Advancing in Place

While writing my post about the frames through which people see us and how they limit relationships and growth, I realized I could provide more detailed guidance to young professionals on how to break out of limiting frames in their current job roles and organizations.

After all, if you love the company, enjoy the company’s work, and respect and gain from your colleagues, why would you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater just to change roles or advance in your career?

Yet many people don’t know how to break their frames—which makes them feel they must leave.

It’s a shame.

Here’s how to take initiative, break free from others’ limiting perspectives, and advance within your organization:

• Volunteer. See a desired assignment? Ask for it. Never hope it lands in your lap—especially if it isn’t something you’ve done in the past.
• Speak up. Make your goal career trajectory known to your manager, your manager’s manager, and anyone else who could help advance your cause.
• Create an action plan. To get where you want to go, what steps do you need to take? Ask your manager for guidance—yet don’t wait for him to draft your action plan. Develop a draft and show it to him. Ensure you can undertake some of the plan’s actions on your own initiative, without your manager’s involvement or permission.
• Research. Read books. Attend seminars and conferences—even if you have to fund them. The investment will pay dividends when you get what you want.
• Subtly brag. The higher ups need to know about the independent research you’ve done and the extra work you’ve undertaken to pursue your goal. (How? Read this.)
• Apply. See a role at your company that you’d like? Toss your hat in the ring. Even if you don’t get the job this time, you’ll have met the key decision makers and you’ll get good practice interviewing for the dream role.

I’ve written it before in my post about the fine line management walks between micromanaging and not managing enough:

Initiative is taken, not given.

If you take the actions I’ve outlined above, your company will begin to see you differently. Without needing to completely shift organizations you’ll advance up the chain to the role you want.

What guidance would you give up and comers about advancing within their organizations?

Closed Rooms and NDAs

Confidentiality agreement for FrogDog. January 2013.

A friend starting a business for the first time wanted to commiserate, strategize, ask questions, and network a little. I suggested a coffee shop I love. She agreed, but thought we might have confidentiality issues meeting in a public place.

Around the same time—and as happens occasionally—a prospective FrogDog client asked me to sign a nondisclosure agreement before sharing anything about his business idea.

Sigh.

Are we so self-enamored that we think everyone is out to steal our ideas?

First, you cannot copyright or patent an idea. For good reason. Ideas aren’t worth much. Creations are.

Few—if any—people troll around, hoping to hear theft-worthy ideas. And even if someone does, what he produces from the theft may not in any way resemble your vision of the finished product, service, company, or work of art. In fact, he’s unlikely to even get as far as an actual creation.

Because execution is the hard part.

Everyone has ideas. Few people actually implement them.

Besides, putting walls around ideas won’t just protect them from theft—it will protect them from success, too. How can you raise money for your business without telling people what your company does? How can you market and sell your products and services if you’re afraid of telling people what you do?

Closed rooms and NDAs are appropriate when the session intends to review intellectual property—an actual creation. NDA me if you want to reveal software code, proprietary algorithms, or your secret-sauce recipe. Need to discuss financial or employee matters that the public shouldn’t hear? Let’s avoid the coffee shop.

Anything else is silly.

What do you think?

Women Don't Ask

The story may prove apocryphal. Someone told it to me with every indication that she witnessed its events. Here’s how I remember her tale.

Female MBA students at a university—no, neither of mine—complained to the business school dean that only men received special projects from the professors and that this had been the case for more than one successive semester. Appalled, the dean investigated and found the allegations true.

Driven to research further, he talked to each of the professors who had given special assignments. Universally, it boiled down to the same finding in every case:

The men had asked.

I remembered this tale during a talk on networking tips and tricks to a group of women. I recommended attending networking events with an agenda—as I do in this article. One of the women said she felt asking for something would seem rude or pushy.

Of course, it’s all about tone of voice and the way you couch the request. You can make a query sound brash or appealing—and the latter is always preferable if you want to get your way.

But if you don’t ask, how could anyone ever know? Are they supposed to guess? How often does that work?

We’re talking about business here—not a tea party at which you’d like another sandwich and the hostess hasn’t offered. You’re at a networking event—or in a workplace, or in a meeting, or at a conference—where everyone has an agenda. No one attends these functions to make friends—although, yes, it does happen. When it does, the resulting friendship is a surprise benefit.

Perhaps we should blame how the world raises women: Polite, quiet, considerate, reticent, in the back seat. Maybe innate female nature is the cause. (Ah, the neverending nature vs. nurture debate.) Maybe the fault is a little of both.

Regardless, successful people don’t wait for others to offer opportunities, even if people sometimes do. Successful people ask for what they want and make their objectives and agendas clear.

If women want to continue their ascent, they need to get better at speaking up.

Making the Most of Speaking Engagements

Me speaking at an IABC conference. October 23, 2009.

The real value of a speaking engagement—for the speaker—comes at the end.

That’s where most speakers go wrong. Sharing expertise raises your profile, yet truly maximizing the opportunity for marketing purposes involves what comes at the end of and after your presentation.

Make Connections

The group knows all about you. The conference or association blasted out your name, credentials, and company profile to get attendees. You may have slides with your contact information, too.

But do you know anything at all about your audience? How can you market to them if you don’t?

At the close of your presentation, offer to send follow-up materials to anyone who gives you her business card or e-mail address. I favor sending information via e-mail over providing handouts. It’s a fair trade: Valuable information in exchange for contact details.

What do you send? Could be a copy of presentation slides, a white paper on the presentation topic, links to articles or references, or a promise of future useful information.

Follow Up

And then what?

• Send everyone who requested it the information you’d promised with a note of thanks for attending and a wish to stay in touch.
• Input their information into your contact database. For a memory jog later, I recommend noting when you met them, too. (e.g., “Met at my XYZ presentation to ABC group. November 2012.”)
• Add them to your newsletter, research reports, or general update lists. (Shameless plug: To receive FrogDog’s research reports, sign up here. To get an e-mail when I post a new article on this blog, register here.)

• Find and connect with them on LinkedIn.

Stay Connected

If you have a newsletter or a similar regular communication and you’ve added them to the send-to list, you have one way to stay in touch. If you don’t have a newsletter, aim to check in periodically, even if it’s only a brief e-mailed hello.

In my case, FrogDog’s newsletter goes out bimonthly and my blog updates go out every other day. In addition, I block time each week to go through my contacts and connect with people to keep my relationships active.

After all, your network is one of your greatest assets. Done the right way, speaking engagements can help you build it.

Audience Awareness

Recently I attended two presentations, invited as an observer with one other professional. The organization had sent out a request for proposals, which a number of firms had answered. The person who asked me to attend had narrowed the field to two potential venders.

Typically, I'm on the sales side of the table, so I'm always interested to see others sell. In these two cases, I noticed how little the presenters from either company paid attention to the people in the room.

When you're presenting information to an audience--especially when you're trying to persuade it of something--you absolutely must be audience aware.

Don't Sell as You'd Like to be Sold

When the firms reviewed their processes and proposals, what they discussed and how they presented the information was clearly how they'd like to receive it.

Common fallacy.

Every good sales class will teach you to discern the buyer's preferences and to present accordingly. Consider my last car purchase:

• Dealership One: The salesperson wanted to chat about my job and my family and my hobbies and on and on--and then he exhausted me with details about the car. I wasn't there to make a friend and I'd already done my research. I drove the car and he drove me nuts.
• Dealership Two: The salesperson asked me what I wanted to see, had the car in question brought around for a test drive, and we talked money. No chit chat, no tedious details, nothing beyond necessary information and the transaction. Sold.

Someone else would have liked salesguy number one. That's how she likes to be sold. Yet the second guy intuited how I like to purchase and catered to me. Done deal.

Ask Questions

The easiest way to discern how people like to be sold is to have them tell you. How? Ask questions.

Never walk into a presentation or sales session and talk at people. Ask what they want to know and how they'd like to get the information. In fact, you can ask some of these questions in the exchange required to set up the meeting.

Then you can craft your presentation to cater to their preferences.

Establish Who's in the Room

Prior to presenting, determine who will be in the room. If you can't get the information in advance, take a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting for introductions. Learn names, titles, companies, and roles. Get contact information so that you can send a follow-up note after the meeting.

More important than the afternote, though, is the power you gain from knowing what your audience may already understand about your subject matter, the roles they’re likely to play in making a decision, and what stakes they have in the game.

With this information, you can better tailor you presentation, your questions, and your answers to their questions.

Speech classes and writing classes and sales classes and pretty much every type of training that guides people in swaying others will demand that students pay attention to their audiences.

Yet people clearly have forgotten.

Reminder: It's not about you. It's about them. Pay attention to your audience, folks.