Career Management Lession 2/6 - Forge Relationships

Forge Relationships

Career success is complex today—you’ll encounter many opportunities and navigate lots of change. Discover how to enlist smart people to help you on your journey.

Enlist help

Traditionally, employees managed their careers with help from managers and the company’s human resources department. Or they participated in formal networking and mentoring programs. These are still valid sources of help, but today you need to do more.

Don’t wait for your talents and interests to be noticed, or to be discussed at annual performance reviews. Proactively seek connections. View all work relationships as resources for learning and development.

Career advisers come in many forms, including:

• Developmental networks—a network of people who give you advice, serve as confidantes, or advocate for you.
• Mentors—people inside or outside your company who can give you advice, feedback, and encouragement.
• Sponsors—people within your organization who have the positional and political influence to help you advance.

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Developmental networks

Your developmental network is the collection of individuals you trust and to whom you can turn for a sympathetic ear, advice, and a place to discuss and explore professional options. Members of your developmental network are people who help you grow as a manager and leader.

People who might belong to your developmental network include:

• Other leaders in your company
• Peers
• Members of professional groups
• Industry experts
• Community members you admire

As you develop this network, make sure to:

• Look for diversity. Include people with a range of perspectives, expertise, and background. You want people who will help you consider new ideas.
• Include listeners. It’s often easy to find people who’ll dispense advice, but having people who will listen while you talk through the problem can be more useful.
• Cultivate the relationships. Stay in touch. Don’t call only when you need help. Relationships deepen through reciprocity. Provide help and advice when you can.

Grow your network

It’s easy to get caught up in daily work and forget to develop new connections. To cultivate your network, make a habit of some simple actions—be curious about others, stay in touch with people, and always thank people for advice or perspective.

You can expand your developmental network by:

• Volunteering your time, both at work and in the community
• Joining affinity groups at your company
• Participating in social events connected to work
• Reaching out through social media
• Asking your mentor or sponsor to connect you with people they respect
• Offering others help—reciprocity strengthens your network

What social media networking can and can’t do

Having a large network of social media connections doesn’t necessarily mean you have a strong network for career development. Mass messages and overly personal posts don’t establish your professional credibility.

To use social media to cultivate your professional network:

• Share a link. Perhaps you’ve read a news article or blog post, and thought of someone in your network. Drop them a quick note with the link. This shows your engagement with the professional issues of your industry.
• Introduce yourself. Use LinkedIn or a similar service to summarize your work experience and explain why you’d like to connect.
• Share your story. A strategic, well-written post about an accomplishment, new project, or change of job can keep your network informed about your career direction. Remember that most people see a volume of information daily, so make your words count.
• Promote your personal brand. When relevant, a website, blog, or social media page can help you project your capabilities, talents, and vision. Make sure that all content is professional, so you’d feel comfortable no matter who sees it.

Mentors

Mentors are people who can provide advice, empathy, and perspective. They can counsel you on the organization’s unwritten rules and help you navigate politically charged situations. Over the course of your career, you’ll likely have many mentors, and it’s helpful to seek them both inside and outside of your organization.

Consider a few common myths about mentors, compared with the reality of how they function in workplaces today.

Myths about mentors	Today’s reality
They counsel only junior people	People at every career stage seek mentoring. Consider the senior executive, for example, who asks a younger employee for mentoring on social networks.
You need only one mentor	Given the pace of change in organizations, it’s more realistic to align yourself with several mentors. For instance, if you’ve made it a career goal to improve your management skills, you may ask someone with extraordinary people skills to mentor you on relationship building, but seek out someone else to advise you on budget planning.
Mentoring is a long-term relationship	Not necessarily. In fact, someone may mentor you for a limited amount of time in order for you to gain a specific skill or experience.
Only the mentee benefits	Mentoring should benefit both parties. When you ask for someone to mentor you, explain what you can provide in return—whether it’s feedback about an aspect of the organization, specific skills, or a promise of help in the future.

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Make a Mentor Connection

My first job after finishing my MBA was with one of the big four accounting firms. And it was about a year into my job, and I had a new client. It was a client called Marshall Fields—a large department store that’s now part of Macy’s. And I walk into the client’s office the first day to meet my boss from the accounting firm. And it turns out it’s a female boss!

And I say to her, without even realizing this, I said, “Show me where the files are. What do you need done, and when do you need it done?” She said, “Whoa, whoa! We’ll get there. Why don’t we go first walk around the store and look at what’s on sale?” And so she took me and she showed me her secret way of finding out how to get a bargain: look for the certain clearance sign as you walk through.

And she was also teaching me something else. She was teaching me the importance of first establishing a relationship. Don’t just go in there and barge in like I did. I’m all business: “Tell me what you need done.” We spent about 30 minutes going through the department store on different levels, and we got to know each other. And we talked and we laughed and we relaxed a little bit. She’s still a friend to this day.

Besides helping me initially understanding the importance of relationship and understanding the business in general, not just the task at hand, there came a time in my life where I wanted to change jobs. And one of the three opportunities that I had was to work for Kraft Foods.

I thought, “This sounds like an interesting job, but I’m not sure about it.” I call up my friend, her name is Janet. And she said, “Blythe, if you have an opportunity to get into Kraft Foods, grab it. Normally, they only hire you right out of school, and this is unusual that they’re bringing you in at the manager level.” And based on her experience and knowing Kraft and the food business—and that had been one of her clients—I took the leap. And I loved it. I was at Kraft for a very long time. I really grew up at Kraft. And it was one of the best experiences. And I’m not sure I would have taken it if my mentor, my friend, hadn’t encouraged me.

A mentor does not have to be someone in your company. A mentor can be someone who appreciates your professional side, your personal dreams, and quite frankly, someone who looks outside herself or his self, who really wants to help someone else develop just as she had herself. We took different paths, but that’s all right. As long as you respect one another and you have that open communication, that makes a difference in getting a good mentor.

Here are a few places to look for mentors:

• Your company’s human resources department. Explain what kind of help you are looking for, and a human resources staff member may be able to match you with a suitable colleague.
• Community and personal circles. Perhaps you know someone outside your organization who has excellent negotiating skills or an admirable work/life balance. Ask that person if you could meet periodically for advice.
• Social media networks. LinkedIn, your university’s alumni directory, or a professional association’s website may help you find someone.
• Someone younger. Perhaps a junior coworker has technical or cultural savvy you lack—and they’ll be flattered you asked.

Seek Mentors Who Expand Your Comfort Zone
When I reflect, in order to have come from the poor background that I came from in the UK, to have become a lawyer and then a member of parliament, I’ve had to have mentors all along the way. Now, the first thing to say is, sometimes I had to go and ask for that. You have to be prepared to ask for help. You have to be prepared to sometimes be vulnerable when you get that help.

Most of the time, we want to be in a situation where we’re saying, “I know everything. I’m great! Choose me.” Actually, with a mentor you often have to say, “I just don’t know how to do this. I feel out of my depth. What would you do?” And then you’ve got to be prepared to listen to what is being said to you.

That then gets to the second thing, which is you can’t be in a situation where you are asking a mentor, a great teacher, someone in a profession or in an area—certainly for me, lawyers, where I wanted to get into—you can’t be in the position where you’re assuming that they’re taking the decision. Actually, you are taking the decision. So you can’t confuse advice and the decision making that in the end must come back to you.

And sometimes, if you’ve got a range of mentors, the advice is conflicting. The decision making is yours. And part of the process to maturity and getting to where you need to get to is actually calling that decision and standing by in that decision, working it out if it goes wrong, and stepping up again.

And I think the third thing that I’ve worked out that is really important on this journey is that you often have to be outside of your comfort zone. For me, coming from a poor background in London, I was way out of my comfort zone going to law school and going to a good university. I was way out of my comfort zone when I became a barrister in Britain, as a lawyer, and then when I went to Harvard Law School and sought to qualify in the United States. And certainly when I took my seat in parliament in Britain, I was way, way away from my comfort zone.

So you have to accept what that means. You have to go with it. And you have to remember that you’re learning each time. But each time you do it, you draw on the fact that: “Actually, I’ve been here before. I know what this feeling feels like, and it’s great. And it gets easier.” And of course, you still rely on those mentors to guide you through and remain connected, acquiring new people along the way that can offer you that important advice.

Sponsors

A sponsor serves a different role than a mentor does. Mentoring is based on advice and guidance. A sponsor relationship, in contrast, is based on advancement.

To be your sponsor, the person needs to have a more senior position than yours and be focused on helping you advance. It is a transactional relationship. In return for advancement help, you deliver high performance. This boosts your sponsor’s reputation as someone who can get results and develop talent.

When you look for sponsors, enlist people with:

• * Positional and political influence in your company.* They should be influential and well regarded enough to connect you with other senior leaders and successfully advocate that you receive high-profile assignments, promotions, and other developmental opportunities.
• Belief in your long-term potential. Sponsors will step up to champion you only if they believe you can deliver outstanding results. Sponsors publicly link their reputation to yours, and therefore they need to be able to tout your capabilities without hesitation.
• The clout to give you protection. To advance, you’ll need to take stretch assignments. If your project suffers setbacks, your sponsor can be a vocal advocate who seeks resources and time for you to recover.

Sponsorship is not about blind favoritism. A sponsor sees advancing your career as an important investment in his or her own career, organization, or vision. Your job is to earn your sponsor’s continued investment.

Do you need a sponsor?

Research has shown that sponsorship can be particularly critical for women and members of minority groups. That’s because statistics show that members of these groups tend to have poorer visibility in their organizations and, consequently, fewer advancement opportunities.

The gap persists globally despite broad recognition that diverse leadership improves business results.

Too often women and minorities are unaware they need sponsors. Instead they:

• Assume someone will notice excellent work. Studies have shown women in particular believe if they quietly work hard, the quality will “speak for itself” and they’ll get noticed.

• Mistake a mentor for a sponsor. Many organizations want to diversify their leadership and have formal programs explicitly aimed at mentoring women and minorities. Mentors play a valuable role, but don’t necessarily have the motivation or influence to push for their mentees’ advancement.

• Believe sponsorship isn’t a viable option for them. Women and minorities may feel daunted about soliciting this kind of arrangement since they don’t see many role models like themselves in influential positions.

How to find a sponsor

First, identify anyone who has already acted like a sponsor to you. Perhaps someone:

• Helped you get your last promotion or high-profile assignment
• Connected you with influential people or clients in your organization
• Invited you to an important meeting or event that you otherwise wouldn’t have attended

If you have a relationship with someone like that, work to forge a closer connection. If you haven’t yet identified a potential sponsor, take these steps:

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• Increase your visibility by introducing yourself to senior leaders at all-company meetings.
• Ask for opportunities to speak at company forums.
• Volunteer for cross-functional projects.
• Research potential sponsors’ career histories and the work they care about most.
• Request meetings with potential sponsors for career-development advice.
• Offer to collaborate on a project of interest to a potential sponsor.
• Ask potential sponsors for help. Be specific about what you need, such as introductions to other leaders or stretch assignments.
  

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Ask for career help

Many relationships evolve naturally—someone becomes a mentor, sponsor, or a member of your developmental network without an explicit request.

However, just as often you’ll need to ask directly for a first meeting, mostly because people have full lives and aren’t as attuned to your career as you are. It might feel uncomfortable to approach someone, but you are likely to get a positive response. It’s a professional expectation at many companies that managers and leaders help develop talent.

Be strategic when you approach someone to ask for career help. Make it easy for that person to say yes.

When you ask for help, be sure to:

• Explain your goals. Let the other person know specifically what you admire about his or her work or experience, and how you believe that person can help you.
• Focus on mutual benefit. Explain what you can offer the other person—whether it’s specific knowledge, insight, or support in their current role: “I know you have really focused on sustainability in our production efforts. I’d like to lead an effort to reduce waste in my department, and I have several ideas to share with you…”
• Outline how you envision the relationship functioning. For example, “I’m starting a professional development network for all of us who have been recently promoted. I’d like to try meeting once a month.” Keep your initial expectations modest and considerate of the other person’s time.
• Allow your candidate time to respond. Say something like “I’d like to give you some time to consider this. May I check in next week with you to discuss this further?”