Career Journeys

0:00Just be great. Don't be mediocre, okay? Mediocre people don't get promoted.

0:10What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change. I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

0:45Hey, Patty. Hi, Jessica. So today, I was thinking about the possible subject matter for today. And we had originally talked about career pathing. And you and I both went, we hate that subject. I think mostly because neither one of us really believe in it. Yeah. Just the notion of a career path just strikes me as crazy. I mean, personal for me, because like every great thing that ever happened to me just came totally out of left field. I know. And some of my biggest career achievements, this is a good segue into some of the questions, came because nobody else wanted to do it. Right. Right. It's like, oh, this is so screwed up.

1:31I know. Patty will do it. I was either new or in trouble for something because I was always in trouble for something. But I ended up just, and sometimes like being the star in an unlovable job turns out to. People are like, wow, they did that. Nobody has done that. Nobody ever did that because they didn't care about it. Yeah. So I was thinking that maybe we could talk about, instead of talking about career paths, I used to tell people, they would say, how do I think about a career path here? And I would say, we don't, we don't have them, but we can give you a topo map. Do you know what a topo map is?

2:12I don't think I know what a topo map is. I learned from Neil, Neil Hunt, who's our head of practice. A topo map is a topographical map of wherever you are. They do them in ski resorts and stuff. This is how high the mountain is. It's how low it is. And I'd say, no, I can give you a topo map and say, you are here. Right. And I can tell you, I can introduce you to somebody who got on the other side of the mountain range. But that's how they did it. And so, like, I don't know if you're going to be like hand over hand climbing on a rock, if you're going to take a canoe down a river, if you're going to get on a device that flies you.

2:53I have no clue how you get there. I can tell you where we're going. Yeah. But let's go back to the whole idea about some of the questions. Yeah, I know. Do you want to read the first one? Yeah. Is it wrong to feel like I want to take a step back down the career ladder? I love this question. I've always been super career driven, chasing promotion after promotion, but now after six months in the most senior role I've ever held, I feel like I was much more content in my previous role, which reports to this one. I don't know if I'm still just a bit intimidated by the new responsibilities or if realistically I'm just as suited to this level, but I think it's too late to go back down.

3:32I love the company and my team and I just regret leaving my last role. Oh gosh, this is such a good one. It is such a good one. And you and I saw this like play out many times, right? I think being that self-aware to know what you love and what you don't love is a really good thing. And I'm not saying that you necessarily need to go take a step back down. Maybe you do, right? But if you really love it, right? And you're more suited for it. I think we put people, employees, I mean, I should say, in these situations where they feel like they have to do these things or they're not going to grow, right?

4:14Then they're not going to make more money if they don't take the promotion. They're not going to get to the next level. They're not going to have a seat at the table. They're not going to have, you know, all the things. And I think... Get to go to all the meetings. Yeah. And then, you know, you get in that bigger role and it's not that fun. Right? Or I think what we also saw a lot of and happens all the time is the best individual contributor gets promoted to manager. Yeah. Oh, it happens all the time. Oftentimes, the best individual contributor is that because they love the nuts and bolts of the work that they're doing.

4:54And it's sometimes, particularly in startups, it's naivete on the parts of the people that promote them because the job of management isn't to be the best at the job of the individual contributor. And I have two things to say about this particular person. And one of them is six months in is cold feet, right? Six months in is when you realize, oh, shit, I didn't know what I was getting into. Now my whole life is taken up with meetings. Now I have to deal with everybody's personal problems. Now I got to figure out what the whole team's going to do. And I only used to have to figure out me. Now I'm in.

5:35Now I'm responsible for it. Like if they screw up, it's my fault. Like it never occurs to people ever. that that is a manager that shit rolls uphill. Right. It just doesn't occur to you that like, if you hire the wrong team and they don't do the right stuff, then nobody's going to blame it on them. They're going to blame it on you. Yeah. The second part is, should you hire the right team and they are amazing and they accomplished it all, then you have to give all the credit to them. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. Because so you don't, you don't get any, you know, you get stuck with the terrible part.

6:11And so there there's that part, which is six months in, you're like, man, this is not what I signed up for. I want to go back to where I was happy and successful and things were going well. And I would say, yeah. And I would say at six months in, you might want to just go back to the team and go, how is it going for you? Well, it's interesting because as you were talking, I was just thinking, I was having a conversation with this founder and, you know, he's doing some work that's with the team. And it's, he's not interested in it. This kind of has to do it. And he doesn't like it. And he's like, probably not good for them either.

6:49And I was like, probably not. He's like, yes, definitely not. Good job. Good job being so self-observant. Yeah. Because again, when your heart's not in something, everybody feels it. Right. And when you're going through the motions, everybody knows you're just going through the motions. Yeah. I worked at a company once where we had a technical sort of ladder thing that if the technologist got promoted to manager, it was kind of a no harm, no foul situation. The sort of structure that we had in place was six months in, we'd go back to the team and go, how is it going? And if they're like, you know, I used to love working side by side with this guy.

7:31Now I hate him. Oh, yeah. because he's the world's worst manager, then we would let them go back and say no harm, no foul. Yeah. I think that's a good thing for companies to think about because to your point, we always want to promote the person that's the best at the craft, but the person that's the best at the craft generally isn't the best at leading the team. The secret to being a great manager is to have other people do their most amazing work with a smile on their face and a song in their heart, even when they don't want to. And that's what great leaders can inspire other people to do. And how they do that is they have incredible clarity about what needs to get done and when it needs to get done and what goodness looks like so that everybody on the team feels like they're pulling for the team.

8:27that is very often not what we promote people for right we promote them because they're charismatic in meetings we promote them because they're the first to the plate we promote them because everybody likes them right right and not necessarily and and that that's another like one of those but everybody loves me i'm like i know everybody everybody is loving you but you're not getting anything done. Right. No, I think that's a really good point because again, going back to like, you know, you're promoting, you know, I generally think businesses promote because they think someone's excelling in their area, right?

9:11And also the team likes them and also they're charismatic and they say, okay, I think this person can be a good leader. But I think to the point that you were making about this no harm, no foul thing is that if that's what we're doing, because it is, right? Because you think that they're going to be the best leader. I think having a no harm, no foul kind of policy, because we now have learned, and I think we continue to ignore what we've learned about the people who are great at their craft. Some of them just love the craft and they don't want to be a manager. And also they're not good at it. And so let them gracefully go back and celebrate that.

9:48And pay them for it. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's the other part is that sort of difference. You know, there's the other thing that happens a lot is people get promoted by the size of their org chart. Right. So, you know, you're only as I always say, you know, hold it up in front of you. It's like, I've got a really big org chart. That triangle underneath me is really huge. Right. And and that may or may not be a factor in success and moving up the ladder. But that's what we typically reward. Find somebody that you admire that's successful in your organization and observe them. Just watch. Watch what they do under stress, right?

10:32How they deal with other people. Watch when they raise their hand and have a comment, right? Watch when that person does the job that nobody else wants to do, right? watch when they let their team take credit for something. It's like all those little details. And then a third piece of advice is when you find those two, and it doesn't have to be a one-on-one mentor. It can be just people that you observe. Make sure that you're imprinting on somebody who's a little more like you, right? I mean, if you are introverted and quiet and you don't have, you don't say much and you don't always loud and articulate, you think I'll never be a leader because that's what leaders do.

11:26The truth is that's not true. I mean, you and I have been witness to some amazing leaders who didn't talk much, but when they did, man, we listened. It matters. Yeah. You know, the episode you missed last week with Dr. Bernard Harris, he said something that resonated with me and it was like, leave it better than how you found it. Oh, what great advice. Right. And I'm, I think like, no matter what you're doing, right out there and you want things, and this is outside of the advice that you're giving of talking to people, observing. If you have the mindset of leaving whatever you're working on better than how you found it, that's going to lead to a lot of really great things, no matter whether it's a project, no matter whether it's a team, no matter whether it's a one-on-one, the mindset of like, I'm going to leave this better than I found it.

12:25And guess what? it's going to be better and that's going to pay off for you. God, that's such, that is the best advice. That is the best advice. And it's such a good way to say it. Yeah. Right. Which is like, I remember saying to people, just be great. Yeah. Right. I mean, don't be mediocre. Okay. Mediocre people don't get promoted. Like, okay, be amazing. Solve something, solve a problem that needs to be solved. I mean, we had a person that we both know, and I used to call him our unfucker. Who? And it was Kevin. Oh. And whenever there was a problem, I'm like, oh, you know, God, what are we going to do about this?

13:08Such a mess. And nobody's looked at it for years. I'm like, I know. Call Kevin. Yeah. He's the unfucker. And what he could do was he could take a gnarly, hairy, complicated, screwed up mess and put it in a long line of accomplishments. And he was really good at going, you know, step one to 10, step two, yay, right? Step three, yay. And everybody else is like, it's too hard. We can't. We have to throw the whole thing out. But he never thought about it that way. And I bet you kind of thought about it the way that Dr. Bernard Harris said was like to leave it better than he found it. And it wasn't about ego.

13:54It wasn't about himself. And he got promoted because he did that. Yeah.

14:10Okay. Should we go to the next question? Sure. Okay, I feel pigeonholed in my company, but I'm scared of the risk of starting all over again. In the past year or so, I've missed out on two openings higher than me in the company. One was directly above me and the other was in an adjacent team. From the feedback I got, it seems like the successful candidates just had slightly more experience than me, but I'm left feeling underestimated and undervalued. I've seen similar positions that are competitor companies, but it feels like a betrayal to apply. Do I owe my company loyalty or should I jump ship if I feel limited?

14:54Oh, my favorite, right? I love this one. Okay. So your company isn't your spouse. Right. Right. You didn't marry them in front of your friends and family. You didn't agree to spend the rest of your lives together until death do you part. Right. So if you interview at another company, you are not betraying anybody. Okay. Work with me on that. It is not a betrayal to interview at another company. And in fact, for this person, the first thing I advise you to do is that. Yeah. Because when you talk to a perfect stranger and they ask you what you're good at, and what you're not good at, what you want to do and what you don't want to do.

15:36You can tell them the truth. Yeah. Well, I think the other thing, and we've talked about this on the show, whether it's various questions that we've gotten that are similar to this, but when you go off and you do interview, you will either get those jobs or you won't, right? And I think that that will be very telling for you in terms of how your company's viewing you, whether or not they're truly underestimating you or undervaluing you, or are they valuing you correctly? Because at the competitor for the same job, let's say you don't get it, right? So maybe they aren't undervaluing you. Maybe you're just not ready, or maybe you do get it and maybe they are, right?

16:20But I think about when I left Netflix, it was less about getting promotions and not being valued. I was extremely valued. But I was like, okay, I want more, right? And I want to go be a CHRO. And I want to go learn how to do that. And I took a year to just talk to companies. And in that year, I learned a ton about myself. There were a lot of opportunities that I got that I were like, don't want that one. You know, there were some that I probably didn't get. After a year, there was one that I really wanted. And I ended up leaving for this role. And it was a bittersweet moment because I was getting this thing that I wanted.

17:07But at the same time, I was leaving a company that I loved. Like I loved the company. And I remember getting in my car, you know, on my last day and leaving and just bawling my eyes out, you know? Because I loved all the people. I loved the work. I loved the company. I was so passionate about it. I had helped build it. And I was just, you know, driving off, looking at it in the rear view mirror. So I think, you know, you also have to pay attention to what you love and who you work with and who you work for. Yeah. And sometimes that comfortable, happy feeling, it's okay to leave it behind. Yeah.

17:48Right. I mean, I'm thinking about your, I used to use that metaphor of looking in the rear view mirror and mine was different. I remember driving away from a company that I had left and I was thinking, man, I never want to do that again. Were you holding up the middle finger? Well, it was a company, yeah, where it was like, oh, we called people headcount and it was like they were just numerals, right? And the CEO would say, you know, move headcount down 20%. You know, it's like, get rid of those people. We don't need them anymore. I mean, it was just sort of like, it didn't matter, right? It was just a numbers game to him.

18:32Without a thought of like, who was doing what, how you were thinking about it, it was just, let him go. And I was like, I never want to work in a company that does that, that treats people like numbers. And I didn't ever do that again. Right. Right. Because I knew what it looked like. Right. I didn't want to work for a boss who was always trying to fix me. Right. Right. So, I mean, there's as much about learning what you. It's a question. It's my favorite interview question. Tell me what you don't ever want to do again. Yeah. I love. Right. Don't don't don't give me your dreams. Give me your life.

19:08I never have to do this again. As long as I live, I'll be fine. And we've all got something. right and we all and and it's okay yeah it is it is okay and I have asked that question to people who say uh I never want to manage again yeah right I tried it I suck at it don't want to do it you know I love my craft that's what I want to do I want to make a big difference in terms of that and so and and I think you said something earlier that really really matters is a self-awareness Yes. I was just going to talk about that because I think, do you remember William Vanderbloomen? We had on the show, he had the agency and he had the 12 habits of unicorn people.

19:56The number one was self-aware. And not all of us are all that self-aware. And I think that when you go off and interview, you become a lot more self-aware of your strengths. Yeah. I mean, I personally think it's one of the best things you can do and that you should do a couple of times a year, no matter how happy you are. For one thing, you meet other really interesting people. I have recruited a couple of people I've interviewed with before. But you also get a, it's like the mirror, right? You get to look at yourself in the mirror and occasionally you're like, wow, that, I thought I had a good, but that's great.

20:41Or just as often it's like, you know, this company that I'm working at that I thought really sucked. It actually doesn't. There, there are suckier. Believe me, the grass is not always greener. The grass is not always greener. Patty, do you want to read the last one? I'm in my 50s and I've been in my field for a long time, but I've never really had a leadership role. Lately, I've been thinking about stepping into one. Any advice on how to make a move at this stage? What should I watch out for? Do I need to look at doing a course like an MBA to make myself more appealing to a recruiter?

21:21Sure. If your goal is to be more appealing to a recruiter. Right. And you're probably right. An MBA on your resume makes you more appealing to a recruiter and to many companies more appealing as somebody who's a manager. I think MBAs are wonderful things, I think. And here's what you learn in an MBA that really matters. You learn the holistic view of a company, right? You learn something about how the finances work and how the products work and how the supply chain works and how the customer and the competition works. and you are exposed to an overview of the entirety of an organization. And as a leader, that is really, really helpful, right?

22:08Because the other thing is that sometimes, you know, if you move through your career and you're just the best at whatever team you came from and that's all you care about, then once you get to an executive level, you're not really as useful anymore because now you need to decide, okay, what is the most effective budgeting process for a multinational organization with 50 ,000 people, right? And that is not a finance question. Right. I mean, that's not like, oh, well, I'm really, really, really good at spreadsheets, so I'll be able to figure this out. I mean, that might be the tool that you use to figure it out, But it's the knowledge of the organization holistically.

22:55And I would say that as a 50-year-old in work life, you've probably seen a lot. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I was going to say that, you know, as reading this, that they've been in their field for a long time. And if that's true, then you are sort of an expert, right? And if you can take... Well, if you've paid attention. Yeah. If you've been paying attention, you've seen a lot, right? And my assumption is that they've been doing it for a long time. They have seen a lot and they've done a lot. And that's probably really great for a leadership role. Right. Yeah. And, you know, one question that I just have is like, why they haven't gotten one yet.

23:35Exactly. That was going to be my same one. It was just like, and all of a sudden. Right. Did you feel like, you know, the train left and you're still at the station? And that analogy might be absolutely true. Yeah. Or maybe everybody thinks you're very great at what you do in the field and they want you to keep doing that. Right. So, you know, that was a little confusing to me. But but to your point, I think an MBA can help could help. Yeah. But I think that they really need to think about all the stuff that they know and that they've learned and what that is going to help them be as a leader, right?

24:18Because you know all of this, that's additive. But also, what do you have in your skill set, in your toolbox, whatever you want to call it, that would actually make you a great leader, right? And again, I would prescribe my methodology again, right? Which is find somebody in your organization who's very successful, who has an MBA. Yeah. And say, how do you think that helped you in your career? Yeah. Right. Don't get me wrong. I mean, there are companies, organizations, and hiring managers who absolutely love the letters after your name. Right. Yeah. And they give incredible credence to it, usually because they have it too.

25:04And the self-aware leader who hires other people who have the same letters after their name say, I want to hire somebody with an MBA because my experience was that that gave me the ability to see things differently than I would have if I didn't have that degree. Right. Right. But there is still incredible bias. You know, there are organizations that your MBA only counts if it's from Stanford or Harvard. Right. And so it doesn't matter if you go to your local college and get it. You know, if you go to your state college and get an MBA, there are organizations of people who are going to be like, well, that doesn't count.

25:45So you wasted all that time. You never waste. I take that back. You know, I mean, I think it's your point is maybe it's not wasted time because they learn something in the MBA, but it didn't help them achieve what they wanted to achieve. Yeah, I mean, and I guess for this particular person, I would do that. I mean, I would just spend some time with some reflection, you know, going back and saying, okay, over my life and my career, how have I progressed, right? How many of the moves or changes were things that I went for? And how many of them were things where they went for me? Mm hmm. Right. Right.

26:24Because that's the other thing that happens behind closed doors. The story that we just talked about, Jessica. Yeah, you're right. Just, you know, she'd be pretty good at this. yeah let's and then i go to jessica and go hey by the way we were talking at executive team meeting the other day and we were thinking about this role that we think you'd be good for and you could be like really like i never thought of that right and you would want to be able to say yeah because here's a couple of situations where we kind of threw you in cold and you did a great job right so right um i i remember also coaching another company one time where um this was when I was at Warby Parker, right?

27:02And they were going to go, they're going to do brick and mortar stores, which of course at the time I thought was ludicrous. And they had a person that they were going to put in charge of it. And I looked at his resume and I was like, there's no way. I mean, this, no, no, no, no. This person has no retail experience, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I interview him and I come back to the leaders at the end of the team and I'm like, okay, well, you know, here's the deal. If you hire somebody from the gap, they're going to build a bunch of work market stores that are like gap stores and they're all going to be the same.