Building and Managing Professional Relationships at Work - the Right Way - Part III

[zhulik881]

The purpose of this series of posts is to provide you the reader with advice as to how to enter the social flow in the context of being new and relatively junior in a corporate environment. Doesn’t matter whether you work in consulting, in banking, in an industry role or for an investment firm—if you work for a professional organization, soft skills matter. They’re not all that matter, but they matter.

That said, this series isn’t a guide about how to advance your career—for that you’ll need other resources that can be found on this website to complement this one. This series will not address things like technical skills or how to prepare for an interview. It is designed specifically for junior people that wish to hone their ability to deal with other human beings in their organization.

The series will be presented from the perspective of a new intern entering a firm and follow the first six to eight months of her experience to trace the relationship-building process. The perspective utilized in this manual notwithstanding, the information can be applied to more senior positions also. It is relevant to anyone trying to get involved in the social game of people senior to them.

Ultimately, regardless of where you are, if you’re in a corporate environment, there will always be someone more powerful than you. Even if you’re the CEO, you’ll have shareholders to whom you report, you’ll have board members that are more influential than you in decision-making processes. If you’re a controlling shareholder of a private business, you’ll have to deal with politicians that decide on policy matters potentially destructive to corporate growth, and so on.

My intention is for these words to deepen your sense of self-worth, and provide you with some practical advice, so you can bring your a-game to the workplace to beat the shit out of the corporate ladder because you deserve to be successful. You don’t deserve to associate your identity with the position that succeeds your name on a business card.

So relax, put your work down, grab a beverage and enjoy the material. May it guide you to the realization that what you seek is already within you. The rest is easy!

Before going on, a word about my experience:

I grew up between New York, Moscow and London. My life put me in situations requiring me to build up my social network from scratch often. I graduated from a small liberal arts school in New York.

Out of college, I was flying in and out of Sierra Leone, working on a gold exploration project for a small London-based private equity fund before joining KPMG’s corporate finance division. KPMG wouldn’t take me as a full-time analyst because I didn’t know finance that well—in college I studied economics and in Africa I was in the jungle looking for gold. During my last round interview, the partner asked me to write down the key lines in the P&L and derive EBITDA. I told him I’d need to review and come back to him. In hindsight, I can’t believe he took me after an answer like that.

I must have been astoundingly charming.

I joined KPMG as an intern and within 3 months, I was having lunch and going to drinks with colleagues ten years my senior in corporate terms. This was partially a derivative of the fact that I was a bit older than the analysts, but mostly it was a function of my superior soft skills. In all honesty, I rarely meet people with soft skills that near mine. Ask anyone who has worked with me or that knows me well, and they’ll tell you the same thing—that I stand out as an outlier in this realm. That’s why I chose this topic—because I’m naturally good at it, and I wanted to share with you what works for me.

 

[JustAnotherHuman1]

Thanks for this. I think it would be worth covering how to deal with conflicts with colleagues, whether equals or superiors, as that can be just as important as establishing oneself in the network of a company. A higher up always can and will override you, but finding the right balance between sharing your opinion and not have it dismissed easily is a skill in itself. Which can boost your reputation as well. I find myself at odds with others from time to time and to manage these conflicts good is quite important.

 

[zhulik881]

Thanks for this. I think it would be worth covering how to deal with conflicts with colleagues, whether equals or superiors, as that can be just as important as establishing oneself in the network of a company. A higher up always can and will override you, but finding the right balance between sharing your opinion and not have it dismissed easily is a skill in itself. Which can boost your reputation as well. I find myself at odds with others from time to time and to manage these conflicts good is quite important.

@JustAnotherHuman thanks for your comment. It's unlikely someone can learn the skill of pushing back on a senior colleague by reading a blog post. I've found that my MBA experience is really honing this skill, as the majority of the work we do here is groupwork, in which we sharpen the skill of establishing and holding a position while being conscious of the needs of others to be heard. This serves the purpose of not eliciting defensive reactions from those being challenged. It's like football: you'll never learn to play by reading about how to play - the process of learning to play occurs by playing.

 

[JustAnotherHuman1]

@JustAnotherHuman thanks for your comment. It's unlikely someone can learn the skill of pushing back on a senior colleague by reading a blog post. I've found that my MBA experience is really honing this skill, as the majority of the work we do here is groupwork, in which we sharpen the skill of establishing and holding a position while being conscious of the needs of others to be heard. This serves the purpose of not eliciting defensive reactions from those being challenged. It's like football: you'll never learn to play by reading about how to play - the process of learning to play occurs by playing.

That’s a great point, but I just learned something based on your reply: the only way to learn is to play the game and not reading articles.
Although I do believe articles can serve as good guidelines or frameworks to implement for anyone even if it doesn’t magically turn them into a much better communicator. Well, at least the better ones, not the average ones written by a random blogger (rarely they can be insightful too, but is more the exception and not the rule). I also found that practice is quite useful in developing this skill and targeted practice can be very helpful. It does need to be a conscious and thoughtful effort to improve though, otherwise it’s really just forcing oneself.

It's also quite true that the corporate hierarchy is merely there to serve a purpose and one should embrace it rather than shy away from it. I think also low-level employees might think that seniors have it better, and that is not necessarily true. They might have better hours, and pay, but also more responsibility and they are probably there because they have jumped through all the hoops before and played their cards well. Office politics is certainly not something to ignore, obviously one can always choose to do so or be more on the sidelines but that comes at a cost too and that is negative impact on their careers.

 

[HowardM1]

Let me expand on the topic of office politics, which I believe is in line with the spirit of this thread. While I agree that you can't become an expert solely by reading, you need to experience the situation firsthand to truly understand and learn to navigate it, as @zhulik88 suggests.

However, it is helpful to have a rudimentary understanding of the rules of the game before starting to play. This applies to office politics just as much as it does to football. The first rule is that there are no rules - well, not entirely true, but I couldn't resist. What I mean is that every office has its unique ecosystem with its own cultural and hierarchical dynamics. Your first task is to discern how your particular "jungle" operates before you can consider interacting with the "silverbacks."

Countless books, not to mention blog articles, have been written on this topic, so I won't attempt to instruct you on how to navigate this. People must figure it out for themselves. However, as in life, first, you need to understand your reference frame. Once you do, it should be easier to begin learning the rules.

Here's an example. Certain groups have a clear leader, like a CIO-led hedge fund. They might rule by fear or respect, but make no mistake, they are in control. The first step is to understand how their direct reports interact with them. But don't assume that just because others challenge them, you can do the same. In this world, it's probably best to focus on earning the respect of the CIO's direct reports or even those one level below.

On the other hand, a team with a leader but a relatively flat structure, which is more common in asset management, might be quite different. These leaders are more like the captains of a football team, appreciating the utility of a team and recognizing that even juniors have a part to play. They may even encourage you to challenge them if you feel they are wrong. But remember, they are still the boss, so tread carefully when challenging them.

A useful tip when challenging others is to allow yourself to be challenged and admit defeat or change your perspective, even if you're not entirely convinced. If you're keen to give it, you should be prepared to take it. From my experience, someone who constantly challenges and disagrees without ever admitting they might be wrong is not a popular team member. If they're a high performer, you might tolerate it, but if they're junior, it's not the best start.

In essence, as other responses have implied, understand your place in the pecking order.