Ambition is not a Dirty Word

How To Take It Back

2009-11-02T16:00:28-08:00

Dear Debra: After I spearheaded a major project for our division, my boss singled me out for praise I deserved. I don’t know why I did it—to be humble and nice, I guess—but I “shared” the glory with a coworker I felt sorry for who did barely a fraction of the work. Now, it looks like that co-worker (who has turned out to be manipulative and backstabbing), not me, will be joining my boss at the next inter-departmental briefing on this project. Can I recover from shooting myself in the foot? –Limping, 29.

What do you do when you’ve missed an opportunity and given away your credit? You need to fix that mistake. Here’s how one of my clients—Liz—did it.

A huge project opportunity came in. All candidates had to submit comprehensive pitch materials to the prospective client on short notice. Liz’s boss was away on a family emergency, so she was in charge of the pitch process. She had to gather pieces from sales, marketing, publicity, financial and new media, but she was the architect of the whole thing and was responsible for making all of the creative and judgment calls. When Liz got the call telling her they’d won the assignment, the new client singled her out as a crucial factor in awarding the deal to the firm. When her boss came back, he said, ‘I don’t know who wrote this pitch, but it’s perfectly positioned. It’s a great job.’ Liz told him, “We all worked on it, it was a team effort, the usual ‘girl’ stuff.” But when she got back to her desk, she “felt like crap for not taking credit.”

Liz only spent about ten minutes “feeling like crap” before she wrote her boss an e-mail saying, “I don’t know why I couldn’t tell you this when you asked, but the truth is, I spearheaded that project—and I wrote that pitch letter.” The result? He reiterated that it was a great job and Liz “felt a million times better.”

Obviously Liz could have popped back by her boss’s office to correct her missed credit opportunity; repairing a credit mistake in person is another option to e-mail if you’re more comfortable stopping by his office to say what you wished you’d said earlier.

For now, weigh whether you can elegantly set the record straight with your boss. But the next time someone says, “This was a great job!”, you should reply, without missing a beat: “Thank you. I worked hard to nail it. I appreciate your comments.” Stop selling yourself short. Taking credit is key to being a serious contender.

Oh, and watch your back for credit thieves who make nice and then turn on you!

Speechless in Seattle: How to Make a Great Presentation

2009-09-21T10:38:51-07:00

Dear Debra: I’ve been asked to present at a high-profile company event. My bosses, colleagues, donors, and board members will be attending. I’m petrified. Help!

Practice until you can’t stand the sound of your own voice. Practice breeds confidence. It’s impossible to over-rehearse.

Avoid preparing more material than will fit in your allotted time. This will keep you from rushing, running out of time and missing key points, or running over. Rule of thumb: for every hour, prepare 40 minutes of material. This allows time for interaction and discussion. Speakers prepare excess material hoping to leave no time for fielding dreaded questions; don’t make this mistake. Embrace questions: audience participation brings presentations to life. Afraid of being stumped? Simply say, “Great question. I don’t have the answer, but I’ll get back to you stat, later, after I’ve done some digging.”

Arrange for U-shaped audience seating, facing you. This allows listeners to see, in their peripheral vision, others who are laughing, nodding, or even standing to applaud; these exuberant displays are infectious, so setting up chairs in this way sets you up for contagious enthusiasm.

Get your hands on the list of attendees and email them beforehand, or pop by their office, or ask at the coffee bar: “What burning question would you like to have addressed?” This gets buy in, plus attendees will feel that you’ve custom-tailored your talk to their needs.

Enlist plants: prevail upon trusted colleagues to ask questions at designated times, including when you ask, “Any questions?”, and no one speaks up. This will get the Q & A rolling and eliminate uncomfortable silences.

Something embarrassing happens? Try, “Whoops. I have egg on my face. I hear it’s good for the complexion, but next time I’ll stick with a professional facial.” Non-defensiveness and self-deprecating humor renders you human and irresistible because people can relate to and empathize with you. They may just beg for an encore.

Note: I learned several of the tips above from my favorite professional speaking mentor, Tom Antion. Since I first took his in-depth audio and video course five years ago, I was hooked. I now build in time – no matter what – for a refresher repeat before each and every keynote or presentation I deliver. Being a student of Tom’s advice has made all the difference in my success as a keynote speaker. I can’t say enough great things about his gold-standard speaking strategies and I highly recommend that you, too, take the time to read about his course offerings. What Tom offers isn’t an easy sort-cut: it takes time and hard work. But work his program and you will emerge as a confident, powerful speaker who knows how to fill a room and how to deliver a moving, powerful message. And there’s no better feeling than knowing that you’ve inspired others to go out and make a difference. The world deserves to hear from us.

How Not to Go AWOL (Absent Without Leisure)

2009-07-05T17:20:41-07:00

Dear Debra: I get so stressed out planning to leave work for vacation and check in so constantly while I’m gone that by the time I finally unwind, vacation’s almost over, and then of course when I get back to the office I’m snowed under the pileup. How can I make leaving and returning to the office after vacation less stressful?

1. Plan Your Jail Break. Start preparing three weeks before vacation. Most people wait until the Monday before a Friday departure, then they’re frantically trying to tie up loose ends while the flight attendant is calling final boarding. Brief coworkers on issues likely to come up, let people know specific tasks you want them to handle, and supply contact emergency information. Set your phone and computer with auto-messages stating how long you’ll be away and contact information for the person pinch-hitting in your absence.

2. Don’t Leave ‘Em Guessing: Are you throwing up an unconditional “Do Not Disturb” firewall between yourself and the office, do you want to make yourself available in certain circumstances, or will you check-ins daily? Make your boundaries clear, THEN KEEP THEM. Try cutting the cord; technology makes it too tempting check your BlackBerry when you could be profitably sipping a mai tai or reading the latest thriller poolside.

3. Buck the Trend. There’s no rule that says you have to return from vacation on Monday, the most dreaded work day. Plan for a Tuesday or Friday return. There’s a mysterious but reliable psychological advantage to easing yourself back into the grind by returning on atypical work days; you’ll also score more advantageous travel and lodging rates in the bargain!

4. Give Yourself a Buffer Zone. Plan to return home 24 hours before you’re due back at the office. If you’re due back at work at 8 a.m. Tuesday, plan your return flight so that you arrive home late Sunday night. Use this buffer zone to relax, download photos, catch up with friends, maybe do some laundry—not to answer your backlog of office emails. Hey, you’re still on vacation!

5. Practice Triage. Upon returning, arrive an hour early so you can fly through emails undisturbed. Change your away auto-messages. Read emails in reverse order—from most recent to latest; older issues may have been resolved already. Prioritize the top three most pressing issues; tackle them first. When a frazzled coworker rushes into your office with a drummed-up non-emergency, smile and say, “Looks like you could use a vacation!”

Read more advice in my book, Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word: A Woman's Guide to Earning Her Worth and Achieving Her Dreams (Random House / Broadway Books).

Do Less and Make More

2009-04-13T12:59:24-07:00

Dear Debra: I absolutely love my work. Being a small business owner demands a ton of hours. In addition to my career, in my personal life, I manage everyone’s schedules, laundry, plus field, “Mom! Honey! What should we do for dinner?” I need another me--or a wife. Advice? –Overwhelmed

Do you have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, doing everything yourself so it’ll be done right, or to “save” money? (FYI: Women are 110% percent more likely to answer yes to this question.) Countless ambitious, crazily busy, and successful women do battle within themselves—“I feel guilty; I shouldn’t pay someone to do work I could do. I feel like a prima donna.”

Have you ever calculated how much this is costing you? Time to do the math.

Figure out the real price tag for hiring someone to lighten your load. Let’s say you clear $100,000 a year; that breaks down to $48 per hour. Now let’s say you spend six hours a week running errands that anyone with a car and a sense of direction could do. Plus six hours doing household chores. That comes out to $576 (12 hours x $48/hour). You could hire a competent person to do the same work for $18 per hour ($216). So you’re losing $360 a week by doing the work yourself.

Or say you clear $75,000 a year; that breaks down to $36 per hour. Now let’s say you spend six hours a week running errands that anyone with a car and a sense of direction could do. Plus six hours doing household chores. That comes out to $432 (12 hours x $36/hour). You could hire a competent person to do the same work for $18 per hour ($216). So you’re losing $216 a week by doing the work yourself.

Every hour you needlessly burn up by failing to delegate is time you could be investing in your business, taking on exciting new project opportunities, positioning yourself for advancement, or networking with colleagues, potential clients, and movers and shakers—and it’s one of the key ways women self-sabotage.

I’ve worked with thousands of women who have trouble rationalizing outsourcing—and it doesn’t matter how much they earn. If you crunch the numbers, however, you’ll have objective figures proving it makes sense to free up your time—and money—for what really counts. Ask around. Find a good cleaning person, a part-time or full-time executive assistant, a computer whiz, and other support people that can complete tasks for a fraction of what it would cost you to do it yourself.

Stop wasting time thinking “I need another me” and spend the money for a “mini-me”. You’ll end up a lot richer.

Read more advice in my book, Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word: A Woman's Guide to Earning Her Worth and Achieving Her Dreams (Random House / Broadway Books).

3 Tips to Refresh an Out-Of-Date Rolodex and Network by Sundown

2009-03-23T09:23:28-07:00

1. Deploy a six-degrees of separation search

2. Tap online social media networks

3. Time travel

1. Deploy a six-degrees of separation search: contact your missing contact's mutual acquaintances and score current info; pick up the phone and call for a personal touch during your search. Bonus: you reconnect the old fashioned way with one additional person in your network—the intermediary contact. And you may just get lucky if they have either the missing person’s info on their Blackberry or have another person they suggest introducing you to for a job they just heard about that has your name on it. Don’t be shy about reaching out to people you’ve lost contact with; nine times out of ten, it’s rejuvenating to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, especially when you’ve been isolated, haven’t left your home or changed out of your pajamas for days, and have been glued to and paralyzed by reports of gloomy unemployment news. Break the isolation.

2. Tap online social media networks: tune in to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google to quickly find lost contacts. Join online community discussions on cutting-edge job search tips at sites like WomenForHire.com. Sign up for e-alerts about live professional networking and professional events using sites like BernardosList.com. Don’t have a clue how to navigate the brave new world of Web 2.0? Ask your teenaged kid or college-student niece or next-door-neighbor to give you a tutorial; you’ll be a whiz in no time.

3. Time travel: contact your undergraduate or B-school, or advanced degree alumni office and you may score current contact information in under seven minutes. Respond to requests from your Alma mater’s alumni association to update your own contact information and professional bio. Contribute updates to the association’s print and online publications. Stay visible to former classmates.

Let folks know what you're up to and they may surprise you with a blast from the past phone call or e-mail, just when you were wondering how to find them.

Friends or “Friends”?

2009-03-13T12:17:27-07:00

Dear Debra: Should I accept Facebook “friend” invitations from co-workers I don’t know that well and don’t socialize with? I keep my personal life pretty private. Will I offend if I don’t accept?

There are 3 ways of dealing with this dilemma:

1. Just say no. If you're using Facebook strictly as a tool to stay connected with people in your personal life, then it's a bad idea to include people from your work life. If "friended" by someone at work, simply say, straight up, with a touch of self-deprecating humor, "It's my neurotic little policy to keep work and personal life separate on Facebook—I’m shy that way—but thanks for the invite!" This will take the edge off the rejection, and it’s nicer than saying, “I have enough friends already.”

2. Equivocate. You can accept them as a friend, but put them on "restricted" status, meaning you only allow them to see certain information that you control; they won't be able to get into restricted areas to see photos of, say, you doing keg stands. Go into your account and privacy settings to control which “friends” see what.

3. Do it—with a caveat. If you decide to use Facebook as a social and professional networking tool, follow one simple rule: don't put any photos or information on your site that you wouldn't be comfortable having the whole world seeing. Think hard before revealing that you’re a member of The Baby Seal Killers of America for Gender Equality; you’ll risk alienating colleagues, clients, potential employers or customers, and friends whose beliefs are pro-baby seal. Ask yourself if your sexual orientation is really anybody’s business, other than your real-world friends. On my own page, in the Political Views category, I describe myself as “Optimistic” and my Religious Views as: “My father taught me never to talk publicly about religion or politics.”

However you choose to use online social networking sites, consider the consequences of having photos or posts surface years from now when you're being vetted for a job you have stars in your eyes for, or you're running for Congress. It is the height of stupidity (or youthful naiveté, but now you’ve been warned!) to post potentially compromising information, yet people do it all the time. Online networking gives a false sense of security and trust; people forget that they risk sacrificing their privacy. Don’t fall into that trap.

Read more of Debra’s nuts and bolts advice in her book, Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word: A Woman’s Guide to Earning Her Worth and Achieving Her Dreams (Random House/Broadway Books). Email your burning questions to Debra@AmbitionIsNotADirtyWord.com.

Sample the Goods Before Buying and Land Your Dream Job

2009-03-12T13:56:44-07:00

Dear Debra: I’ve been laid off from a job I hated with six months’ severance. I want to think carefully about what I want to do next. Advice?

Volunteering or interning is a great strategy if your goal is to avoid simply filling time or gaining irrelevant experience that does nothing to move you toward meaningful, challenging work. Volunteer to sample a new company or industry. If you love the work, leverage it into a paid position. Here’s how.

1. Assess your interests and talents. What do you love to do? What work inspires you to get out of bed each day? What is your dream job, no matter how outlandish or if it matches your background or degree? What were your favorite school subjects? What industries spark your passion?

2. Do your homework. Research companies or organizations; spend time daily studying The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Inc., and business sections of major newspapers. Take note of people, companies, organizations, and jobs that light a fire inside of you.

3. Contact the H.R. department—or preferably the decision maker, i.e., the C.E.O. mentioned in an article—of companies that captivate you. Sell the skills, talents, expertise, and training you have to offer for a volunteer position. Ask to set up a face-to-face interview. If you get a no the first time, don’t be discouraged. Keep phoning different people; follow up using multiple channels of communication: e-mail; a succinct voice message; a creative cover letter accompanying your resume—FedEx’d to decision makers so that your serious intent and ambition stands out.

4. Spell out why you want to be a volunteer in the organization, but focus heavily on strengths you bring to their table; focus on why they need you, not on what’s in it for you.

5. After landing a spot, turn it into a paying job by cultivating key contacts within the organization; form your own Informal Board of Advisors. Begin your day at the opposite end of the building from your office; knock on doors, say good morning, lunch with different people. Send around periodic e-mails with tidbits of news relevant to the industry. Stay on folks’ radar as someone who is paying attention and motivated. Some 85% of jobs are won through word-of-mouth contacts.

Who better than a high-performing volunteer to fill a full-time, part-time, or consulting position? When an opportunity opens up, throw your name into the hat: “I’d be great for that job!”

Brush Up on Your Note Taking Skills

2009-02-24T09:37:35-08:00

Excerpt from article by Heather Huhman, Entry Level Careers Examiner at Examiner.com

Even students’ years in school often times don’t prepare them properly for taking notes in the workplace. While it may seem a trivial task, once you miss an important direction or assignment, you’ll realize just how crucial it is.

If you can, record in addition to writing. “Stand out from the intern herd by showing up with a small, digital audio recorder. Say, ‘Do you mind if I tape this while also taking notes? That way, I can be sure not to miss anything and can go back and listen again to anything I didn't absorb the first time. This will save you time training me and get me up to speed 10 times faster!’ Most bosses not only will say yes, but will be impressed that you thought of this and dazzled by your ambition and thoroughness and desire to get it right,” said Dr. Debra Condren, a business psychologist, author and founder of AmbitionIsNotADirtyWord.com.

Click here to read article in its entirety.

Exciting News from Carol Jenkins

2009-02-20T15:11:00-08:00

We have some exciting news we want to share with you, a member of The Women's Media Center extended family: the WMC has acquired SheSource.org, the online database of over 500 women experts. This makes the WMC the definitive source for women analysts and experts -- and meshes perfectly with our intensive media training program, Progressive Women's Voices.

Click here to read more about WMC and SheSource.org

SheSource.org was created three years ago by our friends and collaborators The White House Project, Fenton Communications and The Women’s Funding Network. While they move on to new and exciting ventures training thousands of women to run for political office and fighting for women’s rights, the WMC is thrilled to build on the media resource they created — the go-to place for networks, print and online media looking for expert voices — who happen to be women.

We look forward to other collaborations with our esteemed colleagues and thank them for entrusting us to take their creation to the next level. You can read the press release about the transition here.

Long-time White House Project SheSource coordinator Gillian DiPietro is staying with the project to assure a smooth continuation of operation. WMC Vice President Glennda Testone, Media Director Tristin Aaron, and Media Manager Rebekah Spicuglia will all be working closely on SheSource.org. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the program, please email Gillian at shesource@womensmediacenter.com.

It’s going to be a terrific year for The Women’s Media Center and the women of SheSource.org.

P.S. We hope you will make a tax deductible gift to support this new project of The Women’s Media Center. In this time of uncertainty on every front, we need to hear women’s voices in the conversation. Please donate now.

How to Navigate your Annual Review in This Bleak Economic Enviroment

2009-02-20T14:10:06-08:00

Dear Debra: My annual review is next week. Should I negotiate for a raise or just be glad to have a job?

Always negotiate. What's the worst that happens? You learn there's a freeze on raises or bonuses, so you negotiate for non-monetary perks: an updated, more prestigious title that adds more cache to your resume; an opportunity to take over as editor of your company's industry newsletter or head up a project you have stars in your eyes for; working one day a week from home to cut out two hours a week of commuting time and cost.

Be prepared to discuss specific achievements. Confidently give examples and brief stories that illustrate your performance and star power. Cite hard numbers: "I tripled profits while simultaneously cutting department overhead by 50%." "Identified $1.2MM in underperforming assets and created this detailed blueprint for turning that around" (and of course you have a one page summary of that plan in your hands for show and tell). Whip out your plan for helping your department, team or company reach their objectives, cut expenses, retain talent, lower attrition.

Tell your boss you are open to frank feedback, including what you need to do better to meet your individual, team, and company goals. This sets a positive tone. Outline three specific areas in which you plan to hone your performance, including workshops or advanced training courses you've signed up for.

You'll be prepared in advance for this because this week, before your review, e-mail 10 coworkers, supervisors (other than your boss doing the review), subordinates, and customers and ask for their frank feedback about what's effective and what needs improvement in terms or your performance. Ask them to comment on problem-solving, decision-making, thoroughness, creativity, objectivity, risk-taking and judgment, follow-through, open-mindedness, people skills, leadership abilities, communication and listening skills, organizational awareness, persuasiveness, drive and initiative. Look for key themes in their responses. You'll be prepared to discuss in your review strengths plus how you're working to improve weaknesses. Ask their permission to share any glowing reviews with your boss.

With reviews, the best surprise is no surprise. Walk in prepared. Walk out confident that you've been your own best advocate, whatever the outcome.