My run-in with Marc Benioff, and tips to be a star performer

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Time magazine just hired me to write a piece about workplace trends among young people. One of the things I wrote about was how much people value the opportunity to volunteer for non-profit organizations through their company. And one of the best examples of this is Salesforce.com.

So I called the publicist there and set up an interview with the CEO, Marc Benioff. I also scheduled a Time magazine photographer to take photos of Salesforce.com’s volunteer program in action.

But Marc skipped out on the interview. And, even though he was missing in action, the publicist went ahead with the photo. After about five phone calls I realized that Marc had disappeared and I was stuck with a photo from a company that I couldn’t get a quote from: useless.

So for my first thing I’ve ever written for Time magazine, I was going to miss my deadline. Everyone can be their best selves in the best circumstance. But in bad circumstances, it’s very hard to be your best self. We learn how pulled together we are by watching what we do when things go badly.

I screamed at the publicist. At first I screamed at him for letting the photo happen when he knew he would miss my deadline with the interview. At one point he told me he believed Marc was having a personal problem and I said, “Well it had better be a death in the family.” Yep. I said that. Nice, huh?

Finally, in a huff, I told the publicist I was not using Salesforce.com in the piece I was writing. I was very pissed off and I wanted to punish everyone for messing up my article. But to be honest, I didn’t have another photo lined up. And I was pretty much screwing myself.

Then I got the voicemail from Marc Benioff. He knew that I was angry, that I took his company out of the article, and that he missed my deadline. Still, he left me a message. He told me he was really sorry, and then, instead of leaving a message which would be of no use to me, he left me a long message giving me every quote I could need for my story about Salesforce.com and volunteering.

This was super smart of him, but most people wouldn’t do it. Most people would accept that they were pulled out of the story, most people would be too scared to call a journalist who has been screaming on the phone, and most people would not have the poise and composure to basically interview themselves on voicemail and do a good job. I liked seeing the difference between what a regular person would do and what a star performer does.

So I wrote my article (with Salesforce.com), got it in almost on time, and then someone came to my door with flowers. From Marc. A big arrangement with poppies and bergamot and cabbage. Cabbage! Isn’t that interesting? When I saw it I got giddy. I’m a girl who loves getting flowers.

He sent a card that said he was sorry and what can he do to make it up to me. Apologizing was not difficult for Marc. It seems that for him it doesn’t matter who is right or not. He just wants to have a good relationship. He’s a good influence on me: As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to call the publicist and apologize for being rude.

No one has ever sent me flowers to get into an article before, but you know what? It’s really smart. Some places I write for would fire me in a second for accepting flowers in exchange for an article. But my blog is different. So I’m gonna tell you that flowers can sway me. If you want me to write about you on my blog, send me flowers. And no carnations. This is not prom.

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Learn public speaking that’s based in authenticity (and I just took this workshop myself)

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I just spent two days at TAI Resources getting speaking coaching. I was pissy about it the whole week before. I decided I didn’t have time to go. I mean, two full days away from the kids costs about ten thousand dollars when you add up the babysitter and the Happy Meals and the ten trips to Target for toys.

I told myself that I should be doing book events, not going to coaching sessions. I told myself that there is no way I could learn enough to justify two days of not answering the onslaught of email I get from my blog.

But every day I would see the “cancel TAI” on my to do list, and I didn’t cancel. You can learn a lot about yourself by looking at the stuff you don’t do on your to do list. Deep down I know that if I want to have a life where my job is to connect with people then I have to devote time to learning to be a good at genuinely connecting with people. I need to make room in my schedule for my big-picture goals. And TAI teaches people to connect. So I went.

When I got there at 8:30 am the first day, I had residual pissiness. And I stayed at my mom’s apartment in New York City the night before. I used to be the type of person who could not get along with my mom long enough to spend the night at her apartment. But I decided I was too old for that, and now we get along. The price I pay is that I didn’t tell her no when she made us a big breakfast even though I said I didn’t have time.

So I was late for day one of my training. There were eight of us. We sat in a front row of chairs. Behind us was the professional peanut gallery of people who critique speeches.

Gifford, the facilitator, told us to write for ten minutes describing our best speaking experience. “If you finish early, just keep writing,” he said. “Just write anything.”

I was relieved. Great. I wrote for about six seconds about my best speaking experience and then I wrote stream of consciousness. A writer’s dream.

I don’t know how I could be so dense, but I didn’t realize that we’d have to use what we wrote as a speech. At first I thought I could quickly rewrite something before it was my turn to speak. But I was totally captivated by Gifford helping the speakers before me.

Each person who spoke was a little bit terrible, to be honest. I mean, we are talking about stuff that is not that interesting, and we don’t really even know who each other is. But Gifford found a way to make a small change in each person that totally transformed them into an engaging speaker. So it was fascinating to watch this happen.

He changed one person’s tone of voice by having him do ape calls to the audience. He changed someone’s body language by having him hold his hands behind his back. He changed someone’s eye contact by having him play catch with the audience while he spoke. You’d think each of these things would make a person look insane, but Gifford knew the perfect thing for someone to do to learn a new skill about connecting.

When it was my turn, I had nothing to do but read what I wrote. I described my favorite speaking experience: My stepmother’s funeral. (I know, funeral. I know. But let me tell you something, I really captivated the mourners.)

Then I stopped.

Gifford said, “Did you write any more?”

He has me read it, of course. So I stood there in front of the room reading my stream-of-consciousness stuff about how I don’t want to be in the room and I hate group activities and I wish I were blogging.

And this is what Gifford did. In a matter of minutes he showed me how to take my speech about how I don’t want to be learning to give a speech, and make it engaging. He showed me how if I admit to my feelings and say them honestly, and with integrity, people will actually like hearing the speech.

All this in the first hour of a two-day training course.

We spent a lot of those two days “learning to land”. Everyone in the room knew that we were supposed to look at the audience when we talk. But there are so many different ways to look at an audience. Most people look without connecting. They don’t actually talk with a person because landing your eyes on someone and really talking to them is really, really hard.

And the amazing thing is that you’d think that if you are talking with just one person then the rest of the audience feels left out. But in fact, the audience feels more connected to you if you are connecting with someone – anyone – in the audience. One of the most valuable things about this coaching is that you understand what people do as an audience member so that you are better able to read an audience.

My favorite part of the class is that the room was full of people who are high up in their organizations and respected by their peers, yet here they are doing things that are very difficult – like, giving a speech about an essentially boring topic and trying to make it meaningful by connecting with people. Everyone looks awkward learning something new. I liked that part about all of us becoming vulnerable together.

I am a much better speaker from this course. And, because the course focuses on authentic communication, I am better at talking with people one on one, too; I notice more often the times that I am talking with someone but not totally engaged.

But there’s one more thing I learned from this experience. We need to make time in our life for coaching. Mentoring is one of the big differentiators between the people who get what they want and the people who don’t. And coaching is mentoring on steroids – very specialized and very effective. This is why I have the Coachology feature on my blog, because coaching has made such a huge impact on my life, and I want to share it with you. It makes a huge difference. And even yours truly, Coachology girl, almost didn’t make time for the coaching. So focus on the big picture goals in your life, and get coaching to meet them faster and better than you could do on your own.

 

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Regular exercise is no longer optional

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Exercise is an essential part of a successful career. It’s an essential part of a good life. I think one problem a lot of us face is that we approach exercise like it’s a choice.

When email first became widely used, I worked for a guy who thought it was optional. At some point, it truly was optional. High-level executives used to be able to say, “Call my secretary. I don’t have email.” I remember thinking that my boss did not understand reality. That times had changed and his career was going to end if he couldn’t manage to take a look at his in box once a day.

Today I am thinking the same thing about exercise. We used to think that it was optional. But today, it is so overwhelmingly clear that regular exercise changes your life and makes you perform better at work, that it is absolutely absurd to think that you can function optimally in your life without regular exercise.

This is not just about good-looking people doing better in life (which is true). It runs deeper than that. Mary Carmichael wrote in Newsweek about the research that shows exercise boosts our IQ. And exercise increases our resilience to difficult times, which is often the difference between success and failure in getting what we want.

I told myself all of this stuff last month when I started going to the gym again. Last year, a few months after I started blogging, I was so totally overwhelmed by the amount of work it took, that I told myself there was nothing to do but stop going to the gym until I caught up with my work.

It took me four months to realize that the extra hour a day that I was able to work because I wasn’t at the gym was not changing my life. Being overwhelmed by the demands of blogging was not about one hour. It was about that I had made a career change and didn’t even realize it.

But going to the gym for an hour does change my life. Regular exercise requires a careful mental shift. First you clearly prioritize what’s important to you, and why. Then you pick a specific time and specific place, and then you convince yourself that going is not negotiable. There is clear evidence to show that people who make one conscious change – such as going to the gym every day – unconsciously change many other positive changes in their life. Making one decision to live consciously has a ripple affect throughout your life.

In an interview with Harvard Magazine, psychology professor Ellen Langer says, “More than 30 years of research has shown that mindfulness is figuratively and literally enlivening.” And while we all say we want to live in the present, Langer points out, “If you’re not in the present, you’re not there to know you’re not there.”

I remind myself of this when I start thinking of exercise as negotiable. And for all the ten million pieces of advice on how to make exercise regular in one’s life, the best advice, I have found, is to realize that I will not get the life I want if I don’t go to the gym when I plan to go to the gym. When I interviewed positive psychologist Senia Maymin, she convinced me that the key to regular exercise is to tell myself that it is not a choice, and to also tell myself stories that encourage me to go to the gym. One of my stories is the one I told you — about how working that extra hour did not help me catch up at work.

So tell me, what stories do you tell yourself to exercise regularly? Do stories work for you?

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Book excerpt: How to write so people pay attention

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My book, Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, is shipping from Amazon!

Buy it there now. Or buy the book in local book stores starting on May 25.

Here is tip #25 from the book: Don’t Use Adverbs

If you want people to pay attention to what you have to say, write short. This is true in all of life, but most true at work. Most of the writing we do at work is in the format of an email, proposal or presentation – all documents that your audience wants to get through quickly. The faster and more concisely you get to your point, the more likely your reader will stick with you and understand your message. “If today the president got up and addressed the nation in 270 words, it’d be a top news story. People will pay more attention because you’re so brief,” writes Janice Obuchowski in the Harvard Management Update.

We sound most authentic when we talk, and verbally, short, simple sentence construction comes naturally to us. When we write, authenticity gets buried under poor word choice. For example, people who use complicated words are seen as not as smart as people who write with a more basic vocabulary. “It’s important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly,” says Daniel Oppenheimer, professor of psychology at Princeton University.

Writing short is not easy. Take the 270-word Gettysburg Address, for example. “Lincoln didn’t just suddenly master elegant language. He wrote wonderful, down to earth language that was very concrete. But he rigorously trained himself to do that,” says Bryan Garner, editor of the Dictionary of Modern American Usage.

Here are some self-editing tricks for writing shorter:

1. Write lists.
People love reading lists. They are faster and easier to read than unformatted writing, and they are more fun. If you can’t list your ideas then you aren’t organized enough to send them to someone else.

2. Think on your own time.
Most of us think while we write. But people don’t want to read your thinking process; they want to see the final result. Find your main point in each paragraph and delete everything else. If someone is dying to know your logic, they’ll ask.

3. Keep paragraphs short.
Your idea gets lost in a paragraph that’s more than four or five lines. Two lines is the best length if you really need your reader to digest each word.

4. Write like you talk.
Each of us has the gift of rhythm when it comes to sentences, which includes a natural economy of language. But you must practice writing in order to transfer your verbal gifts to the page. Start by avoiding words you never say. For example, you would never say “in conclusion” when you are speaking to someone so don’t use it when you write.

5. Delete.
When you’re finished, you’re not finished: cut 10% of the words. I do this with every column I write. Sometimes, in fact, I realize that I can cut 25% of the words, and then my word count isn’t high enough to be a column and I have to think of more things to say. Luckily, you don’t have to write for publication, so you can celebrate if you cut more than 10%. Note: It is cheating to do this step before you really think you’re done.

6. Avoid telltale signs of a rube.
Passive voice. Almost no one ever speaks this way. And on top of that, when you write it you give away that you are unclear about who is doing what because the nature of the passive voice is to obscure the person taking the action. Check yourself: search for all instances of “by” in your document. If you have a noun directly following “by” then it’s probably passive voice. Change it.

7. Avoid adjectives and adverbs.
The fastest way to a point is to let the facts speak for themselves. Adjectives and adverbs are your interpretation of the facts. If you present the right facts, you won’t need to throw in your interpretation. For example, you can say, “Susie’s project is going slowly.” Or you can say, “Susie’s project is behind schedule.” If you use the first sentence, you’ll have to use the second sentence, too, but the second sentence encompasses the first. So as you cut your adjectives and adverbs, you might even be able to cut all the sentences that contain them.

… I just checked to see if I have modifiers in this section. I do. But I think I use them well. You will think this, too, about your own modifiers, when you go back over your writing. But I have an editor, and you don’t, and I usually use a modifier to be funny, and you do not need to be funny in professional emails. So get rid of your adverbs and adjectives, really.

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Twentysomething: Best Buy gets it. Stop watching the clock.

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By Ryan Healy — College taught me the true meaning of independence. I attended classes when I chose, I studied at my convenience, I partied at my leisure and I relaxed when I needed to relax. You would assume that since I am now an “adult,” I would at least have this same sense of independence in the corporate world. But working in this antiquated “count-the-hours” corporate structure, I am controlled and monitored more than I was by my parents in high school.

“I’m going to leave at 3:00 pm today, my wife is out of town and I need to pick my kid up at school or he will miss baseball practice.” This is just one example of the countless excuses to leave early that I have heard from my superiors.

Why do my managers and superiors feel a need to explain their need to leave early to me? I don’t care! Leave early if you have to. You have a life! I have a life! Work is just a part of life! I don’t need to know if your kid is sick or if you have a doctor’s appointment. We are all grown-ups here…I trust you.

I can’t blame my coworkers for this. I find myself coming up with ridiculous reasons for leaving a little early as well. We work in a corporate culture that believes more time equals more productivity and the people who work the most hours are the ones “going the extra mile.”

Best Buy has instituted a program called Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE), to combat this antiquated, assembly-line way of thinking. Workers come in when they want, they leave when they want and they don’t make excuses. Major deliverables are known in advance and management trusts its employees to get the job done. This may be an elaborate PR stunt, but if Best Buy actually practices what they preach; they are embracing the blended life.

I am absolutely convinced that this is the future of work. How refreshing would it be to have no idea how many hours you worked because there is no distinction between work hours and life hours?

It’s a new way of thinking, and like my buddy Ryan Paugh said, “change” is a dirty word, but it’s necessary and it’s logical. My peers entering the workforce are not preprogrammed to make a giant distinction between work time and other time. Now is the opportunity to make this very simple change in thinking. It’s a win-win situation. Half of the American population will no longer hate their jobs, which will inevitably lead to increased production for the corporations. The only sector that could possibly lose out is pharmaceutical, when clinical depression reaches an all-time low. And that’s just fine by me.

I’m amazed that a program such as this can be considered revolutionary. To me, it just makes sense. Apparently some older workers equate not having strict business hours with working around the clock. This is completely understandable. If you have been controlled by the clock and overly concerned with hours for years, then it may be hard to differentiate productivity from hours worked. When I have had enough and am struggling to concentrate on my work, it seems pretty obvious to me that I need to shut it down and do other things. The work can be finished later.

Of course, it will not be easy to implement this new way of working for every type of job. Hourly workers actually need to record their time, doctors need to be around in case of an emergency, stock brokers must be available when the market is open and I’m sure there are other examples where this would not work too easily. However, a Results Oriented Work Environment for the average corporate Joe would be a beautiful thing.

Best Buy (or at least their PR department) is redefining the meaning of work-life balance. Simply put, they have created a blended life culture. The wheels have been set in motion; it’s only a matter of time before everyone hops on board.

Ryan Healy’s blog is Employee Evolution.

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Employee loyalty isn’t gone, it’s just different

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Today, people in their 20s change jobs every two years. This frustrates employers, who say, “Why should I hire someone who is going to leave? I need someone who is loyal.”

At the same time, employees look at the work they are given and say, “How can I spend my days doing work that doesn’t mean anything to me?”

Ironically, the way to make your work more meaningful is to be more loyal. This doesn’t mean you can’t quit in three months. It means that you have to be loyal while you are there. And in this way, the idea of workplace loyalty is changing: Loyalty is not dead, but you have to ask yourself, what are you loyal to?

It’s a great job market for young people today. Among college graduates the unemployment rate is less than 2 percent. The problem is finding meaningful work. But this task doesn’t need to be as hard as people make it.

You don’t need to be saving lives. You need to work at a place that contributes to your core needs, in a way that gives you the opportunity to express passions in significant ways.

One of the most common ways of finding meaning at work is through personal development. “Loyalty as a function of time is a dated idea,” says Jaerid Rossi, process engineer at Specialty Minerals of Canaan, Conn. “Work is only appealing if there’s constant learning.”

But loyalty is a layered concept, and for many this includes the power of a company’s brand.

“Organizations are not a source of security but they are a source of identity,” says Bill Taylor, cofounder of the magazine Fast Company and coauthor of the book, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win.

So find a company that you want to attach your identity to.

In this way, you are searching for a company that deserves your loyalty. Its brand will be in line with your own values and the image you have of yourself. For example, Steve Rubel runs the blog Micro Persuasion, but he is also an employee at Edelman, a public relations agency that has an image of being forward thinking about technology. Edelman adds a nice element to Rubel’s identity so it makes sense that Rubel would be loyal.

“Edelman’s success online reaffirms in peoples’ minds that I’m with a company whose values I share,” he says.

Loyalty doesn’t always satisfy image-building, though. For instance you can be loyal to a cause, such as the examples cited by Taylor: “People at ING Direct really feel like they are bringing some sense of sanity to an increasingly insane consumer finance culture. In Mavericks at Work, people are loyal to what they want to do in the world. For example, most people at Netflix are true movie fanatics and they believe popular entertainment is better in America because of Netflix.”

If you want to help homeless kids, you can work at many different types of organizations that fight homelessness, and while you might not feel huge dedication to a particular organization, your enthusiasm to the cause will keep you loyal to the work. You can carry your loyalty from company to company.

Taylor explains that “People can [also] be loyal to a cause or to a technology. For example, they think Ajax is the greatest software in the world. They can also be loyal to colleagues and team.”

The common thread in all this loyalty, though, is being part of something bigger than yourself. You cannot give up everything for your company, but being loyal to nothing is equally disconcerting.

“People are their best when they have obligations not only to themselves, but to other people as well. People do their best work when they identify themselves as part of a team or a project.”

Rossi echoes this sensibility: “For me, the services a company provides must somehow be beneficial to the employees and the community around it. I need to understand what the company’s goals are and I need to share that vision.”

What can employers do to attract new loyalists? Find a mission that they believe in. If they don’t believe in it, they’ll never be able to convince other people. And remember that people can feel affiliated to an organization without having to work 70 hours a week.

In fact, some of the most loyal employees are those whose company arranged working situations to accommodate very strong loyalties such as family or athletic endeavors. Even a company that has little mission to speak of can gain extreme loyalty from employees by easing the employee’s individual mission. Among Microsoft loyalists, for example, are those who rely on its outstanding insurance coverage for children with autism.

So figure out your needs and passions, and cast a wide net for the company that could fill them. You’d be surprised at the number of companies that can make you feel like work is meaningful. Similarly, employers will be surprised at the intense loyalty there is to be had from this generation of job hoppers.

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Four ways to make a bad job good

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The best way to be happier at work is to take personal responsibility for your workplace well-being. Once you do that, any job can be better than it is right now.

Here are four ways you can improve your job yourself instead of relying on your boss or your company to change:

1. Make a friend at work

People with one friend at work are much more likely to find their work interesting. And people with three friends at work are virtually guaranteed to be very satisfied with their life, according to extensive research from Gallup published in the book Vital Friends by Tom Rath. These findings are independent of what a person’s job entails, and what their home life is like.

On one level, this isn’t surprising. We’re better equipped to deal with hardship if we have friends near us, and we have more fun when we’re with friends. So a friend allows us to deal with the ups and downs of work much more easily.

We often think of work and life as separate, and consequently fortify our home life with friends. But we need different friends for different contexts. Having someone you can count on at work to care about you and understand you feeds your soul in a way that used to apply only at home.

Of course, once you have this information, you have to figure out the most effective ways to make friends at work. Because friends don’t just materialize in your cubicle — you need to cultivate them.

2. Decrease your commute time by moving closer to work.

More than three million people have a commute that lasts more than 90 minutes. Many of them justify this commute by saying that their job is worth it, or that it allows them to have a bigger house. But the commute may be doing them great harm at home and at work.

Humans can adjust to almost any amount of bad news, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. In his book “Stumbling on Happiness,” he shows that we think losing a limb will be terrible, but in fact we adjust to it pretty well. In fact, in the long run it generally doesn’t affect our level of happiness.

A commute is different, though. It’s impossible to adjust to because the way in which it’s bad changes every day. So the tension of not knowing what will be bad, and when it will be bad, and not being able to control those things, means we’re unable to use our outstanding mental abilities to adjust.

Here’s the clincher, though: Even though people tell themselves it won’t happen to them, a bad commute spills over into the rest of the day for almost everyone. If you have a bad commute on the way to work and you walk into the office in a bad mood, that’s the mood you’re likely to have all day. And if you have a bad commute on the way home, you’ll probably still be grouchy by the time you go to bed.

3. Know when it’s not about your job.

I’m not certain whether this is good news or bad news, but the connection between your job and your happiness is overrated. In general, the kind of work you do isn’t going to have huge bearing on whether you’re happy or not.

To be sure, your work can make you unhappy (see No. 2 above, for example), but work isn’t going to give you the key to the meaning of life or anything like that.

Still, you can do a quick check to make sure you have a job that’s good for you. A good job:

• Stretches you without defeating you

• Provides clear goals

• Provides unambiguous feedback

• Provides a sense of control

If you have these things in your job and you’re still not happy, it’s not your job — it’s you.

So maybe it’s time to start looking inside yourself to figure out what’s wrong, instead of blaming everything on your job. I’m a big fan of getting help when you feel stuck. Sure, we can all get ourselves through life, but it’s often easier to get where you want to be faster if you have someone to help you overcome your barriers.

To this end, you need to know if you need a career coach or a shrink. And if your job meets the criteria on the above list, you could probably use help from a mental health professional in order to find ways to get happier.

4. Do good deeds.

Help people. Be kind. Don’t think about what you get in return. Just be nice. In this way, you can make the world a better place in the job you have right now.

Take personal responsibility for your happiness during the day, and do things that make you feel good. You’ve heard a lot of this before. If you go to the gym, your mood will get better (and your mind will be sharper). If you eat healthy food, you feel better than if you go to McDonald’s for lunch. And if you do random acts of kindness, you get as much out of it as the person you’re being kind to.

But most importantly, stop looking for your work to give your life meaning. The meaning of life is in your relationships. Cultivate them. A good job is a nice thing to have, but only in the context of larger meaning.

If you’re happy outside of work, where you don’t rely on your boss or your company, then finding happiness at work will be that much easier.

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Paying dues is so old school

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One of the most important career moves of the new millennium is getting out of paying dues. Paying one’s due is an antiquated idea in a workplace where few people aspire to climb the same corporate ladder for 45 years.

Eve Tahmincioglu interviewed 55 leaders for her book, From the Sandbox to the Corner Office: Lessons Learned on the Journey to the Top. She found that one of the most common refrains during her interviews was the importance of paying one’s dues. People in leadership positions today think that is important.

However, Tahmincioglu reminds us that what you get from paying your dues is top-of-the-ladder positions that force you to give up almost all your time with your family. In ruminating about what she found from talking with CEOs, Tahmincioglu said, “?”?This is a ridiculous job. If you’re going to get to the top, you need to make sacrifices. You need a spouse at home and you should expect not to spend a lot of time with your children.”

Tahmincioglu echoes what most people today feel about the job of a CEO: Ridiculous. The 80-hour-plus work week is nothing to aim for, and once you decide that you’re not going to climb that ladder, why pay dues? The dues are what you pay when you’re at the bottom in order to get a proverbial ticket to try climbing to the top.

Today’s climb looks different. For one thing, people want personal growth and workplace flexibility – two things not typically valued by people who are hell-bent on seeing people pay dues. The other difference about today’s climb is being able to skip the bottom rung. So the climb looks more like a hop to a spot where you can enjoy yourself without having to worry about the next rung.

Laura Vanderkam has a word for this: grindhopping. In her book, Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, Vanderkam offers a smorgasbord of career choices and essential skills that will get you out of paying dues while still providing opportunities for challenging and rewarding work.

Her basic idea is for people to take personal responsibility for their goals and career development instead of relying on someone else. She advises people to create benchmarks for themselves and get used to the fact that if they are not climbing a ladder, there is no single clear path. You need to “?”?Get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” she advises.

Vanderkam suggests people think “?”?in terms of projects, and not jobs” and then perform like a star so they get more of them. But there are other ways to get past dues-paying as well: People can start their own companies, or skip the heavy dues-paying industries and go into an area that is not as cutthroat.

Raedia Sikkema did just that. She has a degree from the film and television program at New York University with a specialty in animation. Most classmates went to work on feature films for studios such as Sony and Pixar. But she worked on education projects for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“?”?I used to think that working anywhere else [but a big studio] would be sad and not that important. But years down the line, sure you’re working on a feature film, but all you’ve done is a character’s arm.”

Today Sikkema does financial graphics at Lineplot Productions. She works from home, sets her own hours, and controls a project from start to finish rather than working on only one small piece as she pays her dues.

For Sikkema, making the tough choice to not follow her industry’s dues-paying track has paid off: “?”?I feel my work is more creatively fulfilling because I got to do more, even though it was not in a glamorous position.”

The trick to all of this, of course, is being able to market yourself to the people who can give you the work you want. “?”?Position yourself in a way that is true to you, not just as a fit into someone else’s mold,” says Jennifer Kushell, whose company Your Success Network helps young people market themselves professionally. “?”?You need to know what’s special about you and what makes you different,” she says.

Like many things in life, what’s good about not paying your dues is also what’s bad: You get to do work that is true to you, but you have to figure out what that work is to ensure you are good enough at it to get work. So yes, that’s tough stuff, but many will say that it’s much less tough than paying your dues. And really, why do it if you don’t have to?

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If someone’s bugging you, change yourself

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Here’s a fascinating piece about an Amazon tribe that has no ability to use numbers. Even when the tribe members asked anthropologists to teach counting, the tribesmen couldn’t learn. The tribe is good at other things — fishing and making jokes, for instance — but not counting.

This immediately reminded me of couples therapy with my husband. My biggest complaint, for five or six years, was that my husband doesn’t understand tone of voice. For example, he says, “How was your day?” with the tone of voice that someone uses for “I’m going to kill you.”

It’s startling and disconcerting, to say the least. But our third couples therapist finally said to me that there’s nothing I can do. My husband’s brain just cannot learn tone of voice. I need to work around it.

So I do. I separate the meaning we typically attribute to tone of voice from what my husband is actually saying. The Amazon tribe works around the problem, too – they have a word for “a small amount” and a word for “a bigger amount”.

You need to do this at the office. The people you work with are not idiots. It is just that some people are unable to see things like you do. You need to figure out how they see things, accept it, and work around their deficits.

For example, some people are not very empathetic. Like not knowing numbers or tone of voice, these people don’t understand how some else is feeling. You have to take that into consideration when the person says something inconsiderate. Some people just cannot learn empathy.

So I’m recommending two books that are about getting along with people at work. Both are premised on the idea that you have to adjust yourself in order to get along. You Want Me to Work With Who? is very hands on and self-reflective. Working with You is Killing Me has a lot of case studies and examples. Both are good if you want to take a step in the direction of getting along with everyone at work without relying on them to change.

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Do you need a career coach or a shrink?

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I had a career coach. I got the coach the day after a meeting where I was the only woman and the only person under thirty. My boss said, “You need more polish. You need a career coach.” I thought, “Great, my boss is going to pay to help me to fit in with the 50-year-old men at the top of my corporate ladder.”

The coach asked me a slew of seemingly innocuous questions about myself, and then she trailed me at the office for a few days. Her conclusion: I needed to act more professionally. I was surprised — I had read every book I could find on managing one's image at work. I wore earrings because all the women in Fortune magazine's 50-most-powerful-women list wear earrings. I kept my hands folded on the table in the same way that experts on news television do. I was surprised that I had missed something.

The coach gave me a list of things to change. When I walked, for example, I walked “high”, with a bounce, and didn't give off a sense of being grounded. She told me to look at the CEO: “He has a deliberate, grounded walk — no bounce. It instills confidence.” She told me I smiled too much. “It's a common problem for women,” she told me. “Women want to establish rapport by smiling, but men interpret a lot of smiles as either nervous or giddy.”

Lest she say that I also needed to work on accepting criticism, I thanked her for her help. After weeks of practice — and her trailing me the whole way — I made the changes. The coach collected her thousands of dollars in fees and left with a feeling of accomplishment.

But she left me feeling like a fake. I wanted to go back to regular me, but my boss kept telling me how much more professional I was, and I didn't want to disappoint the guy who was responsible for my next raise.

I started losing sleep, falling victim to my overactive imagination where my direct reports go out to lunch and talk about how fake I am, then they stop listening to me, and my office becomes Mutiny on the Bounty with an ending where I walk the plank to unemployment.

So I did what most people do when they can't sleep for months: I went to a psychologist. And it took the psychologist about twenty minutes to help me realize that I was uncomfortable with the level of authority I held. I had moved up the ladder very fast. I was managing a team of people much older than I was. My smiles and my bounce belied my discomfort.

I worked with the psychologist to feel more comfortable with my own authority, and after a few months, the solid gait and serious face came naturally to me. I didn't have to project a fake image because the image I was supposed to project — authority — felt right to me.

My psychologist helped a lot, but a psychologist is likely to miss the quirks of corporate life (after all, she has built a career by avoiding the corporate ladder). And the career coach is likely to miss the psychology driving you to do what you do. So if you find that your career coach makes recommendations that are hard to handle, hire a psychologist. After all, the more people who are helping you to get what you want in your career, the more likely you are to get it. And your money spent will come back to you later, as you gain more self-knowlege in and out of the workplace.

 

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