Paula Pant (3:31)

You said you did dozens of interviews and you surveyed. Was it 12,000 people?

Melody Wilding (3:35)

Yes, for this book, I surveyed over 12,000 people and had interviews with close to 50 people as well. So it was a bit of quantitative and qualitative research as well as drawing from. I've been coaching now for 15 years, so drawing from stories, case studies, experiences from my clients. But really, the 10 conversations framework that you were mentioning was directly informed by the challenges people were having, the goals that they wanted to achieve. So it came directly from that research.

Paula Pant (4:07)

The 12,000 surveyed, are they professional knowledge workers?

Melody Wilding (4:10)

Primarily. Primarily. I would say most people are in a traditional corporate fortune 500 sort of atmosphere. But I have lots of people who were in academia, for example, in university environments or even in healthcare environments. They may work in a hospital or a clinic. But yes, most of them are your traditional knowledge worker.

Paula Pant (4:32)

Right. And inside of Fortune 500 companies, I've heard from many people that it can feel stifling because there are so many people, there are so many players involved, there are so many things going on, it's hard to feel any degree of autonomy over your environment.

Melody Wilding (4:49)

That's correct. And it's becoming so much more ambiguous because we're no longer living in this very clean. You have one manager, and there's a very clean org chart and hierarchy. We're living in a time where matrix organizations are huge. Yes, you may have one direct manager, but you may also have a project lead or ahead of a certain function that you have to report to on certain projects or entire parts of your work. So it's not as clear cut as it used to be. And as you said, there's just so many more people in the mix. When we talk about managing up now, we have to go beyond our boss because you may have other stakeholders internally in your organization that you have to manage up to, but also externally there may be vendors or partners that there are people in power positions there that you need to manage up to build a reputation with, get buy in from and build trust with as well. So I think there is this assumption that when we say managing up, we are just talking about making your boss look good. And if you do that, you're going to put yourself in a precarious position because you need to be thinking about the entire ecosystem of where you're working.

Paula Pant (6:07)

So let's talk through this framework that you've developed from all of your research. Each component of the frame really addresses a problem that people have. And so I want to work through these one by one. There are 10 of them in total. Let's start with the first component, which is around alignment.

Melody Wilding (6:24)

We start with the alignment conversation. It's the foundation for everything. And let me also back up and say these conversations are sequenced in a very particular order from the most foundational to the ones that are most advanced. Now, in real life, it's not going to happen that cleanly. You're going to weave in and out of certain conversations. You may need to have one multiple times. And when we use the word conversation, you alluded to this before. We're not just talking about one discrete chat. These are more ongoing dialogues that you are having. And we're talking about the formal moments where you may be in a meeting or a presentation or a one on one or your performance review. But we're also talking about the informal overlooked moments like the hallway chat or that slack message that you're sending to your skip level manager. So I just want to set that context for people. Now the alignment conversation really came about because one of the most fundamental things I was hearing from people was feeling like they were spinning their wheels day to day, that they didn't really have a sense if what they were working on was, was meaningfully moving the needle for their team, for the organization. They also felt, like I mentioned, feeling jerked around by the whims and feeling like they didn't have a good sense of what their boss's top priorities were. And then how do you match your work to that? So there was this sense of I feel like the priorities and the target I'm trying to move towards is changing day to day. So how do I get a better sense of what matters to my manager?

Paula Pant (8:04)

Well, that can be difficult because so much of the time you're like, man, we were working on a And then my boss flipped it to B and now we're working on C. And it seems like the company's priorities are like it flips from A to B to C to D, back to A, back to C. So I mean, how do you even get aligned when the goalposts are often always shifting?

Melody Wilding (8:24)

Yes, alignment. This conversation probably needs to happen the most frequently and on the most micro level. So yes, you can have an alignment conversation, let's say annually or quarterly, you may have one that's at a 10,000 foot level, but day to day, week to week, you want to make sure that you are constantly revisiting this because it is always changing and we need to have upward empathy. And when I say upward empathy, I am not condoning bad boss behavior. I, I am not saying that it's okay or acceptable that your boss is changing the target every other day. That is frustrating. But upward empathy is making an attempt to understand the context and the motivation behind your boss's behavior. Because they may be getting directives from the C suite or the board to okay, we're going to chase this shiny object. We're going to do this AI initiative today and no, we're going to focus on this new feature. And so that may be coming down from above for them. It's trickling down to you. But when you can have just that bit of understanding and attempt to have that insight into their behavior, then that helps you build rapport and understanding with them that much faster.

Paula Pant (9:41)

So how do you begin having these conversations that increase alignment between you and your not just your one individual boss, but this whole ecosystem of people that you report to?

Melody Wilding (9:51)

Yes. Well, let's talk about with your boss first. Because still, at the end of the day, your boss is your number one customer. You have to treat them like that. You're trying to understand what is important to them, not from a surface level. Can you please tell me your priorities? Because if you ask a basic question, you're going to get a basic answer. And what we're trying to dig to is some of those unspoken priorities or the nuance there. Because we what may be listed as key performance indicators on a slide deck may be a bit different in reality. There's a number of different questions. I'll give you a few of my favorites. One of them is what are the metrics you, my boss, are asked about the most? Or what are the metrics you are discussing most often with your leader? Because that's going to give you almost instant clarity into what's important to them.

Paula Pant (10:43)

Right? Because what gets measured gets managed.

Melody Wilding (10:46)

Correct. And that's what they're getting evaluated on. So they're going to pay attention to it more closely. So that's one of them. A second one is what does good performance look like from me or from someone in this role? You pause, you let them answer and then you say, great. Now what does excellent performance look like? This one can be helpful because it starts to get under the hood for what are the behaviors that someone in this role does that makes them a top performer? And that gets to this idea that hard work and talent, unfortunately, it only gets you so far. There are certain intangible qualities. Maybe it's someone's strategic thinking or their level of executive presence, for example, that really separates one from being a good performer and a great performer. So it gets us some of those mindsets, those behaviors, the attitudinal aspects that again might not yet have been articulated but might be the missing piece that is stopping you from advancing. So then you're aligning on what does it look like to be successful in this role?

Paula Pant (11:55)

All right, so that's how to align with your boss. But you mentioned earlier that there's this broader ecosystem that you also need to align with. How do you approach that?

Melody Wilding (12:02)

Yes, and we were mentioning there may be a lot of stakeholders that you have to take into account, both internal and external. So one way to do this is the power map. And this is a very simple way that you can start to see that landscape. You create a grid. On one axis is someone's level of influence, what is their sway, their decision making power, and then on the other axis is their level of interest. And that may be how invested they are. Do they have a personal stake in this? Does it affect their reputation in a certain way?

Paula Pant (12:38)

So X, Y axis, interest and influence?

Melody Wilding (12:41)

Yes, the two I's. And as you might suspect, you want to focus most of your effort on the people that fall into the quadrant of high influence and, and high interest. Those are your most important stakeholders that you need to manage most closely. But this is helpful because now you can prioritize.

Paula Pant (13:01)

What do you mean by interest? Do you mean like the coworker who's kind of dialing it in, but they're like really checked out and they're doing the bare minimum? Is that what you mean by interest or does it mean something more than that?

Melody Wilding (13:12)

Could be. Let's take a more tangible example of a managing up scenario. Let's say there are several of your boss's peers and your boss may not actually have high interest in a certain project you're working on. Let's say you're in the product team, but the engineering manager may have a higher vested interest in your product because right now you're focused more on the technology pieces and the build and the rollout of that and your manager who is more focused on product development and let's say innovation may just not be as invested. And so that can help you clarify. Oh, actually, I need to spend more face time with the head of engineering to make sure that this person who is both high influence, they have high decision making power, they can make judgment calls, they can determine what resources get allocated to this, but they also have high personal and professional interest in this. And in that example, maybe the engineering manager, what also factors into their level of interest is that this is something that they're going to be evaluated on in their performance review. Does this product get shipped on time? And so that person has a vested interest in making sure this goes well.

Paula Pant (14:31)

Right. So it might not even be a person that you directly report to. It might be a lateral person that simply works at your company, but you don't even report to them.

Melody Wilding (14:40)

Yeah. A common example I see is board members. I'll often see there are board members that come from a fundraising or finance background, for example, and let's say the stage of the project you're at really involves that skill set. That person is very interested in being a part of it, offering their expertise, and they have high influence because they are a board member and they may have the ear of the CEO or other important partners that you are working with. That may have been something you would have missed otherwise if you hadn't done some of this mapping. And it's very simple. This doesn't have to take long. This can be just a five minute exercise you do with some sticky notes. It can be very simple.

Paula Pant (15:22)

I want to pause here and make a note because we're going to go through 10 of these alignment, which we're talking about right now being the first of the 10. And you mentioned that we're going in the order from most foundational to most advanced. And it's when we get to the end that we're going to talk about the money conversation. But I want to highlight that right now because I'm sure there are some people listening who are like, why should I care what the engineering manager at my company thinks of me? Where all of this is ultimately going is how you can make more money at work. And that's sort of the broader why behind all of this and making more money at work means fundamentally that you are more valuable to your company and so you're better at your job and therefore you make more because. Because you're doing a better job.

Melody Wilding (16:10)

Yes. And I'll give you a cautionary tale. I was very unceremoniously laid off because I had not had the alignment conversation with my manager or with other people in the organization. And I was working on a project that was really seen as tertiary to the main business. And so when it came time to evaluate expenses and headcount, it was very easy to say, well, Melody's great, but she's really not working on our main thing and we don't see a space for her there, so we're gonna let her go. That's exactly what happened. It's rarely as extreme as that. But to your point, it has this cascading effect. When you are aligned on high value, high visibility work, then you have more impressive results and outcomes to bring visibility to. That puts you in a stronger position to make a case for bigger responsibilities, which allows you to make a case for more compensation and so on and so on.

Paula Pant (17:13)

And when you were laid off, so you were a remote worker. This is before remote work was really a popular thing. So it was pre pandemic. You were living in Manhattan and you were a remote worker for a company that was based in Boston and most of your coworkers were in office in Boston. So part of the fact that you weren't aligned was the fact that you were a remote worker for a company where most people were in office. How do you solve the alignment problem when you're remote to the team?

Melody Wilding (17:45)

Yes. And as you said, there wasn't as much recognition of it then. And now we know this is something called proximity bias, where just by virtue of spending more time around people, we build a stronger relationship with them, greater likability of them. Unfortunately, there is some truth to if you are closer to people, then you will have better visibility with them.

Paula Pant (18:10)

I've never heard that phrase before, proximity bias.

Melody Wilding (18:13)

It's not completely insurmountable, though. At the end of the day, there's no replacement for true facetime, which even back then I would go maybe quarterly, and I wish I had amped that up, I could have that pure relationship building time where I was doing internal networking. That was a big mistake that I overlooked. I really had no champions or advocates that were willing to fight for me when it came time to make those changes. Nor did I really understand the perception of what I was working on at the Higher leadership levels. I thought everything was hunky dory. And everyone thought this innovation initiative I was working on was great. And there were concerns and hesitations about it that if I had spent more time just having conversations, even virtual coffee chats, or even asking to sit in on certain strategy meetings, I would have been able to pick up on those things. But it just wasn't even in my awareness at that time.

Paula Pant (19:19)

Right. You were head down to the job, which is what so many of us are taught, correct?

Melody Wilding (19:23)

Yes. Keep your head down. I call this the honor roll hangover, which is us former gold star A students. That's what we've been taught to do. Just keep your head down. You will get rewarded. People will see your good work and then you'll get the checks and the gold stars. And it just doesn't work that way, especially in today's world where everyone is so busy. So even if they don't mean it maliciously, there is no way for someone to keep tabs on every single thing you're doing. And so it's up to us to tell the narrative of not just what we are doing, but why it matters. What value is it creating for the organization? And too many of us, we focus on activities instead of the outcome of that activity. But all of this goes back to alignment because we need to make sure we're working on things that matter in the first place.

Paula Pant (20:19)

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Melody Wilding (23:26)

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C (23:44)

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Melody Wilding (24:19)

Ask your doctor about ebglis and visit epglis.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.

Paula Pant (24:33)

We've talked about part one, which is the alignment problem, and that addresses the question of how do I make sure that I'm working in alignment with the goals of the company, even when those goals are constantly shifting? But what if those goal posts are constantly shifting? What if you work for a boss who is constantly like, let's do this, let's do that, let's do this, and it's just never ending. Shifting goal posts?

Melody Wilding (24:59)

Yes. And I think many of us have worked for that just idea generator, the person who has like a thousand ideas as soon as they come in for the day. And if you work for someone like that, it's important to channel their enthusiasm because what you don't want to do is become the wet blanket who always says, well, here's why we can't do that. We said we were going to do this because then you create a perception of you as difficult as a blocker. We don't want to do that. So we want to channel their enthusiasm. So the next time they come up with an idea, you can say, that's really interesting. I'm going to put this on this list for now. You can call it an icebox or you can call it let's revisit later list. Or you can just say, I'm going to note that down here. I'll add that to the agenda for our next quarterly touch base and we can revisit it then. So you are recognizing, I hear you. This can be a value not right now. Or you can say, how does this stack up against this other priority? So you can kind of force them to evaluate and rank where does this fall?

Paula Pant (26:05)

Now there are some bosses who are going to be more idea generators than others, and that is a reflection of your boss's style. Which is what moves us to part two of this ten part framework, Managing the style of the boss that you have. You've identified four archetypes, four style types of bosses. Can you elaborate on these four different archetypes?

Melody Wilding (26:30)

Yeah, the styles. Conversation is so important because this is the number one place I see people trip themselves up when it comes to managing up or being successful in the workplace, period. It's because what we perceive as difficult behavior, this person is always so flighty or this person is always resistant to ideas. Why do they ask me so many questions and poke holes? Many times what we perceive as difficult behavior comes down to a difference in styles and approach. We are talking past each other and not to each other. And so that brings us to this next framework, another two by two. This comes from decades of sociological psychological research that has looked at communication styles. And what makes that up. And what researchers have found is it, broadly speaking, comes down to two different dimensions. The first of those is dominance. So how much does someone like to assert themselves, feel control in a situation? How quickly do they like to move? And then the other dimension is sociability. How much does someone prioritize relationships, connection in terms of how they approach situations? And so you plot that, as you said, you get four different styles. Now let's start with one. I call the commander. This is often the most challenging and misunderstood of the styles. This is someone who is high in dominance but lower in sociability. So the commander, they move quickly. They are more comfortable making decisions with incomplete information or before there's total consensus. They are very focused on efficiency, outcome, results, and they care about beating the competition, being first. They want to have a lot of control over a situation so they can come off as very much a highly dominant type, which people can find off putting at times because they care much less about who is on board, how does everyone feel about the situation and more about how quickly can we get this done and what value will it create. So that's the commander. And then we get to the cheerleader. The cheerleader, also high in dominance. So they move quickly, they aim high, they set a lot of goals, but they're also high in sociability. So this is that idea generator. This is someone who is much more motivated by mission, vision, big picture thinking. They really resonate with words like opportunity. And because they are higher on sociability, they tend to be a bit more outgoing. They often communicate in stories or anecdotes. They care a lot about reputation and optics. So if you are delivering something to a cheerleader, you want to make sure you've put a bit of time into polishing it so it looks good, so it sends the right impression. Then that brings us to the Caretaker. Think of this as the opposite of that. Commander. The Caretaker is low on dominance, high on sociability. So just as the name suggests, this is someone who really values stability and harmony with other people. They want to make sure everyone feels heard and understood and taken care of. Because of that, they may move a bit more slowly. They tend to be a bit more cautious because they want to make sure, is everybody happy? Is everybody okay? They also take more time to make decisions because they really want to be thorough. They want to understand all of the details, the background, how did we get here? Whereas the Commander that I was mentioning earlier, just give me the bottom line, don't give me a lot of details. So exact opposites. And then last we have the controller, someone who is low on both dimensions. And you may think, well, what is that like if you're low on both of them?

Paula Pant (30:32)

Right. Low dominance and low sociability.

Melody Wilding (30:34)

Correct. These are people who are very process oriented, systems oriented. They really value excellence and precision. They can be a bit perfectionistic and rigid. They may not always be as open minded to new ideas because they want to work on optimizing what we already have. Controllers can ask a lot of questions, sometimes in a very pointed way, because much like the Caretaker, they also want to understand what all of the assumptions that were made, the logic behind this. So sometimes they can come off as a bit defensive or even resistant to ideas.

Paula Pant (31:11)

It's interesting that a term like controller would be low in dominance, but as you describe it, it almost sounds a little bit like a comptroller.

Melody Wilding (31:21)

They almost like controlling things behind the scenes more than they like being the forward facing. The Commander and the cheerleader tend to be more so like being the face of things, where the controller and the Caretaker tend to more so be behind the scenes. And so the controller, they really like to control the details. They really want all the I's dotted, all the T's crossed. So that's how they're controlling nature. They're very disciplined. And I'll say this, I am part controller, part Caretaker. So you can absolutely be a mix of these things. No person is ever just one thing. We're all humans, we're more complex than that. So you may say, hmm, I think my boss is a little bit commander and cheerleader. That's very common.

Paula Pant (32:12)

That happens a lot when you map this framework to the style that your boss has, and not just your boss, but also the other stakeholders, people in the ecosystem of your workplace. How should you tailor your approach, your conversational approach, as you deal with each of these four personality archetypes?

Melody Wilding (32:32)

It really allows you to be so much more surgical and effective with how you communicate because you're going to lessen the amount of miscommunication that you have and misunderstanding and frankly, frustration that you feel about, why aren't I getting through to this person? And a very simple way to put this into practice is just with your word choice. Because a commander, if you frame something in terms of efficiency, outcome, results, bottom line, revenue, roi, speed, that's going to resonate with them. Now, you could be talking about the same idea, but with a cheerleader, you may frame that around opportunity, big picture, possibility, reputation. With a caretaker. Again, the same idea could be framed as this is going to help us make sure everyone is engaged, morale is higher. The same idea. It's almost like you have a diamond and you're shining it on different facets of the diamond. So it really helps you position your idea to be more convincing to that person. And also anticipate, if you know you're going to have to propose something to a controller, you better come with your data buttoned up, you better come with FAQs in mind so that you can get ahead of some of that questioning. So again, you will be less triggered by some of their reactions and that person will say, even subconsciously, wow, they get me. They understood what I wanted here. Which breaks down a lot of those walls.

Paula Pant (34:13)

One thing that strikes me as we talk about this is there are a lot of different frameworks for understanding how people operate in the workplace. So you've got this framework that you've just outlined and then there's MBTI profiles, there's the Colby test, there's the CliftonStrengths Finder. And so there are all of these different ways that we can map personality and interpersonal dynamics. How do you layer all of that? Because if I'm thinking about the people that I work with and now I'm thinking about their CliftonStrengths finder and their Colby A assessment and their how they fit in this styles framework and their mbt, there's kind of a lot going on here.

Melody Wilding (34:53)

There is, there is. Don't get too obsessed with this because it is very easy to try to psychoanalyze someone till the cows come home and it just becomes circular thinking. Just use this as a shortcut to Say, okay, I think generally speaking my boss is a commander. Let's just take that that my boss is a commander. So generally speaking, I know I can't anticipate this kind of behavior for them when I present to them. I need to make sure I'm minimizing the amount of context and backstory I'm leading with. And I'm getting right to my main request. But do not drive yourself crazy. I will also add on to some of those assessments that you were talking about. DISC is another one based on this same research, based on the same thing or we have the ocean personality, the big five personality. Almost all of them are based on a lot of the same fundamental research. I could go off on a whole tangent about that. Use it as a shortcut. Do not get too obsessed with it. The important thing I want to say though is just as, as much effort as you are putting into understanding other people's style, you also have to make sure you are communicating your own. Because that's where managing up can go wrong is when we are just so deferential to other people that we lose ourself within it. And that is not what I am advocating for. You should not just turn yourself into a chameleon to adapt to whoever is in front of you. Not at all. This is a two way street. And so the other half of the styles conversation is making sure that you are articulating and you are sharing your own preferences and you're able to find where possible, a middle ground compromises. You're able to create expectations with the people around you. A powerful way to do that. I talk about this tool called the ME Manual which is essentially where you create a guide to you as a professional. This may be something you do completely for yourself, that you never show another soul. But it is very good practice and self awareness to articulate some of the preferences and approaches we have. Because most of us, it's like we're fish swimming in water. We don't even know how explicitly how we're operating in the world. And we, we never think about how we want people to treat us. And so it's a great exercise in that respect to think about how do I process information? Do I like being on just one project? Do I like having my hands in a bunch of different things across a bunch of different work at one time? Are there certain constraints I have around my work hours or my boundaries when I answer responses after hours, for example? And so all of those things go into your ME manual. Now like I said, you could keep this for yourself. Never share it with anybody else. Most people I work with do decide to share it with their leadership. I have never had someone come back and tell me their boss was angry at them for doing this. Usually to their surprise, their boss is like, this is great. Thank you for saving me the time and energy because now I know how to give you what you need. That makes my job so much easier. And so you can present it to them. You can also just pull out pieces of it. For example, you may say to your manager, well, we are going to have times where we're going to disagree on how to approach something, or I need to give you feedback on something important. How would you prefer I do that in terms of when I bring it up, how I bring it up, what would be most helpful? Once they answer, you can say, that's really great information for me to know. I will absolutely take that into account. And for me, here's what would be useful. So you can turn it into more of a two way conversation.

Paula Pant (38:49)

Oftentimes when you have conversations with your bosses, you might be afraid that you're coming across as overbearing or you might, when it comes to that broader ecosystem, you might be afraid that your colleagues feel threatened by you. And how do you manage concerns like that?

Melody Wilding (39:06)

Yes, that brings us very nicely into the ownership conversation, which you can see how we're building here. So we've talked about alignment, which is getting clear on what we need to focus on. Then we talk about styles, which is okay, how do we approach working together with less friction and stress. And now ownership is about how do I start stepping outside of the bounds of my immediate little box and job responsibilities to take on more. And this is all laying the groundwork for advancement, visibility, money, for example.

Paula Pant (39:38)

So it's alignment, then styles and then ownership is the third part of this ten part framework.

Melody Wilding (39:44)

Yes. And now that you, you understand more how the people around you work, like the mechanics of their mind and what motivates them. Now you're in a better position to take ownership because you can get buy in, in a way that actually resonates with other people. You can get more quickly to a yes, go ahead, do this because we trust you.

Paula Pant (40:04)

Then how do you avoid coming across as overbearing? How do you take ownership, particularly if you're in a role where you don't have a whole lot of autonomy, you don't have a whole lot of authority, how are you able to take that ownership?

Melody Wilding (40:18)

There's an idea that is called pre sueding. This comes from Robert Cialdini, he's the godfather of persuasion. He found that there was a step or a process that comes before persuasion, which he called pre suasion. We've been talking about laying the groundwork and this is another example of that. Pre suasion is all about how do you prime people to be ready and more receptive to hearing something? Because I'm sure we've all had that experience where someone just comes out of the blue and makes a request of you and says, like, for example, you may have someone on your team that says, paula, why don't we try this? I heard this brand new thing, I'm going to go purchase the software, I'm going to go put this email campaign up. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, we need to think about this. All of a sudden your defenses are up. You're telling the person to slow down. That just highlights. As humans, we're resistant to change and so we need to plant seeds for buy in instead of just coming out of the blue. Because when we're perceived as overstepping, it's usually because we haven't brought people along first. We're just surprising them, we're springing a change or a request on them, or we just went and did something. Sometimes we take renegade ownership and someone says, well, we didn't need that done in the first place. So you wasted time and energy on something that wasn't even important. Or number two, you stepped on this political landmine that so and so really liked the way it was being done. And now I have to go back to them and explain why we changed it and undo this. And so that's when ownership can go wrong. And so pre suasion, it can look like taking a survey in advance to gather some data and then using that Azure segue to say, oh, I took the liberty of asking a few people about their thoughts on, on this. This is what I got back. So you're almost building that business case in advance. It could be asking someone questions about historically, how has something been done, how has that worked out? So you're starting to plant the seeds for actually, is there opportunity for improvement here? Which gives you an opening to say, what do you think of this plan? So it's basically priming people to be more receptive to your idea or your proposal. Another way to avoid that trap of coming off as someone who is overstepping or coming on a little too bullish is to also position your ownership as an experiment, a test, a pilot. Because when it comes to managing up again. We need to have that upward empathy and realize that the leaders above you, one of their main jobs is to mitigate risk. By risk, I mean financial risk, reputational risk, any other type of resource risk. One way you can very quickly mitigate that sense of risk is by saying, well, why don't we try this with a segment of our customers? Or why don't we try rolling out four day work weeks for three months and if we're not happy with it, we can always roll back. How does that sound? When you do that again, you're lessening the commitment that someone is making. You're giving them this out, so they're automatically more likely to say, okay, that sounds reasonable, because it's not as big of a jump.

Paula Pant (43:45)

A lot of people who are listening to this will say, you know what, I don't even have the authority to be able to make those types of suggestions. Particularly people who are a bit more entry level, people who are maybe in a completely different department, but they have some ideas about how a different department should be running. Should people just stay in their lane?

Melody Wilding (44:03)

You don't have to necessarily stay in your lane, but you do need to calibrate your expectations. Because if we're talking about you're someone in marketing and you see how something in sales could be done differently, it's like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. You may be so many degrees removed from that that it's going to be a real uphill battle. And so I give ideas for worthwhile problems that you can solve, and the ones that are the lowest hanging fruit are things like neglected needs. Is there something that everyone just keeps saying, oh, it'd be really great if we had this process or this spreadsheet or whatever it is, but it keeps falling by the wayside, or it keeps falling to the bottom of the agenda. Can you capitalize on that? Could you take initiative to say, hey, I took the liberty of putting this together. I know it's something that could be valuable to the team. So neglected needs is a great one. You can also look at feedback patterns. Are there certain things that you hear again and again from your stakeholders, from other team members, from clients where you have a leg to stand on to say, hey, we've heard this from five of our largest customers. Would it be helpful if I met with someone on another team to maybe kickstart this, for example, so you can float the idea? And when you float the idea, at least then you're getting back information about the objections of. No, that's not something that we're interested in or no, I really want you focused on this work. Maybe we could revisit that at your review. At least you're getting information about it. So it doesn't hurt to put the idea out there because it gives you insight into how you might pivot.

Paula Pant (45:49)

What is the purpose of putting ideas out there? I mean, when you talked earlier about managing risk, isn't there some degree of risk to your career if you're floating all of these ideas, some of which might not pan out?

Melody Wilding (46:02)

It's interesting because if you look at any future of work report for the job skills that are going to be important now, five, 10 years in the future, what we see is that it's all things around strategic thinking, decision making, agility. It is these ownership skills. It's people who can look at what's happening around them and who can problem solve very creatively and efficiently. The goal with the ownership conversation is to, number one, rack up some more wins under your belt so you have concrete value to point to. Once we get to some of the later conversations, it's to build relationships as well. Because as I've been talking giving some of these, these examples, you can hear that almost all of them involve other people. You're going to have to meet others or work cross functionally or even work more closely with your manager, your skip level manager, for example. So you're building a reputation as someone who is a doer, who has ideas, who drives things forward. And it's interesting you say that like what if you're someone who's putting all of these ideas out there. Of course you want to be selective. You want to present something that feels sound. You don't want to be one of those idea generators where every day it's oh, what about this? But what about this? Then you look a little bit scattered. You do want to bide your time and be thoughtful about that. But it's interesting you say that because I was talking with an executive level leader earlier this week. She was telling me how in the last year her organization has laid off five mid level people and four of those. The reason why they were laid off is because they could not present clear decisions and clear recommendations they would present. Here's the considerations I've weighed. Option A, Option B, Option C. Option A has these positives. Option B has these ones. Option C has these ones. And she was like it was pulling teeth to get out of them. Well, how should we move forward here? When she could get to that question, they would still waffle. She said that lack of clarity and crispness. And that lack of decisiveness was a main reason why those people were let go. And what her and I were discussing is how it's better to have a point of view and allow people to correct you or build on that point of view and than to seem like you are rambling or waffling or indecisive because that's what you've been put in this role to do to make those types of recommendations.

Paula Pant (48:44)

So if you're taking more ownership, then you're taking on more, but that means your workload has increased and you can quickly burn out. How do you manage that?

Melody Wilding (48:52)

Yes, that's where the boundaries conversation comes in. And this one, I can't understate the importance of this. This conversation has been, I think, the most popular one, the one that people want to talk about the most. I hear from people all the time. I'm doing the job of two, three other people. I don't know how to push back without looking difficult because I want to make sure I'm perceived as a team player. So what do I do that highlights this tension with this conversation that we at once want to be helpful, but we don't want to be a pushover. So what do you do? Because in the workplace, no is not a complete sentence. It is in every other aspect of life. But in the workplace, just imagine if one of your team members, you ask them to do something that you think is very simple and they just reply no, and that's it. Right. It would just be very off putting and just like they're throwing up a blocker. And so we have to be more diplomatic about that. And that's what the boundaries conversation is all about. What I find people overlook the most here is the power dynamics part of it. We are not thinking about the leverage we do or don't have to set boundaries. I call this your pushback power. Because someone who has been at the organization for six months and really hasn't proven themselves, really doesn't have that many relationships, has very different pushback power than someone who's been there six years, who is very much a known quantity, who has established themselves in their track record. Right. The person who has been there longer has a lot more clout. And so your pushback power, you want to be looking at and assessing everything from your tenure in the organization. What's your level? Are you someone who's more junior, who's more senior? What is the strength of your relationship with your manager, but also other allies or champions you have in the Organization, how unique is your role? Are you in a tough to replace role for the organization? Which means you have more leverage to ask for exceptions many times and even things like what's the state of the team or the company as a whole? Because when a company is in crisis mode, for example, there may not be as much tolerance or flexibility for someone to have exceptions or for someone to go from all days of the week in the office to just one day a week in the office. That's not going to fly as much because it's a, all hands on deck sort of a situation versus if we're in boom times. There tends to be more flexibility for that.

Paula Pant (51:37)

Right? Well, I mean frankly, if a company is in crisis mode and somebody is firmly establishing boundaries, they look like not a team player. Then they become. What's the opposite of an mvp? Like the least. The lvp, the least valuable player.

Melody Wilding (51:51)

You have to read the room, right?

Paula Pant (51:52)

Yeah.

Melody Wilding (51:53)

Yes, you have to read the room and calibrate accordingly. That doesn't mean you can never set boundaries. But again, you have to be more strategic and selective about when you do. Which leads us to, well, how in the world do you do that? If I can't just say no, that's not something I can take on. What do you do? So the first approach I recommend, the one that's really like the Swiss army knife and applicable to most situations is called the trade off. That is where you are creating a forced choice. You are saying, okay, I hear both A and B are important. We're not able to do both with the team that we have or in the time that we have available. How would you like us to prioritize or what would you like us to reprioritize, to delegate, to temporarily slow down on? And so you are setting the frame that both of these things can't be done. You're saying that a little bit more tactfully than that and subtly. What's happening here is you're putting the final say, the final decision making power, back in the hands of the person with higher positional authority. So you can say, well, here's what my recommendation would be. As someone who's on the ground dealing with this day to day. I would recommend we keep A on the same timeline and we push aside B for now. You can make your recommendation, but ultimately the final say goes back to them.

Paula Pant (53:14)

That makes a lot of sense.

Melody Wilding (53:16)

The second one is a great one. If your positional power is very low. That's called the conditional yes. So you say yes now to preserve Your reputation and you set an expectation for the future. So you may say, I hear this is important. I'm happy to help out with this, this time because I know we have to get this over the finish line. But I hope we can both understand I can't always accommodate less than a 24 hour turnaround time in the future. Or another way to say that is again, here, this is important. I can get it done this time. They'll grab some time on your calendar for two weeks after we're through this busy period and we can reassess how we tackle these types of things going forward so that we can get ahead of them. So you can create some sort of a process going forward.

Paula Pant (54:03)

I don't know if this is something that employees can do, but a lot of freelancers or 1099 independent contractors will often say something like, my typical time is X, but in this case I will make an exception. Right. Or my typical fee is X, but in this case I will give a discount. And so it's a way of establishing my typical is. And in this limited case I will make an exception.

Melody Wilding (54:32)

Yes. And again, the psychology there subtly what you're doing, it's reciprocity, right? I am, I am giving a little something that's atypical for me and doing you a solid, doing you a favor. And therefore that person may be more likely to honor your boundary in the future if that freelancer or employee comes back to you and says, you know, I've mentioned I'm not able to work past six because I have to get my kids. I hope you understand that person is more likely to be more understanding because you've built a little bit of that social capital, having helped them before.

Paula Pant (55:05)

In this framework, we've talked about alignment, we've talked about styles, we've talked about ownership. It makes sense. Then why the boundaries conversation would come next? Because you need to be aligned with the company goals and understand the personalities that you're dealing with and take ownership over certain projects before you can then say, all right, and these are the parameters around which I will do so. And I think where a lot of employees fail is they will start with the boundaries conversation. I've seen that happen, particularly, if I may say so, around Gen Z. I don't want to be one of those like millennials who's like criticizing Gen Z. I feel like this notion of like almost a cult of work life balance has really infected the Gen Z mentality to such an extent that I've seen some people lead with it, right? And I've seen some people lead with, all right, well I'm coming in with very little skill and I'm not an expert in what you do, but I'm going to lead with my list of demands and I want this compensation and I want this and I want that. I've seen people start there and it doesn't bode well.

Melody Wilding (56:14)

Correct. Yeah, we could get into that because with Gen Z, I think, unfortunately they came into the workforce many times during the height of the pandemic, so they haven't been around these workplace dynamics, they haven't learned the ropes of workplace politics really. And so that's much more likely. What I often find too is that this is really tough for people pleasers and I am a recovering people pleaser myself. We either go to over accommodating, like our immediate reaction is sure, yeah, I can do that, no problem, before we even think about it, or we snap back at the person because we're already so overwhelmed and we say how could you possibly ask me to do that when I have 10 other things on my plate that you already gave me? And again, neither of those is a good look. So a really easy switch you can make. This takes practice to train yourself into this is to instead of framing your boundary in the negative, frame it as an affirmative. So what I mean by that is let's say your boss asks you to do something 4pm they drop a request on your desk. Instead of saying I can't do this today, you would flip that and say I can give this 30 minutes today or I'm not available after 6, I'm available to meet 3, 4, 5pm so you're giving the affirmative instead of the blocker answer. And we as humans, we are very loss averse. And why this works is because when you frame your boundary in the negative, you're highlighting what someone loses or doesn't get. But if it's in the affirmative, I will, I can, that helps it be received better.

Paula Pant (57:58)

Right. You know, and the other piece of it is, especially because you mentioned working after 6, I think the other piece of it is when it comes to reading the room, how much overall flexibility does your job give you? Because flexibility is a two way street. And if it is a job that allows for a great deal of flexibility, you know, and you're able to go to a dentist appointment at 11am and no one's really gonna bat an eye when you do that, then that does mean making up that time elsewhere.

Melody Wilding (58:29)

Yes. And that goes back to your pushback power. You're Right. You have to understand the nature of the culture and your role. I have had clients that are in organizations where overall the culture may be more accepting of flexibility, but their specific role was crisis communication. And so you need to be always on quote unquote. That doesn't mean you have to be writing reports at the middle of the night. It can mean that you just reply and say received, we'll get to this first thing tomorrow. That you're just acknowledging it. Because most of the time, even people who are micromanagers, micromanagement comes from wanting a feeling of control and being uncomfortable with ambiguity. So if you can give that person a little bit of clarity around, okay, I feel confident this person received this request. It's not getting dropped. I have some expectation of when I'll get a reply that can help soothe some of that reaction.

Paula Pant (59:30)

If you do get that unhelpful reaction from your boss, if you do get micromanagement and you want to give feedback, you want to give voice to what you're experiencing so that the day to day of everybody's job can be better, how do you give that feedback?

Melody Wilding (59:46)

Yes. And this is the last of the five foundational conversations, which is the feedback conversation. We talked about the boundaries conversation a minute ago and how that is so crucial for helping you manage your bandwidth. This one likewise is very crucial for helping you manage your sense of resentment. Because if you don't mention these things that are really eating at you, that are really affecting your experience, you just keep pushing them down and down and down and down and down, that's going to come out some way and you need to think about the ripple effects. Is this fair to you? Is this fair to everyone else on your team? What's the ripple effect on your results? The organization now with the feedback conversation, what makes it tricky and loaded is that some feedback is very easy to give. It's very straightforward and tactical. But the feedback we most often want to give is more put personal. It's more, you are micromanaging me, you are giving me vague direction. It's some of our managers behaviors. And I'll come back to that idea of behaviors. But we're afraid to do it because what if this person retaliates against me? We just don't do it at all. Or we wait till something is so bad that again, it becomes a much bigger thing than it needed to be. Now, when it comes to the feedback conversation itself, because it can be so emotionally loaded, we need to do some pre prep first within ourselves, much of managing up is Managing yourself first before you attempt to manage up to other people. And with the feedback conversation, what I want you to think about is breaking down your A, B, Cs. So this is something you do in advance. A stands for assumption. What's the assumption you are making about that person's behavior? Then B is for behavior. What is the specific thing that person is doing day to day that you are labeling? And then C, what is the change you would like to see?

Paula Pant (61:47)

So can we go through a couple of examples?

Melody Wilding (61:49)

Of course. So, classic one, let's talk about micromanagement. My boss is micromanaging me. That's A, that's your assumption. B, what is the behavior that to you signifies you are being micromanaged? Recently, someone told me, well, my boss is asking to review every single slide I send out to this certain client, and they're micromanaging me. Okay, but the behavior is they're asking to review every single slide. And then the C, what they wanted to ask about is, hey, can we sit down? Can we reevaluate all of the clients I oversee and, and revisit what level of oversight you want on each of these? Because maybe it has changed. Another example may be you're giving me vague direction.

Paula Pant (62:32)

So the assumption is vague direction?

Melody Wilding (62:34)

Yes, the assumption is you're giving me vague direction. B, the behavior may be. Last week, when you talked about whatever project it was, you said it needed more polish and it wasn't clear what that meant. And C, maybe what I would like to do moving forward is I can put together a rough draft or a brief and present that to you first and we can sit down and go through it before. I spend a lot of time on the final product. That might be your C. It sounds.

Paula Pant (63:03)

As though the assumptions are really judgments. Right? So the behavior is the boss wants to look at every single slide. Or the behavior is the boss is kind of their feedback is flimsy. But the judgment then is that they're a micromanager or that they're unclear.

Melody Wilding (63:18)

That's correct. Right. Another way to think about it is it's an accusation that you are making. But where I see people go wrong is they come into the feedback conversation, they say, okay, I'd like to talk about something important with you. I feel like you are micromanaging me. And then we're both just backed into our corners because your boss now is having to defend their personality and their approach. There's nothing actionable there for them to latch onto. Now, that's not to say you can come right into the conversation and say when you are asking me right now to review every single slide, and that's not helpful. Can we change that? We need a bit of a more of a segue, because as I mentioned with the ownership conversation, we want to mitigate negative surprise as much as possible. So how this looks in the feedback conversation is we want to start out with a shared goal. And so you may say, is now a good time to talk, get agreement. Yes. Okay, great. I hope we can both agree that we want to do what's best for our clients. Or I would love to talk about how we work together better, even more effectively. Does that sound good to you? Great. Right. So we're establishing we're both on the same side of the table instead of against one another. It's more future focused, it's more solution focused. And then that's where you can segue into the behavior. You can explain the situation. Here was the behavior, Here was the impact. Right. Classic SBI model of feedback. And then ask, is that something you would be open to? Right. And hopefully we get a yes. That sounds great. Let's do that. I didn't realize that was the case. Sometimes you might get resistance. And if that happens, you can approach it with curiosity before you just jump to defensiveness yourself. So you might say, tell me more about why this is difficult, or tell me more about that reaction you're having, or can you help me understand what's driving this? And there may be pressures that are coming from above that you don't understand that may be influencing their behavior. And that's really important for you to know.

Paula Pant (65:36)

Right. Which goes back to that upward empathy. What are the pressures that they're experiencing from their bosses? Because unless you work for a very small company, your boss is not the ultimate. And even if you do, the ultimate boss is the whatever source of revenue is coming in.

Melody Wilding (65:49)

Right.

Paula Pant (65:49)

The ultimate boss is the revenue itself. You know, the clients, the customers.

Melody Wilding (65:55)

That's exactly right. And with the feedback conversation, we can build on alignment and styles. For example, with your shared goal, you can say, I know one of our key priorities for this quarter is to get a new client worth this amount of money. And so to help us do that, I wanted to talk about a change that may help us get there. So you can build that in. You can also build some of your knowledge around what you know resonates with them. Like, let's say you're giving feedback to a caretaker, for example, that you are not getting enough actionable feedback from them. It's very common with a caretaker. They may say, you're doing great, just keep doing what you're doing. And they don't give you anything tangible. You may say, it's hard for me to stay motivated when I'm not clear on what tangibly I can do better. So would you be open to giving me a specific example or walking me through a time where you saw that I could do something more effectively? Because that's going to help me feel more motivated, more engaged, and that's going to speak to that person more.

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Paula Pant (68:39)

Let's pause here and do a recap of the first first five steps of this ten step framework before you move on to the next five. Because the opening five have a different theme to them than the closing five.

Melody Wilding (68:50)

Yes, so the first five we have alignment styles, ownership boundaries and feedback. And these first five, they are foundational. They are more reactive to you, dealing with the personalities and the situations that are already happening around you. But these next five we have visibility, networking, advancement, money. And last is quitting. These ones are more proactive. They're more about Shaping your future and your career trajectory.

Paula Pant (69:21)

So the first five we've really worked through how to be a better communicator in the workplace and how to manage across the entire ecosystem with different styles, different personalities, different situations. What happens next? Now that we've reacted to the environment around us, how do we begin to become proactive?

Melody Wilding (69:43)

With the first five, we've really moved from being a subordinate to more of a trusted advisor. And the next five really build on that. Because when you're a trusted advisor, you are handed more opportunities and more compensation that goes along with those opportunities. The first step to that though, is visibility, because people need to know what you are working on. We have all had that feeling that I'm working hard, but it doesn't seem like anybody else knows about it or other people are getting credit for my work, for example. And it can be really frustrating and demoralizing. And so visibility is all about how do you tell a story around your accomplishments to showcase the value you are bringing without being braggadocious, without being big headed conceited. Because that's what we're all afraid of. We don't want to be that self promotional blowhard that everyone is like, ugh, don't like that guy. We want to be genuine and tactful about it. But still we want to get credit where credit's due.

Paula Pant (70:46)

Does this come from framing your accomplishments in the form of what the team has done?

Melody Wilding (70:51)

That's a big part of it, yes. And we can get to that. Storytelling is at the heart of this though. We're talking earlier about activities versus outcomes and that's the difference here. When we talk about activities, it's just, I did X, I did Y. Okay, so what? Or I did X, I did Y. So that it could facilitate, it could create, it could open up these opportunities. There needs to be the next step for what that creates. And that's what storytelling helps do. We're talking about just putting the work you have done into a more structured anecdote so people understand just a little bit about the background, what you did and why it matters. That's all. We're just talking about structuring it more simply. Most of us though, we are just moving through our day to day without even awareness of the results that we are getting. And so that's the very first step here is we need to get into a practice of even capturing this information. We're just heads down doing our work. We're not even lifting our head up to say, oh, actually that conversation I had with that partner that actually led to a $10,000 sponsorship deal for our upcoming conference. You may have created that, but you're not attuned to it. And that opportunity is passing you by to add that to your to your bank. And so creating a story bank is really the first step here because you need to know what you're telling stories about. And your story bank, it can be very simple. You can create a spreadsheet, you can just keep a notes doc on your computer, but it's maybe once a week capturing what are you proud of? What have you done that's had some meaningful consequence to the work? And why did it matter? It doesn't always have to be something that was successful either, because even if things don't go as planned, we can't always control getting the outcome we want. But there are still skills we can showcase in terms of I had to negotiate here or I had to really amp up my skills around stakeholder management, for example, that we can showcase that are still valuable even if the thing wasn't a quote unquote success on the outside. So we have to start by capturing the stories, but then putting them into those storytelling frameworks. I'll give you two very simple ones. There are several of them. The first one is problem, action, solution. So very briefly, what was the problem that you and the team were facing? What was the action you took to solve it? And then what was the solution? What came of that? So the problem was that we were facing this level of churn with our customers. The action that we took is we put in place a RE engagement campaign. And the solution was we're still working on tweaking it, but already we're seeing some modest Results, about a 10% re engagement rate from some of those clients. And this is something you can say in your one on ones that you can offer to your manager as an update that you can share in meetings as part of a success story, to raise your hand and say, oh, when we were facing a similar challenge like this, you here's what we did. So you can do it as a value add there. You can also use it as what I call a pocket update. And this gets back to the way beginning of our conversation when we were talking about how managing up, we need to look at optimizing those overlooked moments because you may be on a zoom call with an executive before other people are coming in. You're both kind of awkwardly waiting for other people to pop in the room. And the person says, so, how are things going? And most of us just say, oh, well, not bad. Yeah, it's been busy. Yep, same old. Yeah. And we just fritter that away.

Paula Pant (74:43)

Right.

Melody Wilding (74:44)

Instead, imagine in that moment if you were like, actually, it's been a pretty productive quarter. We were noticing that churn was down, and so we did this and it had this outcome. That person, even if they aren't really fully interested in that, you've left a better impression on them. But more times than not, they'll say, that's really interesting. You know, you should talk to Bob about that because he would love to know about that. So it can open up these other doors.

Paula Pant (75:09)

It's a much more decisive way to use that time. We all know that awkward zoom. Oh, we're just waiting for a few more people to join and then we'll get started. We all know that if you can take control of what is said in that awkward space, it does create more credibility. It makes you more of a leader.

Melody Wilding (75:28)

That's right. It adds this air of gravitas to it. The second framework I would highlight here goes back to what you were mentioning around. Well, do you just highlight the team's accomplishments?

Paula Pant (75:40)

Right.

Melody Wilding (75:41)

And a lot of people get very hung up around this when it comes to self promotion, because they'll say, well, it wasn't just me, it was my team. Or especially if someone is a manager or a leader, they'll say, I wasn't the run on the ground executing they were. This framework is called We. Then me. You talk about, here's the group or the team's efforts, and then me. Here was my individual effort. So it was really great to get the new website launched. The team really came together. Jack and Susie did an excellent job on xyz. And the QA team really pulled everything all together in the last minute to get us up ahead of time. And I really enjoyed leading the strategy, doing the wireframing, and working with the design partner on this. And we're just really happy with the result. So the balance is, yes, I'm acknowledging team effort, but we want to make sure that your individual effort gets in there as well.

Paula Pant (76:40)

You know, when you talk about, you said to have a story bank, are we right here laying the foundation for the eventual pay me more money conversation? That's very much what the story bank sounds like.

Melody Wilding (76:52)

That's correct. Yes. This becomes a multipurpose tool that you can build your business case for greater compensation because you can say, look at what I've been already able to create. I could do more of this.

Paula Pant (77:04)

All right, so before we get to the pay Me more money conversation. I feel like there are a couple other building blocks that we also need to establish. Where do we go after visibility?

Melody Wilding (77:15)

Visibility tends to open up more opportunities for networking because as you're becoming more visible, more people know who you are and again, important juncture point for advancement and money. Because we're living in a time where your manager may not be the only decision maker for your advancement or your compensation. It may involve your skip level or a committee, for example. You need to have some of those other internal relationships and that's what networking is all about.

Paula Pant (77:47)

So number six is visibility, number seven is networking.

Melody Wilding (77:51)

That's correct.

Paula Pant (77:52)

In the context of networking, so many people work remotely. Now, how do you network internally across your team when people are living in different states?

Melody Wilding (78:03)

In many ways it can be easier because you can just hop onto Zoom. You can just send someone a slack or a team message and, and say, hey, I really appreciated what you said in that meeting the other day. It stuck with me because of this. I appreciated you sharing that, that insight. Sometimes that's a lot easier than having to drop by someone's office or travel across the country to be able to share that message. So yes, while FaceTime does matter, we talked about the proximity bias. Actually, not having to be in the same space affords you even more flexibility because most of the people I work with, they work in multinational companies and so their company may have an office in L A and New York and the UK and China, for example. Now you can build relationships with people at all those different locations and sites where that was just impossible before.

Paula Pant (78:58)

How then do you know who to have these virtual coffee chats with? As you're eventually amassing the building blocks, that builds that case for why you should get paid more. You don't want to waste your time. You're already busy. How do you identify the key players?

Melody Wilding (79:14)

There's three that I recommend. Three groups of people that you want to prioritize. Number one is decision makers that may be your boss's peers, heads of other functions, e.g. skip level leaders, or even board members, for example. Number two is powerful peers. So these are those mover and shaker, high performers, high post high potentials they call them in your organization that may have insider information about how our promotions done or how does someone get assigned a plum project, for example? And they are more likely to become the decision makers fairly soon. And also those powerful peers also tend to be super networkers. They tend to know other people. So if you tap into their network, it tends to be higher leverage because you get access to a broader group of people and then last are the behind the scenes folks. And this could be admins. It hr often the forgotten people that can really come in handy to have a relationship with them. If you have a good relationship with an executive's executive assistant, for example, and you want to grab time on their calendar to follow up about a meeting and that person knows who you are, they're going to be more likely to move things around for you and squeeze you in for 10 minutes with that person. So that can come in very handy.

Paula Pant (80:41)

Right? Gatekeepers are huge. As we're approaching these people, we don't want to waste their time. So how do you offer value to somebody? How do you offer value to any of these people that you want to connect with?

Melody Wilding (80:53)

It's very easy to get hung up on. Well, I'm a lower level person. How could I possibly meet with this person that's a vp? I have nothing to offer them. How I want you to reframe this is to think about info asks. Information based asks. An info ask could be anything from how does this process work? Do you have a recommendation for a vendor? Are you open to talking about your career experience, how you got here? The reason why this can be effective is because people love to tell you how knowledgeable they are and to give you advice about things people love, nothing more. That's number one. And number two, it's low stakes. You're not asking for funding or career sponsorship or mentorship. People ask me all the time, how do I get a mentor? You don't get a mentor with just one conversation. You get a mentor by building a relationship with them over time. And it starts with conversations like this. And then the third reason why it's helpful is because it gives you a reason to follow up. To say, hey, I took that advice you had about coaching my team member. Here was their response. It actually worked out really well. I will definitely use that going forward. Thank you. That builds the relationship almost faster than anything else, right?

Paula Pant (82:12)

The fortune is in the follow up. What about if you're reaching out to an EA or a gatekeeper? Would the same rules apply?

Melody Wilding (82:19)

I think so. Because what I have found in my experience, I'll use the example of reaching out to someone in hr, for instance, hr. It those types of folks, they're often very neglected. If someone reaches out and says, hey, I would love to understand more about your role and maybe I have colleagues to refer to you or I would love to get your advice. I actually had a client who did this who was having an issue with an underperformer on their team who reached out to someone in the HR business partner and said, I would love to get your $0.02 on how to handle this situation. Kind of off the record. That blossomed into this closer relationship between these two. And this HR person became my client's conduit to get information. And I don't mean that in sort of an underhanded way, but when my client was then going out on maternity leave, she was able to ping her HR business partner and say, hey, is there any flexibility in this policy? And this person said, let me see what I can do, Right? And so having that backdoor into those folks can be really valuable.

Paula Pant (83:29)

So we've laid a lot of groundwork for the big why of what all of this effort is for, which is that the people who are listening to this want advancement and want specifically the higher income that comes with that advancement. Because, of course, increasing your income, that's one of the five pillars of this show. Before we even discuss the higher compensation, let's first talk about the advancement generally within your career. With all this groundwork laid, how do you approach that?

Melody Wilding (84:01)

Advancement in money often do go hand in hand. Sometimes they are separate, but we'll talk about them for the purposes of this as. As distinct. So the advancement conversation, the biggest mistake people make here is that they start way too late. They fall into what I call the performance review paradox is they wait until that formal conversation to say, I would like a promotion. And by then, it's the opportunity has passed, the budgets have been allocated, the headcount has been made, the project assignments, the succession plan, it's all done. And I've had so many people come to me and say, it just felt like they were slamming a door in my face. It's because they were. Your manager's hands are tied at that point in most organizations. And so we've been talking this whole conversation about laying the groundwork. Advancement is no different. You need to start very early with putting your aspirations out there. And this is a sign of confidence. And most managers will be glad to hear that you want more responsibility because, great, there's someone you can hand things off to. And so approaching your manager to say something like, by the end of this year, I would love to move from a director to a VP role, or I'd like to move from a level five to a level six. What would you need to see to feel comfortable granting that request? Or what would you need to see? What would need to be true for that to be possible by that point, this is sort of just an initial conversation to again, understand. Get a temperature check on where your manager is at with this, to start to assess what do they need to see in terms of your readiness and to gather data. Are there other people that need to be involved? Like, for example, earlier this year, I had a client who did this, and she found out that in her organization, they had changed a policy and she had to have a formal mentor through a program that the company had set up in hr and she needed to fill out a form, get set up with this mentor who was essentially like a sponsor for her promotion. But she never would have known that if she didn't have this initial conversation with her manager.

Paula Pant (86:17)

Hmm. So essentially, you're giving them plenty of notice in an informal way. You're giving them plenty of notice that you've got your eye on this particular promotion. Is there a risk that you could be labeled too ambitious or too climbing?

Melody Wilding (86:32)

There always is. There's a risk to anything. And I think as we get towards the end of these conversations, the last one will be about quitting. And managing up is one of the fastest ways to suss out, is this an organization where I can be successful or not? Because once you start having these conversations, you can see pretty quickly and clearly who is supportive, who is not. I would not consider it reasonable if someone came to me and said, I'm an individual contributor, I'm analyst level, and I want to be a director within a year. That is too ambitious. That is just not realistic. But if you are making a reasonable request and you have the track record from your visibility to back it up and someone says you're too ambitious, then we need to start having a bigger conversation. Of course you don't want to make your boss your single point of failure. That's why we need to have had the networking conversation, Because I have had a client. She was essentially told, just stay in your place. Just do your job. Just be quiet. She did not take that as an answer. Kudos to her, what she was able to do, because she had had the networking conversation and she had done the visibility steps. She had allies in other departments. One thing she did was she had went to HR and said, I would love more opportunities to speak within the organization. And HR was like, great, because we always need people who are willing to go on podcasts or lead panels. And so she emceed a conference with a bunch of executives, which allowed her to meet all of those people. They knew her by name. And so when she Hit this roadblock with her manager. She went to some of those people, not to tattletale on him, but say, I'm trying to advance here. This is what I would love to do. Do you know anyone I should talk to? And that sort of like nodes in a network led to all these other conversations. She eventually was able to move internally and so her manager didn't have to become a blocker for her.

Paula Pant (88:37)

When you talk about nodes in a network, that sounds like it would work at a large company, but what would you do at a smaller business?

Melody Wilding (88:43)

In any case, large company, small company, the next thing you want to do after you have had sort of that initial feeling out, part of the conversation is you want to move to contracting. You want to start to get down on paper and some sort of documentation. Okay, this is what we are agreeing on, what you need to see by when. And you can put this in the format of a formal professional development plan. It doesn't have to be as formal. Some people put it into a slide deck, some people just have a verbal conversation or send this an email, but it's documenting. Okay, I would love to be able to take on this new project because advancement doesn't always have to be a formal title change. It may be a change in scope, growing your team, taking on some sort of stretch initiative, for example, a lateral move, but you do want to start to get down. Okay, here is what we agreed on. So that when you have your one on ones, you can be tracking against this. And I recommend that one, one on one a quarter be dedicated or at least you are discussing your professional development. And you can say, you know, earlier this year we, we talked about that. I would love to lead this new project. So far I have done this, this and that. Are we still on track? Is there anything else you would need to see? Has anything else changed? Are other players in the mix? It becomes less of a you begging for this and more of just you're checking the boxes and you're tracking with this as you go. So it becomes much harder for your manager to also keep moving the goalpost of, oh, yes, I said that, but now I need to see these other things. And again, if that happens, then it's a bigger conversation, but it becomes just more of a natural eventuality rather than this big request that you are having to make.

Paula Pant (90:39)

Mm. Which goes back to our initial root conversation around what to do when you've got managers who are always moving goalposts.

Melody Wilding (90:47)

That's right.

Paula Pant (90:48)

Right. So particularly when it comes to your advancement, putting it on paper, that documentation means everything. You could be a company of five people and that would still work. When do you ask for the raise? Do you do so once that advancement is secure? Do you do so when you fall into the performance review paradox, what is the proper timing of all of this?

Melody Wilding (91:09)

Most of the time, they're going to go hand in hand, right? If you are getting a title change, then it's most of the time natural that there's going to be a compensation change that goes along with that. There's a couple of exceptions where advancement and money might be separate or the money conversation may totally stand on its own. For example, scope creep is a big one. You may stay at the same title, but you've just had more and more responsibilities added to your plate and the company is just not in a position to give you a different title. But you may be looking for an adjustment in your compensation because your scope has grown. So when it comes to the money conversation, just as we talked about, performance review paradox is a big mistake with the advancement conversation. With money, where people go wrong or what falls by the wayside is that they pay a lot of attention to what they've done in the past. And we've been talking about that a lot, making sure you're bringing attention to your wins, that you're telling about them in a compelling way. But what they forget is what they can do in the future. And when you are making the case for more money, you have to address both sides of the coin. You have to show I am a known quantity who produces results, and if compensated at a higher level, here's what else I would be able to achieve. Because your manager is likely going to have to go to the person above them to say, if we pay Paula 15,000 more dollars, here's the ROI that we'll get from that. Instead of, Paula deserves this, and you might, you might very well deserve it. But there needs to be that business case there. So you need to be able to say, if I move from manager to director and the compensation is adjusted accordingly with that new title and scope, I'll be able to, because of the level of influence I'll have, I'll be able to work with larger clients which could conservatively bring this amount into the company.

Paula Pant (93:14)

There are people who worry that if they talk about money at work, they're going to be viewed as somebody who only cares about money, and that might reflect on them negatively. In the context of being a team.

Melody Wilding (93:25)

Player, it's understandable, right? Especially since we have all these built up Stories around money in the workplace. Think about it this way. If you are not compensated fairly, then that's going to have this chain reaction of you starting to pull back, feeling resentful in your role. And in actuality, it will cost them a lot more to replace you, to recruit someone else than it may be for them to give you 5, 10, $20,000 more. And we're not talking about bringing this conversation up every day. We are talking about maybe doing this once a year, once every couple of years. A key here though is to frame your compensation request in terms of fairness. There's a big difference between saying, I deserve this, you should pay me more, versus I would like to make sure my compensation reflects the level of responsibility that I'm taking on or that my compensation is commensurate with the value that I'm bringing to the organization. Because that makes it more like we're writing the scales more like this is an even exchange of value. I'm really not asking for something that's unreasonable. I'm just asking for something that is fair.

Paula Pant (94:44)

What do you do if they give you a policy based answer? We give raises every year in December and we will give a range of between 3% to 5%. And that is our process.

Melody Wilding (94:57)

That's good information. There's a few different directions you could take this. Number one, you could ask, have there been any exceptions to that policy for people who are particularly high performers or have produced significant value for the organization? I have a client who's just doing this now. She pushed through a major, major new change initiative and she's being evaluated for an off cycle promotion now because of that. So that's one thing you can do. The second thing you can do is plan for the future. To say, that's really helpful. So would it be all right if we check in three months from now to make sure that I am on track for that evaluation in December, for example? You can do that, sort of get an agreement for evaluating in the future. And you can also ask, all right, I understand the band is typically a 3 to 5% increase. What would be true for someone to be granted the top end of that range? What would you have to see or what have people showed in the past to be given that? So you're getting more data and then again you're tracking against it.

Paula Pant (96:07)

What if you are, let's say the upper edge of the band is 5%, but what you're really going for is 10% or 15%. What would you say in order to try to capture that when they tell you that the policy is capped at.

Melody Wilding (96:19)

Something lower, every organization is going to be different. Some companies, it's very rigid and they may say no exceptions, that's it. In those cases you may look at, Are there other options for compensation? I have had people do really creative things, get adjustments to their bonus structure, for example, flex days. I have had several people get stipends to redo their home office instead of actually getting the salary or even equity, for example, or RSUs in the case of a startup organization. So there may be other forms of compensation where you could get that. Again, asking if there is precedent for potential high performers who have gone above and beyond. And if you are open to it, you could say, all right, I understand there are limitations here. The 5% will work for now. Can we revisit this in another three months if there is other flexibility or sometimes there are things you can do on the HR end of things where you may be within your same title. So there may be different bands within a manager or director title and you may be able to move bands within that title level. So there may also be things you can do on the HR side, which is why you need to do your research before you have this conversation.

Paula Pant (97:44)

Right? And that's also why it needs to start early. Because if you wait until decision time, often the decision making is actually a formality of what was already decided six months prior.

Melody Wilding (97:54)

That's right.

Paula Pant (97:55)

Now, when you're asking for a raise, should you ask for the amount that you want or should you aim higher in order to leave room to negotiate?

Melody Wilding (98:03)

I am a proponent of leaving room to negotiate because you may go in and you may say, all right, 5,000 is really what I need. If you go in and say that, you leave yourself no room there. If you go in and say what I feel would be fair is 7,500, then you give them room to counter and then you can come back and say, yes, actually, 5,500 would be suitable for me. So you want to make sure you are not asking for only exactly what you want. You are leaving room to negotiate. And one other pro tip here to even know what do I even ask for? When you are doing your research and gathering your data, have discussions with your coworkers, I know it can be so awkward to talk about money with the people you work with, but you can blame me. You can say, I read this book or I listened to this podcast and they mentioned that it's helpful for everyone in terms of equity to have an understanding of pay bans and so I'm thinking of going into a conversation with my manager and asking for X, or even asking for this range between X and Y. How does that sound to you? How does that track with your experience? You don't have to ask them, what do you make? Tell me how much your salary is. But you can throw out a number and then get their reaction to it, right?

Paula Pant (99:25)

I've heard a lot of people say that, throwing out that band and then just looking at the expression on their face, right? So if you ideally do it face to face, but if not, do it on zoom with the cameras on so that you can see their facial expression. Because oftentimes the face will give away what they're not willing to say.

Melody Wilding (99:45)

Yes. And of course, there's tons of different websites where you can also get a gut check. I wouldn't solely rely on those, but there's glassdoor and salary.com where you can plug in your role where you live. And so that's another number you can use to triangulate and sort of gauge your ask.

Paula Pant (100:04)

So if you go through all of this and at the end it feels like you've done the work, you've laid the foundation, you've been proactive, right? You've gone through every single one of these steps and you still feel like you're hitting these brick walls and you're going nowhere. How do you know that when it's time to leave? Like, how do you know that this is just not a fit?

Melody Wilding (100:25)

When I'm working with clients, it's often an internal metric of do I feel like I'm running away from a situation or do I feel like I'm moving towards something else? If you are just running away from the situation, like my boss is difficult. I just need a change of scenery and to move somewhere else, you're likely going to repeat what you don't repair. But if you feel like I have tried to. I've had all of these conversations, I've tried to get alignment, but just hitting wall after wall after wall, you get to a place where you're more at peace to say, you know what? I am at an objective point where this is not right for me and I'm ready to move on. So usually it's more of that internal feeling. But that's why I say managing up is one of the quickest ways to figure out, is this somewhere that you can be successful or not?

Paula Pant (101:16)

You know the expression, it's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. Sometimes you can think that you're going through these steps that we've talked about, you can think that you're addressing your boss based on their style and that you're doing a good job of networking internally across the organization. Like, you can think that you're doing it, but then years later, in hindsight, you look back and you realize all of your shortcomings. How do you know, even when you're attempting to manage up and to be better at your job, how do you know when you've done it well, well enough to assess that it's time to quit versus maybe you just need to try harder.

Melody Wilding (101:56)

Sometimes it's an internal feeling. Many times what I have found is that other people around you, other colleagues, other leaders start to nudge you towards it being time to go. One person I worked with, her manager after an acquisition, she was really facing a lot of barriers in terms of advancing, getting her ideas heard. She was being shot down all over the place and her manager actually came to her and said, you are smart, you are valuable, and you will be much more successful somewhere else where people value that. And that's very typical that I start to see people's mentors or even other people in their life start to say, you've been trying, you've been putting your all in. If you feel like you are constantly hitting wall after wall after wall, you do have to have an honest conversation with yourself to say, if I was assessing this as an outside observer, what would I tell a friend to do here? Because as I said, you do repeat what you don't repair. Have you given it a good try to set boundaries, to negotiate your workload, to give feedback, to decode people's styles and be flexible on that? Because if you already have one foot out the door, this is your training ground now. This is a lower stake situation. If you're already thinking, I'm comfortable leaving, then you might as well try to build those skills here. And so there's no reason not to give them a try now. But you do have to be honest with yourself about that.

Paula Pant (103:29)

If you do leave, how do you. As you're going through job interviews looking for your next thing, is there any way to proactively assess if the next place will be better?

Melody Wilding (103:37)

Yes, I love this because managing up does start from the very, very first conversation you have with them. And you can ask everything from can you tell me about if you're having a conversation with the hiring manager, can you tell me a little bit about your leadership style or your communication style? That can tell you a lot about that person's level of self awareness and are they a commander, cheerleader, controller, caretaker? How compatible might you be with them? You can ask, in your opinion, what does it take for someone to be successful on this team? Which again, can tell you a lot about. Well, we really value people who take ownership, who speak up with their ideas, or we really value people who can follow a process and adhere to the tradition and systems that we have. That's going to be very different. So those are two of my favorite questions to understand. What's your leadership style? What would make someone successful here? If you were to describe the culture in three words, what would that be? How do you handle it when there is more work than there are people? Can be another one. Or what is the culture of feedback here? Do you have feedback rituals that can be another one? You can ask.

Paula Pant (104:53)

So this loops right back to the beginning, in fact, and I guess another one would be what are some of the goals of the company and how long have those goals been in place? That could give you some insight into the alignment.

Melody Wilding (105:04)

That's right. And why are you hiring for this role? Because at the end of the day, you're not selling yourself in an interview, you are trying to solve their problem. So as you were saying, it's your very first alignment conversation to say, what are your pain points? What issues is this causing you? Why are you hiring this role? What gaps are you hoping to fill? And then you position yourself as that solution.

Paula Pant (105:28)

And so in that regard, everything that we've talked about, all 10 steps of this framework, the first five which are reactive and the next five which are proactive, even if you do quit, it's not steps so much as it is like points on a circle. Right. They all loop back in on themselves as you cycle through different companies or even different roles within your company.

Melody Wilding (105:51)

Exactly. Because the quitting conversation, it can be, I'm leaving this organization, but it can be, I'm wrapping up this role or capacity. And each of those are junctures where we have to manage our relationships, our reputation. And as you were saying, the cycle goes round and round again.

Paula Pant (106:07)

Right. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more about this ten step framework or any of your other work?

Melody Wilding (106:15)

You can grab the book@mountingup.com on that page we actually offer access to a bonus vault of many of the scripts, templates in the book. So just pop your email in there and you'll get access to those.

Paula Pant (106:27)

Oh, wonderful. Managingup.com thank you so much.

Melody Wilding (106:30)

Thank you.

Paula Pant (106:34)

Thank you so much for being part of the Afford Anything community. If you got value or insight from today's episode, please share this with the people in your life. Share it with your friends. Share it with colleagues. Share it with former colleagues. Share it with all the people in your life. Because that is the most important way that you spread the message of fi r e. Remember to subscribe to our newsletter afford anything.com Newsletter please open your favorite podcast playing app Smash the follow button so you don't miss any of our amazing upcoming shows. While you're there, please leave us a review and head to YouTube. You can watch our interviews, our Q and A episodes. You can watch most of our material on YouTube YouTube.com affordanything you can also talk to other members of our community@affordanything.com community everything I've mentioned is all free. It's all for you so that you can enjoy strong financial health. And if you're interested in learning how to make more money at work, head to affordanything.com yournextraise I'm Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast and I'll meet you in the next episode.