September 27, 2021 • 54 mins
Excelling in your career depends on more than just doing a great job. Just because you’re a decent software engineer, or you get the job done as a nurse- that doesn’t mean that you’ll quickly rise through the ranks. Nor does it mean you’ll automatically see big raises or year-end bonuses! That’s because there are things that managers and bosses expect of you, but they’re never explained to you. This is the basis for Gorick Ng’s best-selling book, “The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right.” Gorick is a career adviser at Harvard, focusing on coaching first-generation, low-income students. But before that, he gained plenty of professional experience from working in management consulting, investment banking, and as a researcher with the Harvard Business School. Regardless of your specific job, there are plenty of soft skills and unspoken rules that you need to discover, in order to find success in your career.
During this episode we both enjoyed a Belgian Aloha by Olentangy River Brewing- thanks Scott for donating this one to the podcast! And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I and
Matt and today we're talking the unspoken rules of career
success with Gore King. Getting ahead in life and succeeding
(00:28):
in your career depends on just a lot more than
doing a great job. Just because you're a competent software
engineer or a nurse or or whatever it is that
you do, that doesn't mean that you will automatically climb
the ranks and see your salary increase with promotions, with
additional responsibility. And that's because there are things that managers
and things that bosses expect but they never explained to you.
(00:51):
This is the basis for Gorik Ng's best selling book,
The Unspoken Rules Secrets to Starting your Career off Right.
Gorick is a career advisor at Harvard focusing on coaching
first generation low income students. But then before that, he
gained plenty of professional experience from working in management, consulting,
investment banking, and as a researcher with the Harvard Business School.
(01:14):
But regardless of your specific job, works added to discuss
the different unspoken ways that you can find success in
your career. Go Rick, thank you for joining us today
on the podcast, Joel Matt, thanks so much for having
me throw the be here. Yeah, well we're thrilled to
have you go wreck and yeah, this is gonna be
really I think a really interesting conversation. Your research and
your history are just gonna make for really like, yeah,
(01:37):
there's a lot of good stuff to cover here today.
But before we get into some of that stuff, I
want to know Matt and I we like craft beer,
as you know, and uh, it is something that we
spend a decent bit of money on in the here
and now while trying to save and invest well for
the future. So, yeah, do you have something like that
in your life? A splurge that your make, you're making
while you're also prioritizing putting some money away in your
(01:59):
savings account and also like in those investment accounts. It
has to be ice cream. I like to work for
my ice cream, so it needs to be chunky, need
to put in some effort for it to go down. Wait,
what do you mean that you have like a favorite
brand or something like that. Yeah, you said it needs
to be chunky. What do you mean that there's something
like Moose tracks or what? Yeah, like Moose tracks, anything
(02:20):
that I need to chew on. And funny, funny you say,
what does chunky mean? Because I've actually gotten that question
from a number of I've ever heard ice cream described
as chunky before, but you're talking about in the beer world,
which they call them ad junks. So all the additional
bits of candy or chocolate, moose tracks, butterfinger, that kind
of stuff. That's I guess that's what you're looking for
(02:41):
in your ice cream. Yes, exactly. And maybe I'm in
search of a new adjective then, because I've been confusing
a lot of people with my use of the word chunky. Well,
I guess it's the opposite of Down here, we've got
a lot of Chick fil A's and ice Dream is
the ice cream that they serve, and it's just a
super smooth, very creamy, like the hand turned stuff that
your grandmother's it does. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of cut
(03:03):
like that, like an old school homemade flavor going on
with it. But it's funny that you mentioned that because
I guess it was a couple of months ago we
talked with Clark Howard and he also that's his splurge.
He trying to hook them up and the top dollar
on really nice ice cream. So you two how to
get together do a little tour of the country and
visit all the best ice cream spots. Uh yeah, but Gary,
(03:23):
let's we want to dig into your background just a
little bit before we kind of start talking about your book,
your career expertise. It basically started when you were pretty young,
at the age of fourteen. Can you share that story
with us? It sounds good. Yeah, it's kind of weird
that it all began back when most of us, I
certainly were focused on playing video games more so than
(03:44):
building our careers. Where I was fourteen years old and
my mom, who is a single mother, came home with
a pink slip and it said that she was laid
off from the sewing machine factory job that she had
held since she was twelve years old. And I, as
the person in the house who knew how to speak
English and get onto the internet, became the person to
(04:08):
step up. And so I ended up spending recesses learning
to write resumes and cover letters, afternoons at the public
library looking for jobs, and evenings coaching my mom. I
put very thick, italicized bolded quotes around coach. It was
really the blind leading of blind there Um, we applied
(04:29):
to hundreds of jobs and didn't end up getting any callbacks,
where my mom ended up actually returning to school, getting
an early childcare assistant certificate, and so things worked out.
But it was that experience that led to me wondering
what was I missing? How could I, as someone who
did well in school, who saw myself as resourceful, not
(04:51):
be able to help my mom get back on her feet.
And it took a number of years for me to
find the answer. And it actually took a few experience
ass after that to find the answer, one of which
came in high school where I met a student from
another school who had applied to Yale University and had
gotten in, And over the course of getting to know
(05:13):
her and having her take me under her wings, I
learned that getting into college required a lot more than
just tossing over an essay and hoping for the best.
There was a certain style of essay that people were expecting.
There's a certain way of holding your hands your teacher's
hands through the admissions process, the recommendation process that no
one really tells you about. And these unspoken rules as
(05:36):
I call them now ended up working. I ended up
becoming the first of my family to go to Harvard,
to to go to college in general, but was lucky
enough to have gotten into Harvard as an undergraduate. And
when I was at Harvard, it was the first time
that I was within such close proximity to so many
people who could call their parents, doctors and lawyers and senators,
(05:58):
people that I would read about in the newspapers but
I didn't even know I could interact with. And over
the course of getting to know these classmates and friends,
started realizing that there's really this informal curriculum that some
of us end up getting over the dinner table from
our parents, mentors, siblings, that many more of us, folks
(06:20):
from my background, for example, end up never getting and
end up having to learn through trial and error and
so over the course of my early career into this day,
I started reflecting on, Wow, well, what responsibility do I
have to hopefully pay a smoother path for people coming
after me? And that all has led to me writing
this book and hoping to spend the next stretch of
(06:40):
my career paving a smoother path for people coming after me. Yeah,
in your book, you actually say that there are insiders
and outsiders, even in like the prestigious world of a
college like Harvard, and you felt like an outsider. So
why was that? Like, what what were those what was
causing those feelings? Yeah, it was this feeling of looking
(07:03):
left looking right, almost as if it were a middle
school dance, and seeing everyone grooving on the dance floor
and you looking left looking right and standing there awkwardly
being like, there's something I'm missing here. And I gotta
say I totally identify with that because that sounds like
exactly what happened to me in seventh grade. So you
(07:23):
and I both y'all just did there awkwardly, and me
and my friend Javier, we're just playing tag. Where were
the idiot sixth graders? That Everyone's just like, what are
you doing? This is the dance. It happens on a
regular basis at a higher education institution. It happens all
the time in in the workplace, and it manifests itself
(07:44):
in the form of in in college, for example, some
students really knowing how to navigate the system and building
good relationship with their with their professors, knowing how to
navigate recruiting events and job fairs, and getting jobs that
aren't even advertised. And then in the workplace, you have
some folks who put their heads down and work hard
(08:07):
and wonder why they're not getting that promotion or that
high profile project. Meanwhile, someone else who may be working
less hard, or less or or less competent end up
getting all that visibility. It's not a matter of what
you know, it's a matter of who you know when.
It's not a matter of whether you're just simply fulfilling
the job description that you've been assigned, But it's about
(08:29):
how you go above and beyond in these unspoken, unwritten ways. Yeah,
and and even so, like you endured some real hardships
growing up, and yeah, like you said, it wasn't the
smoothest path for you to get where you are now
even though you were a hard worker. You know, you're
we're talking about these unspoken rules, Like it's almost as
if like you were learning proper etiquette. Uh, It's it's
not something that it's necessarily directly it's hot, but it's
(08:51):
something that sometimes folks are able to learn either second
hand or they see it demonstrated, or there's there's somebody
else in their life that is able to kind of
meant for them or shepherd them. But yeah, like I
don't know. The more we kind of dove in your book,
I was just like, man, this really feels like being
taught like manners or or just proper etiquete or like
Southern etiquette or something different that isn't as widespread as
(09:12):
you would expect. Yeah, And the thing about so many
of these unspoken rules is they can come across as
common sense. And I've gotten that feedback from some people
who would say, why are you just writing down common sense?
And it actually led to a point where I was
contemplating the subtitle of of the book and one of
the options of like a couple dozen was common sense.
(09:34):
That's only common sense looking back. And that's how I
feel about so many of these rules. Yeah, that's yeah,
that's interesting some of them, Like when I'm reading them,
I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense
intuitively to me. But you're probably right, But part of
it is because of like the water x Wamen, like
how I grew up. Well, I think it probably too
depends on just the kind of work that you're doing.
I think there might be a certain professions, certain fields
(09:56):
where maybe interacting with other folks isn't as important. So
there maybe there is less reading people's emotions or understanding
communication style, different things like that, And maybe it might
only be about the work. But I think as our
world evolves, it's clear that it's not just about doing
really good work. You have to be able to integrate
into these systems, uh, and to do that well in
(10:17):
order to be successful. Yeah, and and go right now,
you help first generation low income students so that they
don't have to go through like trial and error scenarios, right,
like some of the some of the ones that you
went through in your life. And what would you say, like,
are navigating these unspoken rules like the biggest hurdles that
they faced when it comes to succeeding in the workplace. Yeah,
(10:37):
it's say the unspoken rules are a big piece. I'd
say Another piece is around confidence and a sentence I
often find myself saying to to first gen low income
college students and those who are coming from underrepresented backgrounds
is that there's a difference between confidence and competence. Where
competence is how much you know and can do. Confidence
(11:01):
is how much you think you know and can do
and you need both. Where I often hear stories of people,
and I was certainly in this situation myself where you're
in a meeting and you have this idea that you
want to bring up, but you're thinking to yourself and
you have a self talk of hm, is this a
stupid comment? Or is this common sense? And so you're
(11:25):
you're debating with yourself constantly about is even worth raising
this idea? And five minutes later, someone else says the
exact same thing and gets all the credit. In those situations,
I've certainly found myself in this situation a fair bit,
and I start realizing, wait a second, is it the
case that this actually was a smarter comment than I
(11:47):
had thought? And or this other person may just have
lower expectations than I do for what makes a smart comment,
And in having lower standards, they they ended up getting
all the credit and getting ahead. That's the difference between
competence and confidence. Yeah, it's almost as if overthinking it
can just yeah sometimes. Uh. How many of these unspoken
(12:10):
rules do you think have to do with just cultural
differences between whether it be just the different backgrounds that
families have or or where individuals are raised. In the
United States, that's a big one for sure, um, and
I would say that these unspoken rules are becoming more
and more important as companies have more global teams and
(12:30):
are hiring folks from very different backgrounds, where some of
these cultural norms may not have permeated the waters in
the same way that they may have permeated the waters
for for for for these so called insiders. And so
when I think of working cultures across geography, is certainly
there are some that are more hierarchical, where you speak
(12:54):
when spoken to. There are others that are less hierarchical,
where you're expected to speak up, can ribute, disagree with
your manager, and in fact disagreement is is encouraged and
and rewarded. And then they're also uh. As I think
about my Asian upbringing, for example, certainly there's this unspoken
(13:17):
norm or hidden expectation that you respect your elders, and
when someone who is higher ranking, older, more experienced, is speaking,
you'd wait your turn, and you'd not only just wait
your turn, but you'd withhold your comments until you're called upon,
if you are even called upon. And so there is
(13:38):
some unlearning and relearning. That's not to say that there's
a right or wrong way of doing things. To your point,
it's very much a matter of cultural differences, where in
American working culture, because of this difference between confidence and competence,
the people who make it up to the top aren't
necessarily the most competent. They might just be the most confident.
(13:59):
And so there is this this phenomenon where the system
as it stands, at least in American corporate life, doesn't
always reward people for the characteristics that organizations really care about.
M Yeah, that's interesting. Well, we we want to talk
more about the unspoken rules and you know, get into
(14:19):
some of what they are and talk about how you
can you know, think about those so that you can
improve your work habits inside of the place where you're working.
And we'll get to yea some more questions with Gorik
about that right after this break. All right, we're back.
(14:42):
We're speaking with go working about his book The Unspoken
Rules of Career Success as our topic today, and your
book is it's kind of a how to guide. There
are things like we like we said earlier that like
managers expect you to implicitly know, but many of these
things are never explo Lea's hot in your first chapter
in your book, it's it's all about the three cs.
(15:04):
You've already mentioned one of them, which is competence, but
the other ones are commitment and compatibility. You sort of
introduced this as the framework for the book, And so
why do you feel that it is just so important
to prove yourself in all three of these areas? Specifically, Yeah,
it's because when we show up in the workplace and
I define workplace as in an interview, in your first
(15:24):
day in a new role, and frankly thereafter until you retire,
the people around you, your clients, partners, managers, coworkers, they're
sizing you up and they're asking themselves three questions. Question
one is can you do this job well? Which is competence.
Question two is are you excited to be here? Which
(15:47):
is commitment? And question three is do we get along?
Which is compatibility? Competence, commitment, compatibility. The three c's your job, frankly,
all of our jobs, it's to convince the people around
us to answer yes to all three questions all the time. Um,
and I'll maybe augment my my statement earlier by saying
(16:10):
that supposedly the three c's count in the realm of
dating as well, so it may not just be a
workplace concept, could it potentially be a life concept. That's
something that's a more recent shower thought for you. Now, Yeah,
I feel like, actually I heard you refer to like
marriage advice and how building compatibility with co workers can
(16:30):
be similar to building compatibility inside of like a long
term partnership, Like, yeah, do you think there are some
similarities there? Yeah, I'm thrilled you're mentioning this because this
is actually one of my favorite ideas from the book,
even though I don't spend all that much time talking
about it. It's this idea of bids, which is an
idea that was created by a psychologist and a marriage
(16:50):
expert named Dr John Gottman. Dr John Gottman observed couples
that stay together and have happy marriages and compared them
to couples who end up separating. And his question was
what separates those who stayed together from those who separate,
and he found that the lowest common denominator it was
(17:11):
something called bids. Where I'll illustrate it with an example
where if your significant other says something like I'm hungry,
and let's say you're driving down the freeway, You've got
three options you can either pull off of the McDonald's
this one right exactly, you can ignore the bid, so
(17:31):
just keep driving, pretend as if they didn't say anything.
Or the third one is you can smack down that
bid and you can say, didn't you just eat? Or
aren't you trying to lose weight? Don't do that one?
And uh, as you might be able to guess there's
a right answer to to this question. I suspect that
(17:53):
you all are thinking of the right answer now, but
just to toss it back to you, what's your guess?
And it's like, yeah, what you're feeling like? Uh like something?
I'm like very like analytical. It's all right, are you
hungry in like the next two minutes? Hungry? Are you
talking in like the next two hours? You can run
along trip, you know, sometimes you just want to make
good time, or you might be like, I brought a
granola bar. It's in my backpack, let me grab before
(18:14):
you Exactly, so I can already tell that you're you're
in positive relationship territory, because according to this research, the
right answer is to recognize the bid, which you both
have done, and to positively embrace this bid, which you
have also both done, and this is what is the
lowest common denominator to what makes for a happy relationship
(18:38):
in marriage. And yes, this is a marriage concept, but
as I think about relationship building more broadly and career
building more broadly, I think we can translate this idea
of bidding into the workplace, where every email, every meeting
that you're invited to, every exchange of eye contact, that
too is a bid. It's an invitation. It's a hidden
(19:00):
opportunity for you to step up, build a relationship that
may not have otherwise existed, make an impact, and potentially
grow your career. And so this bidding idea is one
that I've been thinking about a lot because and and
maybe this comes back to the first generation low income
college students that that I advise at Harvard, where I
(19:22):
can't help but think that we all, over the course
of our lives, are almost walking down a similar art
gallery together, and we're all looking at the same painting,
but we're coming to two different conclusions around what this
painting depicts. One of us could see this painting and
see the boats in the foreground or the sunset in
the background. Someone else could see the trees in the distance.
(19:47):
And I think of this walking down an art gallery
slash observing a painting comparison is apt for real life
because over the course of our everyday lives, we're going
to be faced with so many bids, so many opportunities.
But it takes a special mindset and awareness to be
able to recognize these bids and to embrace these bits.
(20:07):
That's the key to to getting in and getting ahead.
That's going to be the key to working with others, especially.
I mean, I guess if you're constantly slamming down there bid, Yeah,
that's not gonna go well, doesn't lead to very good
team work. And maybe if you're working by yourself, that's
something that you don't have to consider quite as much.
But certainly if you're working with a partner or working
on a team, you've got to keep that in mind. Gorik.
(20:30):
One of the unspoken rules that you mentioned in your
book proactivity, What does that look like? Why? Why is
this so important when it comes to getting ahead in
your career? M H. Well, for the early career, folks,
I I like to say that school is about keeping up,
so not procrastinating, whereas work in life is about stepping up.
It's about going the extra mile. It's about looking around corners,
(20:54):
it's about asking how can I be helpful and then
ultimately being helpful. And when it comes to a getting
ahead in the workplace, whether you're striving for a promotion,
more important responsibilities, the respect of your co workers, better relationships,
and expanded network. So much of this comes down to
not just being reactive but proactive, So being the person
(21:16):
that says, hey, I noticed this, how can I be helpful?
Or I noticed this? How we considered that? Or hey,
I was thinking about options A, B and C. I
was thinking of B what do you think? Which is
a very different way of interacting with your coworkers compared
to saying, hey, Joel, Matt, what do we do next,
(21:36):
in which case a lot of managers will say, well,
what do you think? You kind of want to have
that be able to offer up a solution from the
get go right, and it is one of these unspoken
norms in the workplace where these high performers at work
are ones who aren't just going to their managers and
co workers with problems, but are coming to the table
with proposals and solutions. A part of being proactive is
(22:02):
thinking ahead and having the ability to tell your own
story and tell it well. And you kind of talk
about that in the book. Why do you feel like
that is so important? And especially some of us maybe
we're raised in cultures where talking about ourselves was something
that was frowned on. It's always like you're always defecting.
But you have to be able to talk about yourself well, right, yes,
And it's the first question you'll get in every interview,
(22:25):
which is which is, tell me about yourself. As they're
sitting down in the chairs, tell me about yourself. I
can see the hiring manager right now, exactly. And it's
it's a nerve racking question because if you just take
it at face value, which I did, and so many
students that I advised still do, which is, okay, tell
(22:46):
you about myself. So do you want to know about
my hometown? Are you asking about my hobbies? What I
ate for breakfast this morning? It's this ambiguous question, but
there is an unspoken way of answering this question, which
is in the form of what's called the hero's journey,
which is a concept by Joseph Campbell where he looked
(23:08):
at the the tales that have lasted the test of
time and he's looked at, you know, the Anakin Skywalkers
of the world, the Harry Potters of the world, the
Mulans of the world, etcetera. And all of these heroes
and heroines they have a past, a present in the
future where there's a spark that led to this journey.
(23:29):
Starting in the first place, there's a journey that this
hero or heroin goes down of slaying dragons and hopping
over fire pits, all in the interest of pursuing some
broader goal. And when people are asking tell me about yourself,
they're actually in some ways asking for your hero's journey,
(23:50):
where they're asking you to say something like, you know,
I've always been interested in climate change. As someone who
grew up in a coastal community. I saw my dad,
who was a fisherman, struggle to make meetas quota season
after season after season, and over the course of growing
(24:13):
up and pursuing a a degree in environmental science, I
started realizing that, Wow, it's not just an issue that
my dad is facing, but it's a problem that all
of humanity is and will be facing. So as I
think about what I'd like to do in the future,
I'd love to combine my interest in environmentalism with my
(24:34):
training in data science to be able to help the
world make more data driven decisions around how to navigate
this crisis. I just totally made that up. My dad
is not a fisherman, of but but I just looking
together these different bits and pieces of your life that
(24:54):
helped tell a story. And I think sometimes it takes
a little it takes some forethought on the front end
before you get into that interview to be able to
tell that story well, because otherwise it's just bits and pieces,
it's fragments, and you want to be able to weave
it together right, exactly exactly, So what I think of,
of course, you don't want to sound all two canned
um and as if you're reading off a script. So
(25:17):
what I like to do is just have a collection
of stories in my mind. Um where these are, and
as I think about the other more common questions you'll get,
it's tell me about a time when right, it's tell
me about a time when you had conflict in the workplace,
or tell me about a time when you had to
step up, or tell me about a time when you
(25:38):
had to own a project from start to finish. Well,
all of those things are in some ways, also as
asking for your hero's journey. So having a bank of
what sparked your interest, what you've done to further this interest,
and where you'd like to combine things going forward can
help you almost pull ingredients out of the fridge to
(25:58):
cook up a dish depending on whatever people want to eat. Yeah, well,
we kind of are talking about thinking ahead here a
little bitcase. It seems like so much of excelling at
work and getting the job done is thinking ahead. It's
it's amazing. You know what feeling prepared? What that can
do for a meeting or a check in with your boss? Uh?
And so can you share some examples you talk about
(26:18):
this in your book. Can you share some examples of
what thinking ahead could look like for employees? Yeah? The
first one, as I think about meetings, is to mentally
rehearse meetings. So before you walk into the room, asking yourself,
who's going to be in the room, what are they
going to be looking for, what are they going to
ask me for? What are they going to ask me about?
(26:40):
What's my one smart comment or one smart question, what's
my point of view in this topic? And coming prepared
you don't have to necessarily do a book report for
yourself every time, but just even the ten seconds that
it takes to join this zoom call or teams call
or whatnot, refreshing your mind as to what your point
(27:01):
of view is and who might be in the room
and what your contribution is going to be can be
the difference between you getting caught off guard and you
looking like and frankly being put together. So that's one
in something that we all encounter on a daily basis,
which is meetings. The second is around uh thinking back
(27:22):
to the Alec Baldwin uh movie of ABC always be closing,
good old school movie there. Yeah, and ABC is not
just a sales concept. It's just as much an email
thread concept. For example, where there are some people who
will take an email and toss it right back at
(27:43):
you and for example ask when are you available, and
then they'll say, well, I'm available next week. Well, you
could push the agenda forward simply by offering your availability
in the other person's time zone and maybe listing out
three five. In my case, I often will list out
my entire week's availability. That way, all the other person
(28:04):
has to do is pick a time and you're done,
versus having to spend you know, five ten emails going
back and forth and asking well what do you think? Well,
what do you think? There's nothing more annoying than going
back and forth and back and forth about a time
So I agree, like, yeah, just for simplicity sake and
for being helpful, like tossing out those that time availability
is like yeah, definitely one easy thing you can do
(28:27):
to make people on your team's life a little bit easier.
And when it comes to managing workload, you know, in
the workplace, it's important to know the difference between what's
urgent and important, right you talk about that in your book,
like how how do we distinguish between those things? And
why is that such an important part of being an
effective worker? Yes, this is probably one of the more
(28:48):
important concepts, especially as we're all juggling multiple balls at
the same time. Where important I define as centrality, scrutiny,
and criticality, So a lot of ease here. Um. Centrality
is how core is this responsibility to your role? So
if this is something that you're hired to do, that's important.
(29:11):
Scrutiny is who's paying attention? So if the CEO is
asking for an update, that's probably a sign that this
is a high profile project and if someone's asking about it,
you should be responsive to it. And then finally, criticality
is his this something that if this doesn't get done,
nothing else gets done. If so, that's important as well.
(29:33):
And urgency I define as proximity, scrutiny, anxiety, and time sensitivity.
So again a lot of ease here. Where proximity is
probably the easiest to define, which is how close you
are to the deadline if there is a deadline. Scrutiny
we talked about, which is who's paying attention. Anxiety is
something that's unspoken and unwritten, where how anxious are the
(29:54):
people around you to to get things done. I think
of this as if we're driving down a freeway and
you're in the fast lane, but you're driving slowly and
everyone's tailgating you. Everyone's anxious you aren't you're going too slowly.
And then finally, time sensitivity is do things get harder
as time goes on? So I think of this as
(30:15):
scheduling meetings, for example, where the longer you wait, the
more people's calendars will fill up. And so the faster
you get this thing scheduled, the sooner you can get
that hold, the less anxious people will be. And it's
important to think about the difference between important and urgent,
because what often happens is we let the urgent crowd
out the important. And I have a lot of examples
(30:37):
of people who said yes to everything and felt like
they did a lot of work, but none of that
work ultimately mattered, and so come promotion time, they didn't
end up having anything to show despite them being so
swamped with work. And so knowing the difference between important
and urgent can be the difference between you working hard
versus smart, or you getting promoted and not from voted. Yeah,
(31:00):
it's like getting all this stuff crossed off your to
do list, but maybe most of the things that you
were able to accomplish it didn't really matter to the
people who are right above you, um or to your
boss's boss. It's it's getting those those are the important
things that you're you're gonna want to be able to
show to your superiors, right, to show that you're you're
actually effective as opposed to just someone who can accomplish tasks.
(31:22):
Oh for sure. Yeah, it's coming back to the idea
of being proactive. I mean, you don't want to be
that rock that has to be kicked constantly, where someone
kicks you a little bit your roll and then you
tumble and then there's a thud. That's not the person
you want to be. Kind Of looping back to proactivity,
it kind of made me think back to some in
your book as well. You talk about setting expectations and
how being proactive a lot of times means figuring out
(31:45):
what your job is, figuring out what those expectations are.
Can you touch on that a little bit? How is
that going to impact your success at work? Yeah? I
think of every job as having almost a major and
a minor or a main course in a set of
side dishes, in certain whatever analogy or a metaphor you
want here where we all in our day jobs have
(32:08):
have twodus and nice to us. So as I think
back to centrality one of these core tenants, to importance.
If you were hired to do something, or if there's
a project that if this doesn't get done, your head
is on the guillotine. That's all of a sudden important.
And and so when you first join a role or
(32:28):
when you're first approaching a project, that can be helpful
to think about, Okay, where do I need to be perfect,
because this is really what's going to be scrutinized, and
where do I only need to be good enough where
maybe I can cut some corners or not treat this
so urgently or not spend so much time on on
on this and so one of the questions that often
(32:50):
gets overlooked when you're joining a new team or entering
a new role is to ask your manager, Hey, what
do you expect me to have done or accomplished in
by the end of my first three months or six
months or a year, or what do you consider high
priorities and maybe mediocre priorities? Um, I guess people don't
(33:11):
generally like to think of things as low priorities, So
I hesitate to maybe drop that in your first conversation
with your manager. What's the stuff I shouldn't care about
at all? Okay, let's get real here. So I mean,
so much of this is is around doing this hint,
h nudge nudge of Hey, what can I kind of
cut corners on? Which is going to keep you saying.
But you have to sort of approach this conversation in
(33:32):
a in a polite, politically correct way, which is asking, hey,
what's top priority? Because I want to make sure I'm
doing a good job of that exactly. Yeah, that and
that can be difficult when you have a job that
encompasses a lot of responsibilities and you're looking at your
job description and you see all these things. But what
it sounds like you're trying to do here is getting
your your boss, your supervisor to boil it all down
for you. Like, just like you said, at the end
(33:52):
of three months, what what has to be done, what
would what would be nice to have accomplished. I think
that's all smart. We've got a few more questions that
we want to ask you here right after the breaks.
I feel like so far we've kind of touched on
ways to get your career kicked off right uh, And
so after the break, we're actually we want to ask
some questions about kind of moving on from a career
when it comes to looking, you know, towards the next
(34:15):
step in your career. So we'll get to all those
right after this break. All right, we're back to the break.
We're still talking with gorek Ing about the unspoken rules
of career success, and match just hinted to this. We're
gonna talk about maybe moving on from a job you're
(34:37):
you're not so interested in anymore. And Grek, you said
that actually, ideally your next job is one that you
don't even have to apply for. That sounds that sounds
pretty nice. You talk about positioning yourself so that opportunities
are flowing to you, how do you actually make that
happen in reality? Yeah, this is one of the more
important concepts because it's really speaking to not just putting
(35:00):
your head down, but being strategic about maneuvering your way
from where you are to where you want to go.
And I'll illustrate with an example that unfortunately didn't make
it into the book, but it's of a late twenties
someomething who had zero acting experience, had zero experience in Hollywood,
but wanted to break into the entertainment scene and his
(35:21):
journey actually last five years. So he also had patients
in addition to the three c's where he was working
as a business analyst unrelated at all to the entertainment field.
But what he did was he went to entertainment conferences
and strategically sat beside the people that he wanted to meet.
(35:43):
He would introduce himself and strike up a conversation with
those who matter. He'd get their business cards or their
emails and send a thank you email. He'd follow up
with them with life updates. He'd pass on opportunit unities
that these individuals may be interested in. He dug through
(36:05):
his university and even his high school yearbook in search
of people who we're even remotely connected to the entertainment
scene in l A. And then finally he just cold
emailed like mad, and over the course of just putting
himself out there in all these different ways and making
in a habit, he ended up meeting someone who five
(36:26):
years later ended up reaching out to him and saying, Hey,
what are you looking for? And actually, as nicely ties
back to our earlier conversation about the hero's journey, because
when this person reached out and asked what are you
looking for, they're asking for your hero's journey. And this
person ended up saying, while I've done this and this,
this is where I'd like to go. The person who
(36:48):
reached out ended up saying, actually, this is exactly the
role that I'm looking to hire for. Let me forward
your resume over to HR. That's so much better than
what I would have done. I would have just like
looked up like Kate Planchett and Brad pitt On LinkedIn
and I would have liked tried to try to friend
them there, but I'm sure you may have done that
as well. Okay, okay one of the movie star home tours,
(37:10):
like I'll get out here, I start yelling from out
in front of the fence. Uh, well go. You know
you kind of mentioned going to these different conferences sitting
down next to the people who you're hoping to get
to know. That sort of sounds like finding a mentor
to a certain extent, right, because if you can, you know,
if you hit it off and they like you and
it's a conversation you can continue, if that's an email
chain that continues for a while, that can be somebody
(37:32):
who can mentor you. And so how important do you
think that is? And you know, this is one small
example of what a mentor might look like, and so
I'm interested to hear just maybe some other examples too.
But how important is it? And and how do you
find the right mentor for you? Uh? And then actually
make that connection? Say it's an industry where you aren't
able to sit down next to that person you know
at a conference, how do you reach out beyond your
(37:55):
current network. And I think the first thing actually is
to to define mentor in a less scary way. Where
when I was first introduced the to the to the
term and the concept of a mentor, I thought, wow, like,
I don't know anyone in high places. But when I
redefined mentor not as some hot shot person who's high
(38:20):
up and therefore inaccessible. If I instead define mentor as
someone who know something you don't know, or someone who
can help you figure out what you don't know, you
don't know but should know, I start realizing that actually
a mentor could be anybody. My classmates are mentors, my
friends are mentors, family members are mentors. And what it
(38:43):
takes to find these mentors and to nurture these relationships,
it involves what I call climbing the relationship ladder, where
if you imagine a ladder with different wrungs, at the
very bottom are strangers, and just by definition, most people
in the world are going to be strangers to you.
But over the course of recognizing bids and embracing bids,
(39:06):
you can turn someone who's otherwise a stranger into an acquaintance.
And maybe that's a matter of opening the door for
someone or holding the door open, or thanking someone who
delivered an especially good presentation, or asking a question at
an event and following up, or sending a thank you email,
or just simply d m ng someone over Teams or
(39:29):
Zoom or any other video chat platform that we may
be using during our work from home days. All of
these microactions are actually elevating someone from stranger status to
acquaintance status, and then from acquaintance status, you can then
follow up and have maybe a one on one conversation,
in which case they become your allies where you're looking
out for them and they're looking at for you. And
(39:52):
over the course of nurturing those relationships, you may have
a couple of people who you may end up having
deeper conversations with. These come your mentors. And then finally,
if you're looking up the chain of command in your organization,
there are people who are called sponsors, who are people
who are a part of those promotion committees, who really
are high up in your organization and who can bang
(40:15):
the table and say, hey, we need to absolutely give
this opportunity to Joel and Matt. I would trust them
with my life and what it takes to get these
people up isn't to just throw them up there. I
think these are maybe the people that give networking a
bad name, people who meet you for the first time
and are maybe overly transactional, but who bring you up
(40:36):
this relationship ladder, one rung at a time. So I
think it actually nicely brings us back full circle to
where we began, which is finding these hidden opportunities to
turn people who are otherwise strangers into acquaintances, following up,
sending thank you emails, digging through databases, and doing all
of these all the time as a habit. Yeah, I
like that, And I like to the way you kind
(40:57):
of talk about mendership and how you can have like
a few different mentors. It it doesn't have to be sometimes,
I guess growing up, I always felt like asking someone
to be your mentor was like asking them to be
a third parent to you or something like that. Um,
and it feels like this this big ask. And I
could see if someone came up with me and was like,
will you be my mentor, that I would just be
freaked out a little bit. And I think that there's
like a soft way of kind of finding someone who
(41:19):
can help mentor you without it being this uber formal
um relationship that maybe a lot of people might not
want to partake in. Uh, I want to ask you
to grek about, like right now, what's happening kind of
in the workplace has been called the Great resignation. A
lot of people ready to move on to a new job.
So when it comes to leaving, though, there's a right
(41:41):
way and a wrong way to leave. So how would
you recommend someone who is thinking about, you know, moving
on just to another competitor in the same space that
they're in, or moving on to a completely different industry,
or going to work for themselves, Like, however they depart,
how can they leave graciously? I think of this as
a bit of a a litmus test or or three
(42:02):
crates herea that I would encourage folks to to think
about where A you want to leave your team not
feeling blindsided. Be you want to leave your team in
a position where they can keep the show running without you.
And see, you want to leave the team in a
position where they've got line of sight to a successor
(42:24):
who can fill your role. And it's a bit of
a tall order to achieve all three. And I realized
that all three may not be attainable all the time.
But I'd also say that number one is more important
than number two, which is more important than number three.
Where the most important thing is to not leave your
folks blindsided. The second most important is to make sure
(42:47):
that there's continuity, that things aren't just gonna fall to
pieces with you absent. And then three is if you
can maybe even help find someone who can who can
take on your role in the future. At all depends
on the extent of the relationship that you'd want to maintain,
the reputation that you want to leave behind. Where if
(43:08):
you want to not only not burn the bridge, but
leave that bridge smelling like flowers, do all three. If
it's a normal situation, do one and two. And if
you want to leave amicably, which I suspect many of
us do because reputation is so important, then make sure
that you're at least not leaving people blindsided. Right, Yeah,
(43:30):
you know, at the very least do number one. So
how do you do that then, because obviously you probably
don't want to forecasts. It's like, hey, I'm gonna be
out here in six months. That sounds like too much time.
But if you're like, like, no, actually, you're out of here,
there's Friday. Yeah, but then if you go in that
morning and you're like, this is my last day, uh,
And so obviously there's there's some place in between. And
so from a time frame standpoint, what's what do you
(43:52):
what do you feel like is ideal? Uh? And then
what are the best ways of actually going about making
that announcement? Yeah, you know, this is a bit of
a tricky question because I know that if you go
onto Google, people will say, well, it's two weeks. If
it's two weeks and one day, that's too long, And
it's two weeks minus one day, it's too short. I
actually came up with this sort of three pronged litmus
(44:14):
test as a way of hopefully helping folks think about
what it means to not surprise your co workers. For
your own individual context, it maybe two weeks for your
co workers to not feel blindsided. It maybe a month.
I've left jobs before where I've actually given that three
month notice because I knew that my role was one
(44:36):
that was hard to to to backfill. So I'm going
to give you a bit of that cop out answer
of saying, make sure you're mindful of these three and
you will likely for your own circumstances. Come upon is
it two weeks? Is at three weeks? Is at four weeks?
Kind of thing. Yeah. In a recent article Goork, you
mentioned that everyone is the captain of their own career,
(44:57):
and if you don't make it happen, it's not going
to happen. And I think that is probably a good
way to encourage us to take the reins of our
own lives and of our our futures and what it
looks like to continue to progress either in the career
that we're in or to move on to something you know,
in the in the near future that we're more more
excited about. What final advice do you have for How
(45:19):
the Money listeners when it comes to steering their career
towards success. Well, given that this is the how to
Money podcasts, that's us. I'll frame this props around capital,
where I know in a number of prior episodes you
talk about the trade off between time and money, as
(45:41):
as as two forms of capital or currency. As I
think about capital, I think of it as things that
we can spend and accumulate. Maybe not time, although maybe
you can save a bit of time. We have a
finite amount of time. When I start thinking about capital
in the context of our careers, I start thinking about
how there are really three additional forms of capital. One
(46:05):
is human capital, which is what you know and can do.
The second is social capital, which is who you know.
And then the final one is reputational capital, which is
who knows you and what they know you for. And
when I think about our careers, it's really a matter
of playing your cards well across these five forms of
(46:25):
capital and making sure that you're making the right trade
offs where maybe it's not all about the money, and
it's about the human capital, the learning that you'll get.
Maybe it's about signing up for this project so you
can meet more people. Maybe it's about building a good
reputation so that you can use this opportunity as a
(46:46):
stepping stone to that next opportunity. So being mindful of
how you're pulling these levers can hopefully help folks better
navigate these unfamiliar situations. That is great advice and makes
sense because as there are going to be I mean,
we should probably be paying attention to all of them.
But I think there are certain forms of capital here
that you mentioned that are going to be more important
(47:08):
to us as individuals, there might be these different areas
that we want to pursue more than others because they
just mean more to us. And so I think kind
of starting with that end in mind can definitely inform
the decisions that we make as we advanced through our careers.
This has been a really insightful conversation. Where can can
folks go to learn more about you as well as
what else you have going on? Yeah, the best way
(47:30):
to stay in touch is through my website. It's gorik
dot com. That's g O R I c K dot
c O M. I'm on the different social media platforms
which you'll see on my website, whether it's Twitter, Instagram, TikTok,
even uh and especially LinkedIn. So feel free to reach
out and I would love to stay in touch. This
is actually a bid, by the way, this is a
(47:51):
bid to your audience that I see reaching out takes
advantage exactly. Awesome, Glary, Well, hey, thanks so much for
joining us on the show. This is a lot of fun.
Thank you so much. This is an amazing time. Thank
you alright, Joel, what a very insightful conversation. I feel
like we just had here at go work. I feel
like his book, it's a book telling you how to
(48:11):
do everything but your job, right, Like, like, we all
have different professions, and we all were essentially hired for
one specific task or maybe a couple of tasks related
to the one job that you're supposed to do, but
go Work's book is just all about all the other
things that we have to do in addition to that
one task to make sure that we're successful, to make
sure that we're compatible with with those around us. Yeah,
(48:31):
and I feel like it's a lot of his advice,
Like he said, he drew some from marriage advice and
what it looks like to be, uh, you know, a
good coworker in the workplace, And so I think some
of the advice he gives is is eminently applicable to
the work you're doing and how to do it well,
but it's also applicable to know being a better human being,
communicating better with the people that you know live under
(48:52):
the same roof with, or family members who you know
live always away. Like it's just, yeah, it's a really
good book with a lot of helpful stuff, but yeah,
what is you're a big takeaway from that combo? So
I liked how he redefined what a mentor is, because
essentially it seems like this very daunting, intimidating word. Oh
sort of like you said, you know, like will you
be my mentor? It's like, oh man, I'm freaking out
(49:13):
over here, like I don't know if I'm ready for
that kind of responsibility. Right I've already got three kids.
I don't even another one, or like before you had kids,
are just like, oh, I'm only twenty eight, like like
I'm not ready for this, uh, this kind of commitment.
But I love how he defined it, which is it
can be as simple as finding somebody who is one
step down further down the path than you are. It
can be somebody who just knows one more thing than
(49:34):
you do, and they could be a mentor. To me,
that doesn't sound like a mentor. But maybe what that
means is we should just completely get rid of that term,
because I'm afraid that that's keeping people from reaching out
to people and thinking about those relationships in that way.
It doesn't have to be this Obi Wan Andakin Skywalker
relationship where where you're passing the skills down from you know,
(49:55):
I'm mature Jedi nights down to like a kid in training.
Will you be my Yoda. But yeah, I just found
that specifically really helpful the way he redefined what a
mentor could be in your life. Yeah, yeah, that was good. Yeah.
So how about you, what was your big takeaway from
this convo? Okay, I think one of the biggest things
that stood out to me was when he was talking
about when you're going to college, you're keeping up, and
(50:17):
when you get in the workplace, it's all about stepping up.
And I can totally identify with that, because if you
bring that college mentality in, like I just gotta show
up to class on time, turning my paper by the deadline,
you feel like you're you are just trying to get
by and you're trying to hope, hopefully at least keep
up that be average or whatever. And you know, in
the workplace, there is if you want to get ahead,
(50:39):
like if you want to succeed, if you want a promotion,
if you want to be able to move up the
ladder and hopefully increase your earnings, which on how the money, Like,
we're down with you increasing your earnings. We think that's
a good thing. Then there are things that you have
to pay attention to and you can't treat it like
you did college. You have to be more about stepping up,
and that does involve proactivity, right. You're gonna have to
work on your communication style and you're gonna have to
(51:01):
think ahead when it comes to what jobs are the
most crucial, which once you you need to get done.
You even have to change your approach to meetings, which
is one of the things he said in this interview.
So yeah, I don't know. I think that's a really
important distinction to make. If you're still kind of thinking
about your work like you did going to college, in
all likelihood, you're gonna be kind of stuck and you're
gonna feel stuck um after after a little while. Yeah,
(51:23):
be average, which you said you can't. You can't get
into Harvard with a B average. No, no, no, I'm
not saying go aage. You gotta have a four part
for everyone out there. But I mean we're kind of
joking about just keeping up in school, but even four
folks who are in school, if you are able to
even at a at an earlier age, to switch that mentality,
I think from keeping up two stepping up mentality. If
(51:44):
you're in school and you're stepping up, you're going to
be the class president. You're gonna stand out from all
of the rest. You're gonna be the one getting the
job offers before you've even graduated. And that's the kind
of situation, uh, you want to find yourself in if
you're a college graduate. But definitely, like you said, those
are the things that you need to do within a
professional environment as well. But let's go ahead and get
back to the beer that you and I enjoyed on
(52:05):
this episode today. You and I both had a Belgian
Aloha and this is a Belgian triple with hibiscus brewed
in Lewis Center, Ohio. Never heard of this brewery. This
one was sent to us by Scotts. Thank you so
much for donating this one plus another one that we're
gonna enjoy here on the podcast. Joel, what were your thoughts? Yeah, man,
this one was light and refreshing, and it really did
(52:26):
have like a little bit of Belgium and a little
bit of Hawaii mixed in, you know. It had had
some of those Belgian notes of a classic triple, some
of that like Belgian spice thrown in there, while at
the same time the hybiscus gave it a little bit
more of a tropical vibe it was. I would say
it was refreshing, it was tasty. Um. I yeah, I
enjoyed it, and it's not necessarily the kind of beer
I normally go for. Belgian triples aren't normally my thing.
(52:48):
I think sometimes those Belgian spices are actually a little
overwhelming to my pallette. But this one was kind of
muted in that way, so I appreciated because of the hibiscus.
I assume those those Uhltal notes that the hibiscus was
able to bring to this beer. Like when we poured it,
I was like, oh, this is a really pretty beer.
It was like halfway between like pink and orange, was
like a rose or something. It is also on the
can it actually says that it says this is a
(53:09):
French slash Belgian, a le that's rosie, bubbly and strong
on the finish. Totally true. It definitely kind of had
those rose vibes going on. I really enjoyed this one,
and I agree, yeah, it didn't have those heavy kind
of triple clove kind of spices. It was almost more
just sort of like a muted Belgian. Herbally notes that
it was able to show up with but either way,
(53:30):
we really enjoyed this one, and Scott, thank you again
for sending this one for us to enjoy on the podcast,
no doubt. All right, well that's gonna do it for
this episode. Folks who want show notes and links to
go Rick's book and his website, you can go to
our website at how to money dot com. That's right,
and so that's gonna be it, dude. Until next time,
Best friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I and
Matt and today we're talking the unspoken rules of career
success with Gore King. Getting ahead in life and succeeding
(00:28):
in your career depends on just a lot more than
doing a great job. Just because you're a competent software
engineer or a nurse or or whatever it is that
you do, that doesn't mean that you will automatically climb
the ranks and see your salary increase with promotions, with
additional responsibility. And that's because there are things that managers
and things that bosses expect but they never explained to you.
(00:51):
This is the basis for Gorik Ng's best selling book,
The Unspoken Rules Secrets to Starting your Career off Right.
Gorick is a career advisor at Harvard focusing on coaching
first generation low income students. But then before that, he
gained plenty of professional experience from working in management, consulting,
investment banking, and as a researcher with the Harvard Business School.
(01:14):
But regardless of your specific job, works added to discuss
the different unspoken ways that you can find success in
your career. Go Rick, thank you for joining us today
on the podcast, Joel Matt, thanks so much for having
me throw the be here. Yeah, well we're thrilled to
have you go wreck and yeah, this is gonna be
really I think a really interesting conversation. Your research and
your history are just gonna make for really like, yeah,
(01:37):
there's a lot of good stuff to cover here today.
But before we get into some of that stuff, I
want to know Matt and I we like craft beer,
as you know, and uh, it is something that we
spend a decent bit of money on in the here
and now while trying to save and invest well for
the future. So, yeah, do you have something like that
in your life? A splurge that your make, you're making
while you're also prioritizing putting some money away in your
(01:59):
savings account and also like in those investment accounts. It
has to be ice cream. I like to work for
my ice cream, so it needs to be chunky, need
to put in some effort for it to go down. Wait,
what do you mean that you have like a favorite
brand or something like that. Yeah, you said it needs
to be chunky. What do you mean that there's something
like Moose tracks or what? Yeah, like Moose tracks, anything
(02:20):
that I need to chew on. And funny, funny you say,
what does chunky mean? Because I've actually gotten that question
from a number of I've ever heard ice cream described
as chunky before, but you're talking about in the beer world,
which they call them ad junks. So all the additional
bits of candy or chocolate, moose tracks, butterfinger, that kind
of stuff. That's I guess that's what you're looking for
(02:41):
in your ice cream. Yes, exactly. And maybe I'm in
search of a new adjective then, because I've been confusing
a lot of people with my use of the word chunky. Well,
I guess it's the opposite of Down here, we've got
a lot of Chick fil A's and ice Dream is
the ice cream that they serve, and it's just a
super smooth, very creamy, like the hand turned stuff that
your grandmother's it does. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of cut
(03:03):
like that, like an old school homemade flavor going on
with it. But it's funny that you mentioned that because
I guess it was a couple of months ago we
talked with Clark Howard and he also that's his splurge.
He trying to hook them up and the top dollar
on really nice ice cream. So you two how to
get together do a little tour of the country and
visit all the best ice cream spots. Uh yeah, but Gary,
(03:23):
let's we want to dig into your background just a
little bit before we kind of start talking about your book,
your career expertise. It basically started when you were pretty young,
at the age of fourteen. Can you share that story
with us? It sounds good. Yeah, it's kind of weird
that it all began back when most of us, I
certainly were focused on playing video games more so than
(03:44):
building our careers. Where I was fourteen years old and
my mom, who is a single mother, came home with
a pink slip and it said that she was laid
off from the sewing machine factory job that she had
held since she was twelve years old. And I, as
the person in the house who knew how to speak
English and get onto the internet, became the person to
(04:08):
step up. And so I ended up spending recesses learning
to write resumes and cover letters, afternoons at the public
library looking for jobs, and evenings coaching my mom. I
put very thick, italicized bolded quotes around coach. It was
really the blind leading of blind there Um, we applied
(04:29):
to hundreds of jobs and didn't end up getting any callbacks,
where my mom ended up actually returning to school, getting
an early childcare assistant certificate, and so things worked out.
But it was that experience that led to me wondering
what was I missing? How could I, as someone who
did well in school, who saw myself as resourceful, not
(04:51):
be able to help my mom get back on her feet.
And it took a number of years for me to
find the answer. And it actually took a few experience
ass after that to find the answer, one of which
came in high school where I met a student from
another school who had applied to Yale University and had
gotten in, And over the course of getting to know
(05:13):
her and having her take me under her wings, I
learned that getting into college required a lot more than
just tossing over an essay and hoping for the best.
There was a certain style of essay that people were expecting.
There's a certain way of holding your hands your teacher's
hands through the admissions process, the recommendation process that no
one really tells you about. And these unspoken rules as
(05:36):
I call them now ended up working. I ended up
becoming the first of my family to go to Harvard,
to to go to college in general, but was lucky
enough to have gotten into Harvard as an undergraduate. And
when I was at Harvard, it was the first time
that I was within such close proximity to so many
people who could call their parents, doctors and lawyers and senators,
(05:58):
people that I would read about in the newspapers but
I didn't even know I could interact with. And over
the course of getting to know these classmates and friends,
started realizing that there's really this informal curriculum that some
of us end up getting over the dinner table from
our parents, mentors, siblings, that many more of us, folks
(06:20):
from my background, for example, end up never getting and
end up having to learn through trial and error and
so over the course of my early career into this day,
I started reflecting on, Wow, well, what responsibility do I
have to hopefully pay a smoother path for people coming
after me? And that all has led to me writing
this book and hoping to spend the next stretch of
(06:40):
my career paving a smoother path for people coming after me. Yeah,
in your book, you actually say that there are insiders
and outsiders, even in like the prestigious world of a
college like Harvard, and you felt like an outsider. So
why was that? Like, what what were those what was
causing those feelings? Yeah, it was this feeling of looking
(07:03):
left looking right, almost as if it were a middle
school dance, and seeing everyone grooving on the dance floor
and you looking left looking right and standing there awkwardly
being like, there's something I'm missing here. And I gotta
say I totally identify with that because that sounds like
exactly what happened to me in seventh grade. So you
(07:23):
and I both y'all just did there awkwardly, and me
and my friend Javier, we're just playing tag. Where were
the idiot sixth graders? That Everyone's just like, what are
you doing? This is the dance. It happens on a
regular basis at a higher education institution. It happens all
the time in in the workplace, and it manifests itself
(07:44):
in the form of in in college, for example, some
students really knowing how to navigate the system and building
good relationship with their with their professors, knowing how to
navigate recruiting events and job fairs, and getting jobs that
aren't even advertised. And then in the workplace, you have
some folks who put their heads down and work hard
(08:07):
and wonder why they're not getting that promotion or that
high profile project. Meanwhile, someone else who may be working
less hard, or less or or less competent end up
getting all that visibility. It's not a matter of what
you know, it's a matter of who you know when.
It's not a matter of whether you're just simply fulfilling
the job description that you've been assigned, But it's about
(08:29):
how you go above and beyond in these unspoken, unwritten ways. Yeah,
and and even so, like you endured some real hardships
growing up, and yeah, like you said, it wasn't the
smoothest path for you to get where you are now
even though you were a hard worker. You know, you're
we're talking about these unspoken rules, Like it's almost as
if like you were learning proper etiquette. Uh, It's it's
not something that it's necessarily directly it's hot, but it's
(08:51):
something that sometimes folks are able to learn either second
hand or they see it demonstrated, or there's there's somebody
else in their life that is able to kind of
meant for them or shepherd them. But yeah, like I
don't know. The more we kind of dove in your book,
I was just like, man, this really feels like being
taught like manners or or just proper etiquete or like
Southern etiquette or something different that isn't as widespread as
(09:12):
you would expect. Yeah, And the thing about so many
of these unspoken rules is they can come across as
common sense. And I've gotten that feedback from some people
who would say, why are you just writing down common sense?
And it actually led to a point where I was
contemplating the subtitle of of the book and one of
the options of like a couple dozen was common sense.
(09:34):
That's only common sense looking back. And that's how I
feel about so many of these rules. Yeah, that's yeah,
that's interesting some of them, Like when I'm reading them,
I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense
intuitively to me. But you're probably right, But part of
it is because of like the water x Wamen, like
how I grew up. Well, I think it probably too
depends on just the kind of work that you're doing.
I think there might be a certain professions, certain fields
(09:56):
where maybe interacting with other folks isn't as important. So
there maybe there is less reading people's emotions or understanding
communication style, different things like that, And maybe it might
only be about the work. But I think as our
world evolves, it's clear that it's not just about doing
really good work. You have to be able to integrate
into these systems, uh, and to do that well in
(10:17):
order to be successful. Yeah, and and go right now,
you help first generation low income students so that they
don't have to go through like trial and error scenarios, right,
like some of the some of the ones that you
went through in your life. And what would you say, like,
are navigating these unspoken rules like the biggest hurdles that
they faced when it comes to succeeding in the workplace. Yeah,
(10:37):
it's say the unspoken rules are a big piece. I'd
say Another piece is around confidence and a sentence I
often find myself saying to to first gen low income
college students and those who are coming from underrepresented backgrounds
is that there's a difference between confidence and competence. Where
competence is how much you know and can do. Confidence
(11:01):
is how much you think you know and can do
and you need both. Where I often hear stories of people,
and I was certainly in this situation myself where you're
in a meeting and you have this idea that you
want to bring up, but you're thinking to yourself and
you have a self talk of hm, is this a
stupid comment? Or is this common sense? And so you're
(11:25):
you're debating with yourself constantly about is even worth raising
this idea? And five minutes later, someone else says the
exact same thing and gets all the credit. In those situations,
I've certainly found myself in this situation a fair bit,
and I start realizing, wait a second, is it the
case that this actually was a smarter comment than I
(11:47):
had thought? And or this other person may just have
lower expectations than I do for what makes a smart comment,
And in having lower standards, they they ended up getting
all the credit and getting ahead. That's the difference between
competence and confidence. Yeah, it's almost as if overthinking it
can just yeah sometimes. Uh. How many of these unspoken
(12:10):
rules do you think have to do with just cultural
differences between whether it be just the different backgrounds that
families have or or where individuals are raised. In the
United States, that's a big one for sure, um, and
I would say that these unspoken rules are becoming more
and more important as companies have more global teams and
(12:30):
are hiring folks from very different backgrounds, where some of
these cultural norms may not have permeated the waters in
the same way that they may have permeated the waters
for for for for these so called insiders. And so
when I think of working cultures across geography, is certainly
there are some that are more hierarchical, where you speak
(12:54):
when spoken to. There are others that are less hierarchical,
where you're expected to speak up, can ribute, disagree with
your manager, and in fact disagreement is is encouraged and
and rewarded. And then they're also uh. As I think
about my Asian upbringing, for example, certainly there's this unspoken
(13:17):
norm or hidden expectation that you respect your elders, and
when someone who is higher ranking, older, more experienced, is speaking,
you'd wait your turn, and you'd not only just wait
your turn, but you'd withhold your comments until you're called upon,
if you are even called upon. And so there is
(13:38):
some unlearning and relearning. That's not to say that there's
a right or wrong way of doing things. To your point,
it's very much a matter of cultural differences, where in
American working culture, because of this difference between confidence and competence,
the people who make it up to the top aren't
necessarily the most competent. They might just be the most confident.
(13:59):
And so there is this this phenomenon where the system
as it stands, at least in American corporate life, doesn't
always reward people for the characteristics that organizations really care about.
M Yeah, that's interesting. Well, we we want to talk
more about the unspoken rules and you know, get into
(14:19):
some of what they are and talk about how you
can you know, think about those so that you can
improve your work habits inside of the place where you're working.
And we'll get to yea some more questions with Gorik
about that right after this break. All right, we're back.
(14:42):
We're speaking with go working about his book The Unspoken
Rules of Career Success as our topic today, and your
book is it's kind of a how to guide. There
are things like we like we said earlier that like
managers expect you to implicitly know, but many of these
things are never explo Lea's hot in your first chapter
in your book, it's it's all about the three cs.
(15:04):
You've already mentioned one of them, which is competence, but
the other ones are commitment and compatibility. You sort of
introduced this as the framework for the book, And so
why do you feel that it is just so important
to prove yourself in all three of these areas? Specifically, Yeah,
it's because when we show up in the workplace and
I define workplace as in an interview, in your first
(15:24):
day in a new role, and frankly thereafter until you retire,
the people around you, your clients, partners, managers, coworkers, they're
sizing you up and they're asking themselves three questions. Question
one is can you do this job well? Which is competence.
Question two is are you excited to be here? Which
(15:47):
is commitment? And question three is do we get along?
Which is compatibility? Competence, commitment, compatibility. The three c's your job, frankly,
all of our jobs, it's to convince the people around
us to answer yes to all three questions all the time. Um,
and I'll maybe augment my my statement earlier by saying
(16:10):
that supposedly the three c's count in the realm of
dating as well, so it may not just be a
workplace concept, could it potentially be a life concept. That's
something that's a more recent shower thought for you. Now, Yeah,
I feel like, actually I heard you refer to like
marriage advice and how building compatibility with co workers can
(16:30):
be similar to building compatibility inside of like a long
term partnership, Like, yeah, do you think there are some
similarities there? Yeah, I'm thrilled you're mentioning this because this
is actually one of my favorite ideas from the book,
even though I don't spend all that much time talking
about it. It's this idea of bids, which is an
idea that was created by a psychologist and a marriage
(16:50):
expert named Dr John Gottman. Dr John Gottman observed couples
that stay together and have happy marriages and compared them
to couples who end up separating. And his question was
what separates those who stayed together from those who separate,
and he found that the lowest common denominator it was
(17:11):
something called bids. Where I'll illustrate it with an example
where if your significant other says something like I'm hungry,
and let's say you're driving down the freeway, You've got
three options you can either pull off of the McDonald's
this one right exactly, you can ignore the bid, so
(17:31):
just keep driving, pretend as if they didn't say anything.
Or the third one is you can smack down that
bid and you can say, didn't you just eat? Or
aren't you trying to lose weight? Don't do that one?
And uh, as you might be able to guess there's
a right answer to to this question. I suspect that
(17:53):
you all are thinking of the right answer now, but
just to toss it back to you, what's your guess?
And it's like, yeah, what you're feeling like? Uh like something?
I'm like very like analytical. It's all right, are you
hungry in like the next two minutes? Hungry? Are you
talking in like the next two hours? You can run
along trip, you know, sometimes you just want to make
good time, or you might be like, I brought a
granola bar. It's in my backpack, let me grab before
(18:14):
you Exactly, so I can already tell that you're you're
in positive relationship territory, because according to this research, the
right answer is to recognize the bid, which you both
have done, and to positively embrace this bid, which you
have also both done, and this is what is the
lowest common denominator to what makes for a happy relationship
(18:38):
in marriage. And yes, this is a marriage concept, but
as I think about relationship building more broadly and career
building more broadly, I think we can translate this idea
of bidding into the workplace, where every email, every meeting
that you're invited to, every exchange of eye contact, that
too is a bid. It's an invitation. It's a hidden
(19:00):
opportunity for you to step up, build a relationship that
may not have otherwise existed, make an impact, and potentially
grow your career. And so this bidding idea is one
that I've been thinking about a lot because and and
maybe this comes back to the first generation low income
college students that that I advise at Harvard, where I
(19:22):
can't help but think that we all, over the course
of our lives, are almost walking down a similar art
gallery together, and we're all looking at the same painting,
but we're coming to two different conclusions around what this
painting depicts. One of us could see this painting and
see the boats in the foreground or the sunset in
the background. Someone else could see the trees in the distance.
(19:47):
And I think of this walking down an art gallery
slash observing a painting comparison is apt for real life
because over the course of our everyday lives, we're going
to be faced with so many bids, so many opportunities.
But it takes a special mindset and awareness to be
able to recognize these bids and to embrace these bits.
(20:07):
That's the key to to getting in and getting ahead.
That's going to be the key to working with others, especially.
I mean, I guess if you're constantly slamming down there bid, Yeah,
that's not gonna go well, doesn't lead to very good
team work. And maybe if you're working by yourself, that's
something that you don't have to consider quite as much.
But certainly if you're working with a partner or working
on a team, you've got to keep that in mind. Gorik.
(20:30):
One of the unspoken rules that you mentioned in your
book proactivity, What does that look like? Why? Why is
this so important when it comes to getting ahead in
your career? M H. Well, for the early career, folks,
I I like to say that school is about keeping up,
so not procrastinating, whereas work in life is about stepping up.
It's about going the extra mile. It's about looking around corners,
(20:54):
it's about asking how can I be helpful and then
ultimately being helpful. And when it comes to a getting
ahead in the workplace, whether you're striving for a promotion,
more important responsibilities, the respect of your co workers, better relationships,
and expanded network. So much of this comes down to
not just being reactive but proactive, So being the person
(21:16):
that says, hey, I noticed this, how can I be helpful?
Or I noticed this? How we considered that? Or hey,
I was thinking about options A, B and C. I
was thinking of B what do you think? Which is
a very different way of interacting with your coworkers compared
to saying, hey, Joel, Matt, what do we do next,
(21:36):
in which case a lot of managers will say, well,
what do you think? You kind of want to have
that be able to offer up a solution from the
get go right, and it is one of these unspoken
norms in the workplace where these high performers at work
are ones who aren't just going to their managers and
co workers with problems, but are coming to the table
with proposals and solutions. A part of being proactive is
(22:02):
thinking ahead and having the ability to tell your own
story and tell it well. And you kind of talk
about that in the book. Why do you feel like
that is so important? And especially some of us maybe
we're raised in cultures where talking about ourselves was something
that was frowned on. It's always like you're always defecting.
But you have to be able to talk about yourself well, right, yes,
And it's the first question you'll get in every interview,
(22:25):
which is which is, tell me about yourself. As they're
sitting down in the chairs, tell me about yourself. I
can see the hiring manager right now, exactly. And it's
it's a nerve racking question because if you just take
it at face value, which I did, and so many
students that I advised still do, which is, okay, tell
(22:46):
you about myself. So do you want to know about
my hometown? Are you asking about my hobbies? What I
ate for breakfast this morning? It's this ambiguous question, but
there is an unspoken way of answering this question, which
is in the form of what's called the hero's journey,
which is a concept by Joseph Campbell where he looked
(23:08):
at the the tales that have lasted the test of
time and he's looked at, you know, the Anakin Skywalkers
of the world, the Harry Potters of the world, the
Mulans of the world, etcetera. And all of these heroes
and heroines they have a past, a present in the
future where there's a spark that led to this journey.
(23:29):
Starting in the first place, there's a journey that this
hero or heroin goes down of slaying dragons and hopping
over fire pits, all in the interest of pursuing some
broader goal. And when people are asking tell me about yourself,
they're actually in some ways asking for your hero's journey,
(23:50):
where they're asking you to say something like, you know,
I've always been interested in climate change. As someone who
grew up in a coastal community. I saw my dad,
who was a fisherman, struggle to make meetas quota season
after season after season, and over the course of growing
(24:13):
up and pursuing a a degree in environmental science, I
started realizing that, Wow, it's not just an issue that
my dad is facing, but it's a problem that all
of humanity is and will be facing. So as I
think about what I'd like to do in the future,
I'd love to combine my interest in environmentalism with my
(24:34):
training in data science to be able to help the
world make more data driven decisions around how to navigate
this crisis. I just totally made that up. My dad
is not a fisherman, of but but I just looking
together these different bits and pieces of your life that
(24:54):
helped tell a story. And I think sometimes it takes
a little it takes some forethought on the front end
before you get into that interview to be able to
tell that story well, because otherwise it's just bits and pieces,
it's fragments, and you want to be able to weave
it together right, exactly exactly, So what I think of,
of course, you don't want to sound all two canned
um and as if you're reading off a script. So
(25:17):
what I like to do is just have a collection
of stories in my mind. Um where these are, and
as I think about the other more common questions you'll get,
it's tell me about a time when right, it's tell
me about a time when you had conflict in the workplace,
or tell me about a time when you had to
step up, or tell me about a time when you
(25:38):
had to own a project from start to finish. Well,
all of those things are in some ways, also as
asking for your hero's journey. So having a bank of
what sparked your interest, what you've done to further this interest,
and where you'd like to combine things going forward can
help you almost pull ingredients out of the fridge to
(25:58):
cook up a dish depending on whatever people want to eat. Yeah, well,
we kind of are talking about thinking ahead here a
little bitcase. It seems like so much of excelling at
work and getting the job done is thinking ahead. It's
it's amazing. You know what feeling prepared? What that can
do for a meeting or a check in with your boss? Uh?
And so can you share some examples you talk about
(26:18):
this in your book. Can you share some examples of
what thinking ahead could look like for employees? Yeah? The
first one, as I think about meetings, is to mentally
rehearse meetings. So before you walk into the room, asking yourself,
who's going to be in the room, what are they
going to be looking for, what are they going to
ask me for? What are they going to ask me about?
(26:40):
What's my one smart comment or one smart question, what's
my point of view in this topic? And coming prepared
you don't have to necessarily do a book report for
yourself every time, but just even the ten seconds that
it takes to join this zoom call or teams call
or whatnot, refreshing your mind as to what your point
(27:01):
of view is and who might be in the room
and what your contribution is going to be can be
the difference between you getting caught off guard and you
looking like and frankly being put together. So that's one
in something that we all encounter on a daily basis,
which is meetings. The second is around uh thinking back
(27:22):
to the Alec Baldwin uh movie of ABC always be closing,
good old school movie there. Yeah, and ABC is not
just a sales concept. It's just as much an email
thread concept. For example, where there are some people who
will take an email and toss it right back at
(27:43):
you and for example ask when are you available, and
then they'll say, well, I'm available next week. Well, you
could push the agenda forward simply by offering your availability
in the other person's time zone and maybe listing out
three five. In my case, I often will list out
my entire week's availability. That way, all the other person
(28:04):
has to do is pick a time and you're done,
versus having to spend you know, five ten emails going
back and forth and asking well what do you think? Well,
what do you think? There's nothing more annoying than going
back and forth and back and forth about a time
So I agree, like, yeah, just for simplicity sake and
for being helpful, like tossing out those that time availability
is like yeah, definitely one easy thing you can do
(28:27):
to make people on your team's life a little bit easier.
And when it comes to managing workload, you know, in
the workplace, it's important to know the difference between what's
urgent and important, right you talk about that in your book,
like how how do we distinguish between those things? And
why is that such an important part of being an
effective worker? Yes, this is probably one of the more
(28:48):
important concepts, especially as we're all juggling multiple balls at
the same time. Where important I define as centrality, scrutiny,
and criticality, So a lot of ease here. Um. Centrality
is how core is this responsibility to your role? So
if this is something that you're hired to do, that's important.
(29:11):
Scrutiny is who's paying attention? So if the CEO is
asking for an update, that's probably a sign that this
is a high profile project and if someone's asking about it,
you should be responsive to it. And then finally, criticality
is his this something that if this doesn't get done,
nothing else gets done. If so, that's important as well.
(29:33):
And urgency I define as proximity, scrutiny, anxiety, and time sensitivity.
So again a lot of ease here. Where proximity is
probably the easiest to define, which is how close you
are to the deadline if there is a deadline. Scrutiny
we talked about, which is who's paying attention. Anxiety is
something that's unspoken and unwritten, where how anxious are the
(29:54):
people around you to to get things done. I think
of this as if we're driving down a freeway and
you're in the fast lane, but you're driving slowly and
everyone's tailgating you. Everyone's anxious you aren't you're going too slowly.
And then finally, time sensitivity is do things get harder
as time goes on? So I think of this as
(30:15):
scheduling meetings, for example, where the longer you wait, the
more people's calendars will fill up. And so the faster
you get this thing scheduled, the sooner you can get
that hold, the less anxious people will be. And it's
important to think about the difference between important and urgent,
because what often happens is we let the urgent crowd
out the important. And I have a lot of examples
(30:37):
of people who said yes to everything and felt like
they did a lot of work, but none of that
work ultimately mattered, and so come promotion time, they didn't
end up having anything to show despite them being so
swamped with work. And so knowing the difference between important
and urgent can be the difference between you working hard
versus smart, or you getting promoted and not from voted. Yeah,
(31:00):
it's like getting all this stuff crossed off your to
do list, but maybe most of the things that you
were able to accomplish it didn't really matter to the
people who are right above you, um or to your
boss's boss. It's it's getting those those are the important
things that you're you're gonna want to be able to
show to your superiors, right, to show that you're you're
actually effective as opposed to just someone who can accomplish tasks.
(31:22):
Oh for sure. Yeah, it's coming back to the idea
of being proactive. I mean, you don't want to be
that rock that has to be kicked constantly, where someone
kicks you a little bit your roll and then you
tumble and then there's a thud. That's not the person
you want to be. Kind Of looping back to proactivity,
it kind of made me think back to some in
your book as well. You talk about setting expectations and
how being proactive a lot of times means figuring out
(31:45):
what your job is, figuring out what those expectations are.
Can you touch on that a little bit? How is
that going to impact your success at work? Yeah? I
think of every job as having almost a major and
a minor or a main course in a set of
side dishes, in certain whatever analogy or a metaphor you
want here where we all in our day jobs have
(32:08):
have twodus and nice to us. So as I think
back to centrality one of these core tenants, to importance.
If you were hired to do something, or if there's
a project that if this doesn't get done, your head
is on the guillotine. That's all of a sudden important.
And and so when you first join a role or
(32:28):
when you're first approaching a project, that can be helpful
to think about, Okay, where do I need to be perfect,
because this is really what's going to be scrutinized, and
where do I only need to be good enough where
maybe I can cut some corners or not treat this
so urgently or not spend so much time on on
on this and so one of the questions that often
(32:50):
gets overlooked when you're joining a new team or entering
a new role is to ask your manager, Hey, what
do you expect me to have done or accomplished in
by the end of my first three months or six
months or a year, or what do you consider high
priorities and maybe mediocre priorities? Um, I guess people don't
(33:11):
generally like to think of things as low priorities, So
I hesitate to maybe drop that in your first conversation
with your manager. What's the stuff I shouldn't care about
at all? Okay, let's get real here. So I mean,
so much of this is is around doing this hint,
h nudge nudge of Hey, what can I kind of
cut corners on? Which is going to keep you saying.
But you have to sort of approach this conversation in
(33:32):
a in a polite, politically correct way, which is asking, hey,
what's top priority? Because I want to make sure I'm
doing a good job of that exactly. Yeah, that and
that can be difficult when you have a job that
encompasses a lot of responsibilities and you're looking at your
job description and you see all these things. But what
it sounds like you're trying to do here is getting
your your boss, your supervisor to boil it all down
for you. Like, just like you said, at the end
(33:52):
of three months, what what has to be done, what
would what would be nice to have accomplished. I think
that's all smart. We've got a few more questions that
we want to ask you here right after the breaks.
I feel like so far we've kind of touched on
ways to get your career kicked off right uh, And
so after the break, we're actually we want to ask
some questions about kind of moving on from a career
when it comes to looking, you know, towards the next
(34:15):
step in your career. So we'll get to all those
right after this break. All right, we're back to the break.
We're still talking with gorek Ing about the unspoken rules
of career success, and match just hinted to this. We're
gonna talk about maybe moving on from a job you're
(34:37):
you're not so interested in anymore. And Grek, you said
that actually, ideally your next job is one that you
don't even have to apply for. That sounds that sounds
pretty nice. You talk about positioning yourself so that opportunities
are flowing to you, how do you actually make that
happen in reality? Yeah, this is one of the more
important concepts because it's really speaking to not just putting
(35:00):
your head down, but being strategic about maneuvering your way
from where you are to where you want to go.
And I'll illustrate with an example that unfortunately didn't make
it into the book, but it's of a late twenties
someomething who had zero acting experience, had zero experience in Hollywood,
but wanted to break into the entertainment scene and his
(35:21):
journey actually last five years. So he also had patients
in addition to the three c's where he was working
as a business analyst unrelated at all to the entertainment field.
But what he did was he went to entertainment conferences
and strategically sat beside the people that he wanted to meet.
(35:43):
He would introduce himself and strike up a conversation with
those who matter. He'd get their business cards or their
emails and send a thank you email. He'd follow up
with them with life updates. He'd pass on opportunit unities
that these individuals may be interested in. He dug through
(36:05):
his university and even his high school yearbook in search
of people who we're even remotely connected to the entertainment
scene in l A. And then finally he just cold
emailed like mad, and over the course of just putting
himself out there in all these different ways and making
in a habit, he ended up meeting someone who five
(36:26):
years later ended up reaching out to him and saying, Hey,
what are you looking for? And actually, as nicely ties
back to our earlier conversation about the hero's journey, because
when this person reached out and asked what are you
looking for, they're asking for your hero's journey. And this
person ended up saying, while I've done this and this,
this is where I'd like to go. The person who
(36:48):
reached out ended up saying, actually, this is exactly the
role that I'm looking to hire for. Let me forward
your resume over to HR. That's so much better than
what I would have done. I would have just like
looked up like Kate Planchett and Brad pitt On LinkedIn
and I would have liked tried to try to friend
them there, but I'm sure you may have done that
as well. Okay, okay one of the movie star home tours,
(37:10):
like I'll get out here, I start yelling from out
in front of the fence. Uh, well go. You know
you kind of mentioned going to these different conferences sitting
down next to the people who you're hoping to get
to know. That sort of sounds like finding a mentor
to a certain extent, right, because if you can, you know,
if you hit it off and they like you and
it's a conversation you can continue, if that's an email
chain that continues for a while, that can be somebody
(37:32):
who can mentor you. And so how important do you
think that is? And you know, this is one small
example of what a mentor might look like, and so
I'm interested to hear just maybe some other examples too.
But how important is it? And and how do you
find the right mentor for you? Uh? And then actually
make that connection? Say it's an industry where you aren't
able to sit down next to that person you know
at a conference, how do you reach out beyond your
(37:55):
current network. And I think the first thing actually is
to to define mentor in a less scary way. Where
when I was first introduced the to the to the
term and the concept of a mentor, I thought, wow, like,
I don't know anyone in high places. But when I
redefined mentor not as some hot shot person who's high
(38:20):
up and therefore inaccessible. If I instead define mentor as
someone who know something you don't know, or someone who
can help you figure out what you don't know, you
don't know but should know, I start realizing that actually
a mentor could be anybody. My classmates are mentors, my
friends are mentors, family members are mentors. And what it
(38:43):
takes to find these mentors and to nurture these relationships,
it involves what I call climbing the relationship ladder, where
if you imagine a ladder with different wrungs, at the
very bottom are strangers, and just by definition, most people
in the world are going to be strangers to you.
But over the course of recognizing bids and embracing bids,
(39:06):
you can turn someone who's otherwise a stranger into an acquaintance.
And maybe that's a matter of opening the door for
someone or holding the door open, or thanking someone who
delivered an especially good presentation, or asking a question at
an event and following up, or sending a thank you email,
or just simply d m ng someone over Teams or
(39:29):
Zoom or any other video chat platform that we may
be using during our work from home days. All of
these microactions are actually elevating someone from stranger status to
acquaintance status, and then from acquaintance status, you can then
follow up and have maybe a one on one conversation,
in which case they become your allies where you're looking
out for them and they're looking at for you. And
(39:52):
over the course of nurturing those relationships, you may have
a couple of people who you may end up having
deeper conversations with. These come your mentors. And then finally,
if you're looking up the chain of command in your organization,
there are people who are called sponsors, who are people
who are a part of those promotion committees, who really
are high up in your organization and who can bang
(40:15):
the table and say, hey, we need to absolutely give
this opportunity to Joel and Matt. I would trust them
with my life and what it takes to get these
people up isn't to just throw them up there. I
think these are maybe the people that give networking a
bad name, people who meet you for the first time
and are maybe overly transactional, but who bring you up
(40:36):
this relationship ladder, one rung at a time. So I
think it actually nicely brings us back full circle to
where we began, which is finding these hidden opportunities to
turn people who are otherwise strangers into acquaintances, following up,
sending thank you emails, digging through databases, and doing all
of these all the time as a habit. Yeah, I
like that, And I like to the way you kind
(40:57):
of talk about mendership and how you can have like
a few different mentors. It it doesn't have to be sometimes,
I guess growing up, I always felt like asking someone
to be your mentor was like asking them to be
a third parent to you or something like that. Um,
and it feels like this this big ask. And I
could see if someone came up with me and was like,
will you be my mentor, that I would just be
freaked out a little bit. And I think that there's
like a soft way of kind of finding someone who
(41:19):
can help mentor you without it being this uber formal
um relationship that maybe a lot of people might not
want to partake in. Uh, I want to ask you
to grek about, like right now, what's happening kind of
in the workplace has been called the Great resignation. A
lot of people ready to move on to a new job.
So when it comes to leaving, though, there's a right
(41:41):
way and a wrong way to leave. So how would
you recommend someone who is thinking about, you know, moving
on just to another competitor in the same space that
they're in, or moving on to a completely different industry,
or going to work for themselves, Like, however they depart,
how can they leave graciously? I think of this as
a bit of a a litmus test or or three
(42:02):
crates herea that I would encourage folks to to think
about where A you want to leave your team not
feeling blindsided. Be you want to leave your team in
a position where they can keep the show running without you.
And see, you want to leave the team in a
position where they've got line of sight to a successor
(42:24):
who can fill your role. And it's a bit of
a tall order to achieve all three. And I realized
that all three may not be attainable all the time.
But I'd also say that number one is more important
than number two, which is more important than number three.
Where the most important thing is to not leave your
folks blindsided. The second most important is to make sure
(42:47):
that there's continuity, that things aren't just gonna fall to
pieces with you absent. And then three is if you
can maybe even help find someone who can who can
take on your role in the future. At all depends
on the extent of the relationship that you'd want to maintain,
the reputation that you want to leave behind. Where if
(43:08):
you want to not only not burn the bridge, but
leave that bridge smelling like flowers, do all three. If
it's a normal situation, do one and two. And if
you want to leave amicably, which I suspect many of
us do because reputation is so important, then make sure
that you're at least not leaving people blindsided. Right, Yeah,
(43:30):
you know, at the very least do number one. So
how do you do that then, because obviously you probably
don't want to forecasts. It's like, hey, I'm gonna be
out here in six months. That sounds like too much time.
But if you're like, like, no, actually, you're out of here,
there's Friday. Yeah, but then if you go in that
morning and you're like, this is my last day, uh,
And so obviously there's there's some place in between. And
so from a time frame standpoint, what's what do you
(43:52):
what do you feel like is ideal? Uh? And then
what are the best ways of actually going about making
that announcement? Yeah, you know, this is a bit of
a tricky question because I know that if you go
onto Google, people will say, well, it's two weeks. If
it's two weeks and one day, that's too long, And
it's two weeks minus one day, it's too short. I
actually came up with this sort of three pronged litmus
(44:14):
test as a way of hopefully helping folks think about
what it means to not surprise your co workers. For
your own individual context, it maybe two weeks for your
co workers to not feel blindsided. It maybe a month.
I've left jobs before where I've actually given that three
month notice because I knew that my role was one
(44:36):
that was hard to to to backfill. So I'm going
to give you a bit of that cop out answer
of saying, make sure you're mindful of these three and
you will likely for your own circumstances. Come upon is
it two weeks? Is at three weeks? Is at four weeks?
Kind of thing. Yeah. In a recent article Goork, you
mentioned that everyone is the captain of their own career,
(44:57):
and if you don't make it happen, it's not going
to happen. And I think that is probably a good
way to encourage us to take the reins of our
own lives and of our our futures and what it
looks like to continue to progress either in the career
that we're in or to move on to something you know,
in the in the near future that we're more more
excited about. What final advice do you have for How
(45:19):
the Money listeners when it comes to steering their career
towards success. Well, given that this is the how to
Money podcasts, that's us. I'll frame this props around capital,
where I know in a number of prior episodes you
talk about the trade off between time and money, as
(45:41):
as as two forms of capital or currency. As I
think about capital, I think of it as things that
we can spend and accumulate. Maybe not time, although maybe
you can save a bit of time. We have a
finite amount of time. When I start thinking about capital
in the context of our careers, I start thinking about
how there are really three additional forms of capital. One
(46:05):
is human capital, which is what you know and can do.
The second is social capital, which is who you know.
And then the final one is reputational capital, which is
who knows you and what they know you for. And
when I think about our careers, it's really a matter
of playing your cards well across these five forms of
(46:25):
capital and making sure that you're making the right trade
offs where maybe it's not all about the money, and
it's about the human capital, the learning that you'll get.
Maybe it's about signing up for this project so you
can meet more people. Maybe it's about building a good
reputation so that you can use this opportunity as a
(46:46):
stepping stone to that next opportunity. So being mindful of
how you're pulling these levers can hopefully help folks better
navigate these unfamiliar situations. That is great advice and makes
sense because as there are going to be I mean,
we should probably be paying attention to all of them.
But I think there are certain forms of capital here
that you mentioned that are going to be more important
(47:08):
to us as individuals, there might be these different areas
that we want to pursue more than others because they
just mean more to us. And so I think kind
of starting with that end in mind can definitely inform
the decisions that we make as we advanced through our careers.
This has been a really insightful conversation. Where can can
folks go to learn more about you as well as
what else you have going on? Yeah, the best way
(47:30):
to stay in touch is through my website. It's gorik
dot com. That's g O R I c K dot
c O M. I'm on the different social media platforms
which you'll see on my website, whether it's Twitter, Instagram, TikTok,
even uh and especially LinkedIn. So feel free to reach
out and I would love to stay in touch. This
is actually a bid, by the way, this is a
(47:51):
bid to your audience that I see reaching out takes
advantage exactly. Awesome, Glary, Well, hey, thanks so much for
joining us on the show. This is a lot of fun.
Thank you so much. This is an amazing time. Thank
you alright, Joel, what a very insightful conversation. I feel
like we just had here at go work. I feel
like his book, it's a book telling you how to
(48:11):
do everything but your job, right, Like, like, we all
have different professions, and we all were essentially hired for
one specific task or maybe a couple of tasks related
to the one job that you're supposed to do, but
go Work's book is just all about all the other
things that we have to do in addition to that
one task to make sure that we're successful, to make
sure that we're compatible with with those around us. Yeah,
(48:31):
and I feel like it's a lot of his advice,
Like he said, he drew some from marriage advice and
what it looks like to be, uh, you know, a
good coworker in the workplace, And so I think some
of the advice he gives is is eminently applicable to
the work you're doing and how to do it well,
but it's also applicable to know being a better human being,
communicating better with the people that you know live under
(48:52):
the same roof with, or family members who you know
live always away. Like it's just, yeah, it's a really
good book with a lot of helpful stuff, but yeah,
what is you're a big takeaway from that combo? So
I liked how he redefined what a mentor is, because
essentially it seems like this very daunting, intimidating word. Oh
sort of like you said, you know, like will you
be my mentor? It's like, oh man, I'm freaking out
(49:13):
over here, like I don't know if I'm ready for
that kind of responsibility. Right I've already got three kids.
I don't even another one, or like before you had kids,
are just like, oh, I'm only twenty eight, like like
I'm not ready for this, uh, this kind of commitment.
But I love how he defined it, which is it
can be as simple as finding somebody who is one
step down further down the path than you are. It
can be somebody who just knows one more thing than
(49:34):
you do, and they could be a mentor. To me,
that doesn't sound like a mentor. But maybe what that
means is we should just completely get rid of that term,
because I'm afraid that that's keeping people from reaching out
to people and thinking about those relationships in that way.
It doesn't have to be this Obi Wan Andakin Skywalker
relationship where where you're passing the skills down from you know,
(49:55):
I'm mature Jedi nights down to like a kid in training.
Will you be my Yoda. But yeah, I just found
that specifically really helpful the way he redefined what a
mentor could be in your life. Yeah, yeah, that was good. Yeah.
So how about you, what was your big takeaway from
this convo? Okay, I think one of the biggest things
that stood out to me was when he was talking
about when you're going to college, you're keeping up, and
(50:17):
when you get in the workplace, it's all about stepping up.
And I can totally identify with that, because if you
bring that college mentality in, like I just gotta show
up to class on time, turning my paper by the deadline,
you feel like you're you are just trying to get
by and you're trying to hope, hopefully at least keep
up that be average or whatever. And you know, in
the workplace, there is if you want to get ahead,
(50:39):
like if you want to succeed, if you want a promotion,
if you want to be able to move up the
ladder and hopefully increase your earnings, which on how the money, Like,
we're down with you increasing your earnings. We think that's
a good thing. Then there are things that you have
to pay attention to and you can't treat it like
you did college. You have to be more about stepping up,
and that does involve proactivity, right. You're gonna have to
work on your communication style and you're gonna have to
(51:01):
think ahead when it comes to what jobs are the
most crucial, which once you you need to get done.
You even have to change your approach to meetings, which
is one of the things he said in this interview.
So yeah, I don't know. I think that's a really
important distinction to make. If you're still kind of thinking
about your work like you did going to college, in
all likelihood, you're gonna be kind of stuck and you're
gonna feel stuck um after after a little while. Yeah,
(51:23):
be average, which you said you can't. You can't get
into Harvard with a B average. No, no, no, I'm
not saying go aage. You gotta have a four part
for everyone out there. But I mean we're kind of
joking about just keeping up in school, but even four
folks who are in school, if you are able to
even at a at an earlier age, to switch that mentality,
I think from keeping up two stepping up mentality. If
(51:44):
you're in school and you're stepping up, you're going to
be the class president. You're gonna stand out from all
of the rest. You're gonna be the one getting the
job offers before you've even graduated. And that's the kind
of situation, uh, you want to find yourself in if
you're a college graduate. But definitely, like you said, those
are the things that you need to do within a
professional environment as well. But let's go ahead and get
back to the beer that you and I enjoyed on
(52:05):
this episode today. You and I both had a Belgian
Aloha and this is a Belgian triple with hibiscus brewed
in Lewis Center, Ohio. Never heard of this brewery. This
one was sent to us by Scotts. Thank you so
much for donating this one plus another one that we're
gonna enjoy here on the podcast. Joel, what were your thoughts? Yeah, man,
this one was light and refreshing, and it really did
(52:26):
have like a little bit of Belgium and a little
bit of Hawaii mixed in, you know. It had had
some of those Belgian notes of a classic triple, some
of that like Belgian spice thrown in there, while at
the same time the hybiscus gave it a little bit
more of a tropical vibe it was. I would say
it was refreshing, it was tasty. Um. I yeah, I
enjoyed it, and it's not necessarily the kind of beer
I normally go for. Belgian triples aren't normally my thing.
(52:48):
I think sometimes those Belgian spices are actually a little
overwhelming to my pallette. But this one was kind of
muted in that way, so I appreciated because of the hibiscus.
I assume those those Uhltal notes that the hibiscus was
able to bring to this beer. Like when we poured it,
I was like, oh, this is a really pretty beer.
It was like halfway between like pink and orange, was
like a rose or something. It is also on the
can it actually says that it says this is a
(53:09):
French slash Belgian, a le that's rosie, bubbly and strong
on the finish. Totally true. It definitely kind of had
those rose vibes going on. I really enjoyed this one,
and I agree, yeah, it didn't have those heavy kind
of triple clove kind of spices. It was almost more
just sort of like a muted Belgian. Herbally notes that
it was able to show up with but either way,
(53:30):
we really enjoyed this one, and Scott, thank you again
for sending this one for us to enjoy on the podcast,
no doubt. All right, well that's gonna do it for
this episode. Folks who want show notes and links to
go Rick's book and his website, you can go to
our website at how to money dot com. That's right,
and so that's gonna be it, dude. Until next time,
Best friends Out, Best Friends Out,
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