How to get a meeting with anyone

My colleague Jeff Schreifels wrote a great blog post called "You Need a Friend" on how important it is for development professionals to have mentors. This is great advice. We all need friends and especially peers in our industry we can go to for advice. Mentors inspire us and help us build our expertise. I used to get emails and phone calls from students wanting an interview for a class or advice on moving to a nonprofit career. Most of them were college students and if they had a deadline it was that week. Real agendas were not made clear until I was sitting across from them. After a few years of this I grew wary of these requests until one day I got an email from a graduate student at the Acton MBA program in entrepreneurship.

It was an unforgettable breath of fresh air. She asked for precisely 30 minutes of my time, told me exactly what she wanted to cover, promised she would only ask me questions not answered by my press or blog, and in exchange would donate 10 hours of her time to my favorite charity. Three years later I'm still raving about her!

Susie Hall, Director of Admission at Acton was kind enough to share her technique with me, it's called Naive Networking. It is the most honest and realistic guide to networking I've ever read and a must read for any student or professional wanting to get ahead. Frankly, I wish they taught this in high school! Here are my favorite Naive Networking tips:

1) Do your personal soul searching and industry homework first. 2) Be specific about what you need. Make sure the other person understands how a little effort on their part can make a big difference in your life. 3) Don't pester 4) Show up prepared 5) Send your questions in advance 6) Ask questions. My favorite? "What's your favorite mistake?" 7) Give something unexpected in return. In my case it was 10 hours to my favorite charity. 8) Be nice to the gatekeepers. 9) Follow up. 10) And as my colleague Jeff would resoundingly agree with me: be gracious and be grateful.

Stay classy, Rachel

Core values: if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything

One of the greatest lessons I have learned as a leader is the importance of core values.  Core values are the foundation of how you and everyone in your company conduct themselves.  They are the enduring things that would remain if you took away everything else.  Core values require no external justification.  They are not trendy; they are primary.  They are not strategies or goals; they do not change every quarter.  They are the filter through which you conduct yourself at work.  They determine how you treat others and guide you through difficult decisions. For some, core values are nothing more than a marketing gimmick. Case in point: Enron.  Enron’s values seem like a cruel joke now:  respect, integrity, communication and excellence.  How about Dell’s?  In a nutshell the ‘Soul of Dell’ is advertised as: customers, teamwork, being direct, global citizenship, and winning.  To me those values translate to hard work, long hours, high expectations, and difficult conversations.  Even though they are called the “soul” they don’t feel soulful.

I’m especially proud of the core values we created at Girlstart, http://www.girlstart.org/values.asp They were the framework through which we treated one another and we made every decision.  One of our core values is "No success at work is worth failure at home."  How many people ignore this lesson?  How many CEO's consistently expect their employees to put work over family?  Another one of our core values that I am especially proud of is “Have fun and enjoy the experience.”

When do you need to start creating core values?  As soon as you are ready to take your company to the next level.  When your company is small and starting out, members' values and behaviors are affected through proximity to the leader. The need for articulating core values becomes increasingly apparent as you grow. Defining core values helps maintain the culture the company holds dear.  Once defined, the values should be prominently displayed for employees and clients and reinforced through both the hiring process and in employee evaluations.

They should be short, enduring and memorable.  More than 5 core values are difficult to memorize.  Companies are wise to stick to 3-5 key values. Every company should reflect on them frequently to make sure they are living by them and check and see if they have changed so much as a company that a revisit is warranted.

The best leaders exhibit their values and ethics everyday in their leadership style and actions. If you don’t identify your values in the workplaces, mistrust follows.  People don't know what they can expect from their leaders.  If leaders have identified and shared their values and are living those values daily that visibility will create trust.

What does your company stand for?  Are core values given lip service as marketing jargon or does your leadership live and breathe them?

Here's to keeping it meaningful-

Rachel

The greatest compliment I ever got

Earl Maxwell, founder of Maxwell, Locke and Ritter and CEO of St.David's Foundation, is one of my heroes and mentors. He introduced me to core values when I was just starting out and the greatest lesson of all: no success at work is worth failure at home.  He also gave me a profound compliment to live up to my whole life when he called me a level 5 leader. So what's a Level 5 leader?  Jim Collins, in his bestseller Good to Great researched hundreds of companies to understand what separates the good from the great.  To benchmark, he defined "great" as having average cumulative stock return of at least 3 times the market over a 15 year period. Only 11 of the Fortune 500 companies made the cut.  Their leaders were identified as Level 5 for this key trait:  the ability to blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will.  Humility + Will = level 5 leader.  How do they do it?

1) They set up others for success.

2) They are modest.

3) Their resolve and diligence never wavers.

4) Mediocrity is unacceptable to them.

5) They are quick to credit others for their success, credit theirs to luck and take the blame for mistakes.

How do you become a level 5 leader?  Here's my advice:

1) Build your bench and groom great leaders to succeed you in your organization.  This starts with delegating.

2) If someone is giving you the credit, turn the spotlight away from you and on to the team you lead.  Better yet, join the choir and include specific examples in your praise.

3) People first, ideas later:  get the right team on the bus before you tackle the route.

4) Be brave enough to confront your weaknesses, address them and maintain confidence that you will succeed.

5) Play the part.  If you want to be a level 5 leader, start acting like one.

Go out there and be great!

Keep it classy,

Rachel