Set your networking targets. What you are trying to accomplish? List the types of challenges you have, the decision makers you need to connect with, and what you need to achieve. Who can help you? The webinar worksheets help you create your strategy and plan.
You are more vulnerable if you are not connected. Who other than your boss cares what happens to you? How are you viewed by your boss’s peers? Who knows you? What happens to you and your boss in a re-org, or acquisition?
Is this just Politics? Call it what you wish but you will be at a disadvantage without a network of support. If you intentions are honorable and you are giving back, your networking efforts will be authentic and valuable to both sides. They will not be hollow, selfish or political in a negative way.
Get and Use Mentors
Why you need mentors. You need mentors to fuel your imagination, help you see what is possible and necessary in your work, keep you connected to reality, make connections for you, and help you learn how to do a bigger job.
Types of mentors you need. Don’t get hung up on the word “mentor”. You need lots of smart people (you can’t have too many), but you also specifically need career advocates and business advisors. We talked about how to approach this and why it matters so much. There is a checklist in the worksheets.
How to ask for a mentor. We discussed several approaches but the main idea is to ask in a way they can’t refuse. Be gracious, respectful, and don’t ask for a lot of time. Listen to the podcast for effective conversation starters, and how to build a friendly meeting into a strong mentorship.
Your Extra Teams
Build a Personal Advisory Board. Successful executives have a group of people they can go to assess and brainstorm their business and career issues. It is really valuable source of support if you can work it out. We talked through a couple of models.
Build your Extra Team. Successful people get lots of people working for them that don’t report to them. Don’t just network with people above you, reach to peers and people at levels below you in the organization too. Make personal connections. Give them opportunities to connect with your network, and give them exposure at your level. Then you’ll always have help when you need it.
People often ask me why I stared my own company. Why did I choose not to get another big job as a GM or CEO?
How did I choose this particular business?
Growing Business, Growing People
There is a lot to this answer, but a big part of it is that I chose to create a business that helps people. My corporate business helps teams execute better and helps leaders grow.
And my membership program is something that I do in addition to my corporate work to help individuals at any level, or any point in their career get their breakthrough.
Here are 3 of my favorite stories…
These are stories about people who have made big breakthroughs in their career, are making more money, and are enjoying their lives more.
They obviously did the hard work themselves, but the fact that they point to their membership in Azzarello Group as a factor in their success means the world to me.
1. Karen – Started a successful business
Karen is sole-income earner who was working in a large services organization when she got the news that her role and her team were being outsourced.
Oops! No job. She needed to figure out what she was going to do!
She was getting quite nervous about her income stopping.
Her company came through with a role she could interview for. Since no income was not an option, she was quite tempted by the “paycheck continuation” opportunity, but in her heart she was not excited about this job.
Karen had heard the webinar on Investing in Strengths. She told me she download it and listened to it a bunch of times! It helped her realize that the reason she was not excited, was because this role did not use her core strengths. Yes, she could do the work, but she wouldn’t be great at it, and she wouldn’t be thriving.
This insight gave her the motivation to focus on what she was really good at. She thought about the kind of work that gave her the most energy. And this focus on her strengths gave her the nerve to turn down the guaranteed income of the “wrong” job.
Karen then put her consulting offer together based on her strengths. She packaged herself and her new company to promote the work she was truly gifted at doing. Then she started networking, and getting clients!
She is now highly respected and sought after in her field.
She makes more money than she did before, and is thrilled that she is doing work she is great at.
Karen did an impressive job of transitioning her career. She told me that being a member of Azzarello Group gave her a new way of thinking about her career, and the guts to make a change.
2. Mari – Got a big promotion
Mari just landed her first promotion in over 10 years.
Mari was a manager in a large technology organization, but had been stuck at the same level for a really long time. She was frustrated with her boss, and did not feel like her contribution was being appreciated.
No one was stopping by her desk to offer her a promotion.
Mari was capable of much more.
She is very talented. Mari called into the member Coaching Hours each month and had discussions with me and other members on Leadership.
First, the coaching helped her realize that in her current position, she had the opportunity to maximize her learning, tune her experience and build career capital instead of just being focused on the frustrations. This new habit of going after experience proactively, helped her get ready.
But the big “aha” for Mari was that she should not wait to be discovered.
The advice she got helped her to gain the confidence that she, indeed, had everything it took to do a bigger job — she just needed to package it up and promote it better to others. She realized that she, herself, could position herself for a promotion, (and that no one else was going to do it for her).
From the webinars on Relevance and Building Your Credibility she realized that being clear and up front about her goals with others helped her land a C-Level mentor who helped her prepare.
Mari downloaded the Packaging and Positioning Yourself webinar which helped her organize her best stories and make the interviewing process much easier.
Mari used the tools and support she got from her membership to make this promotion happen for herself.
3. Karl – Got a better job (without changing jobs)
Karl was a project director in a retail company.
As someone who fell into the “work horse” category Karl was struggling to keep his head above water.
He is very talented.
He always delivered, so the work just kept getting piled on. And his reward for working so hard and getting so much done was, you guessed it — even more work.
Karl was stuck being over-busy.
From the member Coaching Hours and using the Career Year of Action Guide, Karl took control of his career path.
The Guide helped him create space in his work to be less busy and to do specific things each month to make his work more strategic, more visible, and more relevant to his company. The guide helped him build his credibility and his network, and better manage conversations and expectations with his boss.
He realized that he could create a path for actually advancing his career, where before he was buried in the never-ending sea of day to day activities.
Karl was finally able to rise above the work.
He hasn’t changed jobs, but he likes his job a whole lot more and is getting more recognition than ever for the value of his contributions – not just for delivering lots of work. And he got a raise.
What do you want?
Why not join Azzarello Group to get the insights, the support and the advantage you need.
This is exactly what I formed the membership program to do — to encourage and support people to go for their breakthroughs.
Members get insights, tools, and access to me.
I really want to help. I had help. Help works.
So I priced the membership at a level that lets me continue to run it, and is easy for you to get approval for, or doable to pay yourself.
I have to say at $179/year it’s a screaming good deal. How much is a real career breakthrough worth to you?
Special Offer: If you become a member this week (by March 15), in addition to being able to attend the member-only coaching hour calls with me, and getting access to all the the webinars and resources in the member library, you will get a free copy of the Career Year of Action Guide.
This guide stages out all the things you need to do (over and above your job) to ensure that you make progress in your career and aren’t just endlessly delivering work and not getting anywhere.
New members who joined this year:
If you joined after Jan 1, 2011 and you would like a free copy of the Career Year of Action Guide, just send an email to support@AzzarelloGroup.com and request one.
This month’s webinar on executive presence drew record breaking participation.
Why are so many people interested in this topic?
Recognition & Respect
People want to be more recognized and respected.
They want access to bigger and better opportunities. They want an advantage.
Having a strong, credible presence is important. You need it in your current job and you need it to open doors. You need it to get access to higher level networks and to win bigger opportunities.
We talked about how to build your executive presence…
How You Feel
Be yourself. You need to feel comfortable and confident. The best way to do that consistently is to be who you really are. Putting on an executive-like facade does not work nearly as well as simply being comfortable in your own skin and projecting confidence.
Confidence. You don’t need to have a big, showy personality to have exeutive presence. Having a strong presence is about confidence, not personality. Even if you are a quiet, humble person it’s about putting your best self out there consistently, not changing your personality.
Fearlessness
If you can’t be confident, be fearless. Don’t back off when you are not confident. You’ll come off much worse if you are tentative and worried about what you are presenting. We talked about ways to achieve a more fearless approach, and build your confidence along the way.
Practice and prepare. If you are not comfortable in the moment, then prepare. Don’t feel bad about practicing ahead of time. The worksheets for this webinar help you plan for situations when you need to exert your presence. Script what you will say and rehearse it. You will be more confident in the moment, and you will get more confident over time, with practice.
Never mind the details. Don’t wait until you feel like know everything. Disconnect “knowing everything” from having executive presence. If you spend all your time learning the details, you will not gain executive presence. You won’t be stepping up and putting yourself out there, and to make matters worse, people will always see you in the weeds.
How You Look
Quality matters. It’s not about fashion, it’s about looking like you care. No one ever felt more confident by wearing a cheap suit. Put some effort in.
Remove distractions. Make sure nothing about your appearance distracts from your competence. Take stock, get feedback. Make changes.
How You Behave
Lead the room. Don’t just be in room. Lead the room. We talked about various rooms and types of gatherings and how to portray leadership and confidence in each situation.
Be fast on your feet. Part of executive presence is being able to actively listen and respond, and not become defensive under attack. You also have more presence if you can be flexible and don’t always need to stick to the script.
Be Present! Part of executive presence, is “presence”. You need to put yourself out there. Don’t stay in the shadows. Speak up. Have something to contribute. Be personable. Be the one to ask key questions or put forth recommendations. Don’t talk just to talk, but don’t be silent just to avoid risk. Step up.
Fit in Socially. You need to be able to fit in to higher level networks. Get over being awe-struck, and find a way to personally connect with people as higher levels. If you can’t fit in socially, you will appear junior. You need to make others comfortable that you belong there.
Never Appear Overwhelmed
Ease and grace. Although this is part of how you behave, it’s worth emphasizing because appearing overwhelmed is inversely proportional to executive presence. You need to find a way to deal with overwhelm privately, and have others see you as calm and in control. If you are appear overwhelmed, no one will see you as ready for more.
RISE…How to be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life
Get this book for anyone whose career you care about.
It’s available on Amazon
Kindle version is available too.
Please help me spread the word…
I wrote this book to give away all the secrets!
My goal is that every person who wants more success and satisfaction from their work (and wants to suffer less along the way!) will have access to the career-changing ideas in RISE.
Described as “startlingly useful” and “completely free of fluff”, it’s a straightforward combination of big insights and practical things (you can do right away), that make a huge difference between getting ahead and just working really hard.
So please get the book today for yourself and someone else whose career matters to you, and please also share this blog post with your network. I’d really appreciate it. And you’ll benefit too! It is a really useful book.
Contact me for corporate purchases and volume discounts at rise@AzzarelloGroup.com
In “Rise,” Patty Azzarello has done what no other successful executive before her has: analyzed, codified and recorded the steps and techniques required to achieve success in, and more importantly, to gain more fulfillment from one’s career.
This is real-world stuff. The book talks about the whole chain of how you get your first management job and takes you all the way through to managing, in her case, a billion dollar global business. Like she says in the section ‘Executive Confessions – “It’s OK to be scared. It’s not OK to get paralyzed by it.”
“Consider the purchase of this book as a paltry investment in your future career.”
I read a lot of business/career books and they typically have 3 or 4 insights that I can take from them and use in my day job. I stopped folding pages back and highlighting passages in RISE because just about every page had a mark or a bent page..
We are doing a formal marketing launch to the general public in January, but for friends of Azzarello Group, I wanted to let you know early for two reasons.
1. Many of you wanted to get the book for your team for Christmas. (We just made it, whew!)
2. I wanted to give you an early look, and an opportunity to join in the launch. Here’s how…
A New Book Blog
I’ve created a new book blog (early stage, sneak-peek) where a community of thought leaders will contribute ideas and resources on Business Leadership and Personal Development.
There are already some really cool links and my top book recommendations on the RESOURCES page.
Among the early posts will be some of my favorite classics like Bob Sutton’s Bullshit Bingo, and Margaret Heffernan’s, 10 Signs of Incompetent Managers.
There will be regular guest bloggers who are highly regarded experts in this space as well.
Please join the discussion!
I hope you will contribute as well. There are many important ideas in the book like how to:
Be more effective, more strategic, a better leader, a better communicator, and a better networker.
Increase your value to your company and advance your career.
Fit your work into your life, so your life gets better.
Contribute your content
Contribute a review of the book. Or write an article on one of the topics in the book. You can also contribute links to great related resources, blogs and websites you have found.
You’ll be getting exposure for your ideas and connecting with a community of like-minded people.
Many of you talk about expanding your professional network. Here’s a great place to do it!
2. Write a review or article – Feel free to include links to your business or service so we can all find you.
3. Send your article to me at rise@azzarellogroup.com
4. We will post your article on the blog
5. You can also post your ideas and links directly in the comment section of the blog posts. (Right now there is only one post, but feel free to comment there and get us rolling.)
Thanks so much!
Patty
PS. Contact me directly for volume orders of the book.
Here are some of the early review comments you’ll find on Amazon
In “Rise,” Patty Azzarello has done what no other successful executive before her has: analyzed, codified and recorded the steps and techniques required to achieve success in, and more importantly, to gain more fulfillment from one’s career.
This is real-world stuff. The book talks about the whole chain of how you get your first management job and takes you all the way through to managing, in her case, a billion dollar global business. Like she says in the section ‘Executive Confessions – “It’s OK to be scared. It’s not OK to get paralyzed by it.”
I read a lot of business/career books and they typically have 3 or 4 insights that I can take from them and use in my day job. I stopped folding pages back and highlighting passages in RISE because just about every page had a mark or a bent page..
My first book signing at the Fanzilli/Bauer dinner in New York City, Dec 7, 2010
One of the things many people overlook is that taking care of your career is actually good for your company.
Think about this way. If you are doing great work, you will make some progress and get some rewards.
But if you optimize for your career AS you do great work…
You’ll tune your work to have more impact on the business. You’ll share it so it’s visible to stakeholders. And you’ll make connections with people who can support you. All of these things are specifically good for your career.
But they all also help you get even better at your job. When you do them you will deliver even more relevant, great work for your company.
How important is your job to your company?
You need to understand how much value your job adds to your company. If it isn’t highly valued, don’t look for ways to posture or pretend it is. Face reality.
Become more relevant.
Find out what your company truly values, and tune your job over time to make your work more relevant, and to have a bigger impact on what the business cares most about.
This is vitally important for your career, AND valuable for your company.
Your company and your career are both waiting for you to step up.
Your career development is up to You
If want to get ahead, you need to take charge of making it happen. Don’t expect your manager or your company to do it for you. It just doesn’t work that way. Don’t wait to be helped or discovered.
The people who get ahead are the ones that take their career development into their own hands.
How to take more control of your career
You need to keep three kinds of effort in mind, if you want to build genuine value into your career and the business.
DO Better: Make sure your work has enough impact on the business. Understand if it does. Tune it if it doesn’t. Make yourself less busy. Give yourself time to think so you can work more strategically. Refuse to burn up so much time on things that don’t matter.
LOOK Better: Don’t be invisible. Share your work with the people who count. Build your credibility. Be more relevant to others. Don’t just have good ideas, sell them!
CONNECT Better: Make sure you are always building a network of support for your work and your career. Get Mentors. Grow your network in a personal and authentic way.
Waste less time. Get Somewhere.
I love to help people do this. I love to see people waste less effort, and get more satisfaction and payoff from their work.
It’s important to me to offer people the kind of support that I was so lucky to get as I was building my own career. That’s why I write this blog.
Also, to that end, I wanted to let you know that I am only able to do one of my public Career Building Workshops this year.
So if you want to take advantage of it, this is your chance. It is on October 28 in San Mateo, California.
I am doing only ONE Career Workshop This Year
If you already know how valuable this workshop is…
.
This workshop is a unique opportunity to spend a day with me.
If you come I guarantee you will get:
More of what you want out of your work
At least one life-changing idea, and
Dozens of practical things you can start doing tomorrow
Real Executive Experience and Insights
I share, from my personal experience (and everything I learned from smart people along the way) what things will have the biggest impact on your success, and which things are a waste of time and will get you stuck.
It’s been wonderful to hear the stories about the big promotions, and the career and life changing events that people have been able to create for themselves as a result of this workshop.
If you are interested, don’t wait.
Seats are limited, and there is only ONE Session this year:
On a flight this week I had a fun conversation with a top sales executive about the profession of selling.
The best sales people have some fundamental things in common:
They put themselves out there over and over again with no fear
They hear “NO” a lot, and always keep trying
Disappointment, hurt pride, and failure have little impact on their continuing to do the first 2
They always tune their offer to what their customer values most.
Skip the disappointment
The best sales people get over disappointment quickly and jump right back in the game. They don’t let failures along the way discourage or stall them, or damage their confidence.
One of the best stories I heard about this was a sales person telling a non-sales colleague:
The difference between you and me is that if you went up to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said, NO, you would not talk to them again. If I went to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said NO, I would go back and ask each one of them again. And a third time…
Three Sales lessons for your Success
1. NO is never a dead end
Every good sales person I know, can tell you how many NO’s on average it takes them to get to a YES. If their number is 17, when they hear NO for the 14th time, they don’t get discouraged. Their reaction is more like, “Great, I’ve got through one more step to YES!”
NO, is not only a critical step in the process, it’s viewed as a positive step forward. This is so important in building your career as well.
You need to get turned down.
You need to get over disappointment quickly, and see this rejection as a step forward in the process. Then you need to put yourself out there again – as many times as it takes.
Don’t Stop Trying
I can offer my personal example.
While my corporate career, and sequence of promotions was highly successful by any external measure, people didn’t see all the failures. They didn’t see all the times I heard, NO, and all the times I went for promotions and was passed over or turned down.
The success came from acting like a sales person, improving my value, and putting myself out there — and to keep asking.
So out of about 25 times at the plate, by putting my fears aside, and selling myself again and again, I got about 20-something NO’s and 3 life changing YES’s
You don’t get to the YES without the NO’s.
I see people make the mistake of going for promotion once or twice, getting turned down, and getting discouraged. Then they stop trying.
They blame the unfairness of the environment. Or they manufacture an imaginary high ground, and cite that they refuse to take part in the political maneuvers they believe are required.
The biggest thing holding these people back is that they got turned down, discouraged and then stopped trying.
If you are not willing to keep trying, you are the one creating the obstacle to your success.
2. Find a Bigger Pond
Good sales people go where the opportunity is. If they are assigned a “bad territory”, they find a way to expand or develop it. If they are assigned a genuinely bad territory, they move on and get a different job.
I see many people make the mistake of not moving on, when their environment can no longer support their advancement. They will stay for years, frustrated that there are no promotions available.
I’m all for advancing within your company, and much of what I write about is to help you do exactly that. But if there are no jobs, and several people above you need to die before a position opens up, you need to take it upon yourself to move on if you want to advance.
Or if you have an incompentant manager, you will get stuck. You need to get yourself into a different spot.
Go outside your comfort zone, go get some NO’s from new people, and keep trying!
3. Increase Your Value
When a customer is not buying, a great sales person will pump up the value of what they are selling.
They do this by getting a better understanding of their prospect’s needs, and putting together an offer which is more useful and valuable, and therefore much harder to refuse.
This is also critical in you career.
If you are not seen as promotable, ask yourself why.
Go the extra mile to really learn about and understand what is most relevant to your executive management. Is it new customers? Is it innovation? Is it cost cutting? Is it developing people?
Learn what counts and tune your job to offer more of it. Build up your value.
No one will instruct you to do this. It’s up to you.
Doing your job as written is more like selling a commodity product. Instead create a new product, higher value product. Differentiate your value by tuning your job to have more business impact.
The only way to reliably advance your career is to be always be adding more value to the business.
Your job description is not a life sentence – you can change it. You need to change it.
If you want to make more progress in your career, (and suffer less along the way), you need to rethink how you work.
I had an opportunity to speak about this at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim this week, to the Women in Electronic Design Group.
My talk was on Managing your Career on Purpose.
Add value to the business
Something that has been on my mind lately is how important it is, for people at any level, to take control of re-defining their job so they can put themselves in a position to add more value to the business.
The only reliable way to advance your career is to understand what the business needs and make sure your work is impacting it.
Working hard is not enough
In fact, working too hard, trying to do everything that is asked of you, is what gets you stuck. You need to understand what the business values, and then tune your job to deliver more value, not just deliver more work.
You need to refuse to burn your time, energy, and career capital working too hard, the wrong way, on the wrong things.
What I find really interesting about this when I work with companies, is this gaping disconnect:
The Employees: When I talk to the employees and mid-level managers, they tell me they feel like they are working themselves to death, and their work is not being appreciated or recognized.
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The Executives: Then when I talk to the executive management, they tell me that they are frustrated that their people are stuck in the details and not stepping up to deliver at a higher level of value, and failing to drive the strategy forward.
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What this implies, is that improving your career is not just good for you. It’s good for your company. They are waiting for you to step up.
The secret:
Your management doesn’t just want you to do what they ask of you.
They want you to do the job that needs to be done, not just the one they gave you.
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Think about it this way. If your job as a manager was just to get your team to do everything that is asked of you, your manager wouldn’t need you. They could just assign all the work directly to your team.
You need to change the game
You need to catch all the work, but not try to do it all as it comes across the table at you. You need to step above it, analyze it, sift through it, prioritize it, and recommend a better way to do it.
Your management wants you to think strategically about the workload that is dumped on you. It’s up to you to figure out how to change the game, figure out what the most important stuff is, and find the best way to do it.
Don’t wait to be asked
The people who figure this out and do it without being asked or instructed to do so are the ones whose careers advance.
They are not burned out, working tirelessly, without recognition, on everything. They have figured out a way to be less busy, but add more value to the business.
Good for business
From the perspective of the business, having more people and managers who are personally motivated and capable to step up, the better the business strategy will be executed.
Execution stalls happen when managers and employees are so overwhelmed with activities and demands of their current jobs, that they don’t even have time to think about how to do things in a better way, or implement a new strategy.
Stepping Up
Make sure you know what it means to lead at the right level and manage talent and team performance, not just projects and work output. Increase the reach and breadth and significance of your impact.
Communicate better. Build a strong network of support. Delegate better, and always raise the bar. You need to step up and pull your people up. It is what your business is expecting of you.
Individuals: If you’d like some help to step up, check out these resources.
Executives: If you’d like to discuss how to give your managers tools and support to step up, contact me:
1. You, the Product. You will come across as much more powerful and compelling if you develop your approach to present yourself.
You need to think of yourself as a product to be marketed, and create a communication strategy for each audience you need to influence.
You have a lot of control over how you are perceived, and can stack the deck in your favor, if you do the right things on purpose.
Create the Right Materials
2. Your Marketing Materials. We talked about creating an inventory of marketing materials way beyond a resume.
3. The worksheets for this Webinar are loaded with checklists, examples, and templates for creating a compelling marketing package for your job search or stronger positioning within your company. (download)
Define Your Unique Offer
4. Your Offer: You need to talk about what you offer in a specific way that opens doors and gets people making introductions for you.
5. Thought Leadership. If you want a big job, people will Google you. Make sure they find something impressive! We covered how to create presence and thought leadership internal and external to your company.
6. The Right Stories. Having the right stories prepared ahead of time is critical to making the right impression. How to package your key accomplishments and proudest moments, and use them to gain a real advantage in how others perceive you.
7. Story Telling: Don’t be boring! How to wrap the right, different titles and
punch lines around key stories for each specific audience, and your desired outcome with them.
Take the Right Actions
8. How to get on “the List”: There is always ” A List”. Learn how to get on it. Make connections and get the support of people who are in a position to help you.
9. Make the Connection: We talked about how to map what you offer to what companies are looking for, so they will recognize that you are what they are looking for.
10. How I did it: I walked through an example of how I used all of these techniques at a time in my career when I was going for a big job.
The feedback on this session was amazing, thank you!
Based on the great response to the Membership program and this particular webinar,
I have decided to extend the 3 free months offer to June 9th.
If you become a member by June 9th, you’ll get this podcast and the worksheets, as well access to all the other resources in the Member Library until September 2011.
When I was in my early 20’s I learned an important lesson.
I was working in a start-up company and had gone 3 years without a raise.
The wrong way…
I went to the CEO and asked for a raise.
He said, Why?
Among other things, I said that I had been working for 3 years without a raise, and that I had taken on more and more responsibility over that time, and that I always delivered and often exceeded expectations. I told him it was becoming un-motivating to feel I was working so hard and not moving forward in pay, and peers in other companies were making more money than I was…
He said, I don’t’ care. It’s not my problem. I only care about what the cost is to replace you, and I could replace you for your salary or less – so no raise.
(In reality I was valued more than that conversation would lead you to believe, and ultimately got rewarded for it, but I was being taught an important lesson.)
Your job is a contract with your company
You don’t get a raise for good attendance, or because you feel like you deserve one.
You earn a raise by increasing the value of your contribution.
And if you want to get that raise, you need to re-negotiate your contract on terms that are relevant and valuable to your company, not based on what you want or need. And you have to ask.
1. YOU Drive the process
If you are uncomfortable having this conversation with your boss either get comfortable with it, do it anyway, or don’t be disappointed if you get overlooked.
Know that you are at a disadvantage by not having this conversation.
It is vitally important that you and your boss share a common view of your performance and your expectations for promotion and compensation, even if your boss does not drive this discussion. Of the 20-something years I worked in a corporation for a boss, I did my own performance review 17 times, just to make sure that there were never any disconnects.
2. Understand how you and your role are perceived
It is important to know if you are perceived as a high, average or low performer. Don’t ever guess about this. There should never be any surprises about this. Find out.
Even in an economy where there are not a lot of raises going around, you still need to be communicating with your boss about your performance and what it is worth, so when there is money, you have done all the groundwork.
Also make sure you know how much your ROLE is valued by the company. For example you don’t want to be the superstar performer leading the support team for an obsolete product. You may be great, but need to move into a higher valued role to get a raise.
Once you confirm that you are a high performer then go on to build your case for what you want. If you are not perceived as a high performer – fix that first. Understand what it takes, and focus on adding value, before you start asking for things.
3. Discuss your raise as part of a business outcome
The basic premise here is:
If I do this, what is it worth to the company?
Here are some things you can say:
Last year, this is what I accomplished and this is my current compensation.
I would like to raise the bar for the upcoming year, and deliver more value to the company.
And If I were to add these additional business outcomes, exceed these goals, etc, would that be worth more to the company? How much more?
What business outcome would I need to accomplish that would be worth this level of pay, or this promotion?
Can we agree that if I deliver this, you will give me that?
4. Follow up on the specfics…
9 months ago, we agreed on performance objectives which if accomplished would
result in increased compensation.
I believe I have delivered on all of these and then some, and I also took on this additional project which has benefited the company by increasing our margin on this product line.
Do you agree? Can I get your feedback on my accomplishments? … (Assuming it’s very positive then…..)
Will you be increasing my compensation for next year, per our agreement?
.
If the answer is, No, for some reason outside performance, you need to get a next agreement.
As long as you keep focused on business outcomes, you are on the high ground.
If your hands are tied right now, I would like to understand the timeline of what is possible, and if it’s not a raise, is there [stock, bonus, promotion, etc.] that could be possible?
I’m very motivated, but I think you can understand that at some point this level of performance will be hard to keep delivering if it is not recognized by the company, what do you advise?
You have my commitment to keep delivering for you, but I can you help me understand what I can expect over time in terms of the company being able to hold up our prior agreement about my performance and compensation?
And my personal favorite…
If you were in my position, how long would YOU keep performing at this level with my current compensation?
. Note to high performers:
One of the hazards of being a high performer is that your career advances quickly, and you are always at the bottom of the pay curve.
Your company acts like it is doing you a favor by taking a chance on you in a bigger role (and in the beginning they are), but then you can get stuck. You end up performing at or above the level of your peers and getting paid far less.
It is up to you to show the value of your work and re-negotiate your contract based on the business outcomes you deliver, instead of the history of how you got into the role.
Focus on what you are delivering, and mention the fact that you are not getting any slack for having less time in the job, or delivering any less value than your peers. You should be paid what the job is worth.
Two things to never do
1. I need a raise because my mortgage has adjusted, I had another child, I am supporting my extended family… Your company does not, and should not care what you spend your money on. They only care about the value you deliver.
2. Give me a raise or I’ll quit. This can work… if you are serious. But you better actually quit if you don’t get the raise. If you don’t quit, you will have caused so much bad will, and lost so much credibility that your career at that company will never quite recover. And that story will be part of your back-channel reference forever after too.
This month’s webinar topic Professional Networking and Mentors is such an important one for people searching for relevance and opportunities.
My first book signing at the Fanzilli/Bauer dinner in New York City, Dec 7, 2010
Your Job