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25 tips for professionals under age 25

27 Apr 406295610_6ac305b653_z

As a big sister, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring my 10-years-younger little brother as he went through high school, college, several internships with my company, and eventually joined my company. He is now on a full-ride scholarship in grad school at Notre Dame. I couldn’t be prouder.

I’ve also worked with a number of younger professionals throughout my career, and I remember keenly being one of those young professionals—as a journalist, I was usually the youngest person in my newsroom (by far). There was so much I didn’t know, and wasn’t taught to me in college, about how to succeed in the business world.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the advice that I, at 35, would give to my 25-year-old self or other young professionals in their first few years of post-college employment. I don’t always follow this advice, but the results are infinitely better when I do. Here are 25 tips for success for young professionals under age 25:

  1. Take initiative. This is the most important thing you can do in any job, in any role—in life. Don’t wait for permission or a request, just see a need and propose a solution…better yet, start working on the solution!
  2. Dress for success. Senior professionals want to see you as an up-and-coming professional, not stuck in your college gear (and they’ll assume, your college mindset). Invest in a wardrobe that mirrors the executives (and by shopping sale racks and seconds stores like Nordstrom Rack and TJ Maxx, you can do this on your current salary). Don’t imagine “casual Friday” equals jeans and sneakers—choose better-than-casual shoes, slacks and a casual jacket to demonstrate your professionalism.
  3. Be polished. A dry cleaner and tailor will help—and don’t wear anything that is revealing, too tight/ill-fitting, or dirty/stained/torn. Iron your shirts, shine your shoes, file and polish your nails, get a good haircut. Carry a high-quality bag. Each small detail adds up. Look like the kind of person an executive would be proud to introduce to a client.
  4. Be polite. Manners count in business lunches, in thank-you notes and in small interactions. Read a book on modern manners—seriously! When flustered, keep your cool and be nicer than necessary.
  5. Polish your communications. Send emails that are properly capitalized, spelled and signed. (Don’t lower-case your name or the letter i—this reads a juvenile chat-room behavior.) Double-check documents and communications before sending—a small grammatical error or typo will make you look less smart than you really are, especially if you know better. Continue reading →

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How to say No: Validate people and projects, and say it bravely

20 Jan Office tower

Hello, we’re talking about saying ‘No’ at work and how to finesse this with respect to work styles. I’m using Market Force styles—Control, Influence, Power and Authority—to illustrate how handing a deluge of projects and requests at work by saying no can challenge each work style.

In my last post, I listed these two lessons:

Lesson one for Controls: Balance time discussing what you’re working on with a healthy debate on why. This is because Controls often handle being overwhelmed by becoming micro-managers.

Lesson two for Influences: People are more important than projects. Influences will be sure they know it, but must be sensitive to people with other styles who might feel like they’re wasting time in meetings. They must also avoid over-promising (a habit because they value relationships).

And now here are the rest.

Lesson three: It’s not about time, it’s about value: validate your projects and contributors.

For those with the Power work style, busybusybusy is kind of a drug. When they say, “Oh, I have a million things on my plate right now! I’m working 60-plus hour weeks and still have more to do,” they’re not complaining. They’re bragging. The subtext is “Look how important and indispensible I am!” Continue reading →

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Just say No? It’s not that simple: your work style’s blind spots

18 Jan Birds on wire

In today’s Harvard Business Review blog, Tony Schwartz has a great post about “No is the new Yes: Four practices to reprioritize your life.” In it, he describes a typical executive workday filled with meetings, email and hair-on-fire requests that keep their wheels spinning endlessly.

The tyranny of the urgent over the important seems like an unchangeable force, as if we are constantly running on a hamster wheel. But doing so will leave us tired—or fired—unless we can find a way to hop off the wheel.

I observe that for some executives, the hamster wheel bleeds into relationships with colleagues and subordinates: they never seem to be present for the people they are leading. That’s why I wanted to offer five lessons I’ve learned about managing time, work, people and priorities that embraces Schwartz’s fundamental argument about saying no more often … but does so with finesse based on the styles of people you’re working with.

You might be familiar with a work style framework from DiSC, Meyers-Briggs, Kolbe, or others—my personal favorite is Market Force, taught by the folks at aPriori International. I’ll explain each type of style and their blind spots related to saying no.

Lesson one: Balance time discussing what you’re working on with a healthy debate on why. Continue reading →

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Key question for innovators: How can we make this more fun?

30 Nov Fun paint

As part of my social media experimentation and engagement strategy (that’s code for “learning it by doing it”), I sometimes participate in one of Harvard Business Review’s #HBRchat sessions on Twitter about leadership.

These can be a great—if chaotic—place to discuss business and management issues with other leaders on Twitter. Even if you miss the weekly chat sessions, the posted recaps always include a few insightful zingers, in tidy 140-character bites.

One of the questions I recently answered was “What are the qualities of a great leader?” My immediate tweet back? “A sense of fun.”

Leaders generate better ideas (and greater innovation) when people are willing to take a chance in proposing a wacky idea. Fun breaks down the barriers and fear of failure.

During the chat, I went on to argue that the most effective leaders make a conscious effort to build a sense of fun in their teams. They are intentionally approachable, which in turn encourages people to go out on a limb, look silly and even fail.

Let me put it another way: I strongly believe that leaders with a sense of fun will get better ideas from their team, because their team members will be less afraid to propose or pursue them.

I can tell you this: I can offer up the most hair-brained idea to my CEO fearlessly. While I typically put serious effort and thought into honing things before they get in front of him, I still feel the sense of fun, the permission to be foolish that makes innovation possible.

For example, at Pixar, mistakes are celebrated along with successes—the nothing-ventured, nothing-gained mantra is “He who fails the most wins.” Pixar’s appetite for risk has removed layers of fear that stifle creativity and limit an individual’s willingness to go out on a limb with a crazy idea.

What I love is that Pixar hired top-notch creatives who were considered “unmanageable” and gave this group free reign to do their best work. Result? Their film, The Incredibles, won Academy Awards and became a best-selling DVD, even though its budget per minute was lower than any previous Pixar film.

I have to imagine that fun was more than just a movie goal. It was an essential mandate for being part of the team.

Google tells a similar success story; it enables its engineers to spend one day per week or up to 20% of their time working on anything that interests them. Here, I see fun at work as a product of autonomy—getting to choose to do what you love.

Both Google News and Google Product Search were spawned by this permission to innovate. Pulitzer-winning author David Vise explained, “Google … technologists think first of ways to solve problems; only later, if ever, do they worry about how to ‘monetize’ them.”

For an extra helping of fun, take your meeting outside, or somewhere more interesting than your office.

One of my most successful projects was proposed twice, dismissed twice, and finally left for dead by a boss that fostered a sense of fear, not fun, in the workplace. It’s hard to keep pushing your idea at what feels like a brick wall.

But, when things changed and I had a new opportunity to pitch my idea, the project was resurrected (and we had a lot of fun doing it).

Fun beat fear, and the results speak for themselves.

What’s getting in the way of your ability to innovate? Maybe it’s a lack of fun, or the presence of fear of failure. So instead of tackling the innovation problem, consider taking a step back and asking a simpler question: How can we make this more fun?

GO.

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I am thankful for … mentors who guide my career

24 Nov Hopscotch

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s my favorite holiday—we celebrate our many blessings, we give to the less fortunate, there’s always room at the table for another; we cook, eat, nap and watch football. What could be better?

There’s more: I’ve never had someone get mad at me for failing to buy them a Thanksgiving Day gift, or send them a Thanksgiving card. The hardest holiday shopping is the Costco parking lot the day before the big event, and even then, it doesn’t require traffic cops like the mall does on Christmas Eve. (Not that I’d be caught dead there and then.)

But I digress. It’s Thanksgiving, and I wanted to share what I’m thankful for. Since this is a blog about work and purpose, I wanted to specifically acknowledge mentors who have been important to me: I got a wonderful surprise via Facebook last week, which was a blog post via aPriori International about my blog post on styles. You can read the whole thing here, but my favorite part is this:

We don’t bring Heidi’s blog to the forefront just because she is a participant in our programs or because her latest post references the principles we espouse. Rather, we feel her documentation of her learning expands the risk that is inherent in learning. By jumping into Market Force courses, Heidi admitted to herself that there are things in her life with which she needs assistance, from employee assessments to personal time management to … whatever. And so by writing about her learning, she is taking a greater risk, a critical action in the process of becoming your “whole self.”

The thing that this post immediately brought to my mind was Charles Bukowski’s poem, “The Rape of the Holy Mother.”

Before that title freaks you out, read what this poem is really about: “To expose your ass on paper/ terrifies some/ and/ it should:/ the more you put down/ the more you leave yourself/ open/ to those who label themselves/ “critics.” (full poem here)

As Travis Carson, author of the aPriori post above, rightly says, learning is inherently risky. And that’s why today, on Thanksgiving, I am especially grateful for mentors.

Mentors challenge you. They allow you to fail. They guide your learning and your experimentation. They’re not about “thinking out of the box,” they’re about tearing that whole damned box apart.

Which is pretty cool, don’t you think? So here’s my list (and only just a start) of career mentors who have helped me make pivotal choices.

I am thankful for Yvonne Young, my second-grade teacher, who constantly repeated the phrase, “You are loveable and capable!” She built tremendous self-esteem (and daring qualities), and her expert storytelling remains so memorable that I try to mimic it with my own children.

I am thankful for Andy Gottesman, my high school debate coach. Winning in debate helped me feel fantastic about myself in high school even though I was pretty nerdy. That’s a big deal, but more importantly, I truly believe that speech and debate skills got me through college and prepared me for the world of work.

I am thankful for Cliff Rowe, my college journalism professor. Cliff literally changed my life when he prompted me to apply for a fellowship even though I hadn’t declared a major in journalism. I ended up winning the fellowship, a $1,000 stipend to intern at a newspaper, and then Cliff then directed me to an idyllic summer at the Port Townsend-Jefferson County Leader. By the end of five months there, I was hooked, and spent the next nine years in newspapers.

I am thankful for Pat Jenkins, my first, full-time newspaper editor. He took a chance on hiring me fresh out of college and pushed my writing far, far forward by taking the time to show me how I could improve (not just making corrections and moving on). He helped me develop strong reporting skills to really immerse myself in a community, and also helped me navigate some tricky political stories that resulted in the resignation of a judge.

I am thankful for Dan Cook, my business reporting editor, whose passion for digging into a story completely changed my reporting style, who managed to reign in this spitfire with good humor and tons of patience, and who taught me the value of having conviction in your work (and knowing when to take a pass).

I am thankful for Lynn Parsons, marketing and business development consultant, who understands the value of real business relationships (not just LinkedIn connections) and how to manage clients with diplomacy and grace, and who I admire tremendously for running her own firm through any economic cycle. She is the master of client service.

I am thankful for Craig Robbins, Chief Knowledge Officer and “dean” of Colliers University, who has given me hours of insight into work styles and systems, and who has the kind of advice that is tough to hear but absolutely essential if you want to get through any roadblock.

And I am also thankful for Katherine Steen, director of Colliers University, who since 2006 who has given me the platform and opportunity to speak to a broader audience, share my expertise and connect with people from around the world, and tackle challenging projects with zest.

There are many more on the list, but I wanted to recognize the people above because the each played a pivotal role in my career development. I am deeply grateful for everything they shared and invested in me.

If you’re from the USA, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. If you’re not, give thanks anyway. I’m taking this weekend off blogging to spend with my family, but I’ll send you a post later tonight on gift-giving and see you back here on Monday, Nov. 28.

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Rescuing bits of wasted time

14 Nov 11.14 Park

What’s your perfect weekend like?

For me, it’s getting up later than my little ones sleep, a leisurely brunch, a good walk or hike, time spent with friends or on my novel, and playtime that lets me totally connect with my family.

The paragraph above has four major signs of what kind of person I am, and I’ll give you a hint: it’s all about time. Getting up later. Leisurely brunch. Time with friends. Playtime with kids.

Even as I wrote the first paragraph, I wasn’t consciously trying to describe my weekend in terms of the push-pull of the clock, and yet, there it is. Time, time, time.

I hate to be rushed. I hate to be late. I hate to waste time (I’ve got too many things I want to do!). My perfect world would probably exist without clocks, as we moved from one activity, done for as long as it takes, to the next.

I remember, shortly after my son Drew was born, wondering how could take so darned long simply to leave the house? When pregnant, I might have been eating for two, but with a newborn, it seemed like I was packing for hundreds. My backup plans had backup plans. Military supply-chain specialists had nothing on me.

Want to motivate me best? Challenge me to throw on my superhero suit and make the project go faster.

One of the habits of my work style (if you know the Market Force framework, I’m an Influence) is a constant concern about time. Want me to really step in and own a project? Challenge me to go faster. Want to shut me down? Rush things past me.

So it’s pretty funny that I’d launch a blog called the Fifteen-Minute Firestarter. Why put an artificial constraint on myself about time? I guess it’s because I realize that the push-pull of time during my work and personal hours makes it virtually impossible to do anything more than a headlong rush toward what I want to say.

My point, that is. And with just six minutes left, I’d better make it—quick. Here’s one key suggestion I have about how you arrange your time:

Have you noticed that most of your meetings are scheduled for an hour? How many topics do you know that neatly fit into that box? Too often, we waste part of the meeting before getting started, and it’s not until fifteen minutes after the hour that we tackle what needs to be done.

Or, the reverse: we’ve covered most of what’s needed in the first forty-five minutes, and then there’s a lot of chatter, but not a lot of work getting done.

How powerful would it be if you captured those little fifteen -minute increments?

You know I already think it’s possible to accomplish something significant in that time. So my suggestion is to plan your meetings for forty-five minutes. Start at fifteen minutes after the hour, enabling your colleagues who are coming out of a previous meeting to grab coffee, take a bathroom break or print the documents they need to bring to your meeting.

(You would have wasted those first fifteen minutes waiting for the tardy ones, anyway, right?)

You might be surprised to find you didn’t need that whole hour for the meeting, and even more surprised what else you can accomplish with fifteen extra minutes.

Oops, that’s it. I’m out of time. Try this yourself. GO.

P.S. Don’t be a time hoarder—to make this work, you must spend those extra minutes on what matters to you: care for others, careful listening, accomplishment or tranquility.

My favorite book on the subject isn’t a time-management tome from some business school professor. Instead, check out Momo from author Michael Ende (better known for The Neverending Story). I was so inspired by it I even named a character in my novel Momo!

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You are not air-dropped into corporate culture

11 Nov Culture

Hi there. What’s your day been like? Meetings? Deadlines? Buzzwords?

Oh yeah, I hear that. In my newsroom, back when I was a journalist, we used to make fun of the worst corporate-speak press releases that came in. They were chock-full of business clichés like “leveraging synergies” and “thinking outside the box” and “win-win situation.”

But the most frustrating one for me was “corporate culture.” It was as if culture were an immovable force, a wilderness that you’re air-dropped into. Somehow, as the employee, you’ve got to survive it.

But I don’t buy it.

I see corporate culture not as something that comes at you, like a ball thrown for you to catch, but as something you constantly create and affect, like being in a swimming pool, making ripples of your own.

You heard me: you are responsible for your corporate culture. Not leadership. Not your manager. You.

I told you a while ago in Guiding by Goals that I developed a list of three business goals in response to a challenging colleague. Last on the list was “Thrive in a positive and professional work environment.”

But when that colleague was finally out of the picture, I realized I was wrong.

My goal assumed culture was something thrust upon me, something I had to react to. But it didn’t credit my ability to change things, to make the company I’m in become the company I intend. So I changed my goal. My new goal is this: Lead culture and best practices.

Let me give you an example of leading culture. This summer, I partnered with our Chief Information Officer to present a fun lunch-and-learn to our corporate team called “Apps & Apps.” I demonstrated six appetizers (I adore cooking), and the CIO demonstrated a bunch of cool apps for iPad and iPhone.

It was a hit! So many colleagues said it was the most fun program they’d seen. More importantly, I think it shifted the company culture just a little bit further toward what I intend—a place where everyone has something interesting to contribute, where we enjoy each other and have fun learning together.

I’m sure you feel like sometimes your corporate culture is lacking. Maybe your sense is that everyone’s got their head down, grinding under project deadlines, budget cutbacks and political wrangling that can truly take your eye off the ball of what’s important.

Out for drinks with colleagues one night, someone asked me how I’d handle a particularly cranky set of folks who never seemed like they enjoyed work or each other. What would I do?

“Forget ‘em,” I said (or another word starting with F), speaking from my gut and shocking myself as much as I did them. And then, I added this quote from another colleague: “You can’t get blood from a rock.”

My point is this: you can spin your wheels forever trying to “get everyone on the same page,” “achieve buy-in” or any number of other business clichés. Or you can just be who you were meant to be: a positive, dynamic, inspiring influence on the culture of your company.

I love the quote, “Don’t try to win over the haters. You are not the jerk whisperer.” (Another good blog on this here.) So that’s where I draw the line on creating culture—be the influence, but be OK with the fact that not everyone will follow.

That’s because some people show up for work and are unprepared to participate in culture. They see it as happening to them, and if they don’t like it, chances are they’re living in resignation and resentment, a hole they’re not likely to climb out of.

Take a risk. Throw ‘em a rope, be your authentic self, live the culture and values you intend to spread throughout the organization. You’ll surprise yourself with followers. And who knows? The haters might just come around, too. (I keep talking to those cranky people, thinking, Someday….)

Take 15 minutes to go affect your corporate culture by being the kind of person you want your whole company to be—inspiring, polite, thankful, collaborative, fun, engaging, risk-taking, authentic. Don’t wait for someone else to take the cultural reins. GO.

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One way to get un-stuck: Use ‘extreme questioning.’

7 Nov Extreme questioning feat

I’m back, and I’ve got 15 minutes to tell you the rest of the story.

Last post, we were talking about Lord Voldemort—a painfully challenging colleague who made coming to work every day feel like torture.

The first step was realizing I couldn’t change her.

The second step was realizing I could change my situation. I realized my options were good, they were exciting, and that all I needed was to take the third step—to decide.

I made the choice one March day in San Francisco. I was participating in a business coaching training session and the leader of the session stopped me cold: “When will it change?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.

Extreme questioning. Photos by Epredator (above) and Qthomasbower (top).

“Closer to now or 2011?” This was March of 2009, and the thought of spending two more years in close proximity to Voldemort sucked all of the joy out of me (which, if you know me, is nearly impossible to do).

“Closer to now,” I answered.

“Closer to now or 2010?” the coach pressed.

“2010,” I said. It was only nine months away.

“Closer to now or September?” he asked again.

Let me give you some context. What the coach is doing is a technique is known as “extreme questioning,” starting with a very broad range and whittling it down, bit by bit, to help the person being coached decide for themselves. It’s not up to the coach—it’s up to you. You know in your gut when the time is right.

“September,” I answered, still wanting to avoid the harsh reality that I would have to make the change from the best job I’d ever had.

“Closer to now or August?” he asked.

“August 18,” I finally answered. There. I’d done it. I made the decision.

It was the date of my wedding anniversary, and the first day of our planned Business Pursuit Conference, which I was responsible for running. Given the tyranny of Voldemort from the prior year’s conference, I figured planning the conference would be the pressure cooker I’d need to really push me over the edge.

“There’s you answer,” the coach said quietly. And he was right. It was time to let myself be guided by my goals, rather than dying a death of a thousand cuts by Voldemort.

Making the choice made me lighter. It enabled me to focus more on doing my job than on keeping it. I did good work. I delivered great projects. I developed a successful conference.

And before I had a chance to make the final choice of leaving the career I’d chosen and cherished for more than four years—poof—she was gone. It was because her attitudes and actions were inconsistent with the culture we intend.

So, rewind a bit (just a little, I only have two minutes left!). Remember how I told you in the last post about my three key business goals? That one was to thrive in a positive and professional environment? I’d love to tell you more next time about how that goal has evolved since her departure.

But in the meantime, consider this—where are you stuck, in life or in work? What needs to change for you to move forward? What action would you need to take to make that change? When?

You know the answer, it’s just easier to find it by giving yourself the full spectrum of possibilities. Use extreme questions. GO.

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