Jodi Glickman joined the show recently. You can listen to our conversation here. Jodie is a former Peace Corps volunteer (Southern Chile) turned investment banker (Goldman Sachs) turned communication expert. She received her MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, where she was a Park Leadership Fellow and received a full-ride scholarship to business school. Before turning to the world of finance, Jodi was a policy analyst at the U.S. EPA and did brief stints at the White House and Governor’s Office of Illinois. She has a B.S. in Social Policy, Magna Cum Laude, from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.
Jodi has trained some of the best and brightest young minds in business—her clients include Harvard Business School, Wharton, NYU Stern School of Business, Kellogg School of Management, BofA/Merrill, Citigroup, Baird & Co., among others.
Now she offers her expertise in her latest book: Great On the Job: What to Say, How to Say it. The Secrets of Getting Ahead.
Wow. Clearly-written, very-focused, usable and doable advice and tips, and it addresses the biggest challenge and opportunity for us all: Communication.
Jodi introduces the book with a quick story of Warren Buffett. Mr. Buffett tells an audience of Columbia Business School students that their potential future earnings could increase by 50% if they mastered communication skills.Mr. Buffett is a bit of an expert on projecting future earnings.
Great on the Job is a manual whose instructions can be put into use immediately and its tips can be practiced and followed daily. And as you master them you move along immediately, daily, towards increasing your future earnings...by 50%. Here's a longer review of her book.
Jodi, thank you for this great book and for sharing your time here.
Zane, thank you so much. I am so thrilled to be here.
You started your company, Great on the Job LLC, in 2008.
I did.
Some might say it was a bad time.
But I'm thinking 2008, the start of a recession, what better time to start a company built on helping us all be great on the job. What was it like for you?
Thank you.
I perhaps get a little more credit than I’m due. It was perhaps more of a naive decision than a strategic one. But I launched the business in March, 2008.
But it was before the world’s economy was collapsing in its entirety. By my recollection September 15 was really D-Day in terms of Lehman folding and the markets going into disarray. What had happened was I had been working on this project on the side, working with my husband on potentially writing a book on how to communicate effectively and I called up my alma mater, Cornel business School, the head of the career center and I said:
“I'm working on this book on how to communicate at work more effectively. Would it be of interest to you if I came and spoke to the first year MBA students. “
And they said:
“Sure, we’d love to have you.”
I just that I would try out the content and see if it worked, if it resonated, with the audience. And lo and behold it was a huge success. And I up and quit my job the next day and decided I would give this business 3 years of my life.
So, it was before the collapse of the economy. Although, I do think it helped in a certain way. Really for me, between March and September of 2008 I was able to reach out to and secure, probably, 5 -6 business school clients and 5 - 6 wall street clients given that I had come from business school and wall street. And I really had the business intact before things really took a nose-dive. I was able to maintain the business through 2009 by just encouraging people that these skills were more important than ever. And then in 2010 the business rebounded. Now, we’re on an upswing in 2011.
Just that testimonial for your success shows the importance of what you preach which what to say, how to say it. ...even in one of the worst recessions we’ve had in the past 50-60 years. And that comes through in your book.
Your book, your great book, was copyrighted this year. But it was written years ago even before 2008 when you began to noodle around with this book. When did you decide to put it to paper?
It’s a funny story and a great question.
I have to confess:
"I was a reluctant entrepreneur. "
So, when people say to me:
"God how did you know when you wanted to be an entrepreneur? "
Truth be told, I had very little interest in this project. I have always been able to communicate effectively at work. I didn’t put a whole lot of value on my ability to communicate effectively in the workplace. I didn’t have the insight to think about that as the key to my success. I knew I was great at communicating. I always got high marks in those areas. I always tried to put myself in places where I could develop new skills like be a wall street analyst or be a policy expert.
I happened to be married to an amazing communicator in his personal life. But he struggles to communicate effectively at work. He would listen to my work 24 x 7 as an investment banker and he would say:
“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know to ask for help like you just did. I don’t know how to tell the team I screwed up. That was brilliant! I would never think to end the call with forward momentum like you did.”
So, he was the one who said to me:
"You need to bottle this up and take it to the market. "
And I resisted.
He really, really persisted. I wound up traveling. I was on a business trip abroad. And, he sent me a business plan. And I was reading it on the airplane coming home and I just started crying because it was unbelievable what he had seen in me and I was so taken aback that he really thought this business idea, that I had thought was potentially crazy, he thought it had legs.
And so, we started together working on this business book. And a friend of ours introduced us to a literary agent. Went and met with her. Gave her 60 pages of a very rough draft of the precursor to what is now Great on the Job and she said something interesting.
“You know it’s very interesting. You raised some good points. You’re a good writer.
But who are you? No one’s going to buy a book by an unknown in the industry. You need to build some credibility. Why don’t you build a business before you write a book?”
And that’s when the lightbulb went off. And my husband and I came home and said:
“Well, what would that business be? I’d never thought about in terms of a business.”
And he said:
“Well, why don’t you do something on interviewing, you know, helping people get the job the want.”
And I said:
" Those are very crowded marketplace. There are a lot of people out there teaching interview skills. I don’t know what’s novel about that.
But I’ll tell you what I don’t see. I went to business school and I was so highly coached for my interviews and my networking events. I knew my story and I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, supposedly.
But, there’s no one there to guide you through the everyday, one-on-one, conversations. I want to figure out a way to actually teach people how to be good at work. "
I called Cornel Business School and said I was working on this project.
" What do you think? Can I come speak to the students who are getting ready for their first summer intern position of fulltime job?"
And that was the presentation I alluded to in March ’08 which was a huge success and everyone loved it. That’s when I said:
“Ok, maybe I’ll start this business.”
Maybe, that was too long-winded but that was really the premise of how it was started.
That was a beautiful answer. Very crisp, very clear. It took us back to the very beginning, even before the inception of the idea. Thank you.
As you were writing this very well-organized, well-written book, who was the reader you had in mind? Describe them, where they work, what they face.
I’ll tell you this, just a little background. The original reader in mind was my husband because he needed it.
He would say to me:
“I don’t know how to do this. I didn’t know I was supposed to ask for feedback. I didn’t know it was ok that I didn’t know how to do something. I didn’t know how to tell my analysts that they weren’t doing a good job.”
So, he would say to me:
“I don’t know how to do this.”
And I would say:
“Oh! Well, this is what you do.”
And he would say:
“I need more. I don’t just need that, the strategy; I need the language.”
And so he was the original reader in mind.
And what would happen is as we were going back and forth, he would say:
“Jodi, is there 10 other people who need help?
And I’d say:
“Ok. Yes”.
And he’d say:
“Are there 100 people?”
And, I’d say:
“Maybe there are 100 people.”
I thought he was an outlier.
But the truth is that as we started working on this and as I started building a client-base, I would see it wasn’t 10 or 100 or 1000 people. It’s potentially millions who if they haven’t learned these strategies, and by learning I mean having a role-model who told you the best way or the optimal way to communicate at work to make yourself sound smart and competent always or you knew it intuitively. Otherwise there was no place for you to go and learn it.
So, as I continued to write, my target audience in my head was that young professional in corporate America who aspires to get ahead with their career. Anyone who’s motivated. Anyone who wants to move up the corporate ladder or launch their own business or be a partner at a law firm. It was really anyone who is motivated enough to take their career progression into their own hands and say:
“ I know I’m good. But why am I not getting promoted? Why am I not getting compensated? Why do I struggle when I’m in an important meeting trying to get people to listen to me or get my point across? "
It’s for anyone who is frustrated that they can’t communicate as effectively as they think they should or that realizes that opportunities aren’t coming their way.
You can’t see this obviously. But any time I interview a guest I always keep a notepad handy for scribbling notes and points. And I am scribbling furiously. That’s another great answer.
I don’t mean to create work for you, Zane.
It’s a labor of love thing. I’ll come back through and get all these points.
We’re going to come back to all of these points you brought up.
Erika Andersen coined a phrase, reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future, in her book Being Strategic. And she asks:
What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future?
What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this great book?
At the risk of being immodest, I will say that my hope is that in 5 - 10 years that this is the default curriculum that is taught in every undergraduate institution, business school. People really take notice and say:
“Communication skills can be taught. It is extremely important. It should not be left to people’s own devices. “
Not everyone is a great communicator on their own. They need some modeling.They need some explicit instructions. They need some time to think about these ideas and put them into practice.
It doesn’t mean they’re not smart. It doesn’t mean they’re not capable.
We spend so much time providing people with technical training: Here’s how you do this aspect of your job.
But we don’t give them any training in communication:
- How to answer a question you don’t know the answer to.
People are so much more exponentially effective when they can get their point across effectively and not sound dumb, when they can be transparent and acknowledge they don’t know what to do..
“But, hey! I’ll go and figure it out. Let me be proactive. Here are the resources I’m going to need.”
I think my aspirations are quite lofty. but, just as negotiations are part of every business curriculum, I’m not sure why business communications, effective communication, communication 101...I’m not sure why part of every academic institution’s curriculum.
We could have a whole show on that point. But, we’d better stop before we get side-tracked.
Let me not go there, but in my quick one-sentence answer to “Why it’s not taught?” I think people assume everyone knows it; people think it’s too basic to teach. And that’s a wrong assumption.
I’ll stop there.
Being a former investment banker, this next question should be easy. What metrics will you use to measure the ROI for your book?
Yes. It makes perfect sense as a banker. I think it’s the toughest question to answer. It is very hard to measure. When I was back at the EPA, as a policy analyst, we always talked about what mattered was what you could measure. People, if they can ascribe value to it, they are going to think it is important.
With my clients, I will say to them:
“When you provide this training to your group of analysts and associates or young professionals you will see a dramatic increase in their ability to perform in year one.”
That is my promise to them.
And what they see is is that there is a dramatic improvement with their senior team and how they’re interacting with their junior team and that the junior team has a great ability to make it through year one and be successful.
So, it is, I don’t use it on a numbers game. It is more on a grander scheme. I have a client I’m working with that I have now been working with for 3 years and I said:
“Let’s evaluate the people who have gone through the training in year one and two and figure out how it has impacted them going through their first 3 years on wall street.”
But I don’t have a hard number way to drive that information.
Now, one thing I am doing this summer is I am launching an online summer boot-camp for MBA students who are going through that all-important summer internship between year one and year two of business school. And I will be able to gather data from the people who go through that course and what the percentage was of receipt of full-time job offers compared to a general population within a business school.
That will be the first time I have a defined subset of data. It’s also a different type of experience in a summer internship there is an end-goal: you either get a job offer or you don’t .
In a job, it is more difficult to measure. Did you get promoted? Maybe it took 3 years. Did you get compensated at the top of your class? Maybe in year one, but not year two.,
It’s challenging. I don’t have a stock answer for you.
That’s great. You have a clear idea of where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. That’s excellent.
You hooked me as a reader and fan with the first page of your introduction. You shared a great story that drove home the importance and value of communication skills, the opportunity and the challenge.
Can you walk us through that?
Sure. And it’s an example I just adore.
So, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates were speaking to a class of Columbia Business School students in December of 2009. And one of the students asked Warren Buffet:
“In his estimation what was the most important thing graduates should keep in mind as they embark out into the real world.”
And Warren Buffett, investor extraordinaire, one of the most brilliant minds from an investment perspective, looks at the student and says:
“Let’s assume right now you’re all a $1,000,000 asset. I would invest right now $100,000 for 10% of the earnings of any of you. So, if anyone wants to make that deal come see me after class.
If you want to improve your value by 50% you can do it by improving your communication skills. Many of you, and I certainly could have when I graduated, many of you can improve your value by 50% if you just learn communication skills. "
But it’s not something that’s taught. I actually went through a Dale Carnegie class for public speaking. But, what was so interesting was that public speaking was just one piece of the puzzle. But it was by no means all of it.
How do people, where do people go to, learn better communication skills? They can boost their future earnings by 50% according to him if they become better communicators.
And he ended it by saying:
“Now, you’re a million and a half dollar asset, right? See me after class and I’ll give you a $150,000 if you’re interested in making that deal.”
For me, it was so incredible to hear Warren Buffett A. acknowledge the importance of good communication and B. acknowledge the fact that it was not taught.
That’s again when the lightbulb went off for me. If that’s what Warren Buffett says then don’t you think we all need to wake up and figure out how to teach good communication skills.
Like I said, it’s an awesome introduction. It’s so concise, so crisp, has all the great elements including data, story, all leading to the point.
I thought the potential increase in future earnings could be even greater with people who aren’t MBA graduates. Like say, you’re an art major like myself or you’re not in the track to go to an Ivy League MBA. The potential boost could be even greater if you could outshine or lead your peers with these workplace communication skills.
Absolutely.
And you hit the nail on the head there, right. It’s not just for top-tier MBA students or for people going to into Wall Street firms or law firms; it’s for everyone.
When you think about leaders in corporate America or in different industries in the arts, in the non-profits, typically the person who is at the helm of the organization or who has moved up the ladder...why are they there? They are not there because of their technical knowledge. They are there because they manage and lead people. They build trust. People believe in them. It is all based on effective communication and interpersonal skills.
One of the things I always think, if you take a look at people who are leaders in their fields, it is highly likely that they rank very high on those soft skills, those interpersonal skills.
As you’re talking, and as I’m looking at the first page of your introduction, and as I’m thinking out loud... it's still incredulous to me. So, let me say it out loud again.
Communication skills are the key to a possible 50% bump in lifetime earnings.
And yet....no one's teaching communication skills.
But, wait.
A bump in personal earnings must result from a bump in corporate earnings. And a bump in personal earnings means more disposable income to drive our consumer economy which would mean an end to this recession, an end to the federal deficit (possibly), and future recessions would be much shorter.
And yet, no one's teaching communication skills. Jodi, can you help us understand why? You gave us answer earlier. But connect the dots for my little brain here.
It was very interesting. And, I absolutely agree with you. It comes down to, at the end of the day, productivity right. So, the more efficient and capable you are at getting the resources you need, sharing information effectively, keeping people posted on what’s going on with your team, highlighting problems in advance so we solve them before they become bigger problems. All of those issues ultimately relate to your productivity. And if you’re more productive the organization is more productive.
Then you go into your whole scenario which you just laid out with corporate earnings and the debt and the recession, etc. And it’s a virtuous cycle if you will.
But, to go to your question, why isn’t it taught. The first time I pitched this business to Harvard Business School who is a good friend of mine...Harvard Business School said to me:
“You are bold to teach something so basic.”
That has always stuck with. It always takes a little bit of nerve to walk into a room full of Harvard MBAs and say:
“We’re going to talk about the Hello and Goodbye.”
Because at the outset of a conversation, how many of you ask if you have a moment?
Or how many of you, when you get off the call, think “forward momentum” ...next steps? What are the things I need to do to keep the door open?
One thing I think is that there is a taboo around this content. It is assumed you know how to do it. If you’re smart and have a good education or you’re a really hard worker...and you’ve put yourself in great positions then you should know how to handle these one-on-one conversations.
I think the default is that:
- no one knows how to teach it.
It's touchy-feely; it’s hard to evaluate; it’s hard to measure.
And, so, really I think it goes back to what Great on the Job does that I don’t think anyone else has done. I modeled this business after professional athletes who analyze game film everyday, right. These professional athletes will go back after a game and watch frame-by-frame every aspect of a play and figure out they could have done better or differently.
And Great on the Job literally applies that level of micro-analysis. Let’s look at a conversation. Let’s break down all of the pieces and figure out what is the optimal way to handle these conversations and then give you the language with which to do it.
It’s looking at it from a different angle or a different perspective. I think people haven’t cracked that nut of how to teach it. And I think people are afraid to teach it becase they don’t want to boo’d off the stage because “No. We want to learn marketing or accounting or non-profit management.”
No. You really need to focus on effective communication as a place to start.
That’s another great answer.
When did you realize this gap in communication skills and that there was no one teaching it? This realization didn’t come this year or even in 2008. It had to come sooner than that.
Well, it probably was 2008. I’ll tell you what happened. I launched the business in 2008 and went up to Cornell Business School and they weren’t even a client; they were just a friend. And I did the training and they said:
“It was just amazing.”
The head of the career center said;
“You received the best reviews of any guest speaker we have hosted on campus.”
That was the best feedback. She reached out to her colleagues around the nation. And then I went to my former employer, Goldman-Sachs, and said I’d like to come speak to your junior employees.
I’ll tell you between March of 2008 and September of 2008, it was like a game of dominoes. I got one client and then another and another. The leading business schools and the leading Wall Street firms saw the curriculum and content and said:
“Sign us up.”
I had the most bizarre entrepreneurial experiences where I had a lot of clients within 6 months of launching the business. And I thought:
“Holy cow! I am on to something huge here now.”
All of these people are signing on and I didn’t fell like I even knew how to sell the product. I’ still don't see myself as particularly good at sales. This product sells itself because there is such a demand in the marketplace.
For me, that lightbulb experience, where there really was a gap happened in those 6 months.
And, then with each new corporate client I would approach, some of them would open up their corporate training programs to me and say:
“Hey, here’s what we’re doing.”
And they’d show me their training and there was nothing, nada, zilch, not one thing, spoken on the content that Great on the Job was talking about. That’s when I saw that there is a glaring whole in the marketplace. This is not being talked about in the workplace. And this is not being talked about in academia.
How does your book begin to fill this gap in a big, cost-effective way?
Great question.
I like to say that for the past 3 years is that it’s been me, Jodi Glickman, as a solo entrepreneur. I am building the team.
But one of the things that I have come to own and love over the course of these 3 years is I own the product. I love it. I believe in it whole-heartedly. And I have so many people who have gone through the training and have said:
" Oh my god. This is life-changing. "
And there has been this frustration on my part reach more people. I can’t as a single entrepreneur be spending all of my time on the road. I have two small children. I have a family, right. I like being home; I don’t love traveling all the time.
How do I take this and make it scalable? The book was the first step to create a product that could make it to everyone both in the US and outside. By the way, there are a lot of people internationally who come work in the US and are completely lost by our culture and don’t have the guidance and tools they need to communicate effectively.
The book is the first step, the guidepost, the roadmap that you can take and if you read this book and incorporate some of the strategies and you use the language or you think about the language and it prompts you to figure out what works well for you. The book is the first step to say:
" Here is how we’re going to make the change in the world on a step-by-step basis giving this product to as many people as possible. "
That brings in the marketing challenge, of course. It is extremely difficult to market and sell a book in this economy. But that’s the first step.
And the next step is creating this online course I am working on and then figuring out the partnership strategy. Who are the big partners I can work with who can take this content and really push it out there to hundreds of thousands of young people worldwide.
And that’s all in the works.
Excellent.
How you organized your book helped me with this insight, but I see your book as gift. And you organized your 4 themes into a GIFT for the reader. What are those 4 themes?
Thank you. You’re so sweet for saying that.
Those four themes are:
I argue that they are the backbone of all great communicators. They are the gift of Great on the Job.
I will tell you that as I was reading the questions you had provided me to think about this interview you were extremely generous in focusing on this book and you put a lot of time and energy and enjoyed the book. I was so appreciative of that. I came to the table so excited to speak with you today.
Well...thank you!
Generosity is a huge piece of the puzzle at work that I don’t think people give enough emphasis and focus on. If you are a generous communicator, if you are someone who shares information readily...you don’t hoard it, you tell people what they need to know, if you’re someone who shares credit you give people a shout-out for work well-done, if you are always cognizant of other people’s time and agenda, you’re thinking about the other person’s time and agenda, you’re worried about making it easy on the other person, you’re thinking about making your boss’s life easier, then you are a generous communicator and people will want to work for you. They will want to work with you. They will want to promote you. They will want compensate you.
Generosity cannot be understated as an extremely powerful tool in the workplace.
Excellent! Thank you for that!
For businesses, where does the biggest potential ROI exist among these 4?
I’m going to go with Generosity. I think it has the ability to...if people start thinking about:
“What can I do for everyone else?”
There was another great book written titled From Day One. It was written by a friend of mine, Professor Bill White. He was CEO of Bell & Howell. And he talks a lot about, when you go into an organization it’s not:
“ Me-Me-Me. I want this great assignment for me. I want to work with these great people. I want to make sure I am paid well or get a raise.”
It’s about what can I do for you? People go in with that attitude. I don’t think it’s about selflessness because A. you do care about the organization; B. you do care about helping people c. you also know that to that to move your career ahead you have to figure out ways to help make other people’s lives easier and better.
So, it’s not always selfish. It’s also strategic. But I think it makes good business sense. And, that’s where I think people can have a huge shift in behavior.
How would a listener begin to express more of that theme, more generosity, in their own workplace or personal lives? What are 4 steps and the 4th one is buy your book, to better express that theme in their personal life?
Let’s look at a couple of specifics.
One is I talk a lot about the “download” which is how do you share information effectively. And the way to share information effectively is to lead with the punchline. Tell me up-front and center, what is new or different or important.
Don’t make people guess at your meeting. Don’t make people listen to you for 10 minutes when you really could have communicated what you needed to communicate in one minute.
Don’t make people wonder where you’re going with this monologue.
Give them the important information up-front. That’s a way to be a generous communicator.
When you’re offering to help someone don’t say:
" How can I help? "
Instead, come to them with 2 or 3 actions of how you think you can be helpful. Give them something to react to. People always prefer taking a multiple choice test in high school versus an essay test.
When you say to me “How can I be helpful?” you’re actually creating work for me. I need to think of something for you to do.
If you come to me and say:
" Jodi, would you like me to put in a call to a client or reach out about tomorrow’s meeting or review the presentation? "
I can say:
“Oh you know what. It would be great if you could review the presentation in advance of the meeting tomorrow.”
So, 2. Don’t say how can I be helpful; offer to help in specific areas.
If you want to know how you’re performing, if you want to get feedback from your colleagues or your supervisor or your manager, don’t ask them after the fact:
“ ‘How do you think that went’ or ‘how am I doing’? “
Don’t ever put someone on the spot and ask them how your performance was. It puts them in an uncomfortable position. You’re highly unlikely to get good constructive feedback.
Instead, plant a the seed in advance.
“Hey, Zane, I’d love to get some feedback from you was work together putting this show together. Would you be willing to sit down with me next month and talk about my performance.”
Give Zane a headsup that you are going to want some feedback. Right? You make it easy. And Zane can switch gears in your head and say:
“I’m going to need to think about some feedback.”
And then follw-up with an email in advance of your meeting, saying:
“Here are a few areas I’d like feedback on.”
Again, do the work for me so I don’t have to do it.
That’s 3. Ask for Feedback in Advance.
And, then, 4: Always come to me with a solution. If there’s a problem coming down the pipeline, don’t hide behind it. Don’t wait until it gets worse.
Come to me upfront:
“ Hey, Jodi. We’ve got an issue. Here’s what’s going on. Here are a couple of ways I think we can solve it. Do you agree? Does that sound like the right approach? Am I missing something here. I wanted to keep you informed early so you know what’s going on, so we can troubleshoot together. But I’m taking the lead here; I’m taking initiative.”
Those are 4 concrete, easy, ways. I could probably come up with 10 more if you’d like. But that’s all taking initiative and using generosity in helping your boss or your manager do their job better and helping you perform at a higher level.
You know I’m just smiling and nodding going:
Yes, yes. That’s great.
One of the many reasons I like your book is you offer practical, doable, advice and tips. In fact, after the introduction you start with a section on the basics and then the first chapter is titled "master hello and goodbye."
I loved it. But, why do we need a lesson? We say hello and good bye now all day long in person, with email, cellphones, chat, twitter, facebook, blogs. Where's the gap in our mastery?
Well, let me ask you a question. Has anyone ever called you on the phone and you picked up and it was somebody you weren’t expecting or you picked up by mistake and they started talking and you thought to yourself:
“I have no time to engage with this person. Shoot I wish I hadn’t picked up the phone.”
Has that ever happened to you?
Many times.
And we’ve all possibly been on the offending end where we call someone or stop by their office and started talking and didn’t pick up the cue that they weren’t ready for us or didn’t have the time.
The most basic thing in the world is to start with a question:
“ Do you have a minute to speak?”
Right?
And my mom, God bless her, I love her to pieces. We talk 20 times a day. But I will pick up the phone and she will she’ll start talking to me telling me where she’s eating lunch or going shopping or when she’s coming to see my kids and I’m working! I’ll have to say:
“ Mom. I’m working; I gotta call you back.”
It’s just ask me if I have a minute to speak. Often I will pick up and didn’t mean to or I thought it would be a 2 minute conversation and it turns into 10 minute conversation. It’s not just your professional life; it’s your personal life.
It’s the key question:
“ Do you have a couple of minutes to speak. Am I catching you at a bad time? Do you have a few minutes to focus“
And if they don’t then be gracious and give them an out.
“Ok, let’s reschedule our call because I need 5 minutes of your time.”
You’d rather talk to someone when they are ready to listen to you and they’re interested in listening to you versus when they are thinking of the 100 other things on their to-do list.
I’m laughing so hard, especially with the mom example. I don’t want her to blame me, you know, for hearing that.
She knows. She knows. And I’m sure I do it to her.
But I try and be really conscious of how to start a conversation. And if I start talking, I’ll stop and say:
“ You know what? I apologize. Do you have a minute to focus on this. I got excited and went off. Is this a good time for you?”
And sometimes it’s not. And we reschedule.
Everyone does it. But, again, it’s bringing it to top of mind. If you hear it once, ok, you’re right I should ask someone if they have a minute to speak. Or if you drop by someone’s office and they have their door open just because someone’s door’s open doesn’t mean they have the time to talk.
I’m thinking that if you do this then the next time you call that person and they see your caller-id they’ll be more likely to answer as opposed to looking at it and thinking:
Oh, my god. Here’s the person and they’re going to just jump into the middle of a conversation...I’m going to hit ignore.
That’s exactly right.
The only other thing I want to say on that point is:
“It is very basic.”
For some people who will look at this and say
“ I can skip that chapter. ”
And, that’s fine. Some people might feel that they have that covered.
I did know when I was writing that chapter that some people might say:
“Oh, my gosh. I’m insulted. Is she kidding? ”
God bless. But, none the less if you’re the person who’s extremely respectful of that question and always ask that question.
Another reason I like your book is your no-victim attitude. You encourage us to be strategically proactive. And you have a strategy called LEARN to be strategically proactive? What is that strategy?
So, the LEARN strategy is probably my favorite part of the book.
The Learn strategy is a strategy where you can figure out ways to advance your own career. Because as someone very senior in an organization said to me:
“No one cares more about managing your career than you do.”
LEARN stands for:
Learn a new skill
Excel at something you’re good at.
Assist others.
Redirect unwanted work.
Network with people who are well-connected or well-regarded.
I always say to people:
“ You have a greater ability to drive the bus in terms of your own assignments and workload than you may think. And if you are in a position where you are not getting a lot of great challenging assignments, then you are not growing to your potential, you’re not having fun. You’re not stimulated. You have to be the one to ask:
Whatever the challenges you have, you have to be the one to say:
" Ok. How can I make a change? How can I work on something more interesting to me. How can I work on something that I am going to do great with, right? "
Maybe, you’re struggling writing great press releases for your firm or you’re struggling running focus groups but you know you could do a great job if you could collaborate with the R&D team or you could work on coming up with a new program for new hires. You’ve got to make those opportunities happen.
Learn a new skill. Go to your manager or boss and say:
“I’d really like to take a crack at running a focus group because I think it would a great learning experience for me.”
Worse case? Your boss says:
‘No’.
Or worst case your boss says:
“Ok. We’ll keep it in mind. Next 3 to 6 months we can get you working on some focus groups.
Excel at something you’re good at. I happen to be a very good writer. I wasn’t so good with merger math. So, on Wall Street I would raise my hand when I heard that there was going to be a sales memo where we were actually working on a deal and we would need to do significant writing and I knew I would do great on those assignments and those tasks. And they would be what Michael Watkins calls “an early win”. He wrote a book called The First 90 Days.
Maybe, you’re not at capacity and you have time and you see other teammates around you who are really busy. Offer to help them.
“ Can I get you dinner? Can I get you lunch? Can I take this project over the finish line? Do you need someone to proof the memo for you? Do you need some help to think through strategies to engage the client tomorrow? “
Offer to Assist. It may not be fun and sexy. But it shows you to be a team player and may give you opportunity to more meaningful work down the road.
I have a non-profit client in Chicago. One of my favorite stories is the fact that this non-profit has a board comprised of some pretty prominent people. And every year they need someone to act as Secretary for the Board. And every ear they ask a junior staffer to come be Secretary for the year.
And it’s a pretty thankless job. You come to the board meetings and you write down every word that is said. You’re the scribe.
But, you know what? There’s a lot of learning there. You wind up meeting some of the board members and you get a bird’s-eye view of what is happening in the organization.
What junior staffers started realizing was:
“Hey, this is a great way to figure out my next step in the organization.”
And now, over the past 2-3 years, everyone who has been in that position, and don’t kid yourself it’s a volunteer position, it’s in addition to your normal workload, but everyone who has taken on that task has found a new and exciting challenge and opportunity after that position.
That’s a great way to say:
“I’m going to assist others, not necessarily going to be fun, but it’s going to be a good-long term assist for me in my career.
So, that’s the Assist.
Then the last two are Redirect and Network.
Redirect is if you are being given a bunch of crappy assignments over and over and they’re not helping your cause, then you need to raise your hand. You need to say:
“ Hey. I’m always happy to help with logistics. I love what I’m doing. But I need to get some more [fill in the blank]. I need to get some more client experience. I need to get some more project management experience. I need to get some experience working with the product development team.”
Whatever it is, you need to raise your hand and say:
“ I want to make sure I am where I am at next year so I can be in line for promotion. So, I need the opportunity to do more challenging work. “
I had a very sad experience with a summer intern once. He had a great attitude; everyone really liked him. And at the end of the summer when we went around the table giving offers, no one could attest to his skillset. Everyone said:
“ Really nice guy, but I didn’t have any technical work for him. I didn’t get to see him in action. ”
And it was a loss for him and a loss for the organization. He needed to raise his hand halfway through the summer and say:
“ I really want to get some challenging work in because I really care about getting an offer. I am concerned that I man not getting the experience that I need.”
And then the final piece of the LEARN strategy is Network. Work with people who are well-regarded, well-respected or well-connected. People will call me out on this and say:
“ This is very political.”
But, I say:
“ If you’re going to work, you might as well play the game. You might as well find people who are going to mentor you. You might as well find people who are going to advocate for you. You might as well find people who are going to teach you new skills. “
For me, as a Junior Associate on Wall Street, I struggled with the technical aspects of my job. So, I sought out the most technically proficient, scary, banker. And I said:
“ I want to work with you.”
Because I knew if I put myself in a position where he was going to sign off on me I would learn a ton from him and there would be a pay-off.
And it worked. I learned a lot. I got great feedback from him. And it basically, once he signed off on me, then everyone in the organization said she must be good if “Will has signed off on her.”
But, you may use networking to do a rotational program in another area of the business or go abroad, go try out a new experience. You may just use it to establish relationships with people who are senior and are going to help you move up through the ranks.
I think men do a better job of this than women. Men see the strategic relationships and say:
“ Ok, I want someone to be my champion or mentor.”
Women don’t do it as proactively.
The value of networking within your organization cannot be underestimated. It’s not just for when you’re looking for a new job.
“ Who do I need to be on my side, rooting for me, as I make my way through this organization? “
That is the LEARN Strategy. And those are the ways you can take the reins of your career and say:
" Ok. This is how I’m going to make it happen. "
Excellent! I’m just marveling at your answers. A delight.
Let's talk about your consulting business and how you help your clients. What is your elevator pitch for your business?
Well, I will tell you when I think about my elevator pitch the part that gives me the greatest pause...because I still struggle with it and as much as I can help people with their communication skills I do not pretend to have all of the answers all of the time.
Now. That being said I will go into my clients and tell them that if they spend two hours of time with me and their junior employees in year one their employees will be so much better equipped to handle the challenges coming their way that they will see an extremely high impact result that will come from this, in my mind, a minimal investment on their part.
My pitch to them is:
“Listen. You give me two hours with your analysts or your young professionals and I promise you that within the next 3 - 6 months, the first year, that your junior employees are going to be so much more equipped to have better conversations with your senior people. They will do a better job. They will get better reviews. ”
So, it really is in my mind a small investment upfront for a big return on the back end.
The other thing is, especially in this economy and this recession where employees have little time and energy and resources to focus on talent development that this is a really large bang for the buck. There’s only so many slots available and only so much time and energy that they can invest in new employees and the spots they do have are very valuable. So, if you give your junior employees this training upfront then the likelihood that they will stick around and be successful on the job is much higher.
What's been the biggest surprise or discovery for you with working with clients?
That’s a great question.
I would say there is a level of complacency on some level within corporate America.
As I mentioned earlier, my clients in the beginning just ate it up. And they were on board right away. I think I have the core base of believers. And I was lucky getting to them quickly.
But, as I fan out my client base, I find there is a level of complacency in the workplace where they say:
“ Well...this is the way we’ve done it. “
I think people are willing to accept less than 100% and I’m not sure why.
This content is pretty unique. And, it’s novel and it’s not taught anywhere else. So, when when people me they’re ok doing it they way they’ve already done it or they don’t need it.... then that always gives me pause and I wonder if they see the problem then why are they not willing to address it.
That is a good question. Improved workplace communication offers a company a bump of 50% in future earnings.
Not everyone believes that. And a lot of people think:
“ We’re going to focus on what we can measure. We’re going to give them training for building sales leads or basic accounting....where they could really measure it. “
Or they say:
" We want to improve their communication so we’re going to train them in public speaking. "
To me that’s such a near-sighted mistake which is with public speaking...
- How often are you in front of a group of 100? Not that often.
- How often are you in front of a group or 1 or 2? Every day.
Yeah. Communication skills means:
We’ll tell them what to say.
Right. Right.
I’m looking at the time and I am hating it because we’re coming to the end of the show. I am thoroughly enjoying it. Thank you for sharing this time.
Thank you. As am I.
And we've reached the imagination moment in the show. You’re from Chicago. Let’s imagine an old home week with you and other Chicago power players. President Obama's on line 2 for you right now. Your husband and children are waving frantically mouthing
It's President Obama!
And he talks with your husband and says:
I'd love to have you and Jodi come to the White House. Michelle and I and Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, would love to hear your ideas on how to begin teaching communication skills in the public schools today. We'll get Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel on the phone and we'll make the Chicago public school system the beta site.
What are the first three things you think we should do? And how much will they cost cause you know we're in these budget discussions.
What do you tell him?
I love it! What a fun scenario!
I think the first thing we do is we roll out this online course to juniors and seniors in high school. It’s pretty low budg. I don’t think it is terribly expensive to teach all of this. I think it can be done through a combination of interactive learning, where you’re giving people the tools to role-play and the scenarios to go through it...you can use online webinars to students do the work back in their classroom.
- What’s an area you want feedback on?
- What’s an area you think you need to be learning more of?
- What’s an area you have struggled with?
- How would you go ask your teacher for help?
- How would you go ask your friends for help?
So, I think it can be an online component and an in-class component.
I don’t think it is terribly expensive. And if you roll it out on a beta to all the juniors and seniors in high school...it’s a 6 to 8 week course, a mini-course. It is not something that needs to be taught over 2 semesters.
I think it is fun and high-impact. You can make it really creative by having a subset of teachers who can use the curriculum that already exists and the online course and then be facilitators to the conversation.
A lot of what I say is:
“ Great on the Job is giving people permission to ask questions they wouldn’t have otherwise felt comfortable asking. “
So, think about an experience you had as junior or senior in high school when you didn’t know how to do something in science class. How did you ask for help? Now, let’s give you better strategies that will give you better outcomes. Let’s practice those.
I think it’s all there for you. I think if you could get a pilot-program, 6 weeks, for teachers to facilitate then you could have a huge impact.
I love it.
2 other steps? In their summer jobs, have them put it into practice. And then have a follow-up course the next year.
And see how it’s changed.
This is just as relevant if you are a life guard or a teacher’s assistant or working in a fast-food restaurant.
Beautiful. I’m nodding my head going:
Yes, yes, yes!
Social media. This great big workplace communication resource. Is it the elephant in the living room of improving communication skills or a built-in community of advisors and mentors?
It is both. I love social media and it plays a huge role in our world. So, to pretend it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t play a role and have great benefits would be short-sighted.
But, but here’s the deal. Social media is not a substitute for in-person live, one-to-one, communication.
- You are never going to text your boss and ask for help.
- You are never going to hire someone over email.
- You are never going to close a billion-dollar deal im’ing someone.
So. Social media is a tool that helps us diffuse information to more people, connect more people, reach out and get more information from around the globe.
But it does not replace the fact that you need to be able to walk into a room in a business context and talk to people in comfort. You need to be able to sell your ideas. You need to be able to share information effectively. You need to be able raise your hand when you don’t know how to do something and ask for help.
- You can’t do it on twitter.
- You shouldn’t be doing it on linkedin.
Social media is an amazing tool for leverage. But it will never, ever, replace the importance of one-on-one communication.
What social media do you use?
I am a huge fan of Twitter. I love Twitter.
Facebook confounds me a little bit. I have a social media intern helping me manage Facebook.
LinkedIn, I use pretty readily.
Twitter is my preferred social media outlet. I have made some nice business connections over Twitter. I tell you every time they get to a point we always say:
“ Email me. We’ll talk offline. We’ll set up a call.”
Then, there’s a level of intimacy in that relationship you wouldn’t have if you were only talking on Twitter. For me, it’s a great starting place but it doesn’t end there.
Great advice. And on Twitter you are GreatOnTheJob, right?
You're a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that. I just quote him. What are you reading?
For the first time, reading for real, it’s been so nice.
I’m reading a great book by Mika Brzezinski called Knowing Your Value. It's about women in the workplace, we are undervalued and underpaid. She’s the co-host of Morning Joe in MSNBC.
On a fun note, I ‘m reading a great book called The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. It’s about Egypt in the 1950’s.
I just finished another book called The Commoner, it’s about 1940’s Japan.
I don’t know why I’m in this WW2 phase. But both of those are excellent books.
Let's end the show by bringing it back to the beginning. What's in it for everyone and why should we care about workplace communication skills?
It’s an easy win. It is just frustrating to me when I see people with potential and they are not living out that full potential.
- Focus a little bit on the impressions you leave with others.
- Focus on being competent and confident in your communications, right.
- Starting out strong... it’s ok to ask for help. Just do it in the smart way.
- You should ask for feedback.
- It’s ok to not know the answer to something. It’s ok. Just do it in a way that people recognize how smart you are.
- It’s totally nonsensical to not focus on communication skills because it could likely hold you back in the face of so many other great qualities you likely have.
So, I think of it as if you’re going to invest the time and energy to have a career you might as well have a great one. You might as well have a great job. And these are really practical actionable ways that people can improve their workplace performance.
I love it. Where can we find you on the web?
Thanks, Jodi!
