KF #23. Organizational Savvy Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Erin, welcome!

Erin McGoff
Hi! I’m so happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am happy to have you here talking about the secret language of work and more. So, wow, you have quite the impressive audience, six million plus followers across everything. Could you maybe kick us off by sharing what’s a piece of advice you’ve offered that’s been counterintuitive, such that folks are like, “No way!” but you just staunchly believe, “No, this is, in fact, the way”?

Erin McGoff
I don’t know. Small talk comes to mind. People tend to kind of hate and downplay small talk, thinking that it’s just something that’s not for introverts. But I always urge people to know the difference between being shy and being introverted, and to understand that small talk is as old as humans are themselves, and that it’s a really, really important thing to master in order to develop rapport with people.

So sometimes people are a little surprised, as an introvert myself, that I’m so pro small talk, but it really is a very, very important thing to master.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, make the case, why is small talk important, if it’s just small?

Erin McGoff
Yeah, right? I talk about this in my book, about how, you know, small talk is not really about the conversation. It’s about signaling to the other person that you’re not a threat to them. And this goes back to our caveman days.

Like, if a person from another tribe, like, tries to come in, you know, to your village, small talk is the way of you both communicating that you’re not a threat to each other. And I think it’s still that way today when we go into work.

Being able to maximize those first few minutes of a Zoom call with a client when you’re still waiting for your boss to get on, that’s like a really golden time for you to showcase your professionalism and your maturity and how capable and competent you are.

And a lot of people think, “Well, small talk is just so cringe-y and I’m just so much deeper than that.” But you need to just get out of that mindset because it really doesn’t do you any favors. So that’s kind of, like, generally my advice is just to get out of mindsets that aren’t doing you any favors and get into mindsets that are.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I don’t know who said it, probably one of our guests – we’ll dig into the archives – that small talk leads to big talk, and I think it’s so true. Because if you went right for big talk, because I mean, I don’t know, I’m in that ballpark, too.

It’s, like, “I don’t care about the weather. I mean, what are we doing?” And it feels like almost silly and performative. And yet, if the opening question was like, “So, Pete, what’s the deepest fear you’re wrestling with right now?”

Like, “What? I don’t…Who are you? Why would I tell you that out of the gate?” And so it’s sort of, like, there needs to be some kind of a bridge or stairway between just meeting or silence and the really deep stuff that turns into a strong relationship.

Erin McGoff
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I love that small talk turns into big talk. I think that’s very, very true.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and you’ve got some hyper-helpful scripts for us in that situation, and dare your subtitle promise, “Every Situation.” So could you share with us,  what’s the big idea with your book, The Secret Language of Work?

Erin McGoff
Yeah, so “The Secret Language of Work” was really birthed out of what my content is. I started posting career advice online in 2021 and it was mainly script-based. I was helping people actually figure out the exact words to say in situations or, at least, giving them examples for inspiration.

I always was kind of frustrated with a lot of career advice that felt very vague to me, you know, “Speak to your strengths,” “Walk in your truth.” And I’m, like, “What does that sound like, though? I need examples.”

So I really wanted to write a book that democratized access to really high-quality soft career advice, and not only did that but also gave people hyper-helpful, like very, very helpful scripts and examples of what to say in certain scenarios, how exactly to network without being cringe-y, or how to negotiate without accidentally being rude.

Because a lot of us, we want to do things, we want to ask for a raise. The only thing that’s actually holding us back is the fear of coming off offensive or the fear of failure, lots of fears. So I wanted to write a book that was designed to supercharge people’s confidence by giving them the tools and the scripts to actually speak what they want into existence.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Well, we love supercharging confidence over here, so we are in the right place. This is good news. Well, could you share with us perhaps a story of someone who was kind of bumbling and unaware of the secret language of work, but then picked it up and what kind of results that unlocked for them?

Erin McGoff
Just yesterday, I got a DM from a man, Eduardo, and he got a dream offer, and he really didn’t want to rock the boat. He had never negotiated his salary before, but he did think that he was worth a little more.

He grew up in a household where his parents had never negotiated, and that financial literacy aspect wasn’t something that he was inherently taught. And he said, “I read your book. I read the chapter. I’m going to go in and I’m going to try it.”

And he updated me this morning that he was able to negotiate a 10% increase. And that was just probably three minutes of using mouth sounds, and it made cash appear instantly. And so that’s the power I want people to understand, is if you can just use your mouth sounds right, you can make cash appear out of thin air. So I have tons of stories, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Mouth sounds. Well, yeah, you know, in a way, that’s kind of silly and flippant, but in another way, it’s very accurate. Because I think we can overthink it, right, in terms of like, “Oh, my god, I have to say  just the right things, but then if I say this, he might say that. But then if I say this and then…”

But it’s like, “You know what, they’re mouth sounds, they’re words, and no need to get all worked up about them,” but almost, like, sort of this, well, the magic words for a genie or something. Well, since we’re on this example, what are the mouth sounds or the magic words for, “Yeah, I’d like you to pay me 10% more”?

Erin McGoff
Well, every negotiation is unique. It’s all going to be a case-by-case basis and all that. And that was something that always annoyed me when I would get career advice, is people would say, “Oh, well, it depends.” And it’s like, “Just give me an example. Just give me some inspiration.”

And so that’s really what I try to do in the book. And it’s so important to stay aligned on your shared goal. You know, the recruiter, or whoever is negotiating the deal with you, they want to hire you. They have an incentive because their job is to get somebody in the role. The company needs somebody to do a job, you can do the job, they offered it to you. So don’t be scared.

In the United States culture, negotiating your salary is a given. It’s what they expect. They rarely give you the best offer or the highest offer they can. And if they do, they oftentimes will say, “This is the highest offer, by the way. Like, we can’t go any higher.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or, “This is standardized across all of North America. It’s kind of what it is, you know.”

Erin McGoff
Yeah, exactly. So it’s always important to come in with a case, three things. AI can also be helpful, too, if you’re struggling to think about like, “Ugh, I don’t know, the three extra reasons, you know.” It’s helpful to try and figure out what you bring to the table that maybe somebody else doesn’t.

I always say it’s kind of, like, you’re looking at two pairs of jeans, and everybody says, “Oh, they’re just going to go with the cheaper candidate,” and it’s like, “Do you just always go with the cheaper jeans? No, you go with the jeans that look the best on you and they’re the highest quality and they’re the best value for what you’re getting.”

So it’s kind of important to productize yourself, which sounds odd, but to go to them and say, “Hey, I really want to make this work. I want to sign this paperwork today. In order to do that, here’s a salary that I’m looking for, and here are the three reasons why I bring this additional value to the role.”

So it’s really important to remember that, I always say, it’s not personal, it’s just professional. This is just a business transaction. You’re going to provide a service to them, and they’re going to pay you. And a mindset shift that people find really helpful is I like to think about myself as like a vendor or a freelancer.

And I’m not necessarily, like, begging for this job, but rather I bring a certain specialty and skillset to the company, and I’m going to alleviate problems, and I’m going to use my professional skill to improve the company and to provide value, and they’re going to pay you.

And so you’re just negotiating what this proper rate is. Everything is made up. The salaries are changing all the time. Do your research, but also make sure that you are getting paid what you think that you’re worth. And you’d be surprised how well a negotiation can work. It’s just a few minutes of awkwardness for, like I said, cold hard cash.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that was a hyper-helpful script in terms of, “I want to sign this paperwork today, and here is really what would do the trick for me.” And as I’m hearing it, it doesn’t feel rude. It’s funny, as I’m putting myself in the role of the recruiter there, it’s like I’m excited, “Oh, she wants to sign today. Good news.”

And I’m already predisposed to want to be able to say yes. You know, and then I’ll probably either give it to you if I can, or, you know, you just be really clear about why I can’t. But I think that’s a good feeling to know that you explored that rock. You know, “Okay, well, I tried and this is, I believe them when they said that’s the highest they can go.” That’s cool. Okay.

Erin McGoff
Yeah, and there are other things you can always negotiate besides salary, too. If they can’t go higher in salary, maybe they can do a higher 401k match, or more PTO days, or remote flexible Fridays. So it’s just always important to just see what you can get.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very nice. Well, so we’re going to maybe dig into all kinds of little hyper-helpful scripts in particular situations. But I’d love to know, are there a few of your favorite go-to’s, like, “Oh, this is a handy script that is useful in many situations.

Erin McGoff
Something that I help people with a lot is setting boundaries, which is tough, you know, when you’re working and, especially in an economy like this, where it’s really an employer’s market, you don’t want to rock the boat.

At the same time, it’s really important to set boundaries for yourself. It’s not other people’s responsibilities to set your boundaries. People will, generally, take what they can get from you. So it’s important to show people what they can expect from you and what they can’t expect from you.

So it’s important to learn how to say no in professional ways. And something I love is, “Oh, I’m currently at capacity.” So let me give you an example. So say your boss is just throwing things on your plate. Instead of getting bitter and frustrated at your boss, “Oh, why don’t they understand that they’re overloading me, they’re stressing me out? I’m drowning as it is.”

First of all, give everybody the benefit of the doubt. Your boss’ job isn’t to micromanage everything you do, they’re not inside your brain. Their job is to do their job, and your job is to do your job. So you have to communicate with them.

And so let’s say they put yet another thing on your plate, and you’re like, “I just…I can’t do this.” Instead of going to your boss, and saying, “I’m overwhelmed. I’m stressed out. I can’t do this all,” that’s just giving them another problem, and every manager hates that.

Instead, you always want to come to your boss with solutions. So you want to say, “Hey, I noticed that you gave me another task today. I’m currently focused on this task. Which would you like me to prioritize?” And then you’re giving them, “Oh, huh, which client is more important? Which one can we shift? Which one can be moved to Monday?” You’re giving them something to work with.

So saying, “I’m currently at capacity with client A’s presentation. I know that you want me to focus on client B. Which one would you like me to prioritize today? And which one would you like me to postpone to Monday?”

In that way, that is like music to a manager’s ears because then they have something to work with. And they’re not just dealing with your stress and your problems, but you’re providing them a potential solution.

Pete Mockaitis
And it sounds very nice when you say it. Good job. I guess my nightmare, when you talked about fear at the beginning, is I always fear a response that’s very curt or mean, you know, along the lines of like, “Well, Erin, we expect you to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time here.”

It’s like, “Well, you know, hey, Erin, actually, both of those are critical. So make them both happen and don’t whine to me about this.” So, anyway, I feel like that’s a bit more edgy than the vast majority of managers will communicate, but they may well convey something along those lines in a more diplomatic, professional way.

So what do you think about that in terms of, one, can you deflate my fears, like that happens almost never? Or, two, do you have the follow-up for when they’re pushing back on your pushback?

Erin McGoff
Yes, absolutely. This is something that people actually like about my videos, is that I always offer a pushback. I actually just posted this, or filmed a video about this today. Because, yeah, on the internet, in a video, a perfect script is going to get the job done.

But, in reality, when you’re working with a difficult boss who does tell you, “Hey, I need you to prioritize both,” that does happen. And, you know, obviously, I recommend that you don’t work with a boss like that, but we can’t always control who we work for. We can’t just quit our jobs if we don’t like our boss. We’re going to have to work with people that we don’t like constantly.

So if your boss does push back, again, don’t make it personal, keep it professional. So I always recommend, when people are coming to their boss, with like a complaint or an issue that they reframe a personal problem as a professional concern.

So instead of saying, “I’m personally so overwhelmed,” all they’re hearing is you’re not competent. You can’t get it done. A bad boss. A good boss will work with you, but a bad boss is just hearing, “They’re not competent.”

Instead, you want to turn it into a professional concern, “Hey, I know client A is a really, really important client, and I really want to make sure that we get this report done right and on time. I have this much capacity today, and I want to make sure that we have time for both. So can you work with me to figure out a solution here to make sure that we can get both reports out the door?”

Again, align your goals. Always be aligning your goals. The boss wants the reports out the door. You also want the reports out the door. But it’s impossible right now to get that done as is. So you want to come to them and say, “Our goals are aligned here, but the strategies, the car is broken down. It’s not going to work.”

And then present them with a solution, “You know, James has a lighter workload today. Would you mind if I gave him the remainder of project A so I could just focus on project B?” And maybe give them, like, a worse second option or something like that? Just give them options.

Pete Mockaitis
“Or I could just have AI generate it entirely.” “No, don’t. Don’t do that.”

Erin McGoff
Don’t do that. And you can relieve that mental load from your boss and actually get what you want. So that’s the secret language of work. Like, the first page of my book, I talk about the desired outcome. So is your desired outcome from this conversation your boss understanding that you’re stressed? No, your desired outcome is working on one thing at a time. So always always keep the first thing the first thing. And, yeah, keep those goals aligned.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, if I may, we’ll keep the pushback going in terms of it’s, like, “Well, Erin, I think that both of these are possible so long as you just crank at it till midnight. What’s the problem?”

Erin McGoff
“I could certainly crank it out until midnight. but that doesn’t solve the problem of these reports being done on time and with quality. You know, unfortunately I’m only one person and we do need two people on this, or we need to rework the deadline. It’s not possible.”

People are oftentimes tempted to say, “Well, why stop work at five?” It sounds great in an internet video, it sounds awesome. You stick it to the man, you know, those videos always go viral, but it doesn’t work in real life.

So I try to give like very realistic advice. And, again, it always goes back to that desired outcome. Aligning your goals and talking about workflows and solutions. And, yes, when it does come to time-based activities, like that can be really tricky.

Like, if your boss is just like, “You need to stay late,” remember that that’s not a sustainable solution. So, like, sometimes, yeah, you might need to stay late at work. You might need to get something done. I’m like very pro working hard. I’m not anti working hard. I think people should prove themselves at work, but I also believe in working smart.

And working a long time doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re working hard or working smart. It just means that you’re working a long time. So it’s always important to collaborate with your boss. I like to have things in writing, too.

Like, send them an email, and be like, “These are all the things that need to get done in the next 12 hours. Even if I stay working until midnight, that’s not going to happen.” So again, just working with them, keeping it positive, keeping it solution-oriented.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and I like that frame associated with, and you didn’t say it explicitly, but what I’m hearing, and maybe you could highlight it explicitly, is the notion that quality is likely to suffer if you are cranking at it at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 p.m. And I think that we could all just appreciate that that is true of the human biological entity, straight up. That just is.

Erin McGoff
Yeah, it’s important to remember your boss wants to look good to their boss. And you messing up a client report because you ran out of time, that doesn’t make them look good to their boss. So always think about what they’re looking for and how you can align your goals.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think, even to that notion, in highlighting the burnout or sustainability piece, I think it really does give rise to all kinds of other creative solutions. It’s like, “Okay, maybe you can work until midnight and then you’re going to go ahead and take tomorrow off.”

And, like, that’s reasonable and that there are times when that is 100% cool with the manager, like, “Yeah, please go for it.” And you have the chat and you got a win-win there.

Erin McGoff
Yeah. I mean, you can’t fix a bad manager. Like, the only solution is to get away. People don’t change. You just have to get away from them.

But you’re totally right. That’s another solution that you could offer, “Hey, yeah, I could stay until 2:00 a.m. tonight, get it out the door. I’m willing to put in that extra work because I have this goal of becoming a director in 12 months.”

Like, always remind them of, like, what your goal is, like speak it into existence is something I talk about, “I’m willing to put in this extra effort because I want this goal or promotion. However, I’d really appreciate being able to come in at noon tomorrow, as a way of catching up on sleep,” or something like that. Always offer different solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, framing it in terms of the the goal, the objective, what they want is fabulous. One of my favorite quotes, I don’t know where it came from, was, “Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have it your way.”

And I think that that’s kind of what we’re doing here, is you’re always speaking about it in the terms that they care about.

Erin McGoff
Exactly. Yep.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so we talked about some favorite words. How about some least favorite words? Anything you think just needs to go?

Erin McGoff
Yeah, as far as phrases, like, to remove from your vocabulary, well, first of all, there’s always the the fillers, which I intentionally use, by the way – “you know, just, like, um.”

In the book, I talk about them as language softeners because, as a woman, if I tend to speak the way I feel most comfortable, which is like more blunt and plain, people tend to not like me very much.

So I use fillers intentionally, which people are always really interested to hear about because I’m probably one of the only communication experts out there that is not telling you to tone it down. Now some people certainly need to tone it down. But I’m not a hater of fillers, in general, especially in conversations like this. You don’t want to sound too robotic.

But a phrase that I think is really helpful to get rid of, in a professional and personal setting, is the phrase “I don’t have time.” “Boss, I didn’t have time to do this,” “I don’t have time for that.” People just really don’t like hearing that you don’t have time.

And it’s also not helpful to you because there’s no such thing as not having time for something. There’s not making it a priority. And you can’t make everything a priority. And that’s just that. And this is really, really helpful for people on an individual level because when you say “I don’t have time,” you’re taking your power away from yourself.

You’re saying, “I’m not in the driver’s seat of my own life. I don’t have time for anything. I’m flustered. I’m flailing, I’m all over the place.” But when you say, “I don’t have the ability to make this a priority right now,” you’re putting yourself back in a place of power. And you’re saying, “I have control over my life. I have control over my days. I’m not in a position to make this a priority right now.”

And maybe that’s updating your portfolio or cooking homemade meals. It’s totally fine if sometimes you don’t have the ability to make everything a priority. So I’m really a fan of using language that empowers yourself even when it’s way more fun sometimes to use language that disempowers yourself and lets you be a victim. I’m typically a fan of putting yourself back in the driver’s seat even when it’s hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. “I don’t have time” is false, fundamentally. I guess it’s almost like the phrase “I have to” or “you have to.” It’s incomplete and on its own false, but it means “I don’t have time” relative to “I don’t have time to do this, in addition to the things that I’m super duper committed to and unwilling to give up,” which is the same thing as saying, “It’s not a priority.”

And, likewise, “I have to” or “you have to” is false on its own, but is only true in some context, “You have to do this in order to achieve a particular result, subject to some particular constraints and commitments.” But that’s a lot of words.

Erin McGoff
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, tell us, any other super favorite transformational language shifts that we got to highlight here?

Erin McGoff
One of the things that I talk about in the book, kind of like these basic fundamental idea, is strategic communication is all about playing chess and not checkers.

So there are things that you’ll want to say in the moment, things that your gut is telling you to say, you feel compelled to say. It’s impulsive. And a lot of the times it’s really true and really right, and you’re, like, totally fine for saying that. Like, “Boss, you suck.” Your boss might suck. I totally agree.

However, it’s always important to remember what your goals are. So a great example is when you’re quitting your job. A lot of people, especially if you’ve been working for a bad boss, which is unfortunate, want to tell off their boss.

And it totally makes sense that you want to tell off your boss. That’s what you do in your personal life. You know, if somebody’s being rude to you or disrespecting you, it makes sense. There is a way to do this, though, that stings so much more and protects you from the negative repercussions. And that’s playing chess and not checkers.

So playing checkers would be, “I’m quitting. You’re the worst boss ever. I hate working here. You suck. I hope I never see you again.” Hey, that’s all true, fine, and dandy. All the power to you. You’re expressing your emotions. It doesn’t benefit you.

Because, five minutes after you walk out of their office, that stink will follow you. And you’d be surprised how small the world is. And I’m not saying that you need to get your boss to love you, but I’m saying that there is a professional way to leave your job.

You can say, “Hey, I’m putting in my two weeks today. Thank you so much for my time here. I would love to provide feedback, if possible. If not, that’s fine. But April 6th would be my last day.”

Just keep it short and sweet, and then you can provide professional feedback, whether that’s to HR or in an exit interview. And that is so much more painful and effective because you’re doing it in a professional way. So you’re not getting distracted by your personal emotions, but rather it’s professional feedback.

And you can go to Glassdoor, and you can scream in a pillow, and go to kickboxing classes, and get it out in a healthy way. I always recommend getting out your emotions in a healthy way and expressing them. But do it in a way that benefits you and doesn’t accidentally back backfire and hurt you down the line.

And so the book is very, very much about, “How can you strategically use your words to get what you want, maybe in a way that seems counterintuitive at first, but, over the course of time, will pay off?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s a nice distinction there. It’s, like, you’re a human being who has emotions, and those emotions have validity, and it is often helpful and beneficial to have those emotions expressed somehow.

And yet, often in the workplace, about the thing that you’re mad about is not quite what’s going to give you the optimal result.

Erin McGoff
Exactly. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Very nice. Okay. Well, do you have any final pro tips on sounding more confident?

Erin McGoff
Yes. You know, something I talk about a lot is this idea of the person that you talk to the most is actually yourself. So a lot of people focus on external communication, “How can I communicate better with my coworkers and my boss and recruiters and all this stuff?” And that’s great.

But none of it really sticks the landing unless you already have a good relationship with yourself. So the person that we talk to most is ourselves. The way that you talk to yourself really matters. And we all tend to have this internal dialogue that’s hypercritical, not very positive. and it takes work to kind of train yourself out of that.

And so something I always say is to be your own best friend. Next time you mess up at work and you say, “Oh, my gosh, I’m such an idiot. I’m always messing things up. I don’t deserve to be here. Everybody’s going to figure out I’m such a fraud and a failure,” pretend your friend is saying that. And how would you respond to them?

You’d say, “You’re not a failure. You’re not an imposter. You just messed up a spreadsheet. It’s really not a big deal. Just go in and fix it. Let your boss know, and move on with your day.” Like, kind of get used to, like talking to yourself inside your head.

It sounds neurotic and nuts, but once you get in the habit of doing it, you become very, very kind to yourself, but you also become stronger because you’re able to deal with obstacles and issues and challenges much better. You’re able to overcome things much, much quicker.

So before talking to anybody else, so this is how I open up a book, is you need to first figure out how you’re talking to yourself and make that into a healthier conversation and dialogue. And it takes a little bit of work at first but, over the course of time, it becomes much, much easier. And then you treat others how we tend to treat ourselves.

So you tend to treat others with more kindness and empathy and dignity, and that gets you so far. I always say, like, manners go so far. You’d be shocked at how many people come into an interview and don’t even say thank you at the end.

I don’t know if it’s because they were never trained to, or because they’re entitled, or maybe they just forgot, that happens, too. But just saying “thank you,” “please,” “I really appreciate that,” like, just these little tiny things can go so, so, so far.

So the devil is really in the details but, yeah, my overarching advice is that if you’re looking to improve your communication with other people, first, improve your communication with yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like that a lot. Well, you talked about the Golden Rule, fundamentally, treat others the way you’d like to be treated, in terms of, like, “How are you treating yourself?” And so it’s often the case that we are much more vicious to ourselves than we would ever be to a third party.

And I’m right with you. I felt that recently, actually. I’ve had some conversations with myself in terms of, like, you know, maybe I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to take care of business in a couple of days. But to be able to say, like, “Hey, you know what, Pete? It’s been a pretty hard couple of weeks here.”

You know, they cut down my beautiful forest view to make a new house, which is not, yeah, not fun. I’m listening to the beep, beep, beep of the construction machines. I’m sick. So a number of things. And so it’s, like, “So it kind of makes sense that it’s not your most uber productive day in the record books given the context you find yourself in.”

And so, in a way, it feels silly to speak to yourself in that way. And yet it’s very soothing. It’s almost like a a sweet, motherly word of encouragement to your four-year-old self. And I was like, “You know what, that’s right. Okay.”

Erin McGoff
Yeah, you’re right. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
“You know, tomorrow’s another day. It’s all good.” So any pro tips on, if we’re feeling some awkwardness there, or we’re not accustomed to engaging ourselves in this sort of a kind conversation, how do we kind of get more in that groove?

Erin McGoff
That’s a really great question because it’s actually a lot harder than people realize. It’s hard to catch yourself in the moment when you’re in this 24/7 habit of being so self-critical and so hard on yourself. So I recommend this proactive approach.

Every morning, when you’re brushing your teeth, just look in the mirror and be, like, just think, “I’m going to have a great day. Like, I’m really good at my job. People like me. People like working with me.” Those affirmations sound really silly, and a lot of people would roll their eyes with that and scoff.

However, they’re really effective on a neurological basis. And I think if you can just look in the mirror and say three things, “I’m going to have a good day. People love working with me. I’m going to crush this project,” like, if you can get specific about it, too, it will turn into a habit, just slowly over time.

And at first, it’ll feel really weird. Sometimes when I encourage people to do that, they say, “I’m not doing that.” And it makes me really sad because, in that moment, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, you are so mean to yourself that you can’t even be nice to yourself for five seconds.”

And it’s very, very sad to me, and I just say, “You know, what happened to you where you feel like you can’t be kind to yourself?” It’s tough. People grow up in really rough households and really rough childhoods, and they learned that the only way to survive is to hate themselves. And so, things can get pretty deep pretty quick sometimes with career advice.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, you’re right. Well, “What happened to you?” I’m thinking about the book that that Oprah co-wrote there, which was a good one. And it’s intriguing, it’s sort of not that, speaking from my own experience, it’s not that we’re incapable of that, like, “Yeah, I can say the words in the mirror, sure. It’s just that I feel kind of weird and silly and awkward doing so.”

And what’s interesting about that is, well, one, I think that’s the case for all conversation, it’s like, “Well, if you’ve never done it before, everything feels weird and silly and awkward the first time you do it, just straight up, as a fact of learning and how that works.”

But, secondly, and I find it encouraging that the affirmations you spoke – we had Hal Elrod on the show, talking about, you know, make your affirmations truthful in terms of like, “Money flows to me effortlessly.”

He’s like, “Well, no, it really doesn’t, actually. You have to hustle.” So I think with one of my latest affirmations, which I find it’s like it’s really true, and I actually assembled the evidence for it, I wrote it down, because sometimes I can get in, like, a negative loop, and this is just objectively true, “Sometimes things work out better than you expect.”

Erin McGoff
Yep, what’s the best that could happen?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, because, you know, sometimes it’s like, “Ugh, it’s going to be a lot of effort. It’s not even going to turn into anything, anyway. I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to bother. Blech!” It was like, “Okay, yeah, maybe.”

But also what is true is sometimes things work out better than you expect. And, hey, what do you know? I’ve written down a dozen examples and I found that quite encouraging lately. So I think that’s kind of the sweet spot for affirmations. It’s not the – was it Gordon Smiley – or, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and, doggone it, people like me.”

But rather, “Hey, here is something that is true, and when I bring that back to the forefront of my awareness, it provides encouragement.”

Erin McGoff
Yeah, I love that realistic approach so much, “I have a big day today. I have a big calendar. I’m feeling really overwhelmed, and I think that I’m really capable of getting this done.” You know, it kind of reminds me a little bit of Tim Ferris’, you know, we’ve all heard of goal-setting when you set goals for your life.

And he has this whole idea where you practice fear-setting. So you actually, like, write out all of your biggest fears. So if you try to start your own company, what’s the worst that can happen? And then you work your way backwards from there to be like, “Okay, well, I go on a debt.” And then you talk about how you would rectify, like, the situation.

And I think that that’s really effective. And I think that if you can just work through it and be really realistic with yourself, like, “I had this big presentation today. I think it’s going to go great because I’m super capable. And if it doesn’t, here’s what I’m going to do.”

I think that’s really, really effective. I like to give as realistic of advice as possible. So I I really enjoyed what you said.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, now let’s hear rapid fire about some of your favorite things. Can we hear about a favorite quote?

Erin McGoff
Yeah, I was just thinking, “Don’t get mad. Get curious.” I don’t always say that. I usually say my favorite piece of career advice, but from our conversation today, I think that’s something that these listeners might need to hear.

It’s just, you know, when you’re feeling angry at work, don’t get mad, get curious, you know, “How did we end up here? What happened to my boss’ childhood that’s making them act this way?” It’s kind of a good general rule of thumb.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Erin McGoff
So I think it was in the 1990s, there was a study that found a phenomenon called the liking gap. And it talks about how they found that, when people exit a conversation, the people who you left, the group you left, tend to rate you way more favorably than you think it went.

Like, consistently across the board, people actually tend to like you more than you think that they liked you. And I encourage anybody listening, go read the study, go watch a YouTube video about it. I think it’s absolutely fascinating because there are a lot of interesting studies out there, but I don’t hear people talk about the liking gap very often. And it can be very, very validating if you’re somebody who’s socially anxious.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite book?

Erin McGoff
I used to say The Alchemist. I feel like a lot of people say The Alchemist though, so I am going to also say Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. I feel like everybody kind of loves that book now, but it is truly the Bible on negotiating. And I think Chris is a great reader on the audiobook. He gives great stories. I think it’s just a well-structured and well-written book.

Pete Mockaitis
He is a great reader on the audiobook. He was on the show, and just the way he says, “Salsa red pearl,” it’s like, “I got to have that truck.” Whenever I see a red truck, I think of Chris Voss. I mean, he makes an impression.

Erin McGoff
Yes, he does.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Erin McGoff
Ooh, I’m using a lot tools now. I’m, of course, using Claude Cowork. I absolutely love Claude Cowork. I think when you learn how to prompt things correctly, it’s very helpful. Where people run into issues with AI is that they don’t put in the effort to learn how to prompt correctly.

So if anybody’s listening to this, watch some YouTube videos, learn how to improve your prompts, and you would be shocked at what a great sidekick something like Claude Cowork can be.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favor habit?

Erin McGoff
I drink a ton of water every morning. I’m not even kidding. I think drinking water is like a really great piece of career advice. People in the afternoon, you know, they think they need that second cup of coffee, that 2:00 p.m. coffee. You don’t. You’re dehydrated. You need water. Go drink a ton of water.

And if you still feel like you need the coffee, then drink the coffee, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that folks really dig, they quote it back to you often?

Erin McGoff
I always say no one knows what they’re doing, and people love it. Some people get really upset. They’re like, “Don’t say that doctors know what they’re doing.” And I’m like, “Of course, they know what they’re doing. Of course, professionals know how to do their craft.”

But when you really zoom out, everybody is winging it. Everybody is making it up as they go along. Nobody predicted COVID. Like, nobody knows what tomorrow brings. Economists are wrong all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, the tech bros hype their things, and most of them don’t do the vision they portray. All these TV shows get canceled, “Well, shouldn’t the execs know what shows are going to be a hit?” No, they can’t do it. Yeah.

Erin McGoff
They do not know. I know from experience.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Erin McGoff
Yes, follow me on Instagram, @advicewitherin. You can sign up for my newsletter, HyperHelpful.com, which is a fun weekly newsletter that I write to supercharge your career. Of course, I have my book, The Secret Language of Work.

And I have a new app out called StupidFish, which is extremely helpful. We have about 30 to 40, maybe even 50,000 users actually today, in our first week. So, yeah, definitely go down on StupidFish.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at the jobs?

Erin McGoff
Find the job that you enjoy doing. It’s much, much easier to work hard at something when you’re having fun. I think people who are having fun always tend to win in the end. So find the job that you’re the best fit for naturally. It’s out there. I know it is. There are new jobs being invented every single day. Sixty percent of the jobs people have today didn’t exist eighty years ago. So go, go find your best fit.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Erin, thank you.

Erin McGoff
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Mark, welcome!

Mark Thompson
Hey, great to be here. I love your work.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, I love your work. I’m excited to talk about becoming CEO Ready, or just advancement ready, in general. But first I got to hear, you are the guy who calls Marshall Goldsmith regularly, asking him key questions. Tell us about this.

Mark Thompson
I mean, there’s nothing more powerful than to be held accountable about something that is your goal, and yet we don’t follow our own goals. So, we will set up a prompt that will be about, in his case and mine, “Did you do your exercise today? Did you tell your spouse that you love her? Do you make sure that you’re reaching out to your kids? Have you made progress writing the book?” “Oops!” Well, you can only lie about that for so long to a good friend.

So, there’s nothing better than to have kind of that loving critic in your life who is sharing with you the time, the kind of the precious gift of saying, “Hey, I’m going to support you. These are your goals, though, dude, because you need to show up for them.” And so, that’s what we do. We’ve done that for many, many, many years. And people will ask us, “Well, aren’t you guys supposed to be like master coaches?” And it’s like, “Well, it’s called a practice, whether you’re a musician or anything else.”

And so, what is so interesting is how you drift, and we all have that. That’s something we all have in common. So, think about that like personal board of directors or a set of people that you might think about setting up a series of goals that you’ve had for a while, and see if they can help you keep yourself accountable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, that’s exactly what I asked Marshall. It’s like, so you’re like the Mr. Top Dog coach here and you’re saying you have a person call you every day to say, “Did I do my best to…etc.?” And I thought that was pretty inspiring in terms of we humans can all benefit from some of that.

Mark Thompson
Also I love his framing because it’s not, “Did you accomplish the task of being happy? Did you make sure that all of these things were necessarily done?” It’s really more that life is about making progress, isn’t it, towards your goals? And so, the idea there is “Did I do my best towards this particular objective? And am I making progress?”

I mean, that’s what makes a life worth living, is when you kind of feel like you’re making progress, not that you always have to have the brass ring every day. So, his inspiration really was something that, actually, very few people do, but it’s surprisingly powerful when you know you’re going to get that call.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it is. Well, right now, I got a buddy who’s trying to lose some weight, and I said, “Hey, I want to try something out here. Maybe this will become a service I offer or build an empire to offer.”

Mark Thompson
Indeed.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s, “Send me a screenshot of your calorie-tracking app every evening when you’re done eating for the day.”

Mark Thompson
Darn.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, sure enough, it’s like…

Mark Thompson
Busted!

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, he knows it’s coming. And so, you know, most days there’s a pretty solid caloric deficit. And so, that’s brick by brick, that’s how you build the thing.

Mark Thompson
It is. And, you know, it’s not about being perfect. It’s about making progress. So, I really admire the idea that, if you can be coachable enough to just take feedback, not on the other person’s goals, but on yours, that’s the thing that’s amazing about it. Marshall and I, for about 700 hours during the pandemic, we had these small groups that got together, and they were at all levels, all incredibly interesting people, highly accomplished actors, celebrities, CEOs, people from all walks of life.

Well, you know, it doesn’t matter whether you’re the most entry-level executive, or you’re a person working in a call center, or a teller at a desk, it is common to all of us to aspire for things that we’d love to accomplish in our lives. And yet, without that accountability partner, we don’t actually make that kind of progress or set aside the steps or time for it.

So, I couldn’t be more excited about the fact that we’re talking about this today because that’s probably the single most effective thing we could do to be even showing up awesomely in our job, is to, let’s say, just for a moment, let’s do a little check in. We’ll do a feed forward, “What could I be doing to make your life easier, boss?”

She or he is being judged by their bosses. It’s hard to feel empathetic about that, but they also have the same nerve-wracking transitions and reviews and feedback that they’re getting. So, hey, could we go and actually ask, “How could I make your life better today? How could I make it easier? How could I do a better job of showing up for you?”

Also, with your peers, this is a way to be kind of, in a sense, CEO-like. When I’m coaching CEOs to be ready for the job, they’re highly accomplished people. They’ve been doing a lot of successful impact in their companies or in the industry. But what’s going to really separate them apart is whether you’re willing to really help the organization move ahead, whether it’s your boss, your board, or an entire community organization.

So, this idea of actually doing the check-ins, people are astonished. They’re astonished when you’re asking them, “How can I do a better job of showing up for you?” That alone gives you disproportionate and outsized points with people, “I never thought Mark would, really? He’s not going to improve at that.” Like, “Well, how could I be a better listener, honey?” “Wait, what? You’re asking me?”

And so, I’d say that that ends up being, it’s disarming as well as empowering. And the good news is you don’t actually have to do all of that stuff. You can prioritize, right? Asking is really worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. And I am a big believer that I have been asked before and I have been the asker, and it’s magic, it’s like, “Oh, well, thank you so much. Well, let’s see.” And it’s very beautiful.

Mark Thompson
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s talk about your book, CEO Ready. You’ve coached a bunch of folks and you put together this book. Can you tell us any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about us humans and becoming ready to take on the CEO job or just a bigger job?

Mark Thompson
Yes, I think that latter question is really what makes this the most profound surprise for me is because it ends up being relatable at all levels. Whenever you’re trying to, maybe, acquire the next level of responsibility, or step into the next role, or even be noticed and attractive for that next role, it’s important to do exactly what I’ve learned the titans of the world do when they’re being considered for the biggest job of their lives, running the biggest companies in the world. The very same attribute.

And it’s interesting, they often have a harder time than the most of the rest of us might because of the level of success that they’ve had, and that maybe overconfidence that they have in thinking that they’ve arrived at becoming a CEO as a destination. Your next promotion isn’t a reward for all you’ve done. It’s an opportunity to learn how you can now contribute at a higher level of skill.

In other words, the biggest surprise I learned is, no matter how far you’ve come, there’s always a little bit more to learn. And if you’re willing to ask, and if you’re willing to invest the extra time, effort, and humility to get better, that’s what you need to be promotable, to be attractive in that next job. That humility is attractive and disarming, very much like getting feedback.

And here’s the twist on it. It’s not that you’re humble because you’re afraid. It’s not that you’re humble because you don’t want to get out of bed because it’s too risky. That’s not the kind of humility related to fear. The humility has to do with being curious about what will it take to be successful at this next gig.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Yes. And I see that connection between the humility and the curiosity is because, implied with the, “What will it take?” is the underlying assumption that, “What I’ve already been doing is not exactly perfect.”

Mark Thompson
Yeah, “I’d hate to think about it that way, so I don’t.” And if you do, the interesting thing is you get huge points for that. It’s one of the things that really differentiates people. Corie Barry, when she was being approached to think about being the CEO candidate, walking in the legendary footsteps of her predecessor who had rescued Best Buy as a Big-Box store, when he approached her, she sent him a seven-page expose, saying, “On the first page here, this is how I could really get the idea that I should be CEO, but I needed to work on these other six pages.”

And instantly almost, the board and he said, “You’re our gal.” The typical response for most folks is to either celebrate with arrogance, or celebrate with maybe denial that we have stuff to work on. And that we’re not quite ready. That’s the reason I really frame this as, “Are we ready for this?” It’s a matter of always preparing and practicing, and then having that sense of inquiry that allows you to understand what’s going to be needed next in that job.

I think a lot of people think that, as they go through their career, it kind of adds up to the next job. And now what you need to also is be kind of reaching and thinking about what is it going to take to be successful and to contribute success for your organization in that next role. I think that’s the difference, “Is it owed to me? Do you deserve it?” Probably.

“Are you ready?” No, because you don’t really know what’s going to be needed. It’s not that the boss who leaves even needs a mini me. They probably need something mini better. And that would be what, really, we found is kind of it’s both an enabler and it’s almost a secret career killer. It’s a blind spot to say that we were kind of avoiding it, being able to be talking about, “What do I need to learn for this next job?” It’s actually something that’s admired usually by leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that a lot. We had the CEO of Korn Ferry on the show, Gary Burnison, and he talked about that very same concept. I think he might have called it, was it leadership agility or learning agility? One of the top competencies associated with successful executives is just this, like, “Huh, what do I need to know and how do I learn it?” And by being not a know-it-all, but a learn-it-all, you serve yourself very well for advancement.

Mark Thompson
Right on. I’d say that ends up being something that differentiates you from the crowd. And then also this idea that we’ve been talking about here, which has to do with being interested in making your boss successful, “What are really the attributes that has made that individual able to get through their reviews? And how are they being rated? And what’s their span of control?”

Because then, you can also do something that you’ve been hired to be in your swim lane, but to be really interesting for the next role, you need to think about all the swim lanes that would be under the responsibility of the job that you would get if you were promoted.

And so, to think more expansively and empathically about what it will take to be successful in that next job, in addition to your current one, is something that aligns you, really, as being an easier pick. They’d rather have an internal person who’s got that context and then has had the extra temerity to put in the effort, run some other drills so that they’re ready for that next job.

It’s usually something that we think is a privilege or a prize, and it’s really more matter of actually earning it again, which is why our subtitle is how to earn and keep it, is because what’s needed usually for the next person in the job that you might get promoted into is probably not everything that that person currently is doing. It’s something else, something more, something different.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and keep it is striking. I believe that there is some spooky data associated with, I don’t know if you want to call it a bounce rate, but people rise to CEO and then they exit kind of fast. Can you unpack this?

Mark Thompson
Boom. It’s been happening at a higher rate than ever before in history. The other thing that really led Harvard Business Review to approach Byron and I. Byron’s at NASDAQ, and he coaches boards and helps them. And I’m the guy who’s known to coach CEOs. And we’ve been seeing a turnover rate like never before.

And, in fact, if you see some of the research that they’ve done and others, the boards that pick a new CEO are often, half of them, are disappointed within 18 months. Not that they’re fired yet. And the level of activism, which are these kinds of shareholders who make a complaint that, “We’re not doing well enough as a public company,” will often, well, I’ll put it this way.

Five years ago, if you had a knock at the door from an activist investor, there was maybe a one in 20 chance that you’d lose your job as CEO. Today, it’s maybe 20% of the time. And if you’re at a big brand, it’s 40% of the time you’re out. So, it’s almost too late because they haven’t been expressing the alignment with all of their stakeholders, which is what we can all do at any level in our career.

This is what’s so portable about the principles of readiness that, think about all the people who have a say in choosing you for that next role, and think about all the people who have to be impressed or have to ratify the approval of you making an advancement, and see what you can learn about each of those responsibilities, each of those stakeholders.

For a CEO, it ends up being, “I need to learn about those shareholders and those pesky analysts and activists, and my board, if there’s a board of directors. I need, of course, to be better aligned with my CEO in whatever dramas she is going through or he’s going through. I need to know what the HR department’s doing, and I need to be able to think about my peers across the C-suite.”

In other words, if I’m in the job of CFO, I need to be thinking about my head of marketing and all the other people, the head of legal, the head of operations. They’re going to have to weigh in a little bit on voting me into office because I’m going to go from peer to chief if I’m lucky. And if I’m just a competitor. So, think about how, you know, often when at any level in the business, when it may be your first time manager, you are kind of, in a sense, in competition and collaboration with all of your other managers around you, your peers.

And if you’re to be picked out of the group, you can’t just be the one fighting for your own department. You have to be one who’s also seen as saying, “You know, Pete’s work is amazing, and I’m going to enable Pete’s work. I’m the better option. But I’ve got to prove that. And I’ve got to prove it to Pete, because maybe he’s not going to decide whether I get the job.” But it can often kill the prospects if you’re known as the person who’s just about me.

And so, thinking about your ascent when they’re banking the selection process is important, “How does this guy, Mark or Pete, show up compared to the others in terms of being able to play with others?”

Pete Mockaitis
Very well. Very good. Well, so I like your story about Best Buy a lot. Could you dive into another story that illustrates some of the principles and the best practices and the top things you recommend for folks, as someone who was maybe not so ready, but they dug in, they did some key things and away they went?

Mark Thompson
Well, you know, one of the people that I admire so much in technology is Cristiano Amon, who is the CEO of Qualcomm, one of the biggest chip companies in the world, known for patents, technical excellence, was running the biggest division of Qualcomm. What was so impressive about him when I did the 360, which is this idea that I’m suggesting that all of us who are listening to this program do, get some inputs from people all around you and see what you can do better.

And it’s interesting. He was actually the most insightful in self-reflection. He says that the job of trying to advance to the next level of responsibility is a job which means that you’re constantly, once you’re in your comfort zone, you’re now pushing yourself beyond it. I mean, once you feel like, “Well, we’ve got this stable. We’ve got this. Now we’re saying, okay, let’s take on more. Well, how exactly would we do that?”

And he had a wonderful way of expressing it. He said, “If you aren’t also trying to test to your edge of incompetence, I’m not sure you deserve to be here a year from now.” You need to stretch and say, “Okay, this is where I am today. I’m a mediocre trumpet player, but I just get my jollies every time I’m sent a sheet music that says intermediate from beginner. I’ve graduated. Everybody wants to be able to do that. What’s it going to take to push yourself just a little further than you’re comfortable?’”

Once again, I think we often can look at our careers as thinking we’ve done a lot of work, we’ve done it well, and we do deserve the advancement, that’s for sure. And yet this next job is going to be involving maybe getting out of your comfort zone in addition to being curious and then doing some skill building.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Okay. I like that a lot. Well, then can we walk through some key steps? So, we’ve got a mindset associated with humility and being of service and trying to help those who are higher-up succeed. And then if we’ve got that in place, what are some of the other top things you recommend we do?

Mark Thompson
Well, I’d say that one of the things that would be helpful is to think about yourself as a utility infielder. In sports, you know, that’s the person they throw onto the baseball field who can play more than one position.

So, if there are other types of opportunities, projects, collaborations with teams in other parts of the organization, in other words, kind of branch out across and see if there isn’t a way for you to get support from your boss to be able to help her or him with their reputation and the position of the department by supporting your division or having involvement in a new strategic initiative. So, you don’t have unlimited energy. You obviously don’t have unlimited time.

But to show the interest, I’d say that your punch list should be for this next year as we look at this wonderful year ahead, if there’s any resolution you had, it would be, “What else could I be doing in this current organization that would allow me to expand my experiences, my impact, my reputation? And what would those be?”

And what that does is it allows you also to test, “What do I really am interested in?” You’re going to try some things, “Oh, well, I don’t need to do that again.” Others, you might find as even another step in your career path. So, to be very intentional about setting your goals for the coming year to be one where you’re thinking about growing and getting noticed by expanding what you volunteer to do throughout the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, there’s many directions, as you mentioned, that we might choose to take on and grow in. Do you have a top listing of the key things to demonstrate, or your book cover has a checkbox with a check mark in it, like the key boxes that we want to check and show others that we’ve checked?

Mark Thompson
Absolutely. So, number one is this idea that you’re thinking about the success of your boss, which we noted a moment ago. What is it that will make them successful in the year ahead? What is it that you could be contributed to that would allow them to be able to build their reputation? So that’s step number one.

Step number two is to really start to map some scenarios so that you can reach out across the department or other organizations so that you can get more experiences within that organization. Step three is to think about what kind of skill-building that might involve. Maybe you need to take an extra class. Maybe you’re going to learn something more about AI. Maybe there’s an opportunity for you to double down on a skill that you want to complete, which requires some fluency in something that you need to accomplish.

The next step is then to think about the stakeholders who are going to be making the decision, “How can I spend time with the people that I know who they’re going to ask about whether I should be advanced or not?” And start to find reasons to hit them in the cafeteria or go to lunch or spend some time with all those who have an impact on the decision that’s going to be made, those stakeholders that are so essential?

And then make sure that you are part of a regular feedback process in your organization. What I found, and you’ll see in the book, is that there’s at least two dozen types of psychological and personality assessments that people can take that are often brought in by the HR department to try to see, “Do you really have the temperament and the background that we need for the next job?”

This is definitely the case at the C-suite and the CEO level. There’s probably more tests out there than ever. And so, what I like to do is give people a sense of patience in undergoing that kind of activity of taking an assessment or getting some feedback. But it can be a gift because you can learn so much about yourself by using these tools.

You just have to calibrate for the fact that, when you do get feedback, especially from assessments, that it’s not necessarily an attempt to find the truth about you. It’s an attempt for you to become more self-aware of what perceptions you might generate in other people’s thinking about you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well said. Well said.

Mark Thompson
In other words, it’s not the truth, right? I mean, when it comes to psychology, there’s never an absolute 100% correlation coefficient. It’s really more a matter of, “So, if I’m leaving the impression that’s like this, why are people having that perception?” If you can open your heart and mind to that, and it’s not easy, that makes you really incredibly accelerate your progress quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that a lot because many times the way these tools, these assessment reports’ outputs are phrased, it’s like, “Oh, on this dimension, on this construct, on this competency, you are at a 2.3.” It was like, “Oh, no, that’s a low number. I am bad at this.” Just to remember, “Ah, the assessment is not actually capable of telling me that I’m bad at this. It’s only capable of telling me the people’s perception of me on this.”

Mark Thompson
Thank you. Yes, exactly. Right. And I think that’s the interesting thing about integrating that feedback into your life, because you might feel that that’s a statement of the facts and that might hurt, the way you’re describing it. It’s interesting how perceptions are actually harder to change on the part of others than the facts are.

You can actually demonstrably become a better listener in meetings six, seven, eight times, and on the ninth time, blurt, interrupt, get short, and then they’ll say, “Yeah, no, Mark never listens.” And part of that is on you and parts on them because part of it is that it can be a little more convenient to stereotype each other, “And he just, Mark just talks and nobody listens. That’s just how he is.”

And then, “I don’t have to really, if Mark’s my boss, then I may not have to really invest in trying to find my voice and finding a way to speak to power and scroll up the courage to talk to that person.” So, it kind of lets them off the hook, because I’m just not a nice guy. The perceptions, too, also kind of stick for the reason that we don’t practice them with enough rigor and enough regularity.

That’s why readiness is really about a practice. I mean, you know, if you’re a musician or you play a sport or there’s some skill that you’ve developed, you’ve probably noticed that you get better when you practice it. And for me, particularly, if I don’t, I atrophy really fast. So, I think that ends up being the opportunity that most people are facing. If you want to be ready for the next gig, then practice and see how you might be able to show up differently.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I’m curious, when you talk about this issue of perception, it’s tricky. We, human beings, we think what we think, we perceive what we perceive, we form opinions and judgments of others, and sometimes they’re accurate and sometimes they’re not. But, nonetheless, individuals’ perceptions will influence or decide whether or not we do advance. So, do you have any pro tips on just common mistakes that make other people think less of us that we should be on the lookout for to avoid?

Mark Thompson
Absolutely. And the context ends up being in the book, with respect to this notion of what you’re describing for really reaching out across, because if you’re going to be a chief executive, you’re going to lead a whole organization. The biggest blind spot ends up being saying that, “Because I was great at what I was doing in this part of the company, and I assume that I understand all the other executive functions in the company.”

And so, to be able to slow down and consider what is really the context in which people are expressing their value set or their needs based on, as I mentioned earlier, they might be the general counsel, they might be a lawyer, they’re going to talk a little differently than a chief marketing officer. They’re going to show up in a way that frames what they care the most about.

In the case of the lawyer, it’s probably, “Well, we need to be in compliance, and we need to make sure that people are safe, and that we don’t get ahead of ourselves.” And the marketing person was saying, “Yeah, but we need to reach everybody, and we need to be able to have impact, and we need to be able to light up people’s emotions,” and you’re both right.

And so, to the extent that you can start to be willing to learn a little bit of the language, and I talk about kind of conversational, you don’t have to be totally fluent in the language of all the other stakeholders. But I think what happens is that people will very much appreciate your interest in them. People appreciate when you ask about their functional area, when you are, we talked about curiosity earlier.

If you really show that, you get a lot of points in terms of their perceptions of your openness, your intelligence, and your appeal because you’ve talked about them, and you’ve talked about what they care about, and you’ve been able to explore in a deeper way what lights them up.

I wrote a prior book called Admired, which I have here, which is entirely about this, where we looked at the most admired people in companies. And what we found is that we all expect to be valued, respected, and admired for what we contribute. And we want to be valued, admired, and respected even for our intentions, not even what we’ve accomplished, but because we have good intentions.

And then we asked people, we did a national survey on this, then we asked people, “Well, how well have you come to understand what the people who you are relying on for that feedback, what they value, and what they’re interested in? I mean, do you know how they want to be valued and admired and respected?”

And the process of actually finding out what that is for your boss, for your peers, for the people who have impact on your boss, is an incredibly engaging and exciting prospect for…People love talking about themselves. They love talking about their journey and then, all of a sudden, they cut you slack when you share your point of view.

There’s very little of that. There’s not enough today, I think, in society of that kind of conversation of trying to understand. Steve Covey, who wrote, The 7 Habits of Most Effective People, and is famous for all of that, he used to always talk about, “Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.” And that would be game changer.

That would change the stakes, you know, “Once I’ve demonstrated that I’ve heard you and that I understand you.” I think people are reluctant to do that because I may have to, it sometimes implies that I agree with you by saying that I understand what you’re saying. And it’s not the case. And what I’m saying is, “I respect and admire and value what you’re saying. I’ll decide later whether I agree. But I’m not giving anything up.”

I think people think it’s zero sum that way. It’s either my way or your way. And I think if you consider, why it is people are thinking the way they are, why your boss is triggered by something, it’s probably because she or he is being judged by their bosses for something that you could help with that would get you promoted.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And when you’re having these conversations to try to gain this understanding, are there any of your favorite go-to questions you love here?

Mark Thompson
One of the things that’s probably the most surprising is, “Who do they admire?” It’s interesting, when I asked you that question and I asked you to kind of form a picture in your head or your listeners right now, think about somebody that you really, truly value, admire, and respect, who you know, not just someone from history, but someone who touched your heart that you feel that way about.

And what’s nice about that is you can know a person really well and ask them, “I could ask Pete who I don’t know at all, ‘Who do you admire?’” Neither way would it be creepy. But it is actually rather intimate because people give you a very deep answer. They’ll talk about that mom who had endless patience, who supported the family and exhibited the kind of grit and effort to support to make this family successful.

And then you’ll ask them, “So, what is it about her that you’d like to be?” They’re almost always anyone you describe that you admire is someone who’s exhibiting attributes that you aspire for. And, all of a sudden, you ask this of a board member or your boss or someone that you can’t maybe say, “Could we sit down and have a deeper conversation about what drives you?” It’s like, “No, you’re not going to get that option.”

But if you ask who they admire, and really lean into it, people love talking about that person. And if you’re listening deeply, you’re going to find out that, “Wow, my boss really, okay, she really admires grit. She really admires the hours that I put in, maybe kind of even more than something else that I thought she needed.”

So, the people we admire is a metaphor for the goals and aspirations of the person you’re asking, which is something that we learned from our prior research. And it’s certainly true for great CEOs who go from having one boss, a supervisor, to 12 bosses, the board. And so, they have to do that with everyone, “Who do you admire? What’s driving you? What are you looking for in my job?” And those are the ones that get the job and keep it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Okay. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mark Thompson
“You’ve got to be the change that you wish to see.” Often, that’s attributed to Gandhi. I don’t think that’s actually a precise quote from him. But to role-model what we’re seeking or hoping is a very hard and high standard to hold yourself to. And yet that’s what really is the most convincing.

If you’re going to be in a position, in a role right now, where you’re asking people to do things, well, how are we showing up that represents that so that ends up being a reinforcement, not hypocrisy? So, that’s one, I think, that’s very powerful in leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Mark Thompson
Yes, we did a study on one of the most surprising attributes of who you can stand to work with. And many situations in which people work, collaboration is really, really hard. And one of the studies that was conducted by Bonita Thompson, actually at Vanderbilt, who owns the construct in collaboration, found out that you can actually work with someone you don’t like, but you can’t work for somebody you don’t trust, and there’s miles difference between the two.

Because there’s plenty of times where we’re working with people that we don’t exactly feel great about being with. You can’t always like everyone all the time. But if you feel like you’re in a situation where there isn’t that bridge of trust, that there isn’t kind of at least a mutually held trust that we’re both sharing the same goal, that’s an absolute game changer in terms of demotivating folks to work together.

I think a lot of folks find that surprising. It’s like, “Really? You can work for somebody that you don’t like?” I think that’s really important to understand, because the circumstances of work today are certainly stressful enough that that can often be the case.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite book?

Mark Thompson
My favorite book was Contact, actually.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, about the aliens?

Mark Thompson
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. So, I was like, “So, is that about networking or building relationships?” “Oh, no, that’s the alien movie.”

Mark Thompson
I knew you wouldn’t see that coming. I thought it would be obvious or not be obvious. What’s interesting about that one is, actually, there actually is a way to segue anything back to the dialogue of leadership, right?

Because we talk about wanting innovation, we talk about wanting to have out-of-the-box thinking, and I think often the reason most organizations and most of us actually have a hard time innovating is because it feels a little bit like you’re talking about little green men or something that is not relevant, and so we instantly reject it.

And we don’t see what, you know, if we dig a little deeper, while we’re hoping for creative change, we’re hoping for innovation, sometimes, you know, once we hear it, we reject it so soundly that we never do advance. And I see a lot of organizations lose their way because they don’t take a little bit more of a Star Trek approach to saying, “Okay, it’s not here in the known universe or in physics, but if we really want to innovate, if we really want to be creative with something, we start there.”

My most actionable fun book on this topic, it was Creativity, Inc., where the folks at Pixar talked about making billion-dollar bets on movies. I mean, that’s the riskiest thing. And they always started there. They always said, “Okay, we’re going to hold our brainstorming sessions in three rooms. And the first room is going to be the one where “no holds barred” on the creativity.” So as crazy as it could be.

There’s nobody shooting anything down there, and they capture all that. It’s not until the next session in the next room that they start to curate, “Okay, so how do these ideas fit with what we’re good at doing and what we have the talent here to do, and that we think that we could accomplish in the time that we have?” And then you start to winnow it down to those framings.

And it’s not till a third meeting where you’re saying, “We’re not doing that. We’re not doing that.
We’re not doing that. We’re just doing this. We’re just doing this,” and they start to winnow it down. I think we close too early on our brainstorming sessions. And do that with your career. Think about kind of what would be the boldest thing you could do in the new year and how you might go about it.

The critics aren’t invited to that first meeting. It’s really more about you continue to imagine, because the self-critique and the critique by others doesn’t usually get you to first base or even second base. So, let yourself go nuts about the year that’s coming forward, and then think about then how to get a little more practical about how to operationalize that in the context of a real life, and then set it into goals going forward.

And that’s how I’ve found the highest achievers, those who become CEO-ready or ready for the next gig, kind of, are able to open their heart and mind and start to really put a plan together, because you deserve that. You really do deserve that if you aspire to be ready.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Mark Thompson
The tool that I use to be the most awesome thing in my job was the 360. Get one, have one, be a part of it, make sure that you get the regular feedback in all directions. I always had to breathe deeply to realize that maybe not all the feedback I got would be ideal. And it’s always been an unlock. It’s always been an accelerator. It’s always been something that allows me to kind of get better faster than anyone else when I was wanting to be promoted so I could get noticed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Mark Thompson
The habit is gratitude. It’s not something that we naturally, or at least I naturally, leap to every day. Be grateful for the people and the opportunities you have. Actually, Hubert Joly, going back to the Best Buy story, he said, “Pressure is a privilege.” If you have the pressure of doing something really hard, that’s also an opportunity to be kind of grateful for that, “Well, I’m getting a chance to do this. It’s hard. It’s really challenging, but I get a chance to really make a difference.”

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people quote often and you’re known for?

Mark Thompson
What I’m known for is you can’t really scale your organization or scale your ambitions any faster than you can scale yourself. You’ve got to be able to invest in a way, in yourself, before you can expect it ever to be an outcome in that wonderful, cool company of yours.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. And, Mark, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Mark Thompson
I’d point them to ChiefExecutiveAlliance.com or just look up CEO Ready, which is just being released.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mark Thompson
I think that you deserve a promotion in this next year. Map a plan. Think about that as strategically as your biggest project and get some loving critics around you. Get some feedback, and most of that from your boss, and then put it in motion. That’s what you deserve.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Mark, thank you.

Mark Thompson
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Patty, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Patty Azzarello
Hi, Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re going to be talking about how to… I love the forced awkward segue. We’re going to be talking about how to rock out in your career and to rise, but you actually have some history in an actual rock and roll band. Tell us this story first.

Patty Azzarello
That is stating it a little bit generously. I started my own company 12 years ago and I created an advisory board for my company. And as I was putting the board together, one of the people noticed that, “You know, we could form a band.” There was a drummer, there was a keyboard player, there was a lead guitar player, and I describe myself as a willing singer. I’m not a great singer but I’m a willing singer. So, we got a rhythm guitar player and a bass guitar player to fill it out, and we were together for a couple years. We played a handful of gigs. It was super fun. It was just super, super fun.

Pete Mockaitis
One of the funnest parts about bands are their names. What name did you go with?

Patty Azzarello
You know, we never named our band.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Patty Azzarello
We never named it.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s even cooler.

Patty Azzarello
My business is called Azzarello Group. We just would call it The Azzarello Group band. It was sad.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it looks like you rose to power even in that context. Like, your name was the one that got to be on the band, so we’ve got some things to learn from you. So, you’ve done a whole lot of work and research in zeroing in on why some people rise or do not rise in their careers. And this is a fascinating topic. We had Carter Cast, he was a professor at Northwestern who talked about five career derailers. And you’ve got some insights yourself. So, lay it on us. Maybe could you start us off by what’s perhaps the most fascinating and surprising discovery you’ve made about what makes the difference between those who rise and those who don’t?

Patty Azzarello
Well, I think the thing that gets most people tripped up is that working hard is not the answer.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Sweet.

Patty Azzarello
Like, just being great at delivering on your job description does not make you stand out. It helps you not get fired. But I find that people, they put their head down and they work super, super hard, and they do an excellent job, and they just have the sense that if the world is fair, they’re going to get tapped on the shoulder, and they’re going to get noticed, and they’re going to rise. But it doesn’t work that way. And it’s simply because everyone else is too busy to go find you and learn about what you’re doing, and you have to figure out how to advocate for yourself in a positive and productive way if you want to stand out and if you want to get the recognition necessary to get ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, hardworking alone doesn’t cut it. Delivering well on the things on your job description doesn’t cut it. So, it sounds like you’re saying that’s necessary, like you need to do the thing that you were hired to do. And your book has three key sections: do better, look better, and connect better. So, do better, is that about the actual performance of your job?

Patty Azzarello
Yeah. So, if we just take the model very, very quickly, there are three parts to it, and the thing that a lot of people miss, and I missed in my own career before I learned this. I wish I had my book in the beginning of my career. It would have made things a lot easier than having to stumble and figure it out along the way. But I think the issue is that those three parts are all critical, and a lot of people just focus on the work. They only focus on the work.

So, do better is not just about delivering on your job description, but it’s about making sure that you are delivering value, and you’re not judging your value by being busy. You’re judging your value by, “Am I really delivering things of high value?” Look better is about your reputation and making sure you’re not invisible, because if you’re invisible, you don’t get noticed, you don’t get promoted. And it’s not about being political at all. It’s about communicating in the right way about your work, so you are sharing the value that you deliver. And then, connect better is simply about meeting support. The most successful people are the ones who get the most help. They’re not the ones that are so brilliant all on their own that they can just soar with their own efforts. And being able to get help and ask for help, and build the network and support you need is a critical skill.

It’s funny, every once in a while, when I’m on a stage and there’s questions from the audience, I get the question “Patty, do you have any natural tendencies or habits or traits that think helped you in your own career success?” And the first thing that always comes to mind is a willingness to ask for help. One of my superpowers is just asking for help, learning from smart people, accepting help, putting that help into practice, and I couldn’t have done any of the things that I did without people helping me.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, excellent. So, that’s a nice little overview there in terms of the three components: do better, look better, connect better. I want to touch upon each of them in some level of depth. I’m curious, would you say that if your goal is to rise in terms of to be promoted, to earn more money, to get a cooler, more high-visibility, high-impact, sexier, if you will, projects, if that’s what you’re up to, then would you say that the do better, look better, connect better are of equal importance? Or if you had to do 100% allocation, how would you split it up?

Patty Azzarello
The most important thing is to make sure that none of those are zero.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Patty Azzarello
It’s not that you have to have a particular balance or have the same balance at any point in time. But if you think it’s just all about the work, and the other two things aren’t important, you’re going to get stuck.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I like that view, it’s like make sure that nothing is zero because I see a spreadsheet in my mind’s eye in terms of, “Okay, I can multiply three things, like zero to 100. So, then the product of these three figures could be anywhere from zero to one million, one hundred times a hundred times a hundred.” And, sure enough, anything multiplied by zero is zero. So, even if there’s a master of someone who looks really awesome and connects just fantastically, if their actual ability to produce the work is at zero, then they’re going to kind of hit a brick wall pretty soon, in terms of like, “Hey, we gave you this because we love you and you know all the people, but you didn’t even do it. I can’t trust you anymore.” So, the rise concludes. So, that’s handy. Make sure none of them are zero.

And I’m sort of imagining, if I multiply them out, what’s that look like? And maybe I’m not at zero but I’m like at two of a hundred in terms of like connecting. So, that’s really a bottleneck. Well, that’s my mathematical brain. You said avoid zero, that’s where I went. So, let’s dig in then. So, with do better, you mentioned that it’s not about being busy. It’s about value. And value is…well, hey, I’m a former strategy consultant, so that’s a word that can fall into jargon territory pretty quickly. What do you mean by value and how do we identify whether we’re doing something that’s high value or low value?

Patty Azzarello
Well, if you think about how you end up spending your work days, there’s a lot of crap that filters in. And the first step is to identify the low-value activities, to identify the chaotic, repetitive, low-value activities, and just develop this habit of saying, “This is not worth this much time.” If you can just develop that habit, and not let yourself get swept away in a bunch of low-value activity, by definition, what you do work on is going to have more value.

But beyond that, I think it’s really important to look at what you’re working on and give yourself some time to think about it, and assess it, and judge it, and look at it, and say, “Where is the value coming from? Is this helping customers? Is this creating efficiency? Is this helping us all communicate better? What are the good things of value that are happening when I complete this work?” And I find when you start thinking about that, you start having the ability to add more value.

Now, if you want to go right to the heart of value, understand the P&L of your business, understand the business model, understand where the company makes money, understand where the revenue comes from, where the profit comes from, where the costs are. And the more you understand that, you might have a job as an individual contributor in a customer service or support department, but when you start thinking about the P&L of the business and the P&L of service and support, you start to realize, “If I could serve customers faster and better, that’s value.” Like, just turning the crank and doing, answering the same question over and over again is doing your job. But thinking about it, and saying, “I’ve answered this question 47 times in the past two days. Maybe I’ll suggest getting to the root cause of it so we can avoid that question entirely and the organization spends zero time asking that question.”

So, no matter where you are, what level you’re at, what role you’re in, you can always be looking at how the work is done, and thinking of ways to improve it, and to make it better. And that’s what I mean by value.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s really great in terms of, you know, I think there was a Dilbert book called Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons. And so, not to be pejorative of…every human being has intrinsic value. But some activities certainly, and some meetings certainly, just don’t do much, or maybe even do negative value adding. And so, one, I think just sort of having your radar up, and saying, “Huh, how is this good and useful?”

And then, sometimes, it’s like, “You know what? No one’s asked that question in five years, and we should’ve stopped doing this a long time ago now that you mentioned it.” That can sometimes be the outcome of just having that habit of regularly questioning. And I’m thinking, even if you’re not in a business organization, the value could be governmentally, sort of serving constituents or nonprofit, like fulfilling the mission and the impact metrics that you’re after there. So, roger, you’re thinking about that, what’s viable, what’s not so viable, what is the good this results in.

And I think, often, it’s great to, I’d love your take on this, to diplomatically ask those sorts of questions. I mean, you probably don’t want to say, “Does anyone care about this crap anyway?” But you do kind of want to educate yourself and get perspective on how something is viable or not viable. So, do you have any pro tips or scripts for how we ask that question without insulting people?

Patty Azzarello
Yeah. So, in two directions here. So, this happens so frequently, an executive will ask somebody to do something, and the person runs off and starts doing it because they believe they have to do it best and immediately because an executive asked, therefore, it’s super important, just because the executive asked for it. That is so not true. Executives ask for things all the time, and they have no idea what they’re asking for. They just have no idea of the costs of asking a question.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing. So, you’re saying they know what they want but they have no idea what the cost is.

Patty Azzarello
Right. So, an example is, when I was an executive, I asked my financial manager, “What is the headcount of our organization?” in the hallway, and I expected him to say, “Eleven hundred and thirty-seven.” And he said, “Well, it depends.” I’m like, “What do you mean?”

And he said, “Well, if you want an answer that is 90%-95% accurate, I can probably get that to you by the end of the day. But if you want it more like 97% accurate, I’ll have to wait till tomorrow morning because I’ll have to pull the organizations in Europe and Asia, and that might take even two days. But if you need it really accurately, it’ll probably take about two weeks because we’ll have to pull all of the open job wrecks, and all of the reports of people who are leaving, and rationalize that.” And my head was just exploding, thinking, “Oh, my God, don’t do any of that. Like, I literally thought you could answer my question in the moment.” And I said, “Do the shortest one. Do the shortest one.”

And so, a great way to match the value of a work to the time you invest in it, and make sure there’s a good match there, is to simply ask yourself the question, ask the executive the question, before you start working, “How much time and effort is this outcome worth? Is it worth an hour? Is it worth a week? Is it worth a half a day?” And if you can really understand that upfront, you’re going to do a much better job and you’re not going to be running around in circles wasting time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I tell you, that’s such a powerful question. I love the way you articulated that because it can vary massively, and you have no idea. And just assuming it’s at one level is bad news. Like, sometimes the answer is, “It is worth more than your entire annual compensation package to nail this perfectly.”

Patty Azzarello
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, okay, then. And then other times it’s like, “Oh, I mean, please spend no more than 10 minutes doing what you can do on this.”

Patty Azzarello
Yeah. But just because an executive asked doesn’t mean it’s like your life is dependent on doing it great and immediately.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Perfect. And so, under do better, you make a point that we should become less busy. That sounds appealing, and we kind of mentioned we should become less busy just by eliminating low-value activities. Do you have additional reasons for why we should become less busy?

Patty Azzarello
Well, so first and foremost, if you burn up all of your time on delivering just what’s in your job description and you’re overwhelmed by it, look better and connect better are going to be zero.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Patty Azzarello
So, first and foremost, it’s important to be less busy for that. But it’s also important to be less busy because you’re a human being that has a life outside of work that also matters, and just grinding yourself up in your work is not my definition of success. My definition of success is that your job has to fit into your life in a way that your life works. And a big part of that is being less busy. And if you’re so busy, you’re not adding as much value as you could because you’re just not thinking about it.

So, the advice I give in terms of how to become less busy, there’s a ton of advice in my book Rise which we don’t have time to go through all of it here, but the one thing that I think is a must to start thinking about is what I refer to as ruthless priorities. And what I mean by ruthless priorities is to be very ruthless on choosing them, and then be very ruthless about protecting them and actually getting them done. And so, if you’ve got 25 things, 25 super-duper important priorities on your task list, you’re not going to get them all done. You’re just not. No one ever does. But if you try to start saying, “I’m going to put these in rank order, or I’m going to draw a cut line,” your head starts to explode because everything seems so important you just feel like you got to do it all.

What I like to do in that case is go through each one and ask the question, not, “Is this important?” but “How bad would it be if I failed at this?” And I find if you ask that of your 25 things, there’s going to be a couple that suddenly rise to the top. And that’s one way to choose your ruthless priorities. But choosing a ruthless priority does not mean you don’t do anything else. It just means that you have one or two things, you’re not going to have 25 or even five ruthless priorities, you’re going to have one or two, and you’re going to protect them, and you’re going to commit to yourself, “No matter what, I’m going to get that one done. No matter what else is happening in the world, I am going to get this one thing done, and I’m going to protect it.”

And, typically, if you choose one thing, it doesn’t take up 100% of your time, so you have the rest of your time to deal with all the flak and other stuff that you still have to do, but you wake up every morning, and you say, “I am going to de-risk that ruthless priority,” and then you finish it. Hallelujah! Like, people love to finish things. And then you pick the next one. And I find that by doing and focusing in a ruthless way on one important thing at a time, you can sort of cut through the chaos, and even if you stay very busy, you’re getting the high-value thing done, and the busyness is not getting you stuck anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
And, actually, I want to zero in on the Hallelujah portion of that because I think that what’s great about that ruthless-prioritizing question there is by taking the time to surface your own kind of emotional anxiety, angst, associations with the to-do list, and then nailing the things that, in a way, have the most hidden terror embedded within them, you really will experience a sense of release and freedom and urgency, stress, anxiety leaving you.

And this happened to me many times. Like, I’ve just been surprised, like, “Oh, I feel so much lighter now that that is done, and I don’t think I even knew that I would feel that way.” But, now, with your question, I will probably more frequently be able to identify that in advance and bring into the prioritization. Very cool.

Okay. Well, let’s talk about looking better. Yeah, how do we do that?

Patty Azzarello
I love a comment. I got an email from a woman in the UK who said, “Patty, I read your book Rise, and I got two pay raises and a promotion.”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Patty Azzarello
I was like, “Wow! Like, what did you do? What did you learn? Tell me more.” So, I sent her an email, and she came back and she said, “It was the look better part.” She had been kind of at a zero on look better. She was in a marketing company, and she was in charge of events, getting people to events. And she was growing the event business for two years. She tirelessly worked to grow their event business, and she was in a meeting with the CEO.

And the CEO looked at the spreadsheet, and said, “Huh, I thought, in general, the event business, the event market was declining. I guess it’s not, because our numbers look good.” And her valiant efforts were invisible. He just assumed he had made a wrong assumption about the market, and their event business was growing because the market was growing.

Pete Mockaitis
Au contraire.

Patty Azzarello
And it was such a wakeup call for her to hear from my work that you have to be an advocate for the value that your work creates. And so, she immediately started communicating about all the things she learned about how to grow their event business ahead of a declining market and make it a growing business for them. And she didn’t just run around bragging, “Look what I did,” but she shared meaningful nuggets of work that other people could learn from, and suddenly she got that positive visibility, and her career just took off with more pay and promotions because she connected the dots.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Boy, that is very illustrative in terms of just the assumptions people make about why even if you’re doing amazing work that’s creating amazing results, you think, “Hey, the results speak for themselves.” They don’t. We’re just making it. Even when the executive had that context of, “Oh, I thought that market was declining. Well, I guess it’s not.” Yeah, that’s excellent. So, point taken. You got to share that with people. And I guess do you have some pro tips on how that happens?

Patty Azzarello
Yeah. So, there’s a chapter in the book that’s titled “Be visible but not annoying.” And this is where I really want to emphasize again that I’m not talking about being political, and I’m not talking about just having a good talking game without results to back it up. The results absolutely do matter. But the thing that people struggle with is, “Oh, I don’t want to be self-promoting. I don’t want to come off like I’m bragging. I don’t want to be annoying.”

The reality is if you have those concerns and fears, you’re never going to be annoying. You don’t have it in your DNA, so I try to get people to stop worrying about it. But we all know people who are advocating for themselves and their careers absent of results, and that is super annoying. The magic formula here is simply to ask yourself, “Is what I communicate of value to the people I share it with?” And if the answer is yes, you’re not being annoying. So, you don’t just around saying, “Look what I did.” You run around saying, “Look at what the company can do now. As a result of this project being completed, we are now in a different space and we can accomplish X, Y, Z which we couldn’t do before.”

And it’s important to tell people that because, Pete, you finished your work, and if you never share, “Now what? Now this value is here, what can we do with it? What can we learn from it? How can we build on it?” you’re missing an opportunity to create even more value. So, if you think about the way you communicate as creating value, because you’re sharing how to collect the winnings of the results you delivered, that’s never annoying. People are like, “Wow! That’s fantastic. I can use that.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s a great point in terms of things change all the time and you develop new capabilities, and as a result, that’s going to come up from time to time in terms of, let’s say, oh, even if it’s sort of like deep in the internals of the organization, like, “Oh, but, yeah, we probably don’t have the data on that.” It’s like, “Well, we used to not have that but once we upgraded with the ABC, we can now pull this by this, this, and that.” It’s like, “Oh, well, okay then. Great move.”

Patty Azzarello
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“Please go get the data on that since we now can,” and then they’ve been made aware. I like that in terms of the point is not, “Look at me, I’m awesome.” The point is, “It’s valuable and we can do something now,” or maybe the context has shifted, or there’s a new opportunity in terms of, “We’ve been getting great results with so and so who’s been quite pleased so they might be the perfect partner to want to explore doing a new thing.”

Patty Azzarello
Right. So, if you don’t mind, before we leave look better, I just want to make one more point on that, which is the importance of understanding how you are perceived.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Patty Azzarello
That’s another thing that sometimes just goes to zero for people. They don’t worry about it, they don’t think about it, but it’s your reputation. And if you want to get recognized, if you want to get promoted, you have to understand what your reputation is, and you have to recognize how you’re perceived. And the way I like to advise people on this is to think about what it would look like if you were to put in your best self forward, and then try to do that on purpose. Try to do that with intention. Because a lot of times we’ll do something, we’ll do a presentation, we’ll do a negotiation, we’ll deliver something, and have the internal reaction of, “Man, I was brilliant,” but you feel surprised by it.

And isn’t it a shame to be so surprised? And it’s kind of a copout to be surprised. Why not try to be brilliant on purpose more of the time? Why not be more intentional about showing up as your best self more of the time? And, again, that’s nothing about being political. It’s just about committing to show up stronger and to be present and to give more in the work environment to give more value because you are showing up. That’s another key part of look better.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s interesting how that can then translate into particular actions that you take. In some ways, you might say, “Well, hey, it’s kind of out of my control. I have good days and I have bad days. Sometimes I’m in the groove, sometimes I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” But, in practice, right off the bat, things like, “Hey, well, I could sleep. I could exercise. I could eat a healthy meal. I could think in advance of the meeting what specific outcome am I looking for, what are likely to be their main concerns, and how could I bring something that will address those concerns.”

So, it’s interesting that, in a way, hey, our general mood does shift day to day and we’re not in complete control of that. In another way, there’s some key sort of levers that we can all pull. Are there any kind of recurring leverage practices you recommend in terms of being able to show up at our best more frequently?

Patty Azzarello
Yeah, there’s a chapter in Rise, and I’ve got also a lot of other resources on my website on this topic, of the idea of understanding your personal brand, and that’s your reputation. Your personal brand is whatever everybody else says it is based on their interaction with you. And so, yes, we all have our good days and bad days, and low energy and so forth, but if you can think ahead of time about what it is you would like to be known for, that can help you be purposeful about it even if you’re having a bad day.

So, if you would like to be known for the person that sorts through the chaos and the clutter in a complicated situation and always has a creative, clear answer, keep that switch turned on. And even if you’re having a bad day, “Oops, this is a complicated conversation, this is time for me to use my superpower.” And if you think about that ahead of time, you stand a much greater chance of doing it consistently.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Great. And then how do we do that connecting better?

Patty Azzarello
You know, connect better, as I said earlier, one of my superpowers has been asking for help. This is another area where a lot of people go to zero which is just networking, just keeping their professional network going. And what I say, there are two elements to networking. One is meeting new people, and the other one is keeping in touch with people you already know. And the second one is actually where all the value is, because once you meet a new person, they become somebody you already know, and if you don’t put any effort into that relationship, there was no value in making the connection in the first place.

And so, what I tell people – and I tell introverts, and I’m also an introvert so this was not natural for me, I had to learn it myself – is that even if you dislike the idea of meeting people so much that you never want to meet a new person ever again for the rest of your life, you should still be networking with the people you already know because that’s where the value is. And that’s actually a lot less scary to people who have a fear of networking.

And what I like to say is, “Let’s just cross out the word networking and instead use the word be generous.” That’s what networking is, it’s reaching out to people, it’s being kind, it’s saying hello, it’s asking if you can help them, it’s sending them interesting things, it’s actually being helpful. The more of that you do, the more you are going to have an army of people who want to help you when you suddenly need help.

And so, you don’t have to try to match it up one-on-one, but it’s more of a karmic thing that always be giving, and always be giving more than you’re taking. And if you’re doing that, you’re going to have so much capital in the bank that people are just going to be so happy to help and support you when you need something. And it’s really that easy. Just be generous and invest some non-zero time in reaching out to people you already know and being generous.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you mentioned a few ways in which we can be generous. I suppose there’s push and pull. Like, you can be generous when someone asks a question, you can either give them the shortest possible reply that finishes that email and gets it out of the inbox. Or you can really thoughtfully think, “Oh, you know, what is it they’re trying to achieve here? It seems like this. I imagine this should probably be difficult given A, B, C constraints, restrictions. I know someone who might be able to help with that.” And so then, there’s one way that you’re generous when a request is made of you. How do you recommend we be generous when no one is asking for anything?

Patty Azzarello
Yeah, it’s so simple. “Hello.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Patty Azzarello
I know when I get an email from somebody I haven’t heard from in years, and they just say, “I was thinking about you and wanted to say hello.” That brightens my day. Absolutely. And if those people…I have people in my life that do that regularly maybe once a year or so. If they ever need anything from me, I’m so happy to do it because I feel like we’re connected, I feel like the connection is current. It’s really that easy.

And I often challenge people in workshops, I say, “How many meaningful network…?” Like, they say, “I’m too busy for networking,” which just means, “I don’t like networking and I don’t want to prioritize it.” And I say, “I don’t believe anybody is too busy to not be able to spend 30 minutes a month doing something intentional. How many networking outreaches could you do in 30 minutes?” Now, if you’re using LinkedIn or Facebook, a gazillion. Like, like, like, like, like, a couple of comments, you’ve got a lot of hits.

But if you wrote thoughtful emails, you could probably write five thoughtful emails in 30 minutes. And if you did that once a month, you would have done a thoughtful outreach to 60 people in a year, which is infinitely bigger than zero and it’s a value. And so, I really challenge people to do that, and they’re like, “Well, what do I do?” And I say, “Just say, ‘Hi, I was thinking about that project we worked on together and that funny thing happened, and I just wanted to say hello. And here’s what I’m doing. My kids just started college. No need to reply. Just thinking about you. But if you do get a minute, I’d love to hear what’s up with you.” Something like that.

It’s easy for them to read, it doesn’t take a lot of time, you’re giving them something. And this woman said to me, she came back to another workshop of mine three or six months later, and she said, “Patty, when you told me to do that, I thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard. I just thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard. I thought it was just a waste of my time, a waste of the other person’s time to have an email with no useful relevant content in it, but I took your dare, and I did it.” And she said, “I have to thank you because it has been wonderful. I have gotten back so much from these simple outreaches that have just made me smile and a few useful things even happened.” And it’s there you go. It’s another Hallelujah moment.

We tend to, I think, sometimes think about networking as this big scary thing where you’re supposed to go schmooze with highly-important influential people and get them to do something for you in the first meeting. It’s like, “No. Say hello to your friends.” That’s networking.

Pete Mockaitis
And I love how there’d been many friends that I’ve wanted, intended to reach out to, and it’s almost like a vicious cycle in terms of, “Oh, it’s kind of been a while. I feel like it’s been a while. Then I really got to bring it in terms of…” But it could just be, I love what you said, it’s like, “Hey, I was thinking about you and how we did this thing. Hope you’re doing well,” and just maybe like a comment, like, “That was really funny,” or, “I really appreciate how you did this.” It’s like, “This has come up again and again,” or, “I still haven’t thrown away your Christmas card because you’re, oh, so adorable, and it’s on my desk. Hope you’re doing well.”

Patty Azzarello
Exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, tell me, any final thoughts you want to share before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Patty Azzarello
So, just two more ideas in connect better that I’ll just mention very quickly. One of them is what I refer to as the experience paradox. And what I mean by that is a lot of people say, “Patty, I want this job but I don’t have the experience, so nobody will give me this job.” And what I mean by the experience paradox is you can’t get the job without the experience, but you can get the experience without the job.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Patty Azzarello
And so, if you’re thinking of career development, that’s what career development is, is to set your sights on the job that you want, and go learn about it, talk to people, just immerse yourself in that job that you want, and look for crumbs to pick up, projects you can volunteer on to get some experience in that job. That sort of connection is really a shortcut to advancing.

And then the other thing I want to mention before I leave connect better is if I look at my own career, the outside of my own efforts, there was nothing more impactful for me than having mentors. And if you don’t have mentors, go get one. Talk to smart people and be learning from smart people. And, for me, it doesn’t need to turn into some like awkward marriage proposal of, “Will you be my mentor?” because you can just learn from smart people and they never know that they’re your mentor.

But if a relationship sparks and you find that you’re talking to the smart person a few times, all you need to do is say something like, “You know, these conversations have been so incredibly valuable for me, and I’ve been putting the things that you say into practice, and they’re working, and I’m so grateful for that. I’m starting to think of you as a mentor. Would it be alright, maybe, if I got on your calendar on a more regular basis, once a month for half an hour?” And if they say yes, you’ve got a mentor. It’s as easy as that. And do it.

Advancing your career without mentors is like climbing Mt. Everest without a Sherpa and a guide. Like, yeah, you could give that a try, but why on Earth would you? Get the help.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Yeah. And it’s interesting how even in the mentorship example, it’s the experience first and then the role, if you will, of mentor protégé. It’s like, “Hey, we’re already been doing this for a while and we’re seeing that.” Very cool.

Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Patty Azzarello
So, the first one is from Picasso, and it is that, “Inspiration does exist but it has to find you already working.” And I just love that because if you’re doing any kind of creative work, if you just sit there and wait for inspiration, it just doesn’t work that way. But if you’re willing to just kind of sit yourself down and start doing it badly, just start, then that’s when the inspiration comes. And I found that over and over again in my life.

My other favorite quote is from Mary Anne Radmacher, which is about courage, and it’s “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” And I think, particularly now, where there’s so much extra stress and pressure and uncertainty, we can’t underestimate the value of just coping, of just trying again tomorrow, “If I didn’t set the world on fire today, that’s fine. I’m going to show up again tomorrow.” I think that’s just so important.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Patty Azzarello
The one thing I have been a student of is success and watching successful people and learning from successful people. And the area that I’m most fascinated by is what it takes, is what the investment is behind that success. Because I think a lot of times we have a tendency to look at success and think it was easy for the person, and I love understanding, “What was not easy about that?” I’m fascinated by that. And I have another quote by Michelangelo, which just cracks me up, which is, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And how about a favorite book?

Patty Azzarello
In terms of like business books and books that enrich your knowledge, one of my favorite, favorite books is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, about how to communicate effectively. That was just like a lightning bolt, and that kind of changed everything for me. I love that book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And how about a favorite tool?

Patty Azzarello
My cheque book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Patty Azzarello
If you look in my tool drawer in my house, I have a hammer, and I have duct tape, I have a couple of screwdrivers, and if it can’t be fixed with that, I use my cheque book. And I’m not a gadget-y person. I have probably the fewest apps on my devices of anyone that I know, but one of my roads to success was just realizing there are certain jobs I shouldn’t do, and just being willing to outsource and get someone else to do some of the things that are not in my wheelhouse is my favorite tool – delegating.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Patty Azzarello
I started about five years ago committing to exercise every single day. And for the first two years, I had a 100% record. And what was fascinating to me about that was it required much less discipline to make it not optional, because before it’s like, “Will I? Won’t I? Will I do a harder workout tomorrow?” I spent so much mental anguish in deciding on a given day whether or not I was going to exercise. And as soon as I made it not optional, boom, I got so much mental time back, and it required so much less discipline. So, I’ve been doing that for about five years now. I don’t have a perfect record anymore but I miss a handful of days a year, which, for me, is close enough.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with people; they quote it back to you frequently?

Patty Azzarello
You know, it kind of gets back to our theme that’s been running through this conversation about not staying too busy. And it’s one of the most highlighted things in my book Rise which is, “You have to find a way to deal with all of the work, not do all of the work.” You can’t just let stuff drop on the floor, but, man, don’t just do it all as it comes across the table. Deal with it all and do the stuff that matters.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Patty Azzarello
I would point them to my website, which is AzzarelloGroup.com. And I also have an online professional development program that’s called my Executive Mentoring Group. And you can find that at ExecutiveMentoringGroup.com, or if you don’t want to type so much, ExecMentorGroup.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Patty Azzarello
Schedule some time to think. If you’re not doing that already, schedule some time to think, and use it to conquer your busyness, and make sure that the look better and connect better portions of your efforts are not zero. But it all starts with scheduling time to think. Give yourself that gift.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Patty, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck and all the more rising.

Patty Azzarello
Thank you. It’s been super fun.