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Internal Networks
Dear HBR: answers your questions with the help of HBS research associate Robin Abrahams.
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Do you wish you were more plugged-in at your organization? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Robin Abrahams, a research associate at Harvard Business School and the “Miss Conduct” columnist at Boston Globe Magazine. They talk through what to do when you want to network at a company retreat, your manager is bothered by your schmoozing with their peers, or you want to know about plum projects before they get assigned to someone else.
Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.
From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:
HBR: Learn to Love Networking by Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino, and Maryam Kouchaki — “A mountain of research shows that professional networks lead to more job and business opportunities, broader and deeper knowledge, improved capacity to innovate, faster advancement, and greater status and authority. Building and nurturing professional relationships also improves the quality of work and increases job satisfaction.”
Boston Globe Magazine: Miss Conduct’s all-in-one career fix-it guide by Robin Abrahams — “Censor your snarky inner voice and have the courage to ask seemingly obvious questions or draw offbeat analogies. Networking is about creating possibilities. Giving people a safe space to explore and connect ideas is a great way to persuade them you are a uniquely insightful genius.”
HBR: The Best Way to Network in a New Job by Rob Cross and Peter Gray — “Anyone who hopes to hit the ground running in a new organization must first cultivate allies — a network of people who can provide the information, resources and support needed to succeed. But few onboarding programs offer concrete advice on how to build those all-important connections.”
HBR: How Leaders Create and Use Networks by Herminia Ibarra and Mark Lee Hunter — “All managers need to build good working relationships with the people who can help them do their jobs. The number and breadth of people involved can be impressive—such operational networks include not only direct reports and superiors but also peers within an operational unit, other internal players with the power to block or support a project, and key outsiders such as suppliers, distributors, and customers.”
DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.
DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts, and help you move forward. Today we’re talking about networking in your organization with Robin Abrahams. She’s a research associate at Harvard Business School and author of the advice column “Miss Conduct” in the Boston Globe Magazine. Robin, thanks for coming on the show.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Thank you, it’s a delight to be here.
DAN MCGINN: When we think of networking we think of etiquette, we think of anxiety, are these the kind of topics that often come up in your column?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: People hate the word networking. They really do, and everybody says that they’re bad at it as though it were like a badge of honor.
ALISON BEARD: Especially when you’re doing it within your own company it can feel political, and sometimes overly political.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: And I think the problem is that people get very much wrapped up in the idea you scratch my back, I scratch yours. But it’s not. There is nothing wrong with going to a peer and say, hey, you give great PowerPoint presentations, I’m kind of terrible at it, can I just like buy you lunch, spend two hours with me, and like teach me what you know that makes you so much better.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, you’re making a great point that networking isn’t just about reaching out to people above you, it’s about knowing the people that are at your same level.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Subordinates. When you really get to the ninja level of networking, you’re not even immediately doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for two other people. Like I keep saying, it’s not that ugly transactional bean-counting kind of thing, it’s an ecology, not an economy.
ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I work in HR in the central office of a big international company quite close to top management. In the two years since I joined, I’ve made an effort to build networks outside of my department, and it’s worked to some extent making me more effective, and hopefully helping me advance. Now there’s a great networking opportunity coming up, I want to make the most of it. I’m involved in the preparation for the meeting of more than 100 top leaders in our organization. I’ll be at the meeting, but not in a very visible way. However, I will probably get a chance to interact with the participants, especially during the networking parts of the event. I’m only an individual contributor, so will these people even be interested in talking to me? I’m very apprehensive about it. How can I use this chance to build connections? Robin, what’s your initial reaction?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: My initial reaction is no. Nobody is only an individual contributor. This person, this woman, knows other people, she will be at this organization where her best bet, I would think, is to ask good questions, listen really hard to the answers, and then start connecting the conversations that she hears at this event. If she can introduce two people at that event to each other, ‘Oh, we were talking about this, you were talking, you guys, have you [met]?’, she will have like a super, super win.
DAN MCGINN: So, I empathize with her a little bit. It seems like she’s putting a lot of pressure on herself. It kind of raises the stakes in a way that might be counterproductive.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Totally. If she’s really feeling Cinderella at the ball about this, she’s going to have a miserable time.
ALISON BEARD: How does she change that mindset? How does she psych herself up for this situation?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Realize how little it does take to make that good impression, simply remembering somebody’s choice of beverage, really listening to what they say, and asking them an insightful question about what they said, not about what you were sitting there waiting to say when they finish talking.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I think she could even take a step back before that, and, A, do a great job on whatever her role is to play —
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yes.
ALISON BEARD: — at this meeting. So, whatever she’s responsible for, whether it’s getting the teas arranged, or putting the speakers on stage, she should be amazing at that.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yep.
ALISON BEARD: And secondly, I think she can give herself a little more confidence in tackling this situation by just knowing all the people she’s going to meet.
DAN MCGINN: She should Google stalk them, in other words.
ALISON BEARD: A little bit, but she’s in HR, so she can actually access everything in the company.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: It’s her job actually. (laughter)
ALISON BEARD: So, she probably has a leg up in that she knows a lot of them already.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Exactly.
DAN MCGINN: So, a target list would make sense in this instance? You’re not going to try to meet all 100 people, but here are the five who make the most sense?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: It depends on where she is in her career, and if she knows what she wants to do. If she’s relatively young in this profession at any rate and is just trying to like raise her profile in kind of a generic way like I just want the top brass to know my face and my name, and think of me as somebody that’s high potential, I think maybe a target list is not the way to go. But she should just obviously strive to excel at what she’s doing, making a good general impression, and then just kind of see who she sparks with.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: If she has particular career goals, which it kind of sounds like maybe she doesn’t at this point. But if she does, then the target list would make more sense.
DAN MCGINN: And should you be goal-directed in this in the sense that when you’re trying to meet these people is her only goal to make a good impression, connect, and maybe create an opportunity for follow-up, or should she have something more specific that she’s trying to accomplish?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: It doesn’t sound like she does have anything more specific that she’s trying to accomplish, and I would strongly advise against being overly goal-oriented because this is not the meet the junior HR associate conference, it’s not about her, she just happens to get to be there.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, and your emphasis on questions, Robin, is so important. That’s the way to have any good conversation —
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Absolutely.
ALISON BEARD: — is to ask questions. But ask intelligent questions —
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yes.
ALISON BEARD: — and that requires that preparation, that understanding what people do.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: And that preparation will help her relax, and I think also she needs to do some yoga, some breath work, some vocal warm-ups, before this, because if the questions are great and insightful but her voice is like all up in her head, and she’s just like twitching, no, you need to be calm, empowered, in control, and competent.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, one other thing I’d love for her to consider is just getting some advice from a trusted peer, or a boss about who are the key people that you’d love for me to meet, maybe even have them make the introduction for her so it is less awkward, and it’s not sort of rushing up to someone at the coffee table that you know you want to talk to, you get a warm introduction.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: That is actually great, yeah. I would say if she does have particular career goals of her own, as opposed to just generally raising the profile, that would be the way to go about it is ask a trusted boss, sponsor, mentor, to help promote that. And then they can decide if that’s appropriate or not.
DAN MCGINN: I like that strategy a lot. The typical cocktail party scenario which everybody gets a little bit nervous in, the buddy system is a great way to reduce nerves, and people tend to be nervous about not having anyone to talk to and standing by themselves. And if you sort of incorporate a buddy, and you and I have done this at plenty of parties in our time, you know that you’re never going to be on your own, and you’re always sort of safe.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I think the other piece of that, having someone with you, especially if it’s a boss, is that they can tout your accomplishments so that you don’t have to, and seem like you’re bragging and trying to impress more senior managers.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Absolutely. I would also say there’s a thing called the availability heuristic, which is a cognitive psychology principle that essentially your brain kind of works like Google. When you think about something, your brain does not immediately come up with the most correct answer, it kind of comes up with the most popular answer, like the page you visited the most often before. This is why candidates who have better name recognition will tend to win in elections. So, one thing that she should really do is just try to get her name and her face just in front of as many people, in as many ways as possible. Just ask if her boss can throw out a thank you when they’re doing that, if there can be, if there’s a program, just whatever, just so that her name is recognizable to these people that the next time they’ll see it, they’ll vaguely remember having seen it before.
DAN MCGINN: Wow, that’s calculated. I never would have thought of that.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yeah. It’s like people just, you know, they’ve done psychology experiments where they’ll show college freshman the huge thousand student classrooms, of these two people, whom do you like best, have you ever seen either before? No. Whom do you like best? They’ll pick the confederate who is actually in the class that like even though they haven’t consciously registered it, they’ve seen the face. Like it’s definitely something she can be taking advantage of on this.
DAN MCGINN: What do you think about a follow-up after the fact? She could send an email thanking them, and referring to the conversation, she could LinkedIn request them. What’s appropriate, and what sort of crosses the line and feels sort of stalkerish?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: I’m going to say anything with LinkedIn, all of that, she should check with her own organizational cultural norms about that. We’re talking LinkedIn, not Facebook, I would imagine it should be fine. But there’s going to be her kind of local culture around something like that. With getting back to people, I would say definitely as long as one, she actually has something to say, and also, is something about how they don’t have to write back. No need to respond, I just wanted to let you know. People are far more willing to help someone if they know that by helping them, they’re not trapping themselves into a lifetime obligation.
ALISON BEARD: Lots of the pieces that we have published on effective networking do say offer something before you’re asking for anything, even months or years before. And I think a lot of times for junior people they say to themselves, I don’t have much to offer, but as you said, Robin, something just like an article, or a connection, or even gratitude, just a thank you is something that people really appreciate.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Honestly just seeing the other, I mean, the thing about at the advanced ranks is they’re frequently lonely. Your peers are also your competition, and there can really be something to that sort of validation that can come with having a protégé or somebody who asks you for advice, who admires you, that is definitely a thing worth offering.
DAN MCGINN: So, Alison, how should she work the room?
ALISON BEARD: First, we want her to make sure the event, at least the part that she’s playing in it, is truly amazing. We think she should do some research ahead of time to make sure she’s able to recognize most of the important people, and also to figure out who she’d like to target, or even just what her general goals are in terms of networking. We want her to relax before she goes into the event, breathing exercises, yoga, making sure she can modulate her voice. And when she’s there we want her to ask really intelligent questions, she can be ready with relevant details on what she’s doing or even have a partner, maybe even a boss, who’s recommended people for her to talk to, can make introductions, and can tout her accomplishments for her. We encourage her to remember the conversations that she’s had, and then definitely to follow up with an email sharing an article, or a connection, or even just offering gratitude that people have taken the time to speak with her.
DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: I’m a 32-year-old director at a large Fortune 50 company. I was a consultant who the organization recruited to be a full-time employee. My current manager, a VP, is the best I could have hoped for. He hired me and has promised me a great career path. He is the nicest guy, and almost like an older brother to me. However, he’s also very protective of me, maybe even possessive. I’ve noticed him getting a little restless when I network with other VPs. He hasn’t explicitly confronted me or told me not to connect with other leaders, but I can sense his unease. I’m very ambitious, and I’d like to quickly climb to the highest level possible on this corporate ladder. How do I manage to network and explore career options at my company without sabotaging my relationship with my current manager?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Whoa. [Laughter]
DAN MCGINN: Good question, huh?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yeah, this one is super murky because what you have here is a business relationship that probably has all kinds of underlying psychological dynamics. Which combining professional and personal relationships can be great, but people have to be very clear about which is which, and not be sort of projecting unconscious things onto the other person, which the whole possessiveness and restlessness thing that he’s talking about makes me think that’s happening.
ALISON BEARD: So, when you mentioned projecting, Robin, I actually saw it from the opposite way, I’m concerned that our letter writer is perhaps manufacturing a problem that isn’t there. He senses this unease, but he hasn’t been explicitly told not to do anything, he hasn’t even had a conversation with his boss about the parameters, whether he can speak to other people, whether he should speak to other people. So, I feel like he’s jumping the gun in being worried about this.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yeah, maybe he is. Also, maybe he’s being super inappropriate, and he’s been there for two months, and he’s hitting up like other directors for jobs.
ALISON BEARD: Right.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: I mean, maybe he’s networking really, really aggressively in a way that is not appropriate in that corporate context, and his boss is quite reasonably taken aback. I think this might be a case where like having some kind of career counselor, executive coach, might be helpful just to kind of calibrate everyone’s expectations.
DAN MCGINN: A career counselor is a pretty exotic solution when there may not even really be a problem here. What if our listener was to simply have a chat with the boss and say, listen, I’m interested in meeting new people, and getting broad exposure to the company, so I met VP so and so, and I met VP so and so, and I like doing that, I think it’s good for our unit, I don’t really have any ulterior motives here, what do you think of that. That would allow, if there is a problem, for the problem to be —
ALISON BEARD: It’s almost having the same conversation that you want to have, Robin, but without a third party first.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Right. If that solves it, if that gets everything open and above board, that’s great. I mean, yeah, definitely always talk to the person you’re having an issue with before you bring in a third party. The reason that I’m thinking there may be a need for a third party at some point, it’s possible they’re both not fully aware of their own desires, emotions, how they’re actually acting given the context. And what’s interesting is he says it’s a mentorial kind of a relationship, but he says, “older brother.” That’s interesting, because if there’s a wide enough age difference, then you can fully mentor somebody without ever being afraid that they’re going to like —
ALISON BEARD: Surpass you.
DAN MCGINN: Jump you.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: — surpass you, exactly. But if this guy’s like oh my god, did I just bring on my replacement.
DAN MCGINN: That seems, the only reason that I could see that the VP would have any reason to be concerned, would be two things, number one, that the director is so talented, and going to network so successfully that he’s going to somehow supplant or take away from the VP. Or that the director is using this networking opportunity to move to a different division, which is going to jam him up in terms of resources.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: I am very ambitious and would like to rise up this corporate ladder to the highest level possible very quickly. Somebody who’s saying that about themselves, kind of sounds to me like somebody who might be taking a real me-first approach to his career, and isn’t think about what, again, we don’t know these people, but this could be kind of a selfish, like, I want to get to the top as fast as I can. That’s not very compatible with making deep workplace relationships, you know? That’s kind of its own goal. And doesn’t always jibe with everything else.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. It sounds like he possibly does want to move somewhere else in the company, and so, maybe that’s why he hesitates to speak with his boss about any of this networking.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Right.
ALISON BEARD: Our letter writer does say that his boss has promised him a great career path, so, again, can he have an honest conversation with the manager about the fact that that path might diverge from their department?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yes, of course. They need to like when he says you promised me a great career path, what was the nature of that promise, and why is he sensing a discomfort now that he presumably is doing the things that that promise would sort of entail.
ALISON BEARD: And does he understand that if I advance, I want him to be as seen as successful too, I’m not interested in leapfrogging him, I’m interested in making him look like the great boss that he is.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Exactly. And this is the question that I think the letter writer really needs to ask himself, am I doing anything that would make this guy regret that he brought me on.
DAN MCGINN: The statement that we’ve all kind of glommed on to, I’m very ambitious and would like to quickly climb to the highest level possible on this corporate ladder, are we telling this listener that that attitude, in general, is problematic in that we wish he should dial it back a little bit?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: There’s a Basque proverb: “God says take what you want, and pay for it.” If what you want is to rise to the top of your company as quickly as possible, take it and pay for it. The price might be not making the kind of friendships, the price might be people thinking you’re transactional, but you may get to the position that you want and may be able to do really great things. Everything has its cost. Everything has its downside.
ALISON BEARD: To your point, Dan, I feel like maybe our letter writer’s issue is not that he is this ambitious, but he thinks that networking is the way to get there. We published a really popular post about how to get noticed by your boss’s boss. There is a list of ten things to do, and only one of them had to do with networking. All the other ones are about doing your job well, thinking strategically, offering solutions, showing commitment to the organization, mirroring its values and culture, so he needs to get all of that right to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as he possibly can.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: I like the way you keep going back to also do your job, first, do your job. Yes, it’s very important.
ALISON BEARD: And make real relationships, not just do this sort of superficial networking, how many senior leaders can I meet as quickly as possible. How he’s going about this climb that he’s embarking on maybe isn’t exactly where we would want him to start.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yeah.
ALISON BEARD: So, Dan, what are we telling this director?
DAN MCGINN: First we’re suggesting he step back and recognize that there may not actually be a problem here. We think he needs to maybe do a little less mind-reading, and maybe have a conversation with the boss to try and get a full understanding of whether he sees this behavior as problematic or not. The listener could try to describe his intention in making these connections. He should recognize though that highly ambitious people whose intention is to very quickly climb to the absolute highest place in this company, that there are some costs associated with that and some trade-offs. Your relationships might be a little less deep, you might have some fewer friends, you might need to make some trade-offs in terms of how you are interacting with people if your real goal is to move ahead as quickly as you can, regardless of how the relationship suffers. We think, in an extreme case, if he and his boss cannot get on the same page about this, and it’s apparent that it’s a problem here, they may think about a career coach or some sort of a third party who can come in and try to mediate and objectively find a solution to the situation.
ALISON BEARD: Last question. Dear HBR: I’m a user experience designer who’s been working for 12 years. I’ve been in my current role on the digital team for one year, and with my company for four. It’s a large omnichannel retailer with hundreds of thousands of employees. I really enjoy my job, and I’m lucky enough to work with a talented group of designers. I’m a woman, and the majority of people in charge of my group are men. I have plenty of work, keep myself busy, and have incremental success. Here’s the issue, my group is going to sign five high-profile business projects tailored to my skills, but I haven’t been tapped for them. I only find out about a project if someone asks if I’ve worked on it, either while it’s happening, or after its done, never before. Sometimes the work’s been done badly, and that’s how I hear about it. Or, if the project is still in progress, I have to do a five-minute elevator pitch on how I can help. One time, my offer to help was largely ignored, and another male designer ended up doing the work. I perceive some gender bias in the decision to leave me out, but I can’t prove it. I’ve talked to my manager, and my director, about taking on more high-profile assignments, and they say they’re open to finding opportunities for me, yay, but my confidence is shaken. I don’t have an outgoing extraverted personality and don’t have a lot of chances to talk about how valuable my contributions are and can be. So, I’m worried I’ll be continually overlooked for work I know I could do well. I’m just asking for a chance to prove myself, which I haven’t gotten. Is there anything else I can do to ensure that I’m picked for a team? I don’t need to be first, just picked would be great. Robin, what do you think? That was sad at the end.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: It was all very sad, but the thing that just really strikes me is how much power this person is giving up. It’s like I want to help, I want to be picked, I want to be on the team, no, this is, she’s so powered down, she’s lost so much confidence. I see two main problems here. One is that she has lost this confidence, and she’s sort of presenting herself as a supplicant instead of as somebody who has a solution to problems that they’re obviously causing and that they need solutions to. And then the other problem is the more structural one is why is there such a lack of transparency around the project process.
DAN MCGINN: I wonder if part of what’s going on here is that she’s in a function that’s relatively new to this organization, maybe it’s not that she’s not being picked, and maybe these project people don’t understand what a user experience person brings to the table, they don’t really understand the value that her function can bring, and she’s really personalizing this a little bit too much. In one instance she does say they picked a male designer to do the work, so there might be instances where they’re affirmatively taking a user experience person that’s not her, but I wonder if some of this is about lack of understanding and value for the function she brings.
ALISON BEARD: And also, maybe a lack of understanding of her specific expertise. You know she knows exactly what her skill set is, and she knows that it’s perfectly tailored to all these projects that are coming up, but clearly other people in her group do not know that, so she needs to find a way, strategically, to show everyone what she can do.
DAN MCGINN: Without bragging, and saying, look at everything I do, I’m great.
ALISON BEARD: Exactly.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: I think she actually needs to find a way of finding out what’s going on.
ALISON BEARD: First.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yeah. I mean, because how can you show people how you can pitch if you don’t even know the games are playing. If she’s hearing about problems from end-users, I think she needs to be more aggressive about that.
ALISON BEARD: So, I think it’s a two-pronged attack. One is she should be letting people know what her expertise is, and maybe that is by diagnosing problems in service of the product. And then, the second prong of attack is how she can get into this information loop. So, how can she do both of those things at once?
DAN MCGINN: I think the information challenge is real, and the description she gives of her company where projects sort of bubble up, and people don’t hear about them, I think that’s really common actually. I think one of the ways around that is presumably she reports into somebody that has some horizontal knowledge about what’s going on, and when she’s doing a check-in with that person, instead of just focusing on the items on her list, she might say, hey, what else is going on, what are you guys thinking about, is there anything new going on, she might affirmatively seek out intelligence to try and figure this out. It’s a form of networking, and I think it’s a very valuable one.
ALISON BEARD: I mean, yeah, that’s the thing, she needs to build her network so that she knows more about what’s going on. And so, how does she figure out who the key people are.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Right.
ALISON BEARD: Who are these gatekeepers?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: There are people who know things.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, who are the people who know what projects are coming in, and who make the assignments, who are those people.
DAN MCGINN: There’s a very good possibility it’s somebody in her network, but that she’s not utilizing them for that. She probably already has a line into the person that has the information she wants, she’s just not interacting with them at the right time, in the right way so that this information gets passed along.
ALISON BEARD: What do we make of the fact that she feels as if her introverted personality is preventing her from making these connections, or utilizing them as well as she should?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: She’s wrong about that. Being an extroverted outgoing person does not make you a better networker. It makes it perhaps easier for you, but not better at it.
DAN MCGINN: I wonder if there’s a way that she could sort of quietly illicit and rely on testimonials from people who have worked with her on other projects, wouldn’t’ necessarily need to be all about her, but imagine there’s somebody in this omnichannel retailer who says, I needed to redesign this part of the website, I wasn’t going to have a user experience person on it because we just haven’t done that before, but I added this listener to the project, and this is what it looked like before she worked on it, she got the feedback, this is what it looked like afterward, results are up 20%. So, maybe if someone else could sort of package and tell the story of what she and her function brought to a project, that would help because it’s not her sort of pleading her case.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: And what I’m, and really even the whole pleading her case, going out and talking about how important her work is, if she can in essence show rather than tell, this would be a really good time to do a conference presentation, get an additional certification, apply for an award, give a talk, write an article, work the external network to get a little mojo back.
ALISON BEARD: And what about the gender piece that she brings up? Is she right in thinking that she is less likely to get these assignments because she’s a woman in a male-dominated group?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Almost certainly statistically. I mean, the likelihood that that would not be the case is negligible, I would think. What she needs to do, I think, is also start networking with other women in the organization, find out what their experience has been.
ALISON BEARD: Joan Williams has shown that women are 18 to 35% less likely than white men to get access to glamor work or really plum assignments, and that’s often because they’re stereotyped into saying well, you should be fine with just doing the office work because you’re supposed to be a team player, and you’re not supposed to have this like major role. And you’re certainly not supposed to demand to have a major role on a team. And so, I feel like our letter writer is falling into that trap of thinking I shouldn’t really have agency, I shouldn’t demand anything, but actually, she should. Robin, how do you get around that stereotype? How do you be assertive in a culture that doesn’t want you to be?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: I think she needs to. She says she’s talked to her manager and director about taking on larger projects, and they’re open to finding her opportunities. I think she needs to get a few more specifics and deliverables from them on that. What exactly does that mean? “Open to finding,” those are some really vague words, though. What does that mean? And then begin to make it clear that if she does not, what her skills are, if she’s not getting work commensurate with her skills, she’s going to begin to look elsewhere.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, and I think her boss and director should be giving her some insight into how the system works.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yeah.
ALISON BEARD: How do the projects come in?
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Yeah.
ALISON BEARD: Who staffs —
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: The thing is with talented employees, use them or lose them. Every manager knows that, or should, that if she’s good, and she’s not getting good work, she’s not going to be around forever.
DAN MCGINN: Alison, what’s our sum-up?
ALISON BEARD: First, we really want her to tackle her confidence problem first. We think she should know her worth and find a way to let other people know the value of user experience expertise, and exactly what her skill set is. We want her to take more agency and be more courageous in networking. Introverts can be really good at this. She just needs to get past the initial anxiety and make connections based on content. We also just want her to get her name out there, whether it’s internally or externally, showing that she has the skills to do these jobs they need done. The second problem is getting into the information loop at her organization, and on her team. We want her to figure out who the gatekeepers are. It’s great that she’s talked to her boss and director. We want her to ask them to be more specific about what help they’re going to give, and also be more transparent with her about how the system works. We do suspect that there is gender bias at play in the situation, she’s probably right about that, so we’d also really encourage her to network internally with other women in the organization who know how to navigate, and might be able to give her some insight on some other teams at this company where she might not run into so many hurdles. In general, we think as long as she gets a little bit more confidence, has good conversations with people on her team, she has a successful future at this company.
DAN MCGINN: Robin, thanks for coming on the show.
ROBIN ABRAHAMS: Thank you. This was delightful.
DAN MCGINN: That’s Robin Abrahams. She’s a research associate at Harvard Business School and her advice column is “Miss Conduct.” Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your questions. Send us an email with your workplace challenge, and how we can help. The email address is DearHBR@HBR.org.
ALISON BEARD: We also want to thank Louis Weeks and Nick DePrey for composing our theme music.
DAN MCGINN: We hope you liked today’s episode, and if you want to get the next one automatically, please go to your podcast app, and hit subscribe.
ALISON BEARD: And if you like the show, please give us a five-star review.
DAN MCGINN: I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.