a sizable dent in her reputation at work.
But before you accuse me of being the mean headmistress, I should point out that—yes- I’m very aware that a robust sense of humor is required to survive in business. (Perhaps now more than ever.) That said, it’s one thing to know how to take or tell a joke, and something entirely different to “make” yourself a joke. When you turn yourself into a punching bag, you are subtly giving others permission to do the same.
7. Missing the small stuff. Think details don’t matter? Tell that to the graduates of the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson “School of Pubic Affairs.” Whoever let that typo appear on the commencement booklet—true story—has certainly learned the, um, hard way that “little” things are actually quite big.
