HOW TO AVOID FALLING WHILE ASCENDING THE CORPORATE LADDERLearned –

20 Lessons

Corporate HQ7550 IH 10 WestSuite 940San Antonio, TX 78229(210) 340-0098www.ylconsulting.com

TONY STREETERSVP, CMO Y&L ConsultingMarch 18, 2015

Experience is a wonderful teacher! Over the past 20+ years, I’ve had the good fortune of learning some valuable lessons throughout my career working for large

corporations. Following are a few key ones that I encourage you to master to avoid the pitfalls along the gruesome climb. I’ve either personally stepped into, or watched others walk into each one of these land mines. I hope you will find them to be of some benefit as you ascend your way up the corporate ladder. Watch out for the slippery rungs along the way!

1. Don’t sacrifice good enough for perfect. Nothing is ever perfect and no one will ever approach you with a perfect solution. Sometimes the solution provided is, however, good enough to keep things moving forward and you have to be open to accepting “good enough”.

2. Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve. People shouldn’t know everything you’re thinking and feeling. Professionally, reserve your negative thoughts, anger and frustrations, keeping them to yourself the best you can. When in a meeting, don’t fold your arms and pout if you don’t think you are being heard, or if someone disagrees with you. This is childish and immature.

3. Don’t say anything about anyone you don’t expect to get back to them …one way or another. I was in a meeting once and someone attending, conferenced in by phone, said something I thought was pretty dumb. I rolled my eyes. Big mistake! I got blasted for it because someone around the table had noticed and reported it back to the speaker.

4. Being a “loose cannon” appears boisterous, but you are not Bruce Willis in the latest Die Hard movie, and running around half-cocked generally doesn’t work out well for the rest of us. If management thinks you’re a loose cannon and they don’t know what you will say next, they will not put you in front of senior management (or at least not very often and without scripting). Off-the-cuff thinking and creativity are good in the right environments, but your boss doesn’t want to be surprised or upstaged in front of his peers or superiors by something that comes out of your mouth.

5. Never say “can’t” or “no”. Two words that back you into a corner in two ways. First, it comes across that you are not a team player,

which exposes you as a person who insists that you know everything. No matter how brilliant you are, there is always someone smarter and there usually is a solution or, at least, a compromise possible. Second, “can’t” or “no” gives you nowhere to go. Someone could insist that you come up with a solution anyway, or someone else solves the problem and you look foolish having said it was impossible. Remember to leave wiggle room!

6. Don’t be seen as a roadblock. No matter what you call it -- a roadblock, gatekeeper, obstacle -- it doesn’t matter. What it translates to is you are stalling progress. If you have an objection, put it into as positive terms as possible, such as, “I understand your point, however, help me to better understand how doing this will help us…. or, will address….” But be careful, if you are not savvy enough, your leading questions can appear to be a trap by the receiver. Discuss their ideas honestly and openly, and invite them to more fully explain how they will work.

7. The devil is in the details. When you are presenting an idea or solution, make sure you have done your homework, practiced what you are going to present and that your presentation is as flawless as possible (bullets on slides are clearly stated, few slides, absolutely no typographical or grammatical errors). An error on a slide will bring everything into question, especially your thoroughness and professionalism.

8. Never sell a big idea to a group. Always, always, always pre-sell! If it is something that needs significant buy-in, go to each member on the committee and present the idea one-on-one. Find out who likes it and who doesn’t. For those whom have objections, make note of them and

Corporate HQ7550 IH 10 WestSuite 940San Antonio, TX 78229(210) 340-0098www.ylconsulting.com

TONY STREETERSVP, CMO Y&L ConsultingMarch 18, 2015

get back to them with how you would overcome those specific issues before the meeting. Never, never, never say, “Well, I just spoke with John, and he thinks…is a great idea”! This will damage you in two ways. First, the individual will know you are pre-selling them and people don’t like to be manipulated. Second, trying to make someone feel their objections are unfounded by stating another person doesn’t have the same opinion immediately puts them on the defensive. Also, the person who is in favor of the idea may not have thought through those objections and if the person you are discrediting goes to that individual and tells them their concerns, they might agree with them, and now you have lost two people. It is all very much a game of chess – think three moves ahead.

9. Be proactive. Frequently offer ideas that are well thought out. Become the idea person, but don’t be obnoxious about it. When you have something to say, speak up and make it good. Usually, the person thought to be the most intelligent is the person who speaks the least but when they speak, their words mean the most.

10. Don’t pat yourself on the back. People hate this. Don’t go around telling of your latest accomplishments. If your boss knows, and thinks enough of what you’ve done to tell your peers or their superiors, this is more than enough. People who go around boasting what they did and how fantastic they are, generally are seen as someone needing a lot of ego stroking and are thought to have self-esteem issues. An unsightly view!

11. Be flexible. Listen to everything with an open mind, even the inane. This doesn’t mean be wishy-washy. It is okay to have convictions, but it is better to hear what people have to say and work together to find a solution.

12. Let them think they came up with the solution. Which is more important? Coming up with a solution that the person you desperately need buy-in from doesn’t buy into or letting them think that they came up with the solution and therefore own it and drive it with you? The answer is it depends on what your biggest battle is. If you need to own the idea for some reason, that’s one thing, however, if the idea can be given away to achieve the greater good, keep that in mind. This parlays into the idea of picking your battles – same philosophy.

13. Get to know people on a personal level and understand what makes them tick. Understand the personalities you are dealing with and also know something about their lives. Don’t get nosy, but if you overhear events or activities they or their children are in, show an interest. If you are an “all-business” person who is a cold fish and doesn’t ever let anyone in, people will not trust you and probably won’t like you much either.

14. Celebrate the small successes. If someone working for you has done something fantastic, make sure everyone else on the team knows about it. And, if you are not into big displays of appreciation, do something small like giving them a handwritten note (not an email) telling them why what they did was so great for the company and how much you appreciate them being on the team. Don’t wait around for big successes, small ones are more frequent and celebrating them spurs people on.

15. Don’t lie, about anything, ever. And, don’t take credit for something you didn’t do or that you played a minor role in. Always give credit away to others. People love true humility and hate glory hounds. Seeking out credit gives the appearance that you did it all on your own and very rarely is that ever the case.

16. Don’t make other people feel inferior. Especially if you think you are smarter, faster, or work harder than them. You don’t know their situation and if, in fact, you are smarter, making them feel stupid doesn’t build you up, it just makes you look like a jerk. Plus, it’s a crappy thing to do.

17. Understand the political climate around you. You are surrounded by politics and in-fighting. Politics is a colossal waste of productive time, but, it is there. You have to acknowledge it, understand what is going on and carefully step around as much of it as you can. It would be nice to think that you can get ahead just through hard work; we would all love to achieve the level of Senior Vice President based on our accomplishments alone. And, if you move around – job hopping from one company to another marketing your accomplishments, you can sometimes get there. However, if you plan on staying in one place and climbing the ladder, you have to carefully pick your allies. Involve yourself in just enough politics to keep things moving forward for you, but don’t become a professional politician. Unless, that is all you want to do with your career!

18. At the end of the day, you don’t own the company. So, don’t get an ulcer or create heart problems for yourself worrying about everything. The company will let you drive yourself into the grave, so you need to know when to push back. Make sure to exercise, have other interests, and don’t come into the office every Saturday. There is a great saying that no one on their deathbed ever said, “If I had just spent one more day in the office!” Also, don’t ever think for a minute that you are indispensible. Everyone can be replaced and generally are, often.

19. If you push too hard on an idea or position and a Vice President says in anger, “Fine, go ahead!” you really should reconsider. This is an invitation by which you are being given rope to swing by or hang yourself. And if they are angry, it is the latter. This happened to me once at the beginning of my career. I went ahead with my way of doing something and almost got fired. I was supposed to know that my boss really didn’t mean to go ahead, and she was really mad that I did.

20. Don’t fight an open battle at a conference room table. Sometimes this is unavoidable, so you can always say, “I understand you are passionate about this point, and if we can take away some of the emotion, I would like to continue to discuss it openly.” This will do one of two things; (1) the person will realize that they have just been called-out publically for losing their cool and will recoil or; (2) because they think you are telling them to calm down they will really blow up and will make a complete fool of themselves. Both are okay. You, however, continue to maintain your professionalism. You can always offer to take the discussion “offline”. This is a really good thing to do if you feel unprepared to further defend your position and want some more time to think about it. n