Career – nate funaro

Get Promoted #3 – Learn From Your Future Job

Learn from the masters, learn from your contemporaries. Always try to update yourself.
James Stewart

This might seem obvious, but there are people out there already in the job you want to be in (and also people who used to be in that job and have since grown), why not learn from the people who are or were already where you want to be?

Preferably this person is someone you look up to, has some sort of shared background or values with you. This can create a better connection for both parties, increasing the candor and insight you receive.

Talk to them about their work, how they got there, what they have learned. There is a vault full of knowledge from people who have already done what you want to do. Successful people often enjoy sharing their wisdom (assuming you ask nicely and don’t come off like a weirdo).

Things you can ask them…

Tell me about your journey getting here – what were some of the big challenges in securing the role?

What are your weeks like? What is unique to the job that you did not experience before this role?

What was most surprising to you about the role when you started? (can be positive or negative)

Were there any skills, requirements, networks necessary that held you back from advancing? How did you discover and grow through these?

Add any question to your list that might give you insights to their challenges, process and journey.

Your path will be different

Their path and experience won’t necessarily be identical to yours, but hearing how they did it might guide you. It certainly could help you avoid some pitfalls along the way.

If they are open to it, you can also tell them about your journey so far – especially where you have succeeded and / or failed in your goal of the next role. Ask about their thoughts – what you might need to work on to secure the promotion. What are you missing that other people have in the role? They will likely have insights that would take you far longer to discover on your own.

What do you need to work on?

Perhaps the conversation will have revealed specific gaps in your skills. If that’s the case, ask them if you can come back to talk with them in a brief targeted time in the future.

There is an absolute wealth of knowledge available to us in others who have already gotten to where we want to be. This can apply to a promotion at work, starting a company, buying a property, winning awards, getting that next jujitsu belt, just about anything – it’s incredibly versatile.

How To Be A Conversation Jerk

Sometimes I talk to someone who seems like a jerk – I often become annoyed, and then immediately question if I also have some of those traits. We tend to be most irritated by people who have similar negative traits that we have.

Are you aware who the conversation jerks are in your group or your company? They tend to be annoying to talk to (and usually annoying to work with). If you don’t know, then you might be the jerk yourself. Here’s some tips I’ve gathered on being a ‘people’ person – so that people don’t get annoyed working with you. Credit to Marshall Goldsmith – most of these are collected from his classes and books.

Winning Too Much

Are you always pushing to win every argument, to always be right? It can be very annoying for the other person. Even if you’re competitive, it’s ok to punt sometimes and let things go. Not every battle is worth going to the mat on. Lots of petty wins end up costing you much more than you get (you’re creating social minefields for later). It’s ok to roll over and sometimes take the L so you maintain relationships and keep things moving.

Interrupting

We interrupt for usually 2 reasons – 1. We are emotional and in a fight mode OR (more often) 2. Our point is SO IMPORTANT that we need to stop the other person to convey it. Being interrupted is annoying, no one likes it. If you find yourself doing it (and can be aware of it), immediately apologize, acknowledge you interrupted and let them finish their point. What you are saying can wait.

Talking Over Others

This is another aggressive conversation tactic, like interrupting. You are trying to talk louder because you believe your point is much more important, but be aware–it’s very rude. This can be exacerbated on video calls when there is connection interference, but it can make you seem like a bully if it happens too often. Remember, your information is rarely so urgent that it cannot wait.

Negatives & Contradictions

Did you start your sentence or idea with, “But”, “No”, or “However”? These are all negatives that essentially say to the other person in conversation, “Whatever you just said is wrong and here’s why.” It’s a great way to make yourself feel good at the expense of others. Even if you are right, you are saying it in a way that puts you in opposition to the other person. Choose other words that convey your point and also collaborate.

Not Acknowledging Points

If you aren’t actively thanking people and pointing out that their ideas are good / welcomed, you might inadvertently be dismissing their contributions. Make an effort to use positives such as, “thank you for bringing that up,” “that’s right,” and “good point.” This folds people into the circle and rewards participation. If you end up getting “too much participation” (rarely happens), it’s easy to re-focus everyone.

Solo Show

I also find aggressive conversationalists don’t like to share the spotlight. They like to answer every question or just talk endlessly and monopolize the meeting. If you find yourself the only person talking, throw to other folks, ask questions. Even if you are leading a meeting, you don’t want to sound like you are pontificating. You aren’t a standup comedian, people aren’t coming to see you talk. They are there for a purpose, remember that and share time.

Side note – most people who use any of the above techniques THINK they are smart. They usually believe everything that they say has incredible value. I have an unfortunate revelation for 99% of us. We are not as smart as we think we are. The other 1% are the Bill Gates and Zucks of this world – people tend to be tolerant of the negative behavior there because they are running 100 billion dollar businesses (but it doesn’t necessarily make it ok).

Ok, so what do I do?

Swallow your pride and shut up. You don’t have to be right, you don’t have to prove how smart you are. When you are about to talk, pause a moment. Make sure you are saying the right thing AND saying it in the right way. Are you about to say something that could be perceived as condescending? Are you getting heated up / emotional? What’s your goal in what you are about to say? How could you say it without leaving someone else annoyed / hurt?

Everyone you are working with is trying to do their best – respect the work they are doing, their contributions, and most importantly, please respect them as individuals.

Get Promoted #2 – Do Extra

Common fallacy we see: “I’ve been doing my job with competency for x number of months / years, so that means I should be promoted.” Turns out, doing your job with an adequate level of quality is good enough to … keep your job (probably).

Doing enough is just that – enough to keep your job. If, you want to get promoted, you should find opportunities to do extra. Think about ways you can add value beyond what you are paid for. What else can you do for everyone around you (especially your bosses)?

By the way, let’s start by saying that if you are currently doing a mediocre version of your job, get good at your job first before trying to implement this stuff. You won’t help anyone if you are barely getting by and then take on more – that’s a recipe for nonsense and will make you worse at your job. If you are good at your job but overloaded / overwhelmed / treading water – you also might want to be careful before incorporating.

Step up and volunteer

What happens when our bosses ask for someone to volunteer to do something? Are you always the person who steps up and takes care of things? Maybe you think you are too busy. I often see people only volunteer when they have no work and their job is about to be eliminated. Don’t be that person, it smells desperate. Try to volunteer even when you are busy and figure out a way to handle it.

Find challenges and growth

There probably isn’t a ton of growth in your job when you hit competency level. There is certainly refinement and places you can be innovative, but exponential / bigger growth parallels bigger challenges. Find places to learn and expand your role or how you can contribute within the company. Can you learn new skills that will help improve processes or take on new responsibilities? Are there tools you can learn to add to your strengths? Spend time asking / thinking about this.

What else can I do?

What can you do that makes your boss’ job easier? What makes your team run better and clears the way for them? How can you build / expand your team and abilities beyond what it is currently? Is there anything you can teach your team or others within the company? If you decide to take this stuff on, make sure you don’t create a personal expectation of payment or compensation – you are doing extra and adding value. Over time, it will be noticed and you will have new opportunities.

What if ‘doing extra’ isn’t working?

If for some reason you have been adding value and don’t see results in terms of returns (new opportunities), I recommend a few things to look at first. 1. Make sure you have been doing it long enough. Progress and growth comes slowly. 2. Are you marketing your victories and wins? Your bosses may not see everything that’s happening through all the other nonsense they are dealing with on other projects (if your projects are going smoothly, you can be sadly ignored in favor of larger issues). 3. If you are feeling that you are being taken advantage of, check your ego at the door. Likely, you need to do #1 and #2 first. If you really are being taken advantage of, then set limits. Learn to say no.

If you think this is too much work, then it IS too much – for you. There is probably someone else who is going to be doing this OR conversely, doing a better job at something else than you are currently. Stack the odds in your favor and do extra so there is no question on who to promote, who the best choice is.

The promotion you want will be a role with more responsibility, more people to oversee (and who will ask lots of questions / need lots of time), more stress, and more obligation. It’s going to be tougher. People do not promote you to do easier work but with more money and a better title. That’s not how it works. Doing extra is not just showing your boss you are getting ready, it’s physically preparing you for what you will be challenged with. This is a practice for your promotion. This will make you stronger.

Beware of Expert

This may be a controversial topic because the word ‘expert’ is a loaded one – what does ‘expert’ mean to you? When I hear someone apply the expert label to themselves, it’s always a bit cringey.

If someone tells me how much they know about something (and perhaps also how they have been disrespected in their field), then I can be reasonably sure they harbor some insecurity issues and their ego has been bruised. It typically has no reflection on their knowledge and ability. Talk is like fast food, cheap and easy.

Frequently self proclaimed experts are just people who enjoy telling you “no” and why “that won’t work”. It’s most frequently a negative mindset that is dangerous to collaborate with – be cautious when you are paired with this type of person. They relish in arbitrarily following rules and shutting down ideas.

I would rather work with a combination of two groups of people – some open minded folks with experience AND some other people with limited experience who don’t know what can’t be done. This is where the real initiative and breakthroughs come from.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying to not have knowledge and ability in your field or not to improve to a very high mastery level. Kaizen (constant improvement) should be a value we all have locked into our utility belt.

You should however be aware of how you are perceived and how you market yourself. You can be seen as someone with expertise but also be aware there is something (probably many things) you don’t know, and something you could learn.

Work in a humble way to improve yourself and constantly learn with the awareness that you could unintentionally / accidentally stumble into being an expert. At which time, you should reset your ego and remember to return to the learning and improvement mindset.

The ‘expert’ knows ‘everything’ and has nothing left to learn. They also will love to tell you about it.

I can say all this with confidence since I used to be an expert too.

Get Promoted #1 – Manage Your Deadlines

Sometimes people will say to managers, “I want to get promoted.” First off, this is not the best start towards your boss (perhaps not the most professional) – maybe instead ask, “What can I do to get promoted? I’m interested in moving up.” Most of the time your boss is not just sitting around waiting for you to take the call to action and tell them you want a promotion and then immediately proceed to promote you because you were assertive. Nice try. Take responsibility and figure out what you need to do.

That’s what this series is – what things do we see as most common gaps in people as they are looking for the next move up.

The number 1 thing – people not able to manage deadlines. If you can’t hit your milestones consistently now, why should someone promote you to a job where it’s going to get worse and you have 2x, 4x, or 10x the number of spinning plates? Do you hit your deadlines? How often? Be honest. This could be holding you back, even if you aren’t getting the feedback.

So how do we fix it? There are a bunch of questions you can ask to help bridge these gaps as you take on the next project.

What’s the deadline for the current job? – Ask this question to you boss, director, producer, client, whoever has given you the work. This is what a professional does. Right away. If you don’t know when the deadline is, are you just hoping you randomly hit the target? If they don’t have a milestone for you, give them your target date so everyone is on the same page.

Can you complete it by the deadline given the resources? – Ask this question to yourself as it’s being assigned. Talk it through with your boss if needed. Again, it shows professionalism. Ask this question again as you in the midst of it and ask again as many times as needed during the process.

Take stock during the process. – This is similar to above question. Does it feel like things are running late? Can you recover and still hit the deadline? What are your options? If you see that you can’t or may not hit the deadline, shoot off a flare. Tell your boss what’s happening.

What is your history? – With similar workloads / projects, what has been the outcome before? How many times have you done this before? Once? Ten times? Two hundred? Use your experience to inform your forecast. How often did you deliver on time? If you can’t forecast, you look like an amateur. By the way, if you can’t forecast accurately and tell your boss the wrong time (overly optimistic target) with consistency, that’s a problem too.

What will it take to complete by deadline? – Assuming you’re not going to make it, what would it take to finish on time? If you had one additional person week would it land it? Do you need one more day to review material? How late will it be given the current resources? Think about needs and convey to your boss. Accuracy here is critical so your boss can help you with resources / clearing the way.

Do you have other obligations? – What else is floating around you that could affect THIS deadline? Telling your boss you are sorry but this week you had to take the kids to day camp or that you were busy on another project deadline is probably something you could have planned around. AKA it’s a ‘you’ problem. Knowing your capacity and what other creeping responsibilities you have haunting you will affect your output.

Do you have bad luck? – Does dumb, bad stuff always seem to happen to you and screw things up? Your computer eats your homework, your person always calls in sick at the wrong time, you got all the bad client notes, etc. Who cares. Your boss doesn’t want your sob story excuses. There’s always going to be some kind of battle. If you are a bad luck kinda person, have some contingency plans. Be like the Boy Scouts – be prepared.

Next level move: Capacity – Know how fast you can potentially work vs the assigned project. Most people just work at a default pace vs an approximate deadline until the project is done and use up all the time they have (Parkinson’s Law). By having awareness of true capacity / potential, you can more accurately predict what projects will hit (or not hit) deadlines AND if you can adjust based on how much room you have left to move.

By the way – answer these questions honestly. If you lie to yourself, it just makes you bad at deadlines. You get better by failing, seeing where the gap was, and adjusting.

Tough questions here but if you want things easy, you probably shouldn’t be promoted. It doesn’t get easier as you move up. Let’s get to work.

Are You Using The Right Tools?

During my college years, I worked in a machine shop part time and learned how to use all kinds of different tools. Inevitably I would screw things up, which resulted in me quickly learning what I did wrong and how to use the right tool for the job. Three tools may do the job, but perhaps only one will work the best, improving accuracy and efficiency (and reducing headaches). Lucky for me, veteran machinists were there to help and tell me which tool to use. This meant as I learned, there wasn’t as much trial and error on my part (and less for them to deal with and fix).

This older Japanese machinist that everyone called ‘grandpa’ would look over my shoulder and see if what I was doing was right. He’d give a fatherly approval nod and a grunt if I was doing it right and if I was doing it wrong, he would make fun of me. Basically he was like a real life, smart ass Mister Miyagi. I’ve never seen another guy work a metal lathe with the accuracy and craftsmanship he did. I appreciated grandpa and the other machinists looking out for me and teaching me the ropes as a young, completely inexperienced, green machine shop grunt.

Which tool to use?

Unfortunately for us (especially in this remote work world), we probably aren’t going to have someone looking over our shoulder (like the veteran machinists back at the shop) to help us with the right tools to use. Additionally, the more you move up in job roles, the less help you are going to get determining how the tools work and what tools to use. This all sounds rather bleak, doesn’t it? How do we figure out what tools to use then?

When you are new to a process / skill / job, you likely will not start with a good idea of what tools to use or possibly even what tools are available. You have to try out different tools and see how they work. You also use available resources and learn from others. The lead editor has been doing this awhile, she might know some tricks – go pick her brain. What website, book or video has a tutorial / help on what you are struggling with? Who knows how to do this?

Sometimes the tool won’t be obvious, or sometimes it might be personalized for how you work. If it is based on preferences – your natural talents / weaknesses, contexts and inclinations, it will naturally drive you towards certain tools (or away from others). Other times your tool choice will be process driven – there is a definitive best tool or required tool and there isn’t a question of what to use. In these cases, hopefully someone tells you what to use, but they may not necessarily train you in how to use or the best way to use (you have to dig that out on your own through learning and execution).

Is the tool working (for this task)?

The way to understand if your tools are working is easy: just look at the results (isn’t that always the answer?). And please – do a hard look at what the end product is, don’t idealize and sugar coat what might not be the best so you can feel better about the mediocre job you did. You might consider asking friends, peers, bosses if your methods are working effectively. You can always lie to yourself (or might be too close to the product), hopefully others will give you good / honest feedback. If you have real, quantifiable data to reflect on your progress – use it. The old saying, “What gets measured, gets managed.” works here.

When you are using the right tools with consistency and improvement, you will see good results and progress. You should also be getting a paired decrease in gaps and errors. If you are instead seeing ongoing just barely meeting standards or getting below standard quality (or declines), it might be time to review your tools and update.

Avoiding Problems

Most of the time we talk about the importance of things like problem solving and crisis management. We celebrate the traits of a leader who can get us through catastrophe. These are exciting to talk about – big battles and war stories.

It’s not as dramatic to talk about the problem that never materialized because the director knew how to avoid it entirely. We don’t say, “That guy sure knows how to spot a bad deal.” It’s a type of business aikido that’s a little difficult to comprehend. It’s typically unseen, not recorded, hard to recognize, and definitely not exciting.

Marshall Goldsmith talks about this idea in his book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”. That book made me realize how important and also how unrecognized this skill was.

What’s the best way to not get punched in the face? Don’t be there. It’s not learning to defend a punch, it’s learning to avoid the fight entirely.

We are not talking about ignorantly avoiding existing problems that are already on your doorstep, this is only for avoiding potential problems that are on the horizon before they arrive / materialize in your world.

The skill of avoiding problems comes from preparation, repetition, knowing the field and then experience takes it the rest of the way. It’s difficult to describe, because you already have to already know or at least have a sense of what you are looking for.

Someone who is great at their job, they can see things shaping before the problems fully materialize. They calculate options that are never used to find the best way. They avoid issues entirely – no one knows the issues were even there. It’s like a reverse opportunity radar.

Some people wait for problems to show up on their doorstep, others look for problems to unearth and address. The next level operator scans the field for potential problems and finds the best available path that avoids the issues without incident.

There’s not a lot of rewards or heroism in avoiding problems. ‘Hey boss, look at this big problem I avoided!’ No one cares, get back to work. Learn this skill and people will sometimes see you as ‘lucky’ or you are always on the ‘easy project’. That’s fine. As Jim Rohn said, “Results is the name of the game.”

Resume Tip #1 – Keep It Simple

Write less than you think you should

One of the best things you can do for your resume / CV is to keep it simple – write concisely, write less.

Too often we see resumes with 3 or 4 pages, explanations of every responsibility they have ever had, whatever other nonsense they can cram in paired with little to no experience. Candidates write like this in an attempt to look impressive BUT any decent hiring manager will see through all that. This is a lot of filler and usually makes the potential employee appear desperate, so don’t do it!

Secondly, a big, chunky resume is difficult for the reviewer / hiring manager to read. I am more apt to pass over a 3 pager, loaded with all the toppings than a cleanly written one page CV. You want your resume to be easily readable and more importantly, scannable. Very few people are doing a deep dive on your resume – instead you want it to read fast and catch their eye.

Here is your goal – keep the resume to ONE page. Unless you’ve been in the business 20 years, you can fit it on a single page. All that semi relevant small stuff doesn’t NEED to be included – have a good reason to include what you do and tailor your resume to the job you are going for.

Also think about this – someone reviewing 50 resumes at a time may not actually look at your 2nd page. You only are guaranteed a glance at one page. Make it a good one.

Whenever I rework my resume, I always ask myself, ‘What can I remove?’ This is a great question to ask every time you sit down to retool the resume.

Your past employment should be 90% of your resume. Where did you work, what job did you do, and for how long. The rest you can go over in the interview. Scrape it down and make it simple!