Ten Make or Break Career Moments

Casey Hawley: Especially now, we're in an era of increased competitiveness and competitiveness in the marketplace because of the economy, it's harder to make profits but also competitiveness sometimes with one another, for jobs, for opportunities, for budget dollars as budgets are limited now and even within a company people are competing more for the money that is available, so that puts a strain. Another thing that puts a great strain on relationships now and communication is we now have four generations at a minimum, depending on how you look at it, in the workplace at the same time.

That has never happened before so along with each generation comes some expectations, sometimes even some judgmental attitudes about the way another generation might communicate, so that's a factor in making communication right now more challenging and the fact that we're more in a service information economy. It was much easier to communicate about formulas or parts in a manufacturing era than it is now because a lot of the communication we do now is problem solving and inherent in problem solving is the word problem and different people look at problems different ways so all of that makes communication challenging for the professionals who are in the marketplace right now.

Rachel Salaman: So how easy is it for people to learn how to communicate in a smarter way?

Casey Hawley: It is very easy. Some people don't believe that, they look around them and they can see the people they consider naturally gifted communicators and they think that person has the "it" factor but all communication is learned behavior and learned behavior from our parents and some people were very fortunate to go to schools that stressed communication, English, articulating ideas, those schools prepared them. But either directly or indirectly at a young age, these people we consider gifted communicators have learned to communicate well and the book that I've produced here, the "Ten Make or Break Career Moments," is condensing everything you need to know about business communication in a very short, succinct, how to, using models and examples to help shorten that learning curve for people who don't feel that they got that in their childhood or through their education.

Rachel Salaman: It's "Ten Make or Break Career Moments," how did you settle on those ten?

Casey Hawley: Well about half of them were just so easy for me because they were things that my clients and friends ask me all the time about, you know, I was in this situation and in hindsight I know I did not handle it well, I did not say the right things, what should I have said? Sometimes they come to me before they have an opportunity and companies sometimes ask me to prepare their national accounts representatives or their lobbyists for important encounters with executives and these are things that I've been asked and I've really tried to write books that are in response to needs that are live and very much operating out there.

The rest were ones that I looked at and they were things that I know are very important to people right now, for instance how do you handle, if you were asked to resign and other moments like that, that even though they are not common they are important right now.

Rachel Salaman: Well let's talk about the first moment that you focus on which is when you meet an executive or other key business contact, what kind of scenario are we actually talking about here?

Casey Hawley: The encounters usually take two forms. One is when you are not expecting at all, you are sitting there having your car washed, you are waiting while the attendants wash your car and it is going to take ten minutes or so and you are seated beside someone and you strike up a conversation and you find out that that person actually is an executive with a company that could do your career a lot of good or someone who knows someone who could give you a reference but more often the encounters that the book addresses are ones that we can prepare for and those are events that we're going to attend, conferences, conventions where we know we'll be meeting people from our industry and we really want to put forward our résumé, our abilities, our skills, our knowledge and we want to package that in a way that is very winsome and attractive. So that is the other thing that you can, or if you are going to a dinner party and someone says, oh by the way, John Doe is going to be here and you are in the same industry and you know that will be a great networking opportunity so you begin to prepare some things to say. So it really can be either way.

Rachel Salaman: Right, and your main tip in this chapter is to remember the mnemonic MISSION which is designed to make sure that you always have something appropriate to say in those kinds of situations. Could you talk us through this?

Casey Hawley: Yes, the MISSION model is comprised of seven safe topics that you can talk to business people about, even executives. You can talk to them about these things in a way that will make you appear to be highly credible as a professional. Some people can always strike up a conversation but at the end of it, are you viewed as an attractive hire? At the end of it, are you someone who they want to take the next step, to possibly hire or to mention your name to someone else who might have a position for you?

So these seven topics are the go to topics and the first one is milestones. Milestones are incremental steps in another person's career or in a project that you're working on and if you mention those milestone events that are going on, you set yourself apart from the crowd. If your local bank or their parent bank is building a branch, at the end when the branch opens everyone will say congratulations. You do not set yourself apart by saying something at the end but if along the way when they purchase the land, when they hire their management team, if you mention the milestone events then you become more astute in their eyes, more discerning, just a lot more interesting person.

The I stands for individual contributions and experiences. When you are talking to an executive they are more than their job and you don't want to exclusively talk to them about their job. Many of these people are also volunteers, they have charities that they are passionate about. Almost all of these people do civic, charitable type work that they like to talk about so if you can talk to them about things that are individually interesting to them, that's great.

The first S is for speeches, events and articles. Quite often when you are meeting someone you've attended an event, someone has spoken, so that is a natural conversation but you don't want to be generic in how you discuss the presentation that was made, you don't want to say something bland like "good speech" or "that was interesting, wasn't it?". Pick out a phrase, a very specific and concrete phrase about one topic that people talked about and mention that to the person you are trying to strike up a conversation with and by saying to them "I thought it was interesting how the speaker related what's going on in the economy now to the deregulation of banks in the 80s", that type of specific topic that makes you appear to be a person that is extremely engaged and interesting. The same thing about articles, whether the person has written an article that you're talking to or they were quoted in an article, that's something you can prepare for and mention. The second S stands for self and very simply, every executive I interviewed for this book, and I interviewed hundreds, every executive told me to tell people to be themselves, to not to appear to be something that they are not.

The I in the MISSION model is interesting nuggets, finding things that are of interest to the other person. One of the best sales representatives, he's been a Vice President of Sales in three technology companies, a very successful man that I know, Frank Lanson Gill, an interesting guy, taught me a lot about this and he said that he never studies a company's website – and I do, I will go ahead and tell you I still think it is a good idea to study a company's website – but what he said is, he studies the competitor's website and the morning of any meeting with a client, he gets up and he does not study the client, he studies the client's industry. So that way he can bring up something fresh that is breaking news in the industry and not the same old tired things that everyone in sales talks about.

The O in the MISSION model is opportunities. If you really meet a lot of executives, you find that many of them are in their positions because they were strategic in their thinking. In some way many of them are futurist and they like to talk about the future so if you ask them about opportunities that are coming up, product lines, that they envision five to ten years out, something that has not happened yet but you ask their perspective on what they think the future holds for their industry, that's an interesting conversation.

Then finally, the N in the MISSION model is neighborly talk. Over half the time when you're meeting someone you are engaging in this conversation with, they live in your city or in your community so as neighbors you don't just share business, you share what's going on in transportation, government, the arts, sports, many of those things and so that is a good way to first of all build a relationship and once you build a relationship then you can shift to business. That in some way is the MISSION model.

Rachel Salaman: The second moment that you mention in your book is when you meet the interviewer for your next job. Your tips here are particularly practical, can you share a few of them?

Casey Hawley: Before you go in to the interview you need to definitely prepare yourself to come across as confident and likable. As you sit in your car or in the reception area, you can do big breathing, breathing in very, very deeply through your nose and when you breathe out, you push the air out as if you are having to blow out all the candles on a very large birthday cake and you really push that air out and you deep breathe in.

The second thing you can do to physically prepare yourself is to do a muscle tightening exercise and you start with the arches of your feet and you arch your feet and you hold that arch very tightly for five seconds and then you relax that muscle. Then you do your calves and you work all the way up, you do your fingertips, you do your forearms, you tense and relax the muscles in your body as you're just sitting there. You can do this in a very subtle way so that no one even knows what you're doing but what happens at the end is it's almost like having a massage from the inside. You are more relaxed and when you're relaxed, more oxygen gets to your brain and your brain is coming up with those great answers that you can better and you look physically relaxed, you don't look fearful, you don't look apprehensive, you look like a candidate who can really handle the job.

Rachel Salaman: Well the next moment in your book is when you are offered a job, what issues should a person be focusing on here?

Casey Hawley: When you are offered the job initially, the first thing that you should do of course is to express your excitement about it and that you agree that it's a great fit and how much you want to work for that company. There are personality styles, especially in this economy, who want to hear you say out loud that you appreciate the opportunity and some people skip that part and that is not a good way to get off to a good start with someone who may potentially be your future boss. So that's the first thing that you do, that you express that in a very gracious way and then at some point in that conversation you also need to ask if you will be receiving the offer in a document or if you will be receiving it by email because you should want to see the offer in writing.

Rachel Salaman: Your next chapter is about the key moments in a performance review, looking at this from both sides of the table so to speak. What are some of your strategies for the person being given the performance review?

Casey Hawley: Well one thing I will say not to do is not to look at it as your manager's meeting. Sometimes employees go into the meeting with a victim mentality, I'm going in for my performance evaluation and my boss is in charge of this meeting and it's going to be done to me. No, the other person has the lead in the meeting, the manager definitely has the lead and you should be respectful of that but it is your meeting too. It is your meeting to prepare for, it is your meeting to be knowledgeable about, it is your meeting to have formed ahead of time all of the positive things because a performance review is not just a review of things that have gone wrong, of course, it is a review of all the contributions you've made and who better to prepare for that meeting and those topics than you. So that is one of the things to look at.

The second thing is to look at it, if it is a meeting about the future, because that word review in is in there or sometimes evaluation, people are very past orientated, they are looking only at the past and the only reason to do a review or an evaluation is so that the individual and the company will be more profitable and be built up for the future. That is the whole purpose otherwise we wouldn't even do these, the purpose is continually to become better at our jobs. So you have to be very future oriented and looking at what you've done to prepare yourself for the future and what you can ask from your company, from your employer, to help you be better in the future.

Rachel Salaman: And what about for the manager giving the performance review, what should he or she be thinking about?

Casey Hawley: The future orientation is even more important for the manager because to dwell on the things that have gone wrong, even though you have to document those, you have to cite those, but to dwell on things in the past is a mistake because then you become argumentative about it and exactly how things happened and who's responsibility it was. Instead the focus should be on training, development, steps to take in the future on both sides, on the employers side and on the employees side, to make sure that when you have this review in six months or a year, you'll be talking about all the things that have improved.

Rachel Salaman: Well the next key moment is meeting your new team for the first time and you offer some really useful tips on gaining the respect of your new colleagues. Could you share some of those?

Casey Hawley: Yes, every company, every department, feels that it is unique. Every client I've ever had is that way, it thinks that their business is so radically different from all the other businesses in the world and departments are the same way so when you go in and you express your openness to learn about the way that things operate in that unique department and you ask for help, there's something very appealing about someone coming in to ask for help. There's something unappealing about someone who comes in and says all the changes they're going to make without asking for help first and it gives the sense that they are saying to people "you are broken and I'm here to fix you" and that is never popular. So that is one of the things that you can do. That's a great way to get off to a good start.

Rachel Salaman: The next chapter deals with something which may never happen to a lot of people but statistics show that it will certainly happen to some, it's the moment you get fired. What's the right way to negotiate this?

Casey Hawley: Just remember that everything that they gave you the day you joined the company is up for negotiation and so you need to think back to the day you were hired and they said here's your laptop, here's your car, here are your benefits. Everything that they told you in those first couple of days of sharing with you everything they were going to give you, most of that is going to go away, perhaps all of that is going away but how fast it goes away and if it all goes away is partly up to you so keep in mind that if they offer you benefits for six weeks, it will not harm your situation at all to say "I would like for you to consider offering my health benefits for six months for these reasons" and you can use your longevity, you can use the idea of helping you make a transition into the next job, there are all kinds of things that you can say to them but the main thing is to ask. You rarely have anything to lose to ask.

Rachel Salaman: Well the next make or break career moment is another tricky one, it's when something arises that challenges your integrity or indeed company policy so if someone asks you to do some creative accounting in their favor. You have a mnemonic to help people here which is DUCK, could you explain this?

Casey Hawley: People are being asked more and more to do fuzzy accounting or to act sometimes under pressure and in a hurry and being asked to do things that probably if everyone had cooler heads and more time to make decisions, no one would ask them to do but I'm hearing more often that people are being asked to do things and they wonder about the ethics involved and so if you are faced with something like this the DUCK mnemonic is a great way to help yourself, just stop and think and the first D of D-U-C-K mnemonic is the word duck and that is to duck the question. Now normally to duck a question is a bad idea but I'm not talking about ducking it permanently, I'm talking about momentarily until you can get your wits about you and really think, to duck the question momentarily and you can say something like "I'm headed into a meeting right now, I want to talk to you about this but could you get back with me at two o'clock or could I call you tomorrow?" This gives you some time to formulate a good answer, not just an off the top of your head answer, which either way could be wrong, so that's the D.

The U is to understand, you want to seek to understand. I hear this all the time, when someone is confronted with a question that is a threat to their values, sometimes there is some emotion involved, there's something in them that rises up and reacts a little bit emotionally, judgmentally, sometimes even with some anger, maybe some surprise or shock and you don't want to display that. Because of those emotions you may not have fully understood exactly what's being asked of you so when you do get back to the person, you want to ask them to help you understand exactly what they're asking for and exactly what the question is. Sometimes when you do that, when they explain it to you, it may not be as unethical, or unethical at all, as what you had thought they'd said when you were a little bit nervous and emotional. The second thing is, when you ask someone to clarify and help you understand, as they are explaining it, I can't tell you how often the other person becomes uncomfortable and realizes it was probably not a good idea to ask you to do this and they will retract. That's an ideal situation, when they just retract the request completely.

C is before you say anything to someone you need to offer them assurance or a compliment about something that you do respect about them. Respect is a real issue here and there can often be a loss of respect on either side in a dilemma like this and you want to affirm them as a person. Now you may not want to affirm what it is they have asked you to do, you may want to really reject what they ask you to do but you want to compliment or affirm something about them and say to them, "Well you know, John, I think you're the best technology manager I've ever worked for" or "Mary, you know that your strength in working with Congress to get the legislation that we want is probably the most valuable work on our team" and you start with what is valuable about the person before you get into the final one which is KISS, which is the old salesman's acronym for keep it simple stupid, where you really get to the part where you say no, I can't do this. It should be short, it should be simple, it should be unadorned.

Rachel Salaman: Well number eight is the moment you resign from a job and you outline seven steps for a successful resignation. Well we haven't got time to go through all of them now but could you share the main elements that would be useful?

Casey Hawley: The main element is to pretend that you plan to go to work for that company again in five years because the chances of that happening are, well it is a possibility. As people move around more, particularly in a particular industry, they are finding that the company that they left, that they thought they would never work for again, they are working for again in five to ten years.

The other thing that can happen is that you're not the only one that's mobile. The people you worked with and your former managers are mobile, so they may be in a new company that neither one of you even knows right now that you'll be applying to in five years and they may be the hiring manager at that time, so you always have to leave as if you want to come back to that job. You leave a legacy, you help leave documentation and things in order so that the people who take over for you can make a very effective transition. So you want people as you leave and when you first leave to be saying extremely professionally complimentary things about you behind your back.

Rachel Salaman: Conflict is the subject of the next key moment, when you find yourself at odds with a colleague or a business associate and a lot of your advice here is about anger management. What's your main tips?

Casey Hawley: The first thing is if you can possibly do it, be objective. If you can possibly get outside yourself and look at it from the company's perspective, look at it from the other individual's perspective and put yourself in their shoes so to speak so you can help to see it from their vantage point because just going in there and arguing your point is probably not going to be conciliatory. The other thing that you can do, this helps you get there, I'll sometimes sit down and I will write a letter from that other person's point of view and I will try to make myself try to present their case and presenting their case helps you be a lot more understanding and it helps you communicate in a lot more compassionate way. That's a word I use a lot, I believe in not just the emotion compassion but communication compassion. If you can look at things the way the other person does and understand that when they come in to a conversation sometimes they are nervous, sometimes they are concerned about things. They may be concerned about suffering loss of prestige or loss of budget or loss of face and so being able to look at it from their standpoint will help shape what you say.

Rachel Salaman: Well you finish your book on a positive note with the final make or break career moment being when you are recognized for excellence, so what kind of scenario are you talking about here and what's your advice?

Casey Hawley: Occasionally employees are given awards for performance or for coming up with a great idea that contributed to the bottom line or sometimes it is just being promoted from your peer group. All of these are acknowledgments and you need to handle those well too. I don't believe in demonstrating a lot of false modesty and you certainly don't want to cast aspersions on the person's judgment who gave you the award or who promoted you, by saying "oh I really don't deserve this", that false modesty is not the way to go. The way to go is to give the credit to other people. Robert Woodruff, I'm from Atlanta and Robert Woodruff built the Coca Cola Company here in Atlanta and he always said the secret to his success, he said that you could achieve anything that you want in business if you don't mind who gets the credit. So you've already gotten the award, you've already gotten the promotion, that's a given so you begin to acknowledge the people who worked on projects with you, who helped you become successful. You acknowledge your manager who developed you in maybe the tactical parts of your job and you are very specific about the things that you learned from that manager or that executive, you mention mentors, sponsors, allies that were part of that so by the time you finish it is all talking about your success but you've given the credit to other people. It's very difficult to fault someone for that.

Rachel Salaman: Finally, in your experience what do people gain from thinking strategically like this about how they communicate?

Casey Hawley: Well most of us don't think competitively, we think co-operatively but if you could back up from your career and look at it as maybe you and maybe another person starting off at the beginning of your career and one of you thinks strategically and advocates for herself or himself strategically, makes the move, connects with people to be allies and sponsors very strategically and says the right things at the right moments, that person – even though the person is no more skilled than the other who doesn't do the strategic things, that career is going to advance at a much faster rate and it will reach levels that the other person never reaches and one of the things that you have to look at is today everyone is busy and you are not going to be rewarded unless you can vocalize and communicate the value that you are bringing.

If things are not broken and there is not a problem, sometimes managers and executives are not slowing down to look at the things that are going right so you have to communicate those things. I mean how can you be rewarded if you don't communicate what you should be rewarded for?

Rachel Salaman: Casey Hawley, thanks very much for joining me.

Casey Hawley: Thank you Rachel, I've enjoyed speaking with you today.

Rachel Salaman: For more information about Casey, you can visit her blog, Xybusinessbycasey.blogspot.com or visit her website, www.grammarcoach.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview, until then goodbye.