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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools.
- [00:03]
B
This is Sarah and I'm Mark.
- [00:05]
A
Today's podcast Career Insurance for your Part 2 of 2.
- [00:10]
B
This cast answers these questions. What can I do to help my directs have great careers? What common career mistakes can I steer my team away from? How can I teach my directs how to manage their careers?
- [00:24]
A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Mark your calendar. Our Virtual Effective Communicator conference is happening on October 2nd. Discover practical strategies to help you and your team communicate better and make work feel less complicated. Check it out today online@manager-tools.com training that then takes us to relationships is insurance number two. And for folks, while most professionals, I think understand that results are really important in their career, the area that many miss is the second most important thing in everyone's career. That is their relationships. Because folks, you work with people, you work in an organization with a bunch of colleagues, all of whom are human beings. And it's not enough to get great results. You also have to get along with your colleagues and coworkers and, and listen, there are exceptions. I mean, Wall Street's toxic and burnout culture is probably the most obvious, I would guess. And those high performers exist in organizations, those ones who seem to get away with treating other people poorly. But to be clear, they're actually pretty rare, at least in well managed companies. The reason they don't seem as rare as they truly are is, is that when they exist in an organization, they stand out. And because they stand out, we remember them. It's kind of like how folks say opposites attract when what is really true is similar. People attract, but when opposites have attracted, you're like, whoa, look at those opposites attracting. And it leads you to believe that opposites attract often, which is not true. And it's the same thing here because it stands out so much. You're led to believe that these toxic win at all costs. People exist everywhere. When that's not true, it's so obvious every time it happens that it stands out in your brain.
- [02:35]
B
Yeah, as our Career Tools Cast says, your two responsibilities in your career, our results and relationships. It's the most important Career Tools Cast we have. It's definitely in the Career Tools hall of Fame. And if you don't, if you're a new listener, you don't know what hall of Fame means. If you come to our website, manager-tools.com and you click on the icon in the top right of the, of the homepage, it looks like sort of like a solar system. It's called the map of the universe. And the map of the universe is every cast we have organized by topics. Some casts are in multiple topics and you can drill down into them and discover things about feedback or about performance reviews or about coaching or being coached or having a mentor. And there's one called hall of Fame. And if you click on Career Tools hall of Fame, you'll find the one about results and relationships. And to be clear, when we talk about relationships, we don't just mean your colleagues on your team, we mean everyone. As a professional, you're expected to have good working relationships with everyone on your team and your directs. And further down the line, if you're a manager, okay, and your boss, and further above her and up the line, all the way to the top. And folks, please do be careful about treating those below you differently than those above you. People start seeing that, they'll see you coming miles away and you'll just be burning your trust and suddenly you won't be able to get anything done and you won't know why.
- [04:07]
A
And folks, you are obligated to have a good relationship with your boss, to work on it and to try and repair it when it isn't working. Well, now what we would say is generally your manager has more responsibility than you do. But be clear, it is not entirely someone else's responsibility. Nothing will ever change if you take that stance in life and just wait for other people to. To do what you think they should instead of taking your own responsibility. So also work toward having that yourself.
- [04:41]
B
Yeah, these good internal relationships play a super important role in your career. People who are liked and respected get more rewards and opportunities than those who are hard to work with and don't have as good or as many relationships. You know this, you see this all the time. People who are liked are given more chances to fail because they're in danger of losing their jobs. Why? For no other reason, but because other people like them. And actually, if you talk to a biologist, if you talk to a sociologist or a sociobiologist, they will tell you, tell you that liking of other people that protects them is very important to the species. So the reason likable people tend to get away with a little bit more is because they're likable. It sounds like a tautology, but it's not. You can't fail at everything all the time and be likable and get away with it. And that's why results are first, by the way. But you will have a better career the more likable you are. And I don't care if you are a hardcore high D and you are like me professing to say your favorite thing to do is to play golf alone. You don't like people. You don't like one on ones. I actually never really did like one on ones, but man, do they work, work. And I don't get paid to be happy. I get paid to be effective. So I don't even care if you're like me or if you're a high C and you're a recluse and you just want time alone so you can think and work out your formulas and everything else. That's great. Okay? And you can learn to become likable. You can. You can learn some basic behaviors that if you work on them for a while, you will gradually get competent. Not skilled, not gifted, but competent at natural human interpersonal relationships. If you doubt that that's true, just listen to our very first podcast, right 20 plus years ago. Solution to a Stalled Technical Career To Technical Career. It talks about someone who didn't have good relationships and wondered why their career wasn't getting ahead.
- [06:43]
A
Yeah, exactly. And folks, the strength of relationships isn't solely internal. Having good relationships as career insurance has an external aspect as well. Your external relationships will play a role when you move from one company to another company. If you don't have any external relationships, you'll be exposed to less about the world that is around and outside of your organization. You'll learn less about the market, you'll learn less about the world. And. And you'll not have friends or former colleagues elsewhere who can help you when you do need to make that job transition. These external networks are critical to your career and far too many people I know me in my younger days did not take time to grow and maintain them. And Mark and I just recently rerecorded and released in Career Tools the How to Build a Network podcast. A Hall of Fame podcast was originally recorded way back in 2006, I think.
- [07:52]
B
Yes, before we formally started Career Tools, in the very beginning of Manager Tools, we would do because people were asking us career questions. We realized we had to do three Manager Tools cast a month and one career ish cast, which we didn't call Career Tools. But it wasn't until three years later that we started Career Tools because I was tired of giving up a week of Manager Tools guidance for career because people were. Yeah. And then we had plenty to do on careers for 20 years.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah. And since that time, since 2006, 2005, we have released at least 50 podcasts on the importance of relationships. I mean, we are beating the relationship drum constantly over here. So yes, focusing on relationships, hugely important. Okay, so folks, if you are teaching your directs about the career insurance value of relationships, it might sound like this. We've already talked about the career insurance that comes with results. Now this week, let's talk about relationships which far too many professionals think as unimportant and don't value. But it is truly the second most valuable form of career insurance. It's not enough to get good results here or anywhere else for that matter. You have to do it, get your results that is, in a sustainable way. And sustainable means you can't go around ticking people off because you've got your work done and your results matter more than anything else. If you've met someone who gets results at the expense of relationships, you know them. And if you haven't yet, you will meet them and you won't like them. If all you do is focus on results and are not likable, are not polite, are not respectful, nobody is going to like you. And I won't have anybody like that on my team either. Having good relationships means being nice to other people, remembering their family members names, asking about their spouse and their children, covering for them when they have to leave early, not complaining when they leave to coach their kids soccer team, saying congratulations when they're doing well, being sensitive when things aren't going well, doing favors for them when they're swamped. If you do these things in your career, you are ensuring your career success.
- [10:16]
B
Your own career, being nice to other people ensures your own career. And you know what? You're not that cool, that good, that special, that big or that gifted that you can ignore the people around you.
- [10:29]
A
Exactly. And if you're not building relationships, I gotta tell you, the word gets around, it will absolutely get around. And nobody else will have you on their team either. And when the next layoff happens, you will be caught. And if there isn't a layoff, you may be here, but you won't get the raises you think you deserve or the promotions that you really want. Relationships are a close second to results when it comes to career insurance. And what's more, you've got to have good external relationships as well. Friends in other companies, in other industries, in other locations. They'll help you learn more about what's going on, where they are, which will often be different from here, where you are. And that's important. It's an important perspective to gain. And you need to keep those relationships current by Staying in touch or they won't be relationships much longer. You won't be able to ask for a favor when you need a career favor from a person whom you haven't talked to in over a year, unless they're your. Your best childhood friend. They're not going to refer you to another individual or give you a reference on your resume or help you get an interview for that matter, either.
- [11:53]
B
Yeah, that's why salespeople call them cold calls when they don't have any relationship at all. It's cold. You get a cold response. Okay, insurance number three is save a year's worth of salary in cash. And to be clear, guys, we're recommending you save a year's worth of salary to provide not just career insurance, but obviously income insurance in the event of a sudden layoff or corporate failure or termination. This means having it in cash or near cash equivalents. Can't be in your ira, can't be in a pension fund that you're going to pay significant penalties or taxes or fees to get it out. Okay? Now, most personal finance gurus say you should have some money in the bank, right? And they say you use it for things like your washing machine or your dryer breaks, right? You don't want to put that on a credit card and have to pay interest. And the reason that happens, of course, folks, is because you're living right up to your means. You're not putting any money aside for the discontinuities that inevitably happen in all of our lives. People are like, well, I have car insurance and I got into a car accident and I forgot that I have $1,000 deductible, right? And you have to pay the deductible, and then you put that on a credit card, and now you've got credit card debt and so on. So we mean having a year's worth of salary. Now, when we first did this cast 20 years ago, maybe it was because the market was pretty good. Maybe it was just because this is the way I had always heard it, sort of unofficially, never from my bosses was have six months saved up. But now we've increased it to a year because of what we've seen in the last 20 years in terms of the volatility of the employment market. And I think with AI coming on board, even though I don't think AI will have the same effects that everybody else does, I do believe it's absolutely transformative. Just like the cell phone, or just like the iPhone, the smartphone, and just like the Internet. But I don't think it's going to have the suppressing effect. This, the massive suppressing effect. It is right in terms of employment, I think it is right now. And I think that's because a lot of tech companies, folks over hired at the start of COVID and very few of them resisted that urge and just told their people, we're going to have to get through this. And then they had this massive hangover, they looked bad, their stock price was suppressed, and so now they're posturing saying we're not having to hire people because of AI. That's actually only partially true. What's mostly true is they learned their lesson and they're never over hiring again. And they've learned the way smart, educated, you know, worldwide CEOs have all learned if they've been there for a while, that it's much better to have too few people rather than too many. So again, we don't mean having it in a retirement fund. That's separate. Retirement is a separate thing. We're suggesting you put money away for a retirement fund, take advantage of whatever your company does for you, and then in addition, you should probably have a separate retirement fund. And then separate from that, you should be putting away money in cash. You could have it in a savings account. And I have a friend who regularly moves from one savings account to another to get the teaser rate for six months and then moves to another one. And yeah, it's like 5% versus 2%. I mean it's on 10, $20,000. It's appreciable, it's noteworthy. And if you want to be picky, you can call it a year's worth of take home pay versus your actual salary. Because think about it, you get a salary, let's say, of $100,000. Your take home pay, I'm going to say, is only $70,000. I'm making that up. I don't know what the tax rates are. And so you're only spending 70. Well, when you get laid off, you won't have any income to declare for taxes. And so you can live on 70 because it's after tax and there's going to be no tax on top of that.
- [16:01]
A
Mm. And folks, to Mark's point, we've been making this recommendation for 20 years already. And the reason we keep making this recommendation is we've talked to hundreds of managers and professionals who did not follow this guidance and were in a position where they then needed to make bad choices about what job offer they would take because they had to have income virtually immediately. To pay their bills, to pay their mortgage, to feed their family and to work with, to talk with those individuals and hear the stress in their voices that they were going through trying to pay their bills. It makes a person less effective in their job search. It makes a person feel more desperate and makes you. Causes you, I should say, to make bad decisions because you're worried all the time and you're stressed all the time and we want to prevent that from ever happening to you. And to Mark's point, there's a lot more volatility as of late anyway that is occurring, that is in large part outside of the individual's control. And therefore we'd recommend you have the best semblance of control we know exists, which is having salary in the bank.
- [17:24]
B
Yeah, Charles Dickens had a character in one of his books called Mr. Macabre and he's famous for being basically a debtor and I think at one point going to debtors prison. Although it's been 30 years since I read my Dickens. And in the book he has a line in which he says annual income £20. Annual expense £19 6 shillings, which is slightly less than £20. Result Happiness. Annual income £20. Annual expense £20 and 6 shillings. Result Misery. And the lesson of this is cost control, home cost control. I suspect many of us had the experience of, hey, we need to cut back right now. During COVID during March of 2020. It's over five years ago now. It seems crazy, seems like yesterday. And it was amazing how many applications people could say, no, I don't need that. No, I don't need that. I think our company, because we pay for people's phones and so they're all their apps, we save thousands of dollars a month. A month, which was money we didn't have to make and we were looking for all kinds of cost savings. Okay, yeah, all right, enough about this. This is how it might sound about talking about having a year's worth of salary saved when you talk to your directs. Dude. The third career insurance is cash in the bank. I highly recommend that you have a year's worth of salary, take home, pay whichever one you want to use as your metric, saved and readily available to guard against a sudden layoff, a big recession, a termination, a company failure. These things may sound rare and you'll probably be fine without this, but having that cash in reserve will be far more valuable than any of things you could have bought with the money you saved by not buying them. If for some reason your career takes you down a wrong turn and this can be totally through no fault of your own, including if you have good results from retention relationships. You don't want to be worried about whether or not you can pay your bills while you're searching for a job. I've seen it too many times. If it happens to you, you'll regret it forever. The key to personal finance is spending less and if you really want to be serious about it, spending a lot less than you make. We know people who have make a great deal of money and have fancy cars and a big house and they have credit card debt. And if it happens to you one time that you don't have any money saved and you lose your job, it will be burned in your head and you will regret it forever. And speaking of which, we'll talk more about this when we talk next week in our one on one about Living Small Always. There's all kinds of ways you can do that.
- [20:36]
A
If you already know our guidance and want all your managers engaged in Trinity behaviors, making it happen is easier than you think. Manage youe Tools Organizational training delivered on site, at your workplace or virtually is a highly cost and time effective option, especially for groups of 20 to 30 professionals. We take the time to learn about your audience before we train, allowing us to customize and tailor the delivery so the learning is directly relevant for your team. Plus, effective manager training includes free annual manager tools licensing benefits for all attendees. Contact Maggie by emailing her at customerserviceanager-tools.com to discuss pricing and scheduling. All right, that then takes us into insurance number four, which is Live small always. And folks, the easiest way for you to get to your year's worth of salary and I should say also eliminate forever this risk of fear or job loss or dislocation. The best way to ensure you get there is to learn to live small. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. You know those influencers lives that you envy. Like those people you see on social media, the ones that look so happy, so many of them are so deeply unhappy knowing that the life they portray is not truly the life that they lead. Because happiness can't be bought. It's not for sale in any store you've ever gone to. Being rich is not having what you want, rather it's wanting what you have.
- [22:17]
B
Yeah, there are plenty of people whom you think of as wealthy who are living paycheck to paycheck. I'm not kidding you.
- [22:23]
A
Absolutely.
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B
They make three quarters of a million dollars a year, which probably for some of you, right, you're saying I'm not even sure I would know how to spend that. And they have great cars and big houses and payments and a boat that they're never on. Maybe they even have fractional ownership of a jet. And yet they don't get to use it as much as they want. And they have big mortgages to boot. And they've been telling themselves for years, I'll finally be okay with my next big promotion. Folks, true wealth is not what others see. It is being able to take care of your family even when you lose your job.
- [23:06]
A
That's exactly it. And the way that you can best do that is to save for a rainy day. And it's not that hard. Just save 10% of your take home pay every month and put it in the layoff fund. Pay yourself and secure your future first before spending money on the other things. We'd even recommend delaying investing for a year. To mark's point, we don't want our money locked up in an investment that we'd have to pay a penalty to get money back out of. So delay investing so that you can have that base salary saved. And at 10% of your salary a month, it'll take you less than a year to have an ironclad defense against all the various ways that you could lose your source of income, which again will be outside of your control. It's not a choice you're going to make, it's going to be made for you. So having that money is a good line of defense.
- [24:09]
B
Yeah. Now look, we know that 10% seems like a lot. Some of you are thinking, wow, I don't know if I can do that. And then you do the math. You're like, if I only made $30,000 take home, you're saying that I would have to save $3,000 a month. That would be really hard. And you're right in one way, but you can pay us now or you can pay us later. Okay? But there are so many small choices that add up over the course of a year. Don't drink coffee outside of your house unless the company provides it for free. Okay? Coffee at home is cheap and you can put it in the thermos the way people have done for practically a hundred years. Maybe it's not as good, but it'll taste really bitter indeed. If you get laid off and have no savings, don't eat out. I know this makes me old. I just turned 65 a couple of weeks ago and I still love my job. And I know I'm retired, but I'm still pitching. And My family and I ate out twice in the, let's say the 10 years where I would have remembered from ages 8 to 18. Twice now. We had four kids, I had three brothers and my dad was just kind of a mid level manager. My mom didn't work. So maybe you're a dual income family. But if you're a dual income family, you could probably figure out how to survive on just one salary if you actually have to. Which by the way, if one of you gets laid off, you will have to figure out how to do that.
- [25:44]
A
You know what I think is really impactful about that story, Mark? Your mom hated cooking. Hated it.
- [25:50]
B
You're right, she did.
- [25:51]
A
She just hated it with a passion. And folks, Mark ate out twice as a child even though she hated every single minute of it because it was the right thing.
- [26:01]
B
Yeah. And she wasn't good at all. She admitted it was a joke. Yeah, I can't cook. And we said to her, yeah, mom, you can't cook. When I go to my friend's house, I feel like I'm at a restaurant. And so it's so good. But they did the right thing.
- [26:14]
A
Yeah.
- [26:14]
B
And guess what? We all turned out to be pretty good. Successful society.
- [26:17]
A
Yeah, exactly. You're fine. You didn't die of malnutrition.
- [26:20]
B
No. So learn to cook. You will remember fondly that too small first house as opposed to the bigger one that makes you look richer than you are when you retire. You will remember that too small first house. Trust us, you will remember it well and fondly and it'll be fine. Look, don't vape or smoke or drink more than a little. Those habits cost money. Quit the habit. In fact, if you're working at a certain size company, mid to large size company, they'll probably pay you to quit your nicotine habit with Patches or Chantix or whatever. In part because they know that their health insurance bills are going to be higher the more smokers they have. Drink water. Don't even have soda in your house. Don't even have soda or beer in your house. Your friends won't mind if your friend comes over and says, dude, you're the only guy I know doesn't have beer. Dude, I'm buying my first six pack of beer the moment I have saved up a year's salary. As a celebration, my wife and I are each going to have a beer. And I probably only have one a week, just so that I can remind myself it's a treat and it's not a staple. Take your lunch to work don't buy two cars. Just buy one and buy it used. Take public transportation. Buy a reliable, unsexy car. I always think, buy a Toyota, they go forever. Cars oughtn't matter until you have a lot of money.
- [28:11]
A
Yeah, dude. I remember during COVID Not that I was strapped for cash, but I was terrified because I didn't know how long it would last.
- [28:17]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [28:18]
A
We didn't know what was going to happen with the company. We had no idea. I did not buy condiments. Like when my mustard ran out, I just didn't have mustard and I just had a hot dog without anything on it. And I stopped eating salad dressing and I just had a squeeze of lemon on it.
- [28:36]
B
We still do that today.
- [28:37]
A
I know, right? I know, because I kind of like that better. I wouldn't buy a bottle of wine that was more than $4.
- [28:44]
B
Nice two buck Chuck.
- [28:46]
A
And it wasn't good. It wasn't good. Which also decreased the amount of times you wanted to have a glass of wine, but I wouldn't. And that was. That was the rule. That was the limit. And you just got to set limits. It's possible. I'm fine. Even though I didn't have mustard and I used lemon on my salad and I drank $2 bottles of wine. I'm fine. You're going to be fine. And it's not just important to maintain this type of standard when times are tough or when you're, in this case, collecting your nest egg. When you get a raise, don't have all of that new money. Go into the support of a new, fancier lifestyle. The first step you ought to take is increase your cash against layoff fund first.
- [29:35]
B
Right? Because now you're making more. So you've got to get to. If you were making 70 and now you're making 80, now you need 10,000 more dollars that gets paid in first, right?
- [29:43]
A
Yes, exactly. And then increase your retirement savings. Decide how much you're going to live on and put the rest away. And if you do this, you continue to do this over four or five promotions, you're going to discover how easy it is and how rewarding it is. And yes, there are going to be other people at your same level of the organization who. Who live more nicely than you do. But you get to have the satisfaction of telling them that my first priority is my family's future. And saying those words will chill them to their bones, because they will know they're spending everything they make and that they do not have the type of insurance that is required if something bad should happen. Not just they, but but their family will also pay the price of that.
- [30:34]
B
Yeah. Now if you want more guidance, guys, you should look into the fire movement. F I R E Financial independence. Retire early. There are podcasts and books that will give you thousands of ideas. We have friends who've retired before they were 45 by being stingy up until then. And by the way, Maggie Tucker says she became a much better professional and she was a mid level executive because she didn't have to worry about what her boss thought about when she disagreed with him. She was like, no, I'm sorry, I don't agree with that. Because she could lose her job and she was fine. She was totally fine. Yeah.
- [31:10]
A
Different kind of freedom that is.
- [31:11]
B
How would it feel to be able to retire at 45? You know all those sports stars you look up to who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year and you wonder why they keep playing. Because they love playing and they don't have to worry about the money anymore. Never having to work again if you don't want to at age 45. You can do that if you'll get control of your costs. Okay, so do you want to do the last one?
- [31:35]
A
Yeah. So this would be then in your series of four career insurance conversations with your direct. This would be your last one and it would sound like this. Our final lesson about career insurance is to live small. What I mean by that is always take care of of your future before you think about spending the money that you've got. Max out your 401k contributions since the company is matching your contributions. Don't spend all of your raises. Pay your future first. If you live right at the edge of your means, you'll always be one month away from missing a payment. Please don't compound the danger of a potential layoff with with also then not being able to pay your bills. And a lot of people live life like it's a race to the most toys. And the vast majority of those people can't really afford the life that they're living. Or maybe it's better to say that they can't afford the lifestyle they're portraying. Most folks can guess pretty closely what you're making. So you trying to look like you have one more clothes or cars or a better house is usually just a sign that you're showing off. And despite your interest in looking good, showing off is not a good look. And think of it this way. How would you feel if you were able to retire when you were 45? You can if you live small. And you won't miss any of the small choices that you made along the way.
- [33:08]
B
Ooh, that was good. Kind of.
- [33:10]
A
You wrote it, dude. So.
- [33:11]
B
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So let me. Let me summarize, folks. A career is not a series of jobs. It's the accumulation of a professional lifetime of choices. Making the right choices in certain areas are good insurance against the vagaries of life, whether professional or personal. Focus on your results, build relationships, be a good person, have a year's worth of pay in the bank, and live small. The tortoise beats the hare, and the ant lived and the grasshopper died.
- [33:48]
A
Thanks, dude. This was a good one.
- [33:50]
B
Ah, that was a lot of fun. Lot of fun.
- [33:52]
A
Thank you so much, folks. We hope this helped you help your directs. Now it's your turn to help us help others. And tell your friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please. Bye, everyone.