Archive for March, 2010

Co-authors Emily Bennington and Skip Lineberg, two influential bloggers and speakers in the business world, have written Effective Immediately (Ten Speed Press, 2010), a valuable guide for recent graduates who, as the subtitle says, want to “Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job.” As an instructor to college students majoring in business, I have learned that most of them lean towards taking the fitting in approach, when in fact the combination strategy of fitting in and standing out — deftly selecting times to blend in or make compromises, and yet seizing the opportunities to be creative or call attention to yourself — is actually one of the surest roads to success. And by success I mean being able both to contribute to your team and advance and improve yourself on a fairly regular basis.

“Find your inner Gene Kelly” is lyrical advice. The authors examine Gene Kelly’s dancing in attempt to discover what made him seem to “float” above the his peers. They claim his edge was “incremental,” noting that small things, like the consistent polish of his shoes, the angle of his cane, and the crease in his pants made all the difference. That attention to small detail, taken together “seemed to make his dancing effortless.”

The theory of the incremental edge, by the way, echoes one of Malcolm Gladwell’s key arguments in The Tipping Point: that small changes in presentation can often make  a big difference when it comes increasing the appeal — and ultimate impact — of an idea or product. You just have to figure out what changes to make depending on your audience.

Among Bennington and Lineberg’s list of sample “Gene Kelly dance steps:”

• Use superb grammar (hooray for that!)
• Complete assignments early
• Give a small gift to your clients (your favorite business book or flowers) on the anniversary of your partnership
• Keep your desk spotless at all times.

If you — like me — consider that last item  too tall an order, come up with your own deft moves. It’s a fun exercise and, as they say, incrementally, but also immediately, effective.

Just posted today, a woman in Brazil who is spreading the word about The Good Girl’s Guide to Negotiating in its Portuguese translation. Beth and I wrote it nearly ten years ago, but it’s still relevant — perhaps now more than ever in this tough economy:

http://marielydelrey.com/blog/2010/03/guia-de-negociacao-para-mulheres/

Very cool the way Google can translate the page into English. Try it!

Think about personal needs as a strategic tool if you want to speed up decision making:

Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr, rarely holds meetings anymore. But when she did, she writes in this month’s Inc. magazine,  everyone would stand, and they talk only after everyone drank 16 ounces of water. The agenda would be discussed, decisions would be made, “and the meeting would be over when the first person had to go to the bathroom.”

That reminded me of a tip Former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder offered when she was interviewed for The Good Girl’s Guide to Negotiating. She confessed to “cutting off bathroom privileges” if she was trying to wrap up a particularly tough negotiating session.

Hunger, thirst, and exhaustion also may come into play. So ignore these needs if you want meetings to end sooner rather than later, or attend to them if you want the discussion to take a more leisurely course.

It’s happened to a banker in Providence, RI, a real estate investment adviser in Boise, ID, and scores of people who work in manufacturing in Midwestern states. If you’ve suffered the embarrassment of being laid off not once, but twice, relax — you are hardly alone. While the latest government statistics tracking people who’ve had two spells of unemployment won’t be out until December, hiring managers are increasingly aware that it is a common occurrence, and not necessarily a black eye.

In fields like marketing and information technology, being laid off may even classify as “normal,” says Lynn Hazan, a Chicago-based executive recruiter. Advertising agencies and marketing departments cut positions when they lose accounts; global companies trim their IT staffs to meet shifting needs. “Everyone knows how much ‘no-fault’ job loss there is, and that [he or she] may be just as vulnerable to it as you have been,” says John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement firm.

So come to a job interview confident that you can explain your double dose of unemployment. “Be candid and focus on the business reasons,” says Melvin Scales, vice president for global solutions, Right Management, a Philadelphia-based outplacement firm. Assuming your layoffs had nothing to do with performance, make that clear by explaining why your position — not you — became less relevant to your employer. If your manager has indicated a desire to hire you back when the economy improves or has written a glowing recommendation, mention that to bolster your case, Hazan advises.

You might even claim that suffering through double layoffs makes you a more attractive job candidate. “When people go through downsizing, typically they use the time to sharpen their skills,” either by working as a consultant or getting additional training, says Scales. Make sure that applies to you. In addition, stress your own understanding of the fact that rapid change is high on the list of challenges many companies face nowadays. Says Hazan: “State what you learned from those experiences and how that can be of help to the new employers.” While your job history may be clouded by double layoffs, clear it up by offering your own extra dose of industry insight.