work habits

A reader writes:

I have follow up question to a February 2010 post, “When Does Advice Become Consulting.” I’m relatively new to nonprofit leadership and often find myself in a situation where, as the head of a reputable organization in a specific field, I get requests from people who want to “pick my brain” about some aspect of our work. Often, these individuals are thinking of starting their own similar program (usually in another location, so competition isn’t an issue), and their questions are quite broad, as in, “how did you get started” and asking me in detail how all of our programs work. I used to be a teacher, so my natural inclination is to help them out. On the other hand, I feel proprietary about the expertise we’ve developed and refined over the years and I balk at giving it out for free. In addition, my time and resources are already stretched pretty thin with managing more fruitful partnerships. When I’ve rejected these requests, however gently, the advice seeker often turns a little huffy, lamenting what could’ve been a great “collaboration.” Most recently, someone told me I was the first person in 20 years ever to deny a request for this type of “chat.”

Are there other nonprofit leaders out there who set boundaries with pushy brain-pickers, and if so, what are they, and how to convey them politely but firmly? I honestly can’t see what I or my organization stands to gain from these one-sided conversations, but I don’t want to harm our reputation or burn potential bridges. For what it’s worth, we already do a fair amount of consulting, collaborating, and partnership building.

I think there are three key questions when you’re trying to decide whether or how to grant these requests:

* Do you want to help? Sometimes you’ll find that you just really want to help the person/organization, either because you’re excited about what they’re trying to do (and believe that they have the ability to do it — a key element that doesn’t always accompany the first), or they were referred to you by someone important to you, or you have chemistry with them personally, or whatever.

* Do you stand to gain something by helping? It might be strategic in some way for you to develop a reputation as the go-to person on this topic, or just a reputation for being a really helpful person/organization.

* Do you have the time to help, relative to your other priorities? That second clause is really key, because the time you spend on this will be time that you’re not spending on something else. So in a situation where you’re already stretched thin, you need to ask if this is a smart use of your time compared to the thing that you’re bumping out of the way to do it.

Assuming you’ve decided that you don’t want to have long conversations in most of the cases you’re talking about, then here are some options for handling it:

1. Simply say no: “I’m so sorry, but my calendar is flooded over the next few months with fundraising/travel/fill-in-the-blank. It sounds like a great project though, and I wish you all the best with it.”

2. Say yes in a limited way: “My schedule is pretty tight right now, but I could talk for 15 minutes on Tuesday at 3:00.”  Then at the start of the call, reiterate that time limit: “I’m sorry I don’t have more time, but things are hectic for us right now. But how can I help?”

3. Offer them something other than a brain-picking session with you:  Write up a web page with the answers to the questions you most frequently receive or the information that you think would be most helpful to people. Then when you get these requests, say, “We actually have some information for people interested in starting this type of program. Here’s a link to it.”  If you want, you can add, “If you have any specific questions after reading it, feel free to shoot me an email, but that’s the best place to start.”

4. If you get these requests frequently enough and it fits in with your organization’s mission, consider whether it would make sense to start a program that teaches others how to do what you do. If you ran a one-day workshop or sold a how-to guide, you’d have the perfect place to funnel these requests and you’d generate revenue too. You’d also send the message that your expertise costs something. Of course, you should only do this if it’s a priority for your organization, but in some circumstances it could be worth considering.

I’d also add that people who get huffy when you turn down their request for a favor aren’t people you want to spend your time helping anyway (assuming that you’re not being rude when you say no).

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Have you ever wondered why you’re not doing better in your career — why you’re not getting the projects, jobs, promotions, and salary that you’d like? It’s worth asking if your own beliefs about and approach to work might be what’s holding you back.

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I talk about eight common misconceptions that can stall your career. You can read it here.

P.S. A couple of days ago, I posted a link to my column about good questions to ask at your job interviewer. Since then, my editor there suggested that I do a second version explaining why each question I suggested is a good one — how it makes the interviewer see you — so there’s now a version of that column that contains an explanation for each suggestion here.

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A reader writes:

Is it OK to leave the office right at 5 p.m.?

I feel silly for asking, but more and more I feel as though it’s frowned upon to come in right at 9 and leave right at 5. I am a 2008 graduate and have been working for about 4 years now. In the beginning, I was always early to work and never batted an eyelash if a project required me to stay late. Along the way, though, I got married and had a baby. Before my daughter was born, when it was just me and my husband, I never really watched the clock. Now that I have a family, I am out the door RIGHT at 5 p.m. There’s a lot to be done when you have a baby, and working late just isn’t an option most days. Plus, after spending a long day away from her, all I want to do is snuggle my little girl until bedtime. Is that a crime?

I understand that there are going to be days where I’ll have to stay late and be forced to tweak our normal family routine. In fact, they’ve already happened and we survived just fine, but I don’t want to make a habit out of it. My health is always my first priority, my family is always my second priority, and my job will always be my third priority. I worry about starting a new job with this mentality, especially because some PR firms seem to be uber competitive when it comes to who can stay the latest, who can come in the earliest, and who can use the least amount of vacation days.

So, I ask, is it OK to come in at 9 and leave at 5?

It depends on your particular field and your particular company. There are plenty of offices where this is normal, others where it might not be the norm but won’t be an issue, and others where it will indeed be an issue.

The best thing to do is to screen for compatibility in this area when you’re job-searching, and not to take a job where you’re going to be out of sync with an employer’s expectations on hours. But since you’re already in this job, talk to your boss about this. Say that your schedule has changed since you’ve had a baby and ask if it’s something that she perceives as an issue in your work.

This will lead you to one of the following likely outcomes:

1. Your boss will tell you it’s fine … and you will believe her because of the impressions you’ve formed by watching what others in your office do, how others react or don’t react to your hours, etc.

2. Your boss will tell you that it’s fine … but you won’t entirely believe her because of the impressions you’ve formed by watching what others in your office do, how others react or don’t react to your hours, and your manager’s own demeanor during this conversation.

3. Your boss will tell you that the job does often require longer hours to get ahead, and that if you’re not willing to put in those hours, it might impact future promotions, raises, your reputation, etc.

4. Your boss will be vague and unhelpful, leaving you to decide for yourself based on impressions you’ve formed by watching what others in your office do and how others react or don’t react to your hours.

Regardless of how this conversation goes, it’s good to bring this issue to the surface and talk about it, both because you’re wondering about it and because you’ve made a change from your former habits. Either of those are conditions that should generally trigger a conversation with your manager.

Now, if you conclude that your new schedule is indeed an issue or has the potential to become one, that doesn’t mean that you need to change your hours. It’s just a new piece of information for you to work with. You might decide that you’re okay with not being first on the list for promotions, for instance, or with being seen as less committed than others. (Or, more realistically, you might decide that you’re not fully okay with it, but that you’re willing to accept that as the trade-off for working better hours.) Or you might come to an agreement with your manager about how to fit more high-impact activities into the hours that you are at work, or you might explicitly agree that as long as the results you get are fantastic, your hours won’t be an issue. Or you might decide that this isn’t the right culture fit for you and so you’re going to look for an employer whose ideas about balancing work and non-work life are more in line with your own.

The basic idea is that you should gather information about the expectations around this specific job in this specific workplace culture, and then decide how you feel about it and whether you want to change anything in your life as a result.

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It’s quiz time! When you’re racing to get something done on a deadline and you get interrupted by a long-winded colleague or telephone caller, do you:
(a) Let them talk, trying to politely hint that you don’t have much time
or 
(b) Say, “I’m actually short on time right now. Could I talk with you later?”

If you’re like most people, your answer is (a) … generally because you want to be nice and aren’t sure how to assert yourself and protect your time in a way that isn’t rude.

Over at the Intuit QuickBase blog today, I talk about how you can nicely protect your time from interruptions — whether they’re in the form of a colleague who won’t stop talking to you or a phone caller who interrupts you precisely when you need to concentrate. You can read it here.

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A reader writes:

In a post recently, you described yourself as “blunt, assertive, kind of a hard-ass, and not a sugar-coater,” which is awesome. This is exactly the sort of person I want to be in my professional life. The thing is, I’m only just starting out in my career and I’m currently more wide-eyed, just trying to absorb everything I can and become better overall, build my network, etc. (I’m also generally quite bubbly and personable, which I know doesn’t exactly command respect.) What can I do over the next few years to transform myself into a hard-ass-career-woman-manager-superstar?

I wasn’t like that in the beginning, believe me. When I first started working, I was shy, hesitant, convinced that everyone else knew what they were doing when I didn’t, and uncomfortable calling the older woman in the office next to me by her first name.

And frankly, that’s probably better than the alternative, because if I’d been blunt and assertive and kind of a hard-ass before I knew what I was doing, I would have been the office nightmare.

Confidence — the good kind, the kind that’s warranted — builds over time, because it’s a direct result of you gaining experience, developing your instincts, figuring out where your strengths are, learning how to get things done, and getting all that validated by seeing over time that you’re able to get the results you want.

Here’s what you can do right now, to lay the groundwork for later:

* Pay attention to how things work around you. Absorb all that you can. Pay attention even to things that don’t directly involve you — like meetings that would otherwise be boring.

* Pay attention to the people you respect and try to figure out why you respect them. When you don’t respect someone, try to figure out why that is, too.

* Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t work — in your field, in people’s interpersonal styles, in your managers’ managerial styles. Notice what gets things accomplished and what doesn’t. Develop opinions about what’s effective and what isn’t effective. (But keep most of those opinions to yourself for now, and keep testing them against new information.)

* Find people who speak their minds without seeming rude, and watch how they do it.

* Volunteer for extra responsibilities. Take on things that feel like a stretch.

* Ask for feedback. Value the critical feedback the most (assuming you respect the person it’s coming from; if you don’t, the value of their feedback goes way down, sometimes to zero).

* Try really hard not to take things in the workplace personally, even when they feel personal. This will be hard to do and you might never do it perfectly. But try.

* Put a high value on having your act together: Stay on top of things, be responsive, don’t let things fall through the cracks, and do what you say you’re going to do.

* Pay attention to mistakes — yours and other people’s. Figure out where they came from and how they could be avoided. (But know that you’ll always make mistakes anyway, and some are okay.)

* Do all the stuff in this post. And what the hell, this one too.

* Do really good work. This is the most important thing of all.

Over time, what’s going to happen is that you’re going start forming your own personal philosophy about How to Be At Work. And you’re going to look around and realize that you feel pretty confident about your abilities and your judgment, and when you combine all that into one package, it is fairly powerful and the sort of thing that entitles you to feel pretty damn good about speaking up and saying what you think.

And you’ll be able to seek out employers who value that in you.

That’s basically my manifesto on how to grow into the person you want to be. If you follow it, you will be one of a fairly small minority who do, and you will stand out in a pretty noticeable way for it.

I’d love to hear advice from others too. What have I missed?

P.S. By the way, on the “bubbly and personable” thing — You don’t need to lose that to command respect. I have the voice of a child and a weird sense of humor that I don’t bother to hide, and I try to be warm and open with people, and I crack jokes that I’m often the one most amused by, and I talk like a normal person rather than being really polished. I used to always think that those things must not come across as especially professional, but what I’ve realized over time is that I don’t want to work with people who don’t like that style. (In fact, now I see most of them as selling points for the right people.)  So don’t be someone who you’re not; instead, be exactly who you are, so that you self-select for places that like who you are and where you’ll feel comfortable. This is one of the best things you can do for yourself, actually.

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A comment on a recent post interested me enough that I’m turning it into its own post, because I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on it. In commenting on yesterday’s post from a letter-writer who feared that a cupcake had set off an unwanted flirtation with a colleague, Kelly O wrote:

Can I just say that I read somewhere that women need to be be careful about bringing too many baked goods to the office, or otherwise blurring the lines between professional and domestic, and I think this might be a good object lesson in how that blurred boundary can cause problems?

I am one of the cupcake makers for our office. We take turns making them for birthdays, and it’s kind of a fun thing for us all. However, I do not bring them for random occasions. It just seems to add to that whole potential issue of “mothering” that some bring to the workplace. (It’s also why I don’t keep a candy dish, or put up too many decorations at my desk – it’s not a social circle, it’s not my living room, it’s my cubicle.)

It’s true that there’s advice out there that women should avoid bringing in baked goods to work, so that they don’t risk their domestic skills blocking out their professional ones. In fact, here’s a Forbes article about it.

My own take:  To some extent, I suspect that this is a piece of advice from an earlier age, where women had a harder time being taken seriously at work. Personally, I’ve brought in a ton of baked goods to my office with no ill effects. (I like to bake but don’t really have a sweet tooth, so I’ve always seen my office as a good place to rid myself of the cupcakes that I randomly made the night before.)  However, it’s worth noting that I have enough stereotypically “masculine” professional traits (blunt, assertive, kind of a hard-ass, and not a sugar-coater) that I’ve never seen a need to worry that bringing in baked goods would make anyone see me as their caretaker. And I also know that if someone did start treating me that way, I’d speak up loudly and immediately. In other words, baking some brownies isn’t going to turn me into the office mom.

However, if someone struggles with being taken seriously at work, is always asked to get the coffee for meetings, and gets stuck doing everyone’s dishes in the office kitchen, then yeah, maybe bringing in cookies with any regularity is something you want to avoid.

That’s just a guess though, and I find this whole question fascinating. What do others think? Oooh, and if you’re willing to note your age in your response, I’d be interested to see if there’s a generational divide on this issue.

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Yes, that’s right, I’m assigning you your new year’s resolutions. They’re right here.

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Continuing with our special year-end programming … A reader recently wrote this to me: “I’d like to see a year-end post with links to your favorite past posts that teach good work habits. Not job-seeking habits, but things to do at work daily that are helpful to others and improve one’s own work.”

Ask and you shall receive. Here are 12 of my favorite posts about generally being awesome at work.

1. Do what you say you’re going to do

2. Instant credibility

3. 10 ways to make your boss love you

4. What to do when you make a mistake at work

5. Why meetings suck and how to make them useful for your team

6. How to mentor someone

7. Taking criticism gracefully

8. Why you should take time to debrief after a project

9. Protecting your time from longwinded interlopers

10. How to disagree with your boss

11. 5 signs you’re a bad coworker

12. How to deal with unreasonable deadlines at work

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I’m making your new year’s resolution for you — and for your whole office, in fact.  You’re going to start holding better meetings.

I’ve written out your game plan, and it’s right here.

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