by Jared Belsky
There are some ways to communicate that are always in style and always certain to gratify your listeners. For instance, write handwritten notes to your clients. Don’t do it just to say “Thank you” from time to time, but do it randomly, spontaneously.
Walk the halls and talk to the people you work with. Be friendly and commit random acts of kindness by surprising your coworkers or clients with a small gift, even doughnuts.
And show gratitude every time someone does something like that for you.
Avoid the Seven Deadly Verbal Sins of Client leadership
Related to communicating extremely well over email, there are some things to learn about how to communicate verbally. Here’s a list of seven things not to say, for various reasons.
“Yes, we can do that.” A client asks you if it is possible to turn around a new forecast in six hours. Without thinking, the client leader says, “Yes, we can do that.” This is a double sin. It sells out your team without them having a chance to weigh in, and it also shows your client that you are a yes-person.
“We will get the A team on it.” If you need to say you will put the A team on it, it implies the B team might have been on it previously. Why do you even have a B team? Never rank things out loud in that fashion.
“Yeah, I thought that work was poor as well.” Why would you ever admit that? It purely suggests you’re a wimp who would sell anyone out for a nickel. If you thought it was bad (which is fine), then you should have spoken up to delay the meeting, asking for more time till you had something worthwhile to present.
“We will circle back on that one.” Great, now you angered them and made the client feel like you don’t want to address the problem. Never delay anything you can finish up at that moment. Don’t ever give a client the Heisman stiff-arm. Face the music the minute you can. Don’t circle back.
“We’ll have a slide for that later.” Bravo, you guessed right and made a slide in preparation. Now, stop making this all about showing off your prep work and just be a bit more improvisational. Get to the issue the client wants to speak about when they want to speak about it. Why put them off just because the slide sequence says so?
“That department is harder to get in touch with.” No client cares about how your agency or consultancy sausage is made. Enough said.
“We will redouble our efforts.” Clients pay for achievement, not activity. They pay for results, not effort. The client is not your mom, who used to give you an ice pop and a gold star because you tried hard during elementary school. This is the big leagues. Don’t tell a client you will redouble your efforts. Instead, tell them what specifically you will do differently and who will help you achieve that.
Throughout every interaction, ensure that you’re communicating in a way that reminds your clients and your team members how reliable you are.
Three Habit Changes
Don’t put the recipient’s address in your emails until the moment you’re ready to hit send. That way you won’t accidentally send something written in the heat of the moment. Write several drafts of each important message.
Be old school. Write a handwritten note to someone.
Practice not saying any of the Seven Deadly Verbal Sins. Review that list until you know it intimately. Pay attention to the spirit of those statements so you always put the client first, letting them know they’re in good hands.
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM a leader that shoots, readies, and aims, TO a leader who avoids pitfalls through patience.
Lesson 26
26. Be Patient in Your Career
“Would you make a career decision for a raise equal to the price of a Starbucks coffee?”
—Something I often ask others
Do the math. In your twenties, it was very common to see someone move jobs for $5,000 more somewhere else. But let’s deconstruct that for a minute. After taxes, $5,000 leaves you with $3,250. Let’s divide that by 365 days and we end up with less than $9 a day. While that is nothing to sneeze at—all money is relevant and helpful—it is certainly about the cost of a coffee and a scone at Starbucks. I would argue that is not reason enough to leave a good position.
There is not a ton of patience in the services workforce. Average tenures range from eighteen to twenty-four months. This has gotten worse now that ad-tech—and the likes of Facebook and Google—are on the hunt for talent. Promotions are expected in yearly increments. Expectation management is at an all-time low, which compounds the problem. Young managers must do a better job helping those who work for them understand that Rome was not built in a day, and they would be better off for having helped their reports understand that it takes time to build skills and graduate to new titles.
Okay, so how do you, as an aspiring leader, help change the narrative at your company or on your team?
Helping people understand divergent ways of thinking, as well as setting better expectations, can help dramatically. Specifically, I would suggest having crucial conversations three months before review season, not during it, to get a better understanding of what your employee is assuming in terms of promotions and timing.
People expect a constant ascent. We are used to the ladder metaphor, step up after step up, higher and higher. In truth, what happens—or should happen—is that after you reach a new rung, the bar is raised, and accordingly, your performance actually dips, relative to that new bar. That is not a bad thing—it’s normal. What is bad is that most managers don’t explain this, and often the first review after a promotion is a tough one. Billy thinks he’s crushing it when his manager thinks he has not yet lived up to the promotion.
Two mindsets—not equally smart
There tend to be two mindsets, Patient Patricia and Job Jumping Jimmy.
Jimmy is a typical services employee. He jumps from job to job every two years or so. For every jump, he secures between $5,000 to $10,000 more in salary and benefits. Each jump appears to be a win for Jimmy. He is earning more money and accruing more titles faster than his peer, Patient Patricia. But that is only on the surface. What is also happening is that Jimmy’s titles and earnings are outpacing his output and performance, and there is a spotlight on him from management.
Meanwhile, there’s Patient Patricia. Patricia, as the next graph shows, stays at each job for at least four years. At each employer, Patricia creates connections. She finds a boss who cares about her beyond a transactional nature. That boss gives her the critical feedback she needs (and deserves) to do a better job. Patient Patricia has developed a relationship with a mentor who will advocate for her. When that mentor leaves to go to another company, that mentor will suggest Patricia for jobs she never even knew existed. She gets meaningful but inexpensive experience and nurtured moments to test out new managerial traits. She is supported. Patricia has created a path to being an adaptable leader with no ceiling to her career.
Kudos Patricia.
There are five things that allow Patricia to thrive long term while Jimmy fizzles out over his short-term decisions that amount, after taxes, to be a Starbucks coffee, a fancy scone, and maybe, some of those waffle cookies they sell.
Patricia does the following: she LEARNs.
Learn—Make it a point to learn one new hard skill every year. Learn to sew. Learn to make pottery. Learn to code. Learn statistics. Stay in a learning mindset. The more time you spend in one position, the cheaper at-bats you’re going to get; that is, more learning opportunities will open up for you.
Execute—Stay in one job long enough to excel, getting into a better situation and position for truly beneficial advancement.
Adapt—Understand that at each new promotion, there is also a step backward, demanding new skills, and EQ (emotional intelligence) to reflect on what must be done better and differently.
Rabbi (Mentor)—Find someone who can tell you the whole truth, stick up for you, and give you the inside sc
oop. You are nothing without an advocate.
Network—Be a family person, be balanced, but don’t forget to network, too—especially when you don’t immediately need anything. A desperate networker is someone who is transparently using other people for their own gain.
The problem with job jumping is that you’re a winner—until you are a big time loser. Jimmy never has the chance to LEARN. He is a transactional figment of others’ imaginations who ends up with too high a salary at the age of thirty-one but who has not acquired the skills to keep it going. Job jumping makes Jimmy flop by age thirty-two.
Be Patient Patricia, not Jumping Jimmy.
Three Habit Changes
Stay for four. If you stay for much less than four years at a job, especially in the services industry, assume you did not make enough of a human connection for someone to advocate for you in rooms you are not in. Stay for four. Stay for four. Stay for four.
Don’t eat alone. Ask someone senior for breakfast or lunch once a week. Nobody says no to a good meal and a chance to impart some wisdom. Go ahead and try it—it will change your career. It did mine.
Get cheap at-bats. Volunteer to do things, on others’ dimes, where you might fail but where the price of failure is small. For example, if you are not naturally very analytical, volunteer to help author the weekly report, or help compile the financials so you practice that side of your brain in a safe environment. Think of them as batting practice. You can swing for the fences, and if you miss, you don’t actually strike out.
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM finding jobs, TO active career management.
Lesson 27
27. Be the Reason Your Team Loves to Come to Work, Not Why They Quit
“People accidentally lie during their exit interview.”
—Eric Bacaolos, former CTO of 360i, Conductor, and W20 Group
The majority of folks who quit tend to cite salary and title in their exit interview. This is a lie. People lie not because they’re bad or want to hide the truth, but rather because the truth is complicated, hurtful, and hard to put a finger on.
But here are some more insights from HR professionals I trust and respect. They have helped me see the three fundamental reasons people actually quit a service organization:
People quit if they think their direct boss is an idiot.
People quit if they don’t understand the mission and vision of the company and, further, if they don’t understand how their contributions fit in with that vision.
People quit if they can’t get their best work done because of artificial barriers like politics, too many meetings, or requiring silly permissions.
Okay, that indicates it is the CEO’s job to ensure folks don’t quit, right?
Wrong.
Another of my favorite phrases that I tend to use is that everything to do with HR is a team sport. HR can’t solve every retention issue. Neither can the CEO. In fact, the most senior leaders and client leaders across a great many service companies can do little to help ensure the retention of your best team members.
To show why, let’s break down the three problem statements above and turn them on their head.
People quit if they think their direct boss is a dolt.
The solution to this is simple. If you are a leader in your organization, you simply can’t allow people who manage teams to be anything less than a top performer. With leaders, you can’t simply measure their contributions; you must measure their leadership competency.
People quit if they don’t understand the mission and vision of the company and, further, if they don’t understand what role their contributions play in that vision.
Your job as a leader is to translate and hand down what you hear at leadership meetings from the CEO or your most senior leader. When you get to attend that leadership off-site or receive the goals for the year, don’t just consume those documents—share and distribute them, and make sure your team members understand what they say.
People quit if they can’t get their best work done because of artificial barriers like politics, too many meetings, or silly permissions.
Dare to get out the gunk! Is your team filling out reports you don’t read? Is your team attending meetings your ex-boss, who quit three years ago, put on the calendar? Do you make your employees justify every dollar they need or want to spend? Be a gunk buster. Make this fun. Send around a “gunk survey.”
Gunk Survey
What is the largest frustration in your job?
On a scale of 1–10 (10 being the highest), how frustrated are you with your ability to get your job done?
What are the three rituals you do each week that drive you crazy and add no value?
For your top client/customer, what are the two things you are asked to do that drive zero value?
If you were not wasting time navigating around roadblocks, what else could you do with this time?
Explain if you think our organization is political or not.
Be the biggest, most fearless, and unapologetic leader for rotation. In the marketing services industry, we are always tempted to keep our key employees on our key accounts for very reasonable notions that range from consistency to something more guttural, like “Our super important client loves Billy, and we simply cannot take Billy off client X.” Well, after many years, Billy begins to realize you care more about client X than him, and he leaves. Now you are not only in trouble with the client, but you lost Billy and his talent went out the door. You both lost. Instead, be brave in rotations. Someone needs to own this process, so until someone else does, it should be you!
Specific Advice on Rotations: Telegraph long in advance to both your client and your employee that you are going to make a change. If it is January and you want to move a key employee in October, then by all means, tell the client and employee in March, a full six months in advance. This will make the transition process easier on the client and will give the employee a very clear tunnel of light ahead.
Three Habit Changes
Vision/Values—make sure you are either creating sensible vision and values if you are on the top leadership team or that you are sharing it out if you’re a supervisor. Don’t make excuses for why your staff doesn’t understand their roles.
Rotation Czar—you, even more than HR or the CEO, will know when your lead creative partner, production partner, or media partner needs a rotation. Before you can even ask, the answer is “Yes, yes, you are your brother or sister’s keeper.” Your ability to advocate for rotations for your partners will ensure that your client has a fresh and excited team, but also that folks see you as someone who is a guardian of culture and people, and not simply a workhorse.
Gunk Survey—use the questions here to create your own survey, and don’t be afraid to customize it for your own unique team. Do this once every six months. It will help ensure that you never let gunk get in the way of your best employees doing their best work.
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM being just another manager at the office, TO being the reason people love coming to work.
Lesson 28
28. Ask Questions People Just Can’t Prepare For
“I always take my most important interviews at a bar so I can see how they interact with the crowd, the waitress, and a glass of wine.”
—Anthony Martinelli, Co- Founder of IgnitionOne
There are two fundamental reasons why it’s so darn hard to interview for Great Client Partners:
Reason 1: The fundamental problem with interviewing for Great Client Partners is that potential candidates over practice and over research for every normal question.
Reason 2: The actual greatest skills needed to be great in account management—perseverance, grace under fire, and creativity—are simply not easily interviewed for during a thirty-to-forty-five-minute
interview slot.
So what do you do? Well, for starters, stop asking them what their greatest weakness is. Their answers will be full of drivel, but it will be your fault. So ask them three specific questions to find out something real.
How did you make money before the age of twenty-one?
What to look for in an ideal answer: here, we are simply looking for some indication of hustle. If you were on the hustle when you were nineteen, you will hustle when you are thirty-one. Between the ages of twelve and thirty-nine, I sold fireworks in my high school, ran a snow-shoveling business, sold baseball cards, was a runner on the commodities exchange, and was a low-wage worker at a gym. I grew up in an affluent area, meaning I did not hustle for dinner. I hustled because I loved to hustle.
What was a time when you let down a loved one, and what did you learn from it?
What to look for in an ideal answer: can they go off script, be honest, and emote? The question is made to trigger a hesitation, reflection, and then honesty—raw honesty.
What is your life’s biggest regret?
What to look for in an ideal answer: can someone tell you something thoughtful that they have learned from, or are they robots who tell you their biggest problem is being a pleaser?
What would you do if you were CEO of your current company?
Look for someone here who is not just a complainer, but someone who has leading thoughts around solutions and someone who has vastness of thinking.