Boost Your Career

How to Make an Impact, Get Recognized, and Build the Career You Want

Sander Flaum, Mechele Flaum

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781621536413
• eBook ISBN: 9781621535720
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

An exclusive guide to besting the competition and rising to the top in your career.
Many people spend years working themselves into the ground, only to be passed over for the promotions, recognition, and pay raises they deserve. Today, there is a new set of unwritten rules for getting ahead, and they are all about making an impact. In Boost Your Career, Sander and Mechele Flaum expose what many people have taken years to learn: Success depends on the "impact dynamic."
Defined as projects that make a resounding difference in an organization, with the added benefit of impressing key stakeholders, the impact dynamic is what separates over-deliverers from average workers. Drawing on their many years in business in a variety of high-level roles, the Flaums teach readers exactly what they need to know in today's job market: how to identify opportunities and successfully lead projects that will propel their careers.
Packed with real and exclusive stories from seasoned professionals, newbies in big roles, and entrepreneurs in a variety of industries, this book shares the hidden hurdles, aha! moments, and tips for getting ahead in a competitive environment. Whether you've been at the same company for twenty years, you're starting a new job tomorrow, or you own your own business, Boost Your Career will make a resounding difference in how you view your professional role and frame your accomplishments.

1

Build Your Platform for Takeoff

BOOSTING YOUR CAREER CAN ONLY HAPPEN WHEN you know how to set yourself up for success. The biggest challenge we see is that young and seasoned professionals alike jump into their first job or a new position, get working, and focus on that instead of on building their career. You get a job, which comes with a job description. Then you get assignments from your supervisor or manager. You do what you’re told to do, work hard, turn in your work, and move on to the next assignment. But this is job maintenance—not career boosting.

If you want your accomplishments to be noticed, if you want to do great work and be celebrated for it, if you want to take one success and leverage it into the next, know this: it isn’t chance that makes people successful. It’s strategy. But unless you have an especially astute supervisor or mentor who helps you, no one will teach you what really matters in the workplace. Don’t be left trying to figure it all out yourself—even the bright intuitions that help you along need to be informed and honed.

There are many components that determine whether or not you will make a meaningful impact. All of them depend on knowing what projects to focus on, what to throw your efforts into, and how to go about accomplishing important feats. So build a platform to stand on by erecting the four pillars offered in this chapter. From there, you will have the stability to launch yourself, your ideas, your projects, and your ambitions. You can aim high, definitely, but first establish the ground beneath you by knowing what’s important to focus on and cultivate.

PILLAR #1: MULTIPLE BOSSES BRING MORE OPPORTUNITY

Boosting your career into orbit requires attention and approval from the players who matter most to your advancement. All of them. Because the truth is that in an organization, you have more than one real boss. Don’t rely on the organizational hierarchy chart to determine who these people are, because many important influencers will not be in your direct chain of higher-ups. There are many people whose opinions matter to your success—all in different ways—and you need to get clear about who they are, how you can align your desires with theirs, and what roles they can play to aid your efforts.

It’s a reality in today’s workplace that the corporate ladder has turned into the corporate lattice. Employees once aimed to climb straight up to the top; now you need to navigate a structure with multiple pathways that lead across to other departments or to new roles requiring different skills or to opportunities elsewhere. So, to determine who you really, truly work for, don’t look up—look everywhere.

Your Manager Is a Gateway

Let’s get closer to the truth about success: not much can happen for you without your manager on your side. This person assigns you projects, approves your requests to lead new projects, confirms your successes, and encourages you to perform ever better. Your direct supervisor has the greatest pull when it comes to promotions and salary increases. That’s why, in general, your professional life will most likely launch into the next stratum when he is behind your efforts. This person has a lot of power over your success, which makes him the most important boss to align yourself with.

Faced with the daily ups and downs, headache assignments, rote activities, or demanding due dates, it’s easy to first blame your manager as the source of a problem. Inwardly, you can start to view him as a taskmaster when the inbox becomes flooded with requests, or a micromanager when he checks in about a project, or a deadline chaser during all those planning meetings. If you can't find some merit and only see your manager in that singular way, then you are going to stay on the ground.

Any supervisor’s own success is measured by the accomplishments of his direct reports. So to boost your career the fastest, find ways to make him look good. Because when he feels good about your work, he’ll share it with his boss, who might share it with the entire management team as an example. That is the quickest way to make an impact that travels throughout the organization. Whether you report to a board, a founding partner, a committee, a team lead, or within an elaborate chain of command, boosting the person who recommends your advancement boosts you every time. Once you learn how to make your supervisor look good, you can look around and target more people who will benefit from your efforts.

Boost Your Colleagues, So They Boost You

Yes, your peers have power over your career. Surprised? They may be the people in the cubicles next to you, the ones you go out to lunch with, and the people you share your thoughts, ideas, and also gripes with. They may represent another team across a meeting table, share your taste in music, or simply be the dudes who bring in the homemade cookies. Even though they are at your same level in the hierarchy or are possibly in a different branch of the company—especially if you work in a relatively flat organization or in a holocracy system—it is absolutely in your best interest to win the backing of your colleagues and peers.

This isn’t about being fake and buttering them up just to make them like you. But here’s a warning flag: if your projects or ideas or grumblings have a negative impact on them, it will result in negative attention. The last thing you want is for them to speak down about your attitude, your personality, or your work. And when you need them in the future for your big launch, they won’t be there if you’ve burned bridges.

If you have the mindset that your colleagues are among your many bosses, you will work for their benefit. This is the absolute best way to regard colleagues, because when you benefit them, they will benefit you. Regard them as both bolsters for your reputation and boosters for your successes. You can easily and naturally become a leader by improving situations for your peers, so keep their needs in the forefront of your mind.

Leverage the Consensus of a Management Team

A nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach is common when around members of the senior management team. Because you sense—accurately—that what executives think of you matters. Their seniority means their opinions carry more weight.

Management teams come together to discuss promotions, problems, best-case scenarios, and new opportunities and to give one another feedback. In the same way that you benefit from your colleagues’ approval, so does your supervisor. Just because your boss is the one to tell you about a promotion, don’t think the decision is made alone. It’s tough, if not impossible, to promote a person the team doesn’t approve of collectively. Most senior leaders readily speak their minds when it comes to anyone who stands out, whether in good or bad ways. So think of the management or executive team as a consensual power that you want on your side. Because if they notice you and they think highly of you, your efforts to launch will be propelled forward by them, possibly reaching greater heights than you could imagine.

So when you look at who you work for, include the people managing other teams. They all have many needs and goals, both individual and shared, which gives you a lot of opportunity to provide support. Keeping this big picture of a company’s collective efforts in mind will help you stand apart as someone who can help all the gears turn. This helps your value and contributions to be recognized by everyone on the management team—support that your supervisor will keep funneling directly to you.

Get Direct Reports to Speak Up in All the Right Ways

Your reports work with you closely. They see and talk about how you respond to opportunities and setbacks and how you approach a challenge. Their opinions shape your reputation more than you realize, and they carry a lot of clout. If you are a smart, supportive, results-oriented, genuine human being—people will know. If you are a disengaged, lazy, self-absorbed, or dictatorial boss—people will know even sooner. Reports share their feelings about you, if not blatantly, then through subtleties that are not lost on your coworkers or manager.

When preparing to boost your career, realize that the ways you manage your reports affect your reputation and your success within the company. You can use their feedback to take responsibility for becoming a more effective manager, which fuels the successes your team needs to set you on your way.

It is often said that employees are reflections of their managers, so if your reports are mediocre, it makes you look like a mediocre leader. Their performance matters. If your group hasn’t done anything noteworthy lately or your reports are regularly missing quotas or deadlines or are falling short of goals—for whatever reason—you look like the dolt. But if coworkers think of your team as committed, competent, impactful producers, as their leader you are celebrated as the mastermind behind their successes. So go out of your way to lead them in troubleshooting and problem-solving. Give full support to great ideas, which includes lending your own skills and knowledge, making resources available, and helping them juggle their priorities and workloads.

Adopt the mindset that a win for your reports is also a personal win for you. As a leader, your job is to bring out the best in your people and help develop and upgrade their strengths. Definitely think about how their involvement will gain them positive attention in your company. This will serve your reputation as a leader well and make a great contribution to your own launch.

A Happy Client Is the Greatest Sign of Success

If you spend a lot of time working directly with clients or customers—such as in a high-touch service business like consulting, advertising, or social marketing—there’s a good chance they are indeed one of your real bosses. Think about where your income is coming from: who is ultimately paying for your services? Keeping clients happy, and therefore loyal, will make your supervisor and other leaders even happier.

When customers aren’t pleased with how a company does business, they spread complaints like wildfire. And when they’re happy, the great news is that they also let the world know it. Through social media, online reviews, and good old word of mouth, it’s easy to get feedback. This demands that companies and their employees stay accountable: negative feedback makes it hard to bring in new business or get referrals; positive feedback does the opposite—it boosts your entire effort into expansion. So fulfill the needs of your clients by working diligently for them.

Even if you don’t work directly with clients, know that your job depends on their happiness. They want a quality product, so provide one. They want great service, so be sure client-facing colleagues have what they need. They want to feel good about the company they partner with, so make efforts to get involved in things like environmentally friendly practices, hiring veterans, diversity, and especially social responsibility. They want companies to be transparent, behave ethically, and not succumb to corporate greed. So work to give them whatever they need to feel good about hiring your services or buying your product.

Be aware: sometimes the client’s power as a boss is magnified. If your company is losing market share on a certain product, or you’re trying to bounce back after negative attention, making clients happy will become top priority. Keep an eye out for those times, because if you can find ways to win additional business from current clients or find ways to appeal to new ones, you’ll be soaring in no time.

Use the Power of HR

You may not work with the human resources department very often, but it’s an undeniable fact that you always work for them. While HR’s role varies from company to company, its opinions matters. It’s best to have HR staffers on your side because they consulted on the current roles everyone has, and they will consult on what roles and which people stay crucial to success—and which can be let go. HR employees know where the movement is happening, what’s being restructured, or the changes a department is in the midst of getting approved. And they have the most power over employee continuity and changeover when a company is facing a merger or acquisition.

Be sure your HR team would recommend you, regardless of the situation or the direction you aim to launch into. Stay on HR's radar, as their approval is among the most powerful. The best way to do this is casually, by stopping in and saying hi, having coffee together, and syncing up. Fill the team in a little on the projects you’re working on, share your goals, and, if appropriate to their role, ask for their input. When the HR staff not only have you in mind but also think of you highly at the top of their mind, you’re standing exactly where you need to be to accurately launch.

Whose Support Matters?

You have the desire to get somewhere, to grow, to expand, to be valued. Sometimes we know exactly where we want to end up, and sometimes we only discover that along the way as we pursue success. Either way, you need to identify whose support matters. We’ve given you some ideas for who they might be; now it’s your turn to get specific. List their names. Describe their roles in the company you work for, in your industry, among your client base, or within your service sector. Clarify how their support might help you. Then comes the most important part: identify how you can work for each of them. Here are some examples:

• If you want to excel in your current role, get clear about the things that are most important to your “boss” and do them in an A+ fashion.

• If you’re interested in moving into operations, think about how processes that worked at other jobs can improve decisions made in your company.

• If you want a global opportunity, do some research, take global management courses, and then consider how something your team does might help a team working abroad.

• If you think marketing might be a good fit for you, meet with a savvy marketing mentor first. Then approach someone on that team and share some ideas for how your department can better support their efforts. Making this initial connection will establish her as a new boss who may eventually support a lateral move.

Taking this type of action will get you noticed by the right people and get them thinking about you and your skills in new, fresh, and exciting ways.

PILLAR #2: SIMPLICITY MAKES THE RIGHT KIND OF WAVES

Don’t make the mistake of thinking work that makes an impact must be time consuming and complicated. Up until now, you may have assumed that the harder you work on something, the more successful you will be. But if you’re working on the things that don’t matter to your boss, you could simply be digging a bigger hole to stagnate in rather than building the platform for your launch.

That’s why you need to get rid of the idea that bigger is better. Just erase it. Because the ideas that make the most meaningful impacts are the simplest. For example, on Monday mornings before work, at 7:30 a.m. in a nearby coffee shop, get your group together to talk about innovation. As they come off the weekend, before the work day begins, everyone’s minds will be fresh. It’s a small idea, but it gathers momentum toward creative thinking and problem-solving. It could have big effects: on how the team approaches challenges; on coming up with new solutions to customer needs; on getting processes out of their h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Clarence Page
• Introduction: Get the Boost You Need
• 1: Build Your Platform for Takeoff
• 2: Fuel Up with the Support You Need
• 3: Project Ideas to Spark Your Ignition
• 4: Launch Your Impact Projects
• 5: Get Beyond Your Current Atmosphere
• 6: Up Your Speed for a New Orbit
• Conclusion: A Propulsion System for the Long Haul
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index