Never Eat Alone Page 6

  I found the script helpful. I think it can help a lot of you as well, and I gratefully offer it to you here:

  1. State the situation. "You go right in and hit them with how you see it in the cold light of day, without being too inflammatory or dramatic," says Rosenberg. She made it clear to the A . M . A . that a) having no women speakers was w r o n g , and b) hiring her would be a step in the right direction. It makes sense that before you can speak persuasively—that is, before you speak from a position of passion and personal knowledge—you need to know where you stand.

  2. Communicate your feelings. We downplay the influence of emotions in our day-to-day contacts, especially in the business w o r l d . We're told that vulnerability is a bad thing and we should be w a r y of revealing our feelings. But as we gain comfort using "I feel" with others, our encounters take on depth and sincerity. Your emotions are a gift of respect and caring to your listeners.

  3. Deliver the bottom line. This is the moment of truth when you state, with utter clarity, what it is you want. If you're going to put your neck on the line, you'd better know why. The truth is the fastest route to a solution, but be realistic. W h i l e I knew Phil Knight of Nike wasn't going to buy anything based on one fiveminute conversation on a bus at Davos, I did make sure to get his e-mail and tell him that I'd like to follow up with him again sometime. Then I did so.

  4. Use an open-ended question. A request that is expressed as a question—one that cannot be answered by a yes or no—is less threatening. How do you feel about this? How can we solve this problem? Can we meet up again sometime soon? The issue has been raised, your feelings expressed, your desires articulated. With an open-ended suggestion or question, you invite the other person to work toward a solution with you. I didn't insist on a specific lunch date at a specific time with Phil. I left it open and didn't allow our first exchange to be weighted down by unnecessary obligations.

  6. The Networking Jerk

  Ambition can creep as well as soar.

  — EDMUND BURKE

  He is the man or she is the woman with a martini in one hand, business cards in the other, and a prerehearsed eleva-

  tor pitch always at the ready. He or she is a schmooze artist, eyes darting at every event in a constant search for a bigger fish to fry. He or she is the insincere, ruthlessly ambitious glad-hander you don't want to become.

  The networking jerk is the image that many people have when they hear the word "networking." But in my book, this breed of hyper-Rolodex-builder and card-counter fails to grasp the nuances of authentic connecting. Their shtick doesn't work because they don't know the first thing about creating meaningful relationships.

  As I learned the hard way.

  If you knew me as a younger man, you may not have liked me. I'm not sure I liked myself that much. I made all the classic mistakes of youth and insecurity. I was pretty much out for myself. I wore my unquenchable ambition on my sleeve, befriending those above me and ignoring my peers. Too often people put on one face with their subordinates, another with their boss, and another one yet with their friends.

  When I became responsible for marketing at Deloitte, I suddenly had a lot of people reporting to me. I had some very big ideas about what I wanted to do—things that never had been done from a marketing standpoint in the world of consulting. And now finally I had a team with which to execute them. But instead of viewing my employees as partners to be wooed in achieving my long-term objectives and theirs, I saw them as called upon to carry out my tasks.

  Add to this my young age (I was twenty years younger than any other member of the executive committee), and you can understand why the resistance among my staff was holding all of us back. Tasks that I thought should have taken hours ended up taking days. I knew I needed to do something, so I reached out to an executive coach, Nancy Badore, who had been coaching highlevel CEOs before there was a name for such a thing.

  The day of our first meeting, sitting in my office, we barely had a chance to exchange pleasantries before I blurted out, "What do I need to do to become a great leader?"

  She looked around my office for a few moments and said nothing. When she finally spoke, it struck me to the core. "Keith, look at all the pictures on your wall. You talk about aspiring to become a great leader, and there's not one picture in your whole office of anybody but you: you with other famous people, you in famous places, you winning awards. There's not one picture in here of your team or of anything that might indicate what your team has accomplished that would lead anybody like me to know that you care for them as much as you care for yourself. Do you understand that it's your team's accomplishments, and what they do because of you, not for you, that will generate your mark as a leader?"

  I was floored by her question. She was absolutely right. Had I shown the genuine concern I had for the lives my employees led outside of work? Why hadn't I made an effort to make them part of the leadership? I'd been doing it with my bosses from day one.

  I realized then my long-term success depended on everyone around me. That I worked for them as much as they worked for me!

  Politicians understand this in a way too few executives grasp: We vote for the people we like and respect. Great companies are built by CEOs who inspire love and admiration. In today's world, mean guys finish last.

  My friend and author Tim Sanders taught me there are two reasons for the end of the era of mean business. First, we live in a new "abundance of choice in business" in everything from products to career paths. Choice spells doom for difficult colleagues and leaders. "At a time when more of us have more options than ever, there's no need to put up with a product or service that doesn't deliver, a company that we don't like, or a boss whom we don't respect," he writes. The second reason is what he calls the "new telegraph." "It's almost impossible for a shoddy product, a noxious company, or a crummy person to keep its, his, or her sad reality a secret anymore. There are too many highly opinionated and well-informed people with access to e-mail, instant messaging, and the Web."

  The bottom line is if you don't like someone, it's easier than ever to escape him. When you don't have others' interests at heart, people will find out sooner rather than later. Our culture demands more of us these days. It demands that we treat each other with respect. That every relationship be seen in mutually beneficial terms.

  When you look back upon a life and career of reaching out to others, you want to see a web of friendships to fall back on, not the ashes of bad encounters. Here are a few rules I can suggest from personal experience to ensure that you never become a Networking Jerk:

  1. Don't schmooze.

  Have something to say, and say it with passion. Make sure you have something to offer when you speak, and offer it with sincerity. Most people haven't figured out that it's better to spend more time with fewer people at a one-hour get-together, and have one or two meaningful dialogues, than engage in the wandering-eye routine and lose the respect of most of the people you meet. I get e-mails all the time that read, "Dear Keith, I hear you're a good networker. I am, too. Let's sit down for fifteen minutes and a cup of coffee." Why? I ask myself. Why in the world do people expect me to respond to a request like that? Have they appealed to me emotionally? Have they said they could help me? Have they sought some snippet of commonality between us? I'm sorry, but networking is not a secret society with some encoded handshake practiced for its own virtue. We must bring virtue to it.

  2. Don't rely on the currency of gossip.

  Of course, using gossip is easier. Most people lap up such information. But it won't do you any good in the long run. Eventually the information well will run dry as more and more people realize you're not to be trusted.

  3. Don't come to the party empty-handed.

  Who are the stars of today's Internet world? Bloggers. Those freewheeling cybernauts who set up sites and online journals to provide information, links, or just empathy to a community of like-minded individuals. They do it for free, and they're often rewarded with a devout foll
owing of people who, in return, offer as much as they receive. It's a loop. In connecting, as in blogging, you're only as good as what you give away.

  4. Don't treat those under you poorly.

  Soon enough, some of them will become "overlings." In business, the food chain is transient. You must treat people with respect up and down the ladder. Michael Ovitz, the famed Hollywood superagent, was said to be a master networker. A scathing and relatively recent Vanity Fair profile, with dozens of anonymous and not-soanonymous sources taking shots at the man, was a very public expression of a dazzling career that had gone somehow horribly wrong. People asked what happened? Ovitz has some amazing interpersonal skills, but he wielded them disingenuously. People he no longer needed he treated with indifference, or worse. It wasn't surprising that these same people not only reveled in, but may have also contributed to, his fall.

  5. Be transparent.

  "I am what I am," the cartoon character Popeye used to say. In the information age, openness—whether it concerns your intentions, the information you provide, or even your admiration—has become a valuable and much-sought-after attribute. People respond with trust when they know you're dealing straight with them. At a conference, when I run into someone I've been dying to meet, I don't hide my enthusiasm. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I've admired your work from afar for quite some time and been thinking how beneficial it might be if we could meet one another." Coy games may work in a bar, but not when you're looking to establish a deeper, more meaningful connection.

  6. Don't be too efficient.

  Nothing comes off as less sincere than receiving a mass e-mail addressed to a long list of recipients. Reaching out to others is not a numbers game. Your goal is to make genuine connections with people you can count on.

  I'm embarrassed by the way I learned this lesson. I had always heard that sending out holiday/New Year's greeting cards was a good idea. So I began a practice when I graduated from Yale to send a holiday card to everyone in my contact database. By the time I was at Deloitte, that list was thousands of people long and I was hiring temp help to address and even sign the cards at year's end. Well, we all can see this coming. The intention was good enough until a college roommate noted (actually gibed) how appreciative he was to get not one but actually three cards one year . . . all with different signatures. It's not about mass, it's about a real connection.

  If you're not making friends while connecting, best to resign yourself to dealing with people who don't care much about what happens to you. Being disliked will kill your connecting efforts before they begin. Alternatively, being liked can be the most potent, constructive force for getting business done.

  CONNECTORS' HALL OF FAME PROFILE Katharine Graham (1917-2001) "Cultivate trust in everyone."

  Tragedy transformed Katharine Graham from wife to publisher overnight. She took over the Washington Post in 1 9 6 3 after the death of her husband, Philip Graham. Her shy and quiet demeanor seemed unfit to deal with the demands of one of the most important newspapers in the country. Graham proved everyone w r o n g . She helped to build one of the great newspapers and most successful businesses in America. During her era, the Post published the Pentagon Papers, took President Nixon head-on over Watergate, and ruled Washington's political and media scene in a style that was inimitably her o w n .

  In fact, it was this style that is her most lasting legacy. Running the Post with compassion, kindness, and sincerity, Graham became a powerful figure. Graham's influence gave her an ability to empower others—from the highest echelons of society to its lowest—with a sense of dignity and respect.

  Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote the following a few days after Graham's funeral:

  On a beastly July Sunday some years a g o , I returned to Washington from the beach and took a taxi to the parking garage across the street from the Washington Post where I kept my car. A tent had been erected on the Post's own parking lot. It was for a company party, given for people whose names you never hear—those un-bylined, non-TV-appearing types who take the ads or deliver the paper or maybe just clean the building. In the heat, I saw Katharine Graham plodding toward the party.

  She was old by then, and walking was difficult for her. She pushed her w a y up the ramp, moving in a laborious fashion. She had a farm in Virginia, a house in Georgetown, an apartment in N e w York a n d , most significantly that hideously hot day, a place on the water in Martha's Vineyard. Yet here she was—incredibly, I thought—doing the sort of thing vice presidents-for-smiling do in other companies.

  Analyze the life of Katharine Graham, and one inescapable theme emerges: Despite a lifetime free from financial worry, and a social status bordering on royalty, she made friends with everyone—not just those w h o could assist her newspaper or augment her position within the Beltway.

  Most reports on her funeral mentioned celebrity names like Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Tom Brokaw. But you don't have to do much heavy lifting before you find an extensive list of non-celebrity attendees. Here's a sampling:

  • Irvin Kalugdan, a Fairfax County special-education teacher who founded a student break-dancing team with a $ 3 5 0 Washington Post grant

  • Rosalind Styles, from the Frederick Douglass Early Childhood and Family Support Center, for which Graham had helped raise money

  • Henrietta Barbier of Bethesda, a woman retired from the Foreign Service, belonged to a weekly bridge club of about sixty women at the Chevy Chase Women's Club. She said Graham never missed a session: "She was bright about the game, and she took lessons, and she was serious."

  All of which reveals an inner truth about the skill of reaching out to others: Those w h o are best at it don't network—they make friends. They gain admirers and w i n trust precisely because their amicable overtures extend to everyone. A widening circle of influence is an unintended result, not a calculated aim.

  Graham's relationship with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, more than anyone, highlighted her flare for friendship qua friendship, as opposed to friendship for ulterior purposes.

  On the surface, the two seemed the unlikeliest of pals: After all, the crucial moments of Graham's career were stunning blows to Kissinger's. First, in 1 9 7 1 , there was Graham's decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, confidential documents detailing the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. A year later the Post, at Graham's behest, began its Watergate investigations. Both led to the embarrassment of the Nixon administration in which Kissinger served.

  Yet there was Kissinger, the first speaker to eulogize Graham at her funeral. He and Graham frequently attended movies together.

  How did Graham form such an alliance, such a friendship? How did she create connections with everyone from anonymous teachers to the world's most famous and powerful? By knowing her boundaries and cultivating trust in others; by being discreet; by the sincerity of her intentions; by letting the other person know she had his or her best interests at heart.

  In an interview with C N N , Kissinger remarked: "It was a strange relationship in the sense that her paper was on the opposite side from my views very often, but she never attempted to use our friendship for any benefit for her newspaper. She never asked me for special interviews or anything of that k i n d . "

  II. The Skill Set

  7. Do Your Homework

  Spectacular achievement is always preceded by spectacular preparation.

  — ROBERTH SCHULLER

  Whom you meet, how you meet them, and what they think of you afterward should not be left to chance. As Winston Churchill would tell us, preparation is — if not the key to genius — then at least the key to sounding like a genius.

  Before I meet with any new people I've been thinking of introducing myself to, I research who they are and what their business is. I find out what's important to them: their hobbies, challenges, goals—inside their business and out. Before the meeting, I generally prepare, or have my assistant prepare, a one-page synopsis
on the person I'm about to meet. The only criterion for what should be included is that I want to know what this person is like as a human being, what he or she feels strongly about, and what his or her proudest achievements are.

  Sure, you should also be up-to-date on what's happening within the company of a person you want to establish a relationship with. Did the person have a good or bad quarter? Do they have a new product? Trust me, all people naturally care, generally above and beyond anything else, about what it is they do. If you are informed enough to step comfortably into their world and talk knowledgeably, their appreciation will be tangible. As William James wrote: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

  These days, doing such research is easy. Here are a few places to start:

  • The Internet. Be sure to check out the company's Web site. Use search engines, like Google, to check a person's affiliations. Going to a meeting without Googling someone is unacceptable.

  • The public library, where you'll find books, periodicals, magazines, trade journals, etc. Check for articles written by or about the people you intend to meet. If there aren't any, read up on the person's industry or type of job. Most of this can be found online, too.

  • Literature from the company's public relations department.

  Call and explain that you have a scheduled meeting and would like some background information.

  • Annual reports. They'll give you a good idea of where a company is headed and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead.