1. Fail to clarify with your boss exactly what"s expected of you. You must excel at the basic responsibilities of your job-and so you need to be certain what they are. Sure, your new boss is bound to rattle off some instructions on your first day, or she may even ask a coworker with similar responsibilities to show you the ropes. But rather than settle for that kind of hurried, possibly fragmented crash course, schedule a sit-down with your direct boss and establish what she expects you to be focusing on in the first days and weeks of the job. Take written notes and determine-this is especially important-what your deadlines are. In a new job people often expect you to have some amazing intuitive sense of when things are due, but how can you? If you get timetables wrong, however, it will be an early mark against you. And then be sure to request feedback about how you"re doing. A few weeks after you"ve started, schedule another meeting with your boss. Don"t say, "Am I doing okay?" Say, "I"m really enjoying my job. Are there any suggestions you"d offer?"
2. Forget the little things. "Little things are actually huge," says Hannah Storm, the stunning cohost of ESPN"s Sports Center and one of the best TV interviewers I"ve ever experienced. "Being superprepared, acting positive, being on time, getting back to people, thanking others-which plenty of people never do," she says. "We tend to think of these things as so basic, and yet they can make you stand out and kick a.s.s in your career." She notes that it was observing all those little things in her first job as a sportscaster on a radio station in Houston that helped her start to get noticed.
3. Resist the culture. One of the most charming interns I met at Cosmo was a guy who worked in the fashion department and wore his shiny black hair in a giant ball on top of his head. He was like a human topiary, and when I first spotted the do, my eyes bugged out a little. But that wonderful over-the-top style was the kind of look that was totally appropriate for the fabulous Cosmo fashion department, a land of short shorts, sky-high heels, and faux fur vests (but not, thank G.o.d, worn at the same time). Everyone loved that intern"s hairstyle. But it wouldn"t have flown at a bank or a law firm. It"s key to pay attention to the office culture you"re settling into-and not only how people dress. What time do they generally arrive each morning? Leave for lunch? Leave for the day? How do they handle personal phone calls? How often do they chat with one another? Do they listen to music at their desks? It"s not smart to go against the ecosystem-until you"re the boss!
4. Shrink back. A common mistake I see people make when they start a new job is to try to recede into the woodwork while they get up to speed. Don"t do that. People-your boss and your coworkers-are paying attention even if they don"t seem to be. Yes, you may want to find your way without a big fat spotlight directed at you, but you also need to seem fully engaged from the start. Smile at people, pop your head into your boss"s office regularly and say h.e.l.lo, and come to your first meeting with something really smart to say.
5. Not know how to triage. I"m sure you"ve heard the term "triage." It"s a method medical personnel use to prioritize the injured and sick at big accidents and disasters. In the Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment (START) type of triage, people are placed into four categories: the expectant, who are beyond help; the injured who can be helped by immediate transport; the injured whose transport can be delayed; and those with minor injuries who need help less urgently. What does this have to do with work? Well, when you are first in a new job, your boss may throw a lot of stuff at you right from the start. Some people, especially those new to the workforce, end up concentrating on the task that"s tossed at them at a given moment or the first thing they see on their desk in the morning. The result: they don"t finish a more important project on time. So you need to prioritize, using your own brand of triage. Determine the importance of and the deadline for everything you"re working on, and then figure out how much time you think every task will take. Each day, give your main attention to the tasks that must be "transported" immediately because of how urgent they are. Other tasks can be back-burnered temporarily, but you still need to give them deadlines on your calendar. Some tasks might not even be necessary (just like those poor people who are beyond help), but don"t ignore any of them until you have a sense of what would happen if you don"t do them.
By the way, if at some point your boss gives you way more than you can handle, you need to subtly make him triage for you. When he hands you a new a.s.signment, say something like "That sounds really interesting. I"m working on A, B, and C right now. Which should I set aside in order to focus on this project?"
6. Get too cozy with coworkers. When you"re new in a job, it"s great to discover that there are nice coworkers on site, people who are happy to share important info and may even become friends over time. Act cordial and gracious, because your coworkers are pa.s.sing judgment on you right now. But remember that in the early weeks, you won"t have any idea whom you can trust. Do not gossip with new coworkers, admit to any insecurities or concerns, complain to them, or solicit too much in the way of guidance (they will peg you as clueless), especially if they are at your level or below. Doing any of those things could later bite you in the b.u.t.t.
7. Turn up your nose at grunt work. When Essie Weingarten, founder and creative director of Essie Cosmetics, Ltd., was working as a salesgirl at Henri Bendel early in her career, a man came in just before closing one night to buy gifts. Because the person who did the gift wrapping had already left for the day, Weingarten volunteered to wrap the purchases herself. As she was finishing, Geraldine Stutz, the legendary president of Bendel, happened to walk by. "She noticed what I was doing," says Weingarten, "and from that moment on she had her eye on me and supported my career."
Don"t turn your nose up at grunt work-whether it"s getting coffee, opening mail, or trying to unjam the printer. When I look back at all the editorial a.s.sistants who were promoted at the magazines I ran, they were never the girls who rolled their eyes or seemed put out by those kinds of jobs.
8. Neglect to let your boss know you like the work. Bosses like happy campers. Smile, look invested, and when you hand in certain projects, say you enjoyed working on them. Do so even if you"re not sure yet whether the job is the perfect fit for you. If you suspect you"ve made the wrong choice, tell yourself you will focus on the work without ruminating on it for at least two months. If you start questioning your situation too much now, it will color your experience.
9. Take on only the work you"ve been told to do. More about that in the next chapter.
{ Now Knock Their Socks Off }.
As I mentioned earlier, it"s essential in a new job to clarify with your boss what he or she expects of you. That will help guarantee, at least temporarily, that you know what to do and that your boss will be satisfied with your performance. In the long run, however, you must go beyond leaving your boss feeling content. To become a success, you need to knock your boss"s socks off. And you can"t do that by simply being proficient at your responsibilities. One of the key mistakes I see young women make in the early stages of their careers is doing exactly what they"ve been told to do-and no more.
"It"s not enough to do what"s expected of you, to hit the numbers," says MetricStream CEO Sh.e.l.lye Archambeau. "You have to excel beyond what others are doing and find ways to differentiate yourself, and show your value." In other words, you have to go big or go home.
"You must get out of the "check the box" mentality on a.s.signments," says ESPN"s Hannah Storm. "When you"re first starting out, one of the surest ways to make sure you"re noticed is to do something that"s not in one of those boxes."
Easier said than done, though, right? How do you know what to go big with? Here are some surefire tactics.
Do things a h.e.l.l of a lot better than they imagined was possible. It goes without saying that you should aim to handle your work fabulously. But not everyone does. Figure out what you need to know (through feedback, keeping your eyes and ears open, research) to tackle your projects spectacularly. This is the first step to dazzling your boss, and you shouldn"t try to jump over it.
Kick it up at least one notch. Look at a basic responsibility you"ve been given and expand it, even if no one has instructed you to. Here"s the perfect example from Lori Andrews, a professor of law at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and a leading adviser on genetics and reproductive fertility to Congress, the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control.
"I always pick very smart people as my research a.s.sistants, but recently there was one who was just hitting it out of the park compared to the others," says Andrews. "She saw the whole picture and what needed to be done and then just took things a step further. For instance, I had asked her to proofread a chapter of my book, but she didn"t just proofread it, she started to make really great suggestions. She"d say something like, "Well, you"ve got this thing here, and you could end the chapter with this whole new idea that parallels it." "
If you"ve been given a certain a.s.signment in relation to a project, ask yourself what would make it even better? What extra step could you do?
Let"s say, for example, that your boss asks you to pull together numbers on your department"s performance in one area. Instead of just downloading the figures, study them and see if they tell you anything. If you spot a pattern, include a note when you turn them in, offering your observation (something like, "I happened to notice when I put these together that . . .") and even making a recommendation if you"re pretty sure it"s on the mark. Chances are more than good that your boss will be impressed by your comments, especially if they"re shrewd. If it becomes clear that your boss isn"t interested in hearing this kind of observation from you, you haven"t overstepped your bounds in an obnoxious way. And you"ve also discovered that your boss may not be the type you want to stick with for very long.
Ask yourself, "What"s missing?" A great way to go big is to add something new and valuable to a workplace that no one has contributed before-especially if it doesn"t cost anything, tax the system, or cause unnecessary grief. That"s what Hannah Storm did. "In the beginning of my sports career-on the radio in Houston-I was supposed to mainly report scores of the local teams," she says. "But I convinced my bosses at the station that it was important for our listeners to have a sense of live reporting from the big sporting events like the Super Bowl and the Final Four. So I paid my own way to those events and did phone-in calls to the station. It was a total win-win situation. I got great experience reporting from a live event, and the radio station got something interesting for listeners."
And you know what really pays off? If the tasks you take on or the ideas you generate not only provide special dividends for your workplace, thus setting you apart from the pack, but also allow you to begin developing your own unique specialty.
In my first year or so as a writer at Glamour, I worked on a lot of small items for a section in the magazine called "The How to Do Anything Better Guide." I enjoyed writing these, but I also knew I wasn"t going to make much of a mark for myself with pieces like "How to Get Rid of a Pimple by Sat.u.r.day Night." So I started pitching ideas for big reported pieces. But the editor in chief told me I didn"t yet have the reporting skills to do that kind of article.
I could have tried to beef up my skills with short reported articles, but another strategy began to form in my head. As a young single woman in Manhattan, I was wrestling with so many issues, but there was rarely anything in Glamour on that topic. We ran service articles, not essays. So without an a.s.signment, I went ahead and wrote a wry first-person piece about being single and dropped it on the editor in chief"s desk. Two hours later she walked down to my cubby and told me she loved it. She published it in the next issue and we received lots of letters from young women saying how much they related to the piece. From then on I began writing personal essays for the magazine and eventually my own column. There was a kind of gap in the magazine and I was able to fill it, thanks to a wonderful editor in chief. But I was also beginning to develop a specialty-different from my peers-that would serve me for years.
Ask for more. Bosses love this, as long as you"re already doing your main job well. One of the best approaches is to volunteer to take on a task your boss doesn"t have time for or one that was previously handled by a colleague above you who was downsized. The beauty of this is that it will prove that you"re capable of tackling something above your pay grade.
Fix something that that no one else has ever gotten around to fixing. One of the fascinating aspects about so many workplaces is that there is always something that doesn"t function perfectly or hasn"t been figured out yet. It"s like a bedroom bureau with a broken leg that has been propped up with a block of wood for months, even years. And guess what? It"s yours for the taking. You can score points by being the one who comes to the rescue.
When I was at Glamour, the magazine routinely rated every item and feature in the magazine for overall reader satisfaction. The findings were generally pretty straightforward, but there was one result involving "The How to Do Anything Better Guide" that editors found baffling. Though the section was one of the most popular in the magazine, the overall rating could vary as much as twenty points from one month to the next. The managing editor, who was in charge of the section, worked hard to put together a good batch of items each month. The articles staff, which included me, would pitch ideas, and she"d fill the section with twenty-five or so of what she considered the best ones-a combination of fashion, beauty, health, relationship, and lifestyle tips. She had no clue why some months readers rated the section so much higher than others.
On my own, I decided to try to figure it out. I pulled together all the ratings and a.n.a.lyzed the months the section had rated the highest and the months it had rated the lowest-and finally I had the answer. Though the managing editor picked decent ideas and made sure all the right categories were covered, many of the topics tended to be very specific (there was once even an item on how to deal with a diabetic pet!); it was clear that she never stepped back and considered the right overall mix of topics.
In a.n.a.lyzing the ratings, I discovered that if all the items in the section were very specific, the overall rating tended to be low. It wasn"t hard to figure out why. A reader might not find anything for herself in that kind of mix. If, on the other hand, the section contained at least five items of more universal appeal-such as how to beat insomnia or ask for a raise-the ratings went through the roof. I"d figured out how to fix the broken bureau leg.
Caveat: I (stupidly) ended up getting cold feet about turning in the a.n.a.lysis; I was afraid the managing editor might view it as my trying to show I was smarter than she was. But in hindsight I know it would have knocked the editor in chief"s socks off. All wasn"t lost, though; I went on to use that type of a.n.a.lysis in every job I had after that.
{ How to Pull Off a Project Perfectly }.
Okay, I hope I"ve impressed on you the importance of doing far more than what you"ve been told to do, of generating ideas that will knock your boss"s socks off. But now it"s time to talk about actually executing those ideas, as well as whatever else your boss puts on your plate. You need to know how to get a project off the ground, keep the momentum of it going, and see it through to its conclusion. Law professor Lori Andrews told me recently that many of the projects she"s been asked to take on actually involve finishing what someone else has started. "You wouldn"t believe how many projects just don"t get completed," she says.
These strategies will help guarantee your projects never derail.
Be absolutely certain of what you are supposed to accomplish. When your boss a.s.signs you a project, take good notes and ask questions regarding anything you"re not sure about. Over the years, I"ve noticed that junior staffers are often reluctant to ask too many questions about a project-perhaps out of fear of looking stupid-but then they fail to do the project well. The key question to ask: "What are the results you"re looking for?" Sometimes a boss can forget to spell that out. It may sound as though she wants a simple PowerPoint presentation about the business, but if she"s hoping to persuade a client of something, you"ll want your slides to help do that. Be clear, too, about deadlines and who needs to be looped in on the project.
In some cases giving your project a name can help motivate you. Lili Root, the terrific executive director of events marketing for Hearst, told me that she comes up with a name for every event she does even if one hasn"t been provided. "A name just helps you focus," she says. "As you brainstorm ideas, you can hold them up against the name and see if they fit or not."
Make a plan. You need to figure out exactly what must be done to complete the project, and then you must break it down into what the productivity expert Julie Morgenstern calls small, "complete-able" steps. Otherwise, the project will seem overwhelming. Morgenstern (whom I"ve hired on occasion to teach me better time-management strategies!) says that one of the smartest things you can do is talk to someone who has done a similar project before and confirm what those steps are. Perhaps it"s the person you"ve replaced, who has just moved up in the department. Go to him and say you heard he did a brilliant job and you"d like to pick his brain.
If no such person exists, look through files and old records to see what they might tell you. Nothing there? Get as much info as possible from those you will be interacting with. Let"s say you"ve been given the task of organizing a luncheon for your boss. Tell the caterer or restaurant manager that this is your first time and you"d love her to provide you with a to-do list and also any information you might not think of. She can tell you, for instance, the date by which a final head count is needed.
Morgenstern says that one helpful strategy for kicking off an overwhelming-seeming project is to figure out the first three steps. "It"s as if you"re focusing on just the things you can see with your car headlights," she explains. "So if you"re setting up a luncheon, those first three steps will be (1) determine the goal of the event, (2) decide on a theme, and (3) pick the venue."
It"s extremely important to factor in deadlines. Figure out how long each step will take and then work backward rather than forward. Let"s stick with the idea of arranging a luncheon. If the date for the event is October 25 and the restaurant has told you it needs the head count by October 18, you will need to have "RSVP by October 16" on the invitation to allow time for stragglers. The invitation will need to go out around two to three weeks in advance (the length of time you give people to respond depends on the field and the age of the invitees; the caterer can help you with this number). It takes only about fifteen minutes to create an e-vite with Paperless Post, but you will need a day or two for your boss to review what you"ve created, so you must complete it by, let"s say, October 2. You get the idea. All the dates and details go into your "plan." Keep track of certain details on your calendar.
Determine your concentration threshold. Morgenstern says that this is essential. If you try to do too much on any project in one sitting, you may end up procrastinating. Break down a big task, such as writing a report into three sessions, for instance-one for the draft, one for the revise, and one to review.
If you hit a roadblock, try jumping ahead a few steps in your plan. Sometimes you can end up stalled on a project not because you"re procrastinating but because there"s a sudden impa.s.se or someone isn"t getting back to you. A trick I like to use in those situations is to proceed to step 4, let"s say, instead of staying stuck at 3.
Here"s an example of what I mean. For two years I tried to arrange for Rihanna to do a second Cosmo cover. We"d been the first major magazine to feature her on the cover, and the issue had sold brilliantly, but then everybody else wanted her and we had to wait our turn again. We were due for another cover, but after Chris Brown a.s.saulted her, she decided to keep a low profile. My project was to score another Rihanna cover, but I wasn"t having any luck.
So I decided to get out ahead of the situation. I told my photo editor to see if she could find some great shots of Rihanna that had appeared on a European magazine but hadn"t been released in the United States. I thought that if we went to the singer and said we had a cover-worthy photo and she had to do only the interview rather than the interview plus a photo shoot, she might be tempted to consent. We had never gone with a cover photo we hadn"t commissioned, but I wasn"t opposed to doing it once.
Well, we found a nice set of photos that had been shot for a European magazine and were available for purchase, as long as Rihanna"s publicist agreed to let us use them. So we asked Rihanna"s publicist and, sure enough, she agreed to let us use one of the photos for the cover and arranged for us to interview the singer. But then, a few weeks later, we found out that Rihanna had decided to do a summer tour. She would need publicity. We went back to her publicist and said that as long as she was now doing the interview and she had the tour, why not let us shoot her? Things were already in motion, so it was easier now for them to say yes-and they did. We"d jumped ahead a step, and it had paid off.
Inform your boss of your progress. Even if your boss isn"t asking for in-person updates, send her periodic e-mails about the project. That way she can get a sense about whether there"s any kind of problem you might not recognize, especially if you"re new at the game. Better to have her course-correct than have the project later blow up in your face.
Keep close tabs on what other team members are doing. If you"re working on a project with your peers, you must stay abreast of their efforts and make sure no one is s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up, which could end up making you look bad in the long run. And what if someone isn"t carrying his weight or is doing his part badly? You don"t want to be a tattletale, but you can"t ignore the problem either. One strategy is to suggest to your boss that everyone on the team meet with her and give a progress report. That way she"ll see firsthand what"s going on.
As you progress in your career, you"ll have projects where you supervise team members, and you"ll want to inspire the best from them. Peggy Schmidt, an independent college counselor in Silicon Valley, supervises students as they apply to schools. Her advice: "Get a handle on what your team"s strengths and weaknesses are. If you know what to expect in advance, you can modify how you work with a particular team member-for instance, what incentives or parameters are likely to produce results. People are surprisingly candid about their work habits."
She also feels that people are more invested in completing a task if they have the autonomy of selecting days and times for turning in work as long as those deadlines fit into the larger picture.
Leave room at the end, says Lili Root, to "sprinkle on some fairy dust." Always plan to finish a day early or, at the very least, a few hours early. This allows you to step back, look at your finished project with fresh eyes, and tweak it if necessary. It can also give you time to add a magic touch or two.
{ Develop a Golden Gut }.
At one point in my career, the magazine company I worked for was sold, without warning, to a large European corporation that took over with all the aplomb of a blowtorch. Management treated my staff and me as if we were summer interns who were just learning the business, asked zero questions about U.S. consumers, and immediately redid the entire magazine, with a young guy on the business side supervising all the layouts.
It was a terribly unsettling experience, one of the worst I"ve ever been through professionally. Every day meant new changes and new instructions to follow. I felt worried about my own career but also concerned about all the turmoil and uncertainty my staff was going thorough. Fortunately, about five months later, I was offered a job as editor in chief of another magazine at a terrific company, and I fled the scene with just a few singe marks on my b.u.t.t. Yet I don"t regret the time I spent in those stressful, unpredictable conditions-because it was there that I learned to listen to my gut.
I"d always respected my gut, but I"d never put it to work the way I did during that time. At first I didn"t even see how much I was relying on it. I did know that since the ground underneath me was shifting every day, I needed to do my best to antic.i.p.ate what might be coming next so my staff and I wouldn"t be caught off guard. I found myself saying things to my managing editor such as "Let"s do a, because b will happen and we"ll be ready." Or "Don"t do c-it will only create problems tomorrow." My decisions turned out to be right on. One day as my managing editor and I were strategizing, she narrowed her eyes and asked, "How do you know all this stuff?"
At that moment I realized that for the past few weeks I"d been paying heed to my intuition on an almost primal level. And it was helping save my a.s.s, big-time. It was as if I were in a survival-training camp and I had no choice but to use my instincts. Later, after I was ensconced at my new job and had caught my breath, I a.n.a.lyzed what I"d been doing so I could always have those skills to fall back on. Since then I"ve relied on them through thick and thin.
It"s never too soon to begin developing your gut. Here are the tricks that have served me best.
Know how your gut likes to talk to you. Vowing to trust your gut won"t do you any good if you can"t tell when it"s sending you a message. You have to learn to tune in. For many people, me included, a gut reaction is just that-a rumbling feeling in my stomach. A gut reaction, however, may not actually occur in your gut. I"ve heard some people say that they"ve learned to pay attention when their pulse pounds or they feel a tingle all over. (A Vanity Fair writer once remarked that when Tina Brown was the editor, she knew an article was right if her nipples got hard when she read it!) You might not even have a physical reaction: perhaps you just have a niggling sense in your mind that something"s really good or really off. Doesn"t matter how it occurs. What"s key is to begin to note when you feel different in some way and ask yourself why.
If you"re not sure if certain sensations really mean anything, keep track of them and see if you can validate them later. Let"s say that when you leave dinner with a friend one night, you end up with a nervous feeling in your stomach on the drive home. When you arrive at your place, write down your impressions. What could have happened during the night that made you feel that way? Was there something subtle about your friend"s behavior that suggested she was troubled though not admitting to it? Did she arrive seeming that way, or did her behavior shift during the meal? Later, if she confesses to a personal problem or admits that you pulled a move that upset her, you"ll have an idea that your tummy was definitely talking to you that night.
Just shut up. Even when you learn to trust your gut, you may sometimes not hear when it"s signaling you. The secret is to listen. One of the smartest, most intuitive women I"ve come to know from writing mysteries (and I love the fact that she is now a great friend) is Barbara Butcher, the chief of staff and director of Forensic Sciences Training Program at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Barbara spent years working crime scenes as a medical death investigator, investigating 5,500 death scenes and 680 homicides. It was at those death scenes, she says, that she learned to develop a golden gut.
"Everything we need to know is around us for the taking as long as we are truly taking it in," she says. "As a death investigator I learned to open my senses to what was around me and abandon preconceived notions of what I was going to find. I learned early on that if I was told that I was going to investigate a homicide, then that is what I would find, but if I reminded myself that I was going to investigate the cause of death, then I would find the truth."
Her advice for honing your gut instincts? "Take your hands off your ears and put them over your mouth," Butcher says. "Learn to listen, see, smell, and absorb everything around you without speaking your thoughts first. If you practice these skills, you will get all the signals you need to be able to trust your instincts."
Trust your gut but teach it first. Your gut is directing you based on what it knows, so be sure it"s well informed about what matters. Experts who swear they make gut decisions often have years of training, and their response is an automatic one based on their reserves of knowledge.
A few months after I began at Cosmo, I took a bunch of mocked-up covers out to a shopping mall, showed them to young women, and asked how they liked them. Based on all the covers I"d done over the years, I was pretty sure the women would automatically pick one particular cover because the model was gorgeous and the background color was a yummy shade of yellow. But before they gave their answer, woman after woman asked me the following question: "What month is it for?" Until then, I hadn"t realized how important the seasonality of the cover clothes was to Cosmo readers. Knowing that enabled me to better use my gut when picking cover shots.
Connect the dots. You just saw two coworkers whispering furtively in the hallway. Is something up that you should be concerned about? Maybe-though it could be that one of them has hooked up with a guy in accounting and is simply sharing the steamy details with her office pal. Your boss didn"t make eye contact with you when she pa.s.sed you in the hall. Is she annoyed with you? Maybe. But then again, she might just be having a bad morning or got reamed by her boss earlier that day.
Little moments don"t always mean anything, but sometimes they do-though it may not be exactly what you think. So how do you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore? You play "connect the dots." If one thing catches your eye in an odd way, make a note but don"t go insane with concern. But if two things relating to the same person or same situation grab your attention, it"s time to sit up. In your mind, run through a list of things they could suggest. Ask yourself how it might relate to you and whether you should be concerned.
Guard against your gut"s biggest enemy. Even if you"ve learned how to tune in to your gut, there may be times when you end up stupidly ignoring it. Why? Because other people pressure you to-directly or indirectly.
I"ve seen the potential for that kind of thing to happen with magazine covers. When you"re a magazine editor, sometimes a cover shoot comes in and for some reason just isn"t strong enough. Maybe the clothes didn"t work or the celebrity felt awkward (or was hungover!). Your gut will tell you you"ve got a loser on your hands, but you feel pressure not to say the word "reshoot." People hate that word. It"s difficult enough to coordinate the celebrity"s and photographer"s schedules the first time, let alone for a reshoot. But you can"t allow your gut to be silenced.
This happened with the second Kim Kardashian cover we did at Cosmo. In order to make this cover look different, we had decided to shoot Kim in jeans and a bathing suit top and mist her body with water, even wetting her hair a little. I loved the idea-until I saw the results. Kim was her gorgeous self, but she looked in the photos as if she"d been hosed down with Wesson oil instead of water. It was like a Maxim shoot run amuck. My gut was rumbling big-time, and when I started talking about needing to do it again, everybody turned ashen. But it was totally the right call.
We reshot Kim in a salmon-colored minidress made of sweatshirt fabric, and the cover was the biggest seller of the year.
Know that you shouldn"t necessarily take your gut at face value. That rumble or knot is telling you something, but it may not be the obvious thing. In a Cosmo interview, Laura Day, the best-selling author of Practical Intuition, pointed out something I"ve found to be true. "When you have an instinct," she says, "it doesn"t mean you should blindly follow it. It"s a message that you should examine the situation a little bit more."
{ Always Ask for What You Want }.
I probably don"t have to tell you that it"s vital to ask for what you want. You know that, right? Whenever I give a career talk to a woman"s group, I stress the value of asking, and lots of women always nod their heads in agreement.
The reason I think that there"s so much vigorous head bobbing isn"t simply that I"m telling them something they know. It"s because they"re trying to drive home the point to themselves. Women realize that they should ask-and ask for more-but so often we don"t do it. According to a study by Linda Babc.o.c.k, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University"s John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, men initiate negotiations between four and eight times more often than women. It"s no surprise, then, that in another Babc.o.c.k study, the women received average annual starting salaries that were 8.5 percent lower than the men"s.
Why are we such scaredy-cats when it comes to asking? We"re afraid that if we ask, it will seem as if we"re overstepping our bounds. The other person might get mad, or stop liking us. If someone"s offering us a job, we may even fear that if we ask for a higher salary than the amount being named, the offer might be s.n.a.t.c.hed back from us. We may also hesitate because we lack experience in asking and it makes us self-conscious. "Guys," says a business friend of mine, "grow up calling for the ball."
But if there"s one thing I"ve come to accept with certainty, as both an employee and a boss, it"s this: the squeaky wheel definitely gets the grease. One of the most important things you must learn to do in your career is ask-in the right way. You must ask for money, responsibility, opportunities, t.i.tle changes, benefits, bonuses, and perks. And don"t worry about the other person becoming ticked off. Bosses or prospective bosses may seem annoyed that you"ve asked, but they expect the best employees and job candidates to do it. They will get over their annoyance soon enough. And trust me, you will be glad you spoke up. The actress, comedian, writer, and producer Whitney c.u.mmings put it perfectly when we interviewed her for Cosmo: "I learned this magic trick at an early age. If you ask for something you usually get it."
And the sooner you learn to do it, the better, because gains that seem small at one point can actually have a compound effect over time. Consider this amazing statistic presented in a 2009 study by Mich.e.l.le Marks of the School of Management, George Mason University, and Crystal Harold of Fox School of Management, Temple University: a.s.suming a 5 percent pay increase each year over a forty-year career, a twenty-five-year-old employee who starts at $50,000 would earn $634,198 less than an employee starting at $55,000 by the time she reaches the age of sixty-five. And it"s not just money that is compounded. Let"s say you ask your boss if you can travel to an annual industry convention, and she says yes. You end up making some key contacts who down the road introduce you to others. That"s a compound effect.
Does reading this section make you feel slightly nauseated? If the answer is yes, it may be because you"re already established in your career and realize that you"ve missed more than a couple of chances to ask. But it"s not too late to learn how to do it. Let me tell you a funny story from my own life. After I was tapped to be the editor in chief of McCall"s magazine and had accepted the job with a rough idea of what the salary package would be (bad move on my part), a meeting was set up for me to discuss the details with the top two executives in the company. We were going to gather in a small lounge on the executive floor of the company that owned the magazine.
There were two things I knew for sure about that upcoming meeting. One was that it would be nerve-wracking. I"d be negotiating with two powerful men who had far more experience doing that sort of thing than I did. The other was that I probably wouldn"t be brilliant at handling the situation. By that point in my career I"d come to see that if you don"t ask, you don"t get, but I didn"t yet feel comfortable speaking up and declaring exactly what I wanted.
So I did something that even to this day shocks me: I talked my accountant, Bob, who"d always preached to me about the value of asking, into coming with me and acting as my agent. You see, my husband was in the TV news business at the time, and like other newscasters he had an agent who handled salary discussions on his behalf. I thought, why not steal a page from that playbook? I explained to one of the executives in advance that my accountant would be joining me at the meeting so that I could review the numbers with him, never revealing the exact role I intended for Bob to play.
Bob seemed a little nervous that day, though I could hardly blame him. He took a ton of notes at the meeting, working with what seemed to be endless sheaves of paper. I saw the other two men exchange a dismissive look once-they clearly thought Bob was in over his head. But Bob asked great questions and pointed out a few gaps in the deal that the execs acknowledged and agreed to fix. After about thirty minutes of going through the numbers, one of the executives said, "Why don"t we give you two a few minutes to review everything in private. We"ll pop back in afterward."
They returned about fifteen minutes later. "All set?" one of the guys asked. I could tell by their manner that they thought things were going to be wrapped up shortly.
"Well, we"ve read everything over," Bob announced. The two men nodded, obviously pleased. "And now we"re ready to negotiate."
I"ll never forget that moment. I swear I saw the two executives" jaws drop. They hadn"t seen that coming at all. Over the next fifteen minutes Bob explained how "we" would like to see the deal enhanced, and he d.i.c.kered back and forth with the men. I ended up leaving with a package much more lucrative than the original offer.
I told that story a while back to several young women who worked for me, stressing to them how essential it was for them to ask for what they want in life. When I finished, one of them wailed, "We need a Bob."
Unfortunately, only people in certain fields-like TV news, acting, and sports-generally have agents. You have to learn to "be your own Bob." Asking is a skill you can acquire, and it actually becomes easier the more you do it. But as I said before, you have to ask in the right way. Here are my favorite "BYOB" strategies for getting what you want.
Never try to talk yourself out of asking. Because asking is such a b.i.t.c.h, we sometimes convince ourselves that there"s really no need to do it. We think, "If my boss had the money to pay me more, he would" or "They know I want that promotion. My work speaks for itself."
But guess what? Your work doesn"t speak for itself. You"re the one who needs to do the talking. With money, for instance, your boss is under pressure from his or her boss to lowball you, so unless you speak up, you won"t receive more. And when a better job opens up in your department or area, it"s not your boss"s job to read your mind and know that you"d kill for it. In fact, employers often wait for people to go after a job as a way of seeing how hungry they are. Recently someone told me that a former employee was really upset because I hadn"t promoted her into a key position. But she"d never said boo to me about it. And to me that was proof she didn"t have enough gumption for the job.