Ep 48 - How To Master The Game of Career Development - Career Coaching Xs and Os

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is career Coaching ex'es and o's and I'm your host,
Mark Peterson, Founder and thought leader at Sierra Consulting, a
small business strategy and technology consulting firm. A small part
of our practice is executive coaching. These episodes are the
summation of some of those sessions. Welcome to episode forty

(00:27):
eight of the podcast. In this episode, we're going to
talk about my new book, Career Coaching Exies and o's
How to Master the Game of Career Development. Now, if
you're like me and you have a twenty somethter year
old that's about to graduate from college, you want to
give them a reference guide of all the things they're

(00:49):
going to face as they begin their corporate career. If
you have a high schooler, junior or senior that's beginning
their career by seeking in turnships, just as valuable to
them as well. And I want to take you through
the chapters of the book because there's lots of insights

(01:10):
for those new budding executives, but there's also insights for
metal managers who seem to be stuck at a certain
point in their career. So I want to briefly take
you through that because I want to encourage you to
pick up a copy, write a review on Amazon, because
I'm going to reach out to those individuals who do

(01:31):
that and then tag it on my social media accounts
to give them an opportunity to come on and co
host this podcast with me to talk about the issues
that you face in your career. So if that sounds
exciting to you, please at the end of this episode
listen for how you can purchase follow and be entered

(01:55):
to be on the podcast with me. So let's dig
right in. Chapter one of the book is labeled how
to Launch your career. Now, for a lot of new
college graduates or high school graduates, they have no idea
of the different types of interviews that they may face

(02:17):
and how to win how to beat them. We cover
that in chapter one as well as how to get
through that probationary period. Now you may not even know
that your boss or your manager has you in a
probationary period after you're hired, and this points out some

(02:38):
of the key things you need to do to get momentum,
succeed and be viewed as a potential long term employee
of that company. And then finally we wrap up chapter
one talking about how to get your first mentor. It's
critical that you get that mentor as quickly as you

(03:00):
can when you start your first job, because there are
so many potholes that are connected to a company, the culture,
the people, and as many of those that you can avoid,
the faster you're going to rise through the ranks. I
want to especially push many members of people of color

(03:22):
to play close attention to this chapter. Why because many
of us don't have family members who have grown up
in the corporate world, and so they can't give you
the insights. They can't let you know what happens within
the four walls of a large organization and how the politics,

(03:45):
the culture, and the people can affect your ability to
rise within the organization. This book tries to paint that
picture for you and give you some insights. Chapter two,
How to become the most productive member of your team
or the most productive member of your company. Why is

(04:06):
that important? Differentiating yourself within a business is the key
to becoming a leader. You want to stand out for
your performance, not because of your mouth, and so we
talk about ways that you can take the tasks that
are given to you and become more productive. Now, why

(04:28):
is this chapter right behind how to Get in the company,
because when you get in, you're going to start out
at the bottom. You're going to be given a lot
of the grunt work. You're going to be given a
lot of the task busy work task, and you want
to know how to handle those tasks. What your bigger
focus should be to show your leadership in order to

(04:50):
create the capacity to go and work on those more
sensitive projects. And so there's a task prioritization framework that
helps you you think about how to manage those grunt
tasks that are given to you and how you should
pitch them back to your boss as ways that you
can help save the company money, making you an instant superstar.

(05:15):
We also get you thinking like an executive in this
chapter because many of us come into a company and
I've heard this over and over and over again. My
boss is stupid. My boss doesn't know what's going on.
I do work, and they don't care about the work
I'm doing. That's because the higher you climb up a tree,

(05:39):
the more you can see of the landscape, and when
you're down near the roots, everything in the grass looks important.
But as you get midway the trunk or up in
the branches, you can see what's coming, and so your
objective becomes the plan for the future. And I want
to get you thinking like that before you start climbing

(06:01):
the tree, because you can become a better employee, a
better assistant to those bosses who are trying to prepare
for the next major challenge. And some of that is
just understanding the value of the metrics that are used
to measure success in your company. When you can understand

(06:21):
that metric and understand how it's tied to your job,
i e. What task you perform that has an impact
on that metric, then of course you want to spend
as much of your time doing things that drive the
metric in the right direction. Yeah, the more you help

(06:44):
the company win, the more you're going to win. So
understanding those metrics get you thinking and acting and be
aligned with the CEO in hopes of one day making
yourself a CEO. Chapter three, How to Manage the Manager.

(07:06):
There's some logics of these chapters because they build on
each other in terms of giving you skill sets to
be an effective leader within an organization. Now, I've had
the unfortunate pleasure of hiring young people who think they
should be promoted the first day that think because they
are clever, they're ready to run an organization. And for

(07:31):
those of you who've been in my same spot, you
laugh and probably are laughing right now because you know
I'm right. They think they're ready and they're not. But
the way we've ordered these chapters is to get those
young people prepared for leadership. And one of the things
that helps you as a new employee is figuring out

(07:53):
how to manage your manager. What do I mean by that,
how to become an effective executive distant. That means you're
understanding what the boss it is, focused on the challenges
the barriers that he or you're facing, and you're working
to eliminate those barriers to give more capacity to that executive.

(08:18):
And you want to be aligned with those projects that
are going to get that manager noticed. And so by
having that knowledge and pre knowledge of what to look for,
you're going to be able to better manage the manager.
You're going to volunteer for the right types of projects.
You're going to provide the right type of support that

(08:40):
makes you indispensable to that manager, and you're also going
to be performing tasks that show you ready for leadership.
So In that chapter, we're going to talk about being
visible without being obnoxious, and we're going to drill down
on the ski sets you're going to have to refine

(09:03):
in order to effectively support your manager. Chapter four, Building
your Brand. Now you're in the organization, you've started building
skill sets. Like any player on any team, you want
to define what you're valuable for why they should be

(09:28):
investing dollars in you. If you're a quarterback, you know
the skill sets. You know the brand that you're building.
If you're a running back or a wide receiver, if
you're a long distance runner, all of those are unique
niche capabilities that become valuable at the right time given
the sport that you play. So if you've done everything

(09:51):
right in the first three chapters, you know the game
your company's playing because you now understand the metrics that
are you to measure the company's success. You understand your
manager's role in driving that success, and you've built the
skill sets to help you manage the manager. Now it's

(10:13):
time to turn that into a brand. What are you
going to be known for When people think of a
crisis situation or a complex project, are you the person
that's known for analytics. Are you the person that's known
for going the extra mile? Are you the person that's
known for being a great communicator, or a great team

(10:35):
leader or a great motivator. What's the brand you're building
that is supported by the skill sets you've developed that
make you stand out at the moment of crisis when
the manager needs someone the most. And that's what we
talk about in chapter four, coming up with those great

(10:56):
communication skills, becoming emotionally intelligent, and developing the art of persuasion.
I love that chapter for what it does for new executives,
junior executives, middle managers, because this is an area where
a lot of people fall down. They never build a brand,

(11:18):
They never make themselves known for something that is needed
by their company. There's a funny story and maybe not
so funny to jellybeing Bryant, Kobe Bryant's father, who many
believed was just as good as Kobe when he played
in the league for the seventy six ers, but he

(11:41):
played behind a guy named Doctor j He never spoke up,
he never tried to really establish his brand on that team,
and he languished on the bench with a set of
skills that should have made him a superstar. Now, he

(12:02):
could have taken those skills no onely I already had
a superstar, doctor J and refine that into something that
got him on the floor, that would get him noticed.
He could have been the motor guy, the guy that
gets in the game and plays the hardest defense against
the team's best player. He could have been known that,

(12:22):
like Dennis Rodman, the rebound guy, used those skill sets
to dominate the boards. But he never did, and he
never spoke up. But he told his son, don't be
like me. Build a brand. And I'm telling you that
as a corporate intern employee, executive, junior executive, medal manager,

(12:47):
it's a critical step that you have to take. Chapter five. Oh,
everybody should love this one because we're going to talk
about how to get a raise, and before you do that,
you've got to understand your value, how to measure it,
and how to articulate it in a way that's analytical

(13:10):
that gives you a ground support for the argument that
you're gonna make. So in this chapter we talk about
how to benchmark your skill sets against the markets to
determine if you're undervalued. Once you've done that analysis, you
need a way to communicate the impact that you've had

(13:34):
on the organization before it's time for them to talk
about raises and promotions. That's a great episode in this
podcast where I talk about getting yourself a wingman or
a wing woman. I know some of you probably chuckled
when you heard me mention that term because you think, Oh,

(13:55):
we're going to the bar and I'm going to have
someone help me get a date because they're going to
talk me up. No, but you're close. You're going to
have a corporate wing person that's going to talk you up,
share your victories so that you don't come off as
a bragger, and of course you reciprocate. Part of the

(14:20):
life in corporate America is building that clique that helps
reinforce your accomplishments so you don't have to getting you
the brand that you want. You want to be visible
without being obnoxious. Okay. We also talk about being relatable

(14:44):
and superhuman at the same time. If you follow what
we talked about in chapter two of being the most
productive person in the company, you still want to be
relatable to your counterparts. That's critical goal because as you
move up, you're going to have to build teams. You're
going to have to build coalitions, and if you've set

(15:08):
yourself apart as someone that is aloof that is unreachable,
it'll be hard for you to lead. Chapter six moves
right into that how to build and manage successful teams.

(15:30):
So if we've gotten these chapters lined up right, by
this time, you are cooking within the organization, you've gotten
the right skill sets, you've demonstrated your performance on the
corporate battlefield, and you're ready to become a field general yourself,
which means you're moving from doing to managing, overseeing, strategizing,

(15:54):
and putting all the right pieces in place to move
the company forward. And we talk about ways that you
can do that the manage your mindset, and that's an
important term. Too many managers move into that role and
still are doing. You got to learn how to get

(16:19):
the right people in the right job by knowing how
to assess their skills and their capabilities and their mindset.
You don't want to put an orange in the place
where there should be an apple, and vice versa. Give
people the jobs in the context and the settings where
they're going to be most successful. Now, that may require

(16:44):
a little extra analytical work on your side, but in
the long run, you win bigger when people are satisfied
with the work they're doing and being rewarded to do it,
both in terms of money, but in just in terms
of your praise. Chapter seven, How to Network and Supercharger

(17:12):
Mental Relationships. Managers win sometimes based on their experience, but
the best managers continuously win because they learn from other
people's mistakes. And that's what this chapter is all about,
figuring out the right types of relationships that you can

(17:35):
tap into when you're dealing with the toughest problems. When
I was a business management consultant with one of the
big organizations, our company had what we call the Knowledge Exchange.
This was a platform where we stored all of our
deliverables from our engagements. Why did we do that because

(17:56):
we didn't want consultants recreating the will If we came
up with the best thinking at an engagement, we wanted
to build on that thinking, not recreated. So the knowledge
exchanged helped us do that because the documents, interviews, whatever

(18:19):
paperwork was stored in this knowledge exchange. Mentors operate like
that for managers who know how to use them. You
tap into their experience, their failures, their successes, and you
build on it. And so chapter seven talks about all

(18:40):
the ways to get yourself our mentor council. Yeah, not
just one mentor, but a council of mentors that you
can use for various situations to get you the right
answers and the right time. Chapter we go into detail

(19:02):
on how to navigate social settings, those corporate social settings,
and there's several of them, but there are some that
are very dangerous, like the holiday parties where livations are
served and careers are lost because people go overboard and
expose parts of themselves that should not be exposed, both

(19:26):
literally and figuratively at these corporate engagements. Now, I don't
want to scare you away from these, and especially for
those people of color who listen to this podcast. I've
been around in corporate America enough to see nine out
of ten people of color within the company decide not

(19:47):
to go to a party, to a holiday party, to
a celebration party because they just didn't want to be
in that atmosphere a wrong answer. First, go through this
chapter so you know how to attack the evening because
you go in with a plan for networking and finding

(20:10):
out information about the company that's going to help you
succeed or help you make the right decision to move
on to a new company, because it's those gatherings where
you get the most information about how you're performing, how
the company's performing, and what direction the company plans to
go in over the next two to three years. You

(20:32):
avoid those types of parties and you're driving a car
without a dashboard. So how to navigate those corporate gatherings? Critical? Critical?
Chapter Chapter nine, How to manage a personal crisis without
derailing your corporate career. Oh, this was a tough chapter

(20:57):
chapter to write because you I've had a personal crisis
come up right in the middle of some of my
most important projects at work. How do you handle that?
I even put in some examples of people like Michael
Strahan right now, who's going through so much with his

(21:20):
young daughter who is going through chemo treatment for brain cancer.
And Michael Strahan has irons in every fire. He's doing
so well in his career. But that personal crisis is
something that you know touches the soul. You know that

(21:45):
for all the success you have, you'd give it away
so that your child or your spouse can have their health.
How do you work through a crisis like that in
a large organization and still keep your sanity and still
keep your career. That's a chapter I want everybody, no

(22:10):
matter where you are in the organization, to take a
look at because nobody is immune. I particularly get upset
with people who don't allow professional athletes to be human,
to suffer family crisis or family successes and enjoy them

(22:37):
or manage them in the way that's right for them.
Their job certainly is to play a child's game and entertain,
but it does not divorce them from having human problems.
And how you handle that, many times determines how you

(22:59):
go forward and maintain your success so that you can
continue to support those people that you love. So check
that chapter out. Chapter ten is stretching you as a
manager by encouraging you to walk in someone else's shoes.

(23:21):
Now you may or may not know, but I am
an African American and I've worked at the highest level
of many big companies, Fortune five hundred companies. I've gone
to every different type of school that you can imagine,
Ivy League schools where the population tended not to have
a lot of African Americans. I've had to walk in

(23:45):
different shoes in order to be effective as a manager,
as a friend, as a colleague. And that's what I'm
encouraging you to do as a leader within the organization
now that has gone through the steps that are outlined
in this book, so that you can become the best

(24:07):
leader possible. The world is getting smaller, not larger, and
what I mean by that is that you're now bumping
against people from all cultures, all continents, many countries as
you begin to grow your business. That used to be
exclusive to Fortune five hundred companies, but now startups, early

(24:32):
startups are tapping into resources from all over the globe.
How you handle those relationships can determine whether or not
your business grows becomes very very flexible to handle crises
that may come up down the road, or if you

(24:53):
become rigid like some organizations do and fail to pivot
and fail to take advantage of the skill sets from
people who don't look, eat, walk, or talk like you.
Chapter eleven, How to break up with your employer. Every organization,

(25:18):
the good ones have an up or out policy. So
when you get to a certain level, your organization is growing,
and certainly companies like General Electric we're notorious for this
type of culture. But you do that so that you
keep the lifeblood of the company flowing. Now, unfortunately, in
this country, we've gotten stagnant in our politics, and our

(25:42):
young politicians on both sides of the owl are finding
it very hard to make it to the top of
the ticket and become the future leaders bringing new ideas
into the public view. Corporations have to do that as well.
If we want to continue to meet and match the

(26:05):
needs of our customers. You do that in your career.
There's a point where you decide I'm in it for
the long term. I think I can become a part
of the highest levels within this organization and have the
type of career impact that satisfies my drive, or it's

(26:31):
time for me to move to a new company where
I can attempt to achieve those goals. This chapter tries
to take you through that process. But in the middle
of that, we want you to establish a plan of
how to exit. We don't want you going scorched earth

(26:57):
as soon as you get another offer and ready to leave.
We want you to leave as if you plan to
come back. Do that with every job. I'm a big
believer in karma. You put negative energy out there and
eventually it will find its way back to you, and

(27:17):
there's no need to put negative energy into an exit,
even if the negative energy has been directed towards you.
Make the situation positive. And we talk through how to
do that in this chapter. And guys, the final chapter,

(27:37):
Chapter twelve, you're ready to leave Corporate America to become
an entrepreneur. And I love this chapter because a lot
of my friends and colleagues, in particular African American women
who lead the country in leaving corporate Americans starting their

(27:58):
own businesses. I love the chapter because it talks directly
to them. There's so much I want you to do
before you walk out that door. And if this is
something that you're thinking about at the age of twenty
twenty one, twenty two, when your first inner Corporate America,
you're thinking, one day, I want to start my own company.

(28:22):
I want to have my name out on the front
of the building. And if that's something that you're passionate about,
start at the end of the book first and read
that chapter because it's going to give you all the
steps I took from day one in Corporate America to
build a war chest of relationships, perks, money, to prepare

(28:47):
for the eventual launch of my business, and it was perfect.
When I left my last corporate job to launch my
last startup. I had so many perks and privileges and
relationships that it made that part of the business launch

(29:08):
easy and extended my runway because the cost of selling
i e. Traveling, staying at hotel tails was all taken
care of because I had a million miles on multiple airlines.
I was platinum of gold or diamond with several hotels

(29:31):
and so preparing to leave on day one when I
was twenty four twenty five, after many, many years of
corporate life thirty plus years, I walked out with a
war chest capable of sustaining me while I built a

(29:51):
company that I was passionate about. So, if that's you,
Chapter twelve is your first chapter and read in reverse
career coaching X's and o's how to Master the Game
of Career Development. It's on Amazon, It's on Barnes and Noble.

(30:14):
I'll put links in the show notes. It's just nine
ninety nine. It's the best ten dollars that you can
invest in an ebook. And there are links back to
this podcast that give you reminders of some of the
episodes that will complement the chapters that we just went through.

(30:37):
Buy that and write a review on Amazon and then
follow us on Twitter, which I'll put that link in
the show notes, and tell me in the direct mail
Lawyer in a post that you wrote the review, and

(30:58):
we will select randomly from those list of posts for
someone to come on and co host an episode with
me on the podcast, and we may do multiple because
I love hearing from you through social media, through email
and the issues that you're facing. So let's let's have

(31:20):
some fun on the podcast and talk about things that
you want to end that episode now. If you want
to support us in other ways, go to Speaker s
p R e a k e r dot com, find
our show page, become a loyal listener by subscribing to
the show. Donate as little is two dollars to the

(31:44):
show and help us continue to put out great episodes
like these, and to give away more copies of my
book for free to young kids at high school and
underserved communities. We'd love to give a way a thousand
copies to kids here in Atlanta who are on the

(32:06):
verge of doing great things in their life, and we
want to give them a head start by giving a
reference guide that can help them avoid some of the
potholes they face as they begin their career. So if
that sounded like something you can support and want to support,
please make your way over to the Speaker show page

(32:29):
for this podcast and sign up to be a show subscriber.
I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope you
found my explanation of each chapter of my new book,
Career Coaching X's and o's how to Master the Game
of Career Development helpful. If so, guys, hit subscribe for

(32:56):
this podcast and never miss an episode, and also buy
the book ebook just nine ninety nine paperback nineteen ninety
nine and write a review on Amazon. And if you
are in the writing mood, leave a review with Apple

(33:17):
Podcasts for this podcast or leave a review on Speaker.
Both help us tremendously get the word out about what
we're trying to do with this podcast. I know you're
going to share this episode with your colleagues, because the
best people listen to this podcast. Now, when you log

(33:41):
in to your social media accounts, find us and then
come tell us the issues you're struggling with in your career,
and we can research them and we might just do
a podcast episode about them. If you need more support
in your career, find us on the web at Serro

(34:03):
dot com, c E y e r o dot com
and let us help you develop a plan for your career.
This has been career coaching x's and o's, and I'm
your host, Mark Anthony Peterson, Founder and thought leader at

(34:26):
Sierraro Consulting,

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Ep 48 - How To Master The Game of Career Development

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