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This video is part of our professional development series focused on career paths, networking, resume and cover letter, interviewing, and performing in the organization. This series compliments our business and law lecture series.
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Jason Mance Gordon
The Business Professor
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Okay, continuing on with our series on moving up in the organization, I want to talk to
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you a little bit about relationships within the organization. Not everything is about competence or performance or you, actually
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It's about other people, the effect that you have on them. So your relationships in the organization can be incredibly important
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Your relationship will affect what type of manager and leader you are for those below and beside you
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It can affect what type of employee or subordinate you are for those above you
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It can certainly affect either being pushed up by those below you or pulled up by those above you
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To start with, be a good teammate to those around you. While you're obviously trying to move up in the organization, do not do it at the expense of them, at the expense of alienating relationships
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Do everything proficient, as we discussed in other videos. Demonstrate your competence
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Volunteer strategically, etc. But at the same time, be a good teammate to others
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Be considerate. Contribute to the team mission, etc. All right, strive to make others better
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That includes the people on your team but also includes those below you
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If you work hard to make them better, they will work hard to make you better in return
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That reciprocity element is there So don just focus on yourself focus on those around you and their betterment as well as your own
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Have a mentor. Have someone you look up to that you believe can through their experience, through their
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general knowledge can provide you advice that is helpful to you, that will help you in career
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that will help you personally, that will help balance out or be complimentary to the skills
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or knowledge that you already have. A mentor should be able to challenge and expand you, to open up your horizons, to consider
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other things and to help you determine your own direction. Not give you direction but help you determine the direction
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Have a great relationship with your boss. Believe it or not, as horrible as that person could potentially be, as much as you could
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have potential for conflict, maintaining at least a positive relationship with that person
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is essential. Because within that organization, they control so much about your performance, about their
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level of recognition, and about the opportunities that you can potentially receive
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Try to maintain a positive and professional relationship with them no matter how much of
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a conflicting personality you have. Okay, with them. So make connections, continue to network
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Networking isn't just for finding a job. All the principles we talked about in the networking scenario you do that internally as well and particularly upward But don forget about downward Networking with your subordinates networking with the people left and right of you and
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networking upwards. Again, it's all about creating opportunity just like creating opportunity for a position
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creating opportunity to move up within the organization. Networking is key. And then continue to strive for fit
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You can be an individual as long as your individuality works within the organizational structure
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and allows you room to move up. You lots of time have the quirky mad scientist in research and development or the disagreeable
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statistician in the ysis department but those people generally don't move out of those
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roles because it's not assumed that because they are competent at their other role, the
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negatives associated with them often alienate them from other positions where they can be valuable
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So again, striving for fit. An anecdote that really resonated with me was when I listened to a lecture at Yale School
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of management where Carl Icahn was a guest speaker and he said that when he's evaluating
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a company for potential takeover, he looks towards the leadership, the CEO particularly
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and asks himself if he replaces the CEO, can he create value
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And he says generally in every company he targets to take over he can He believes that just replacing that individual can create value
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He described the typical CEO as the individual who was not the most competent person, not
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the most able or the best decision maker but the person who didn't make any waves, the
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person who was the most agreeable and liked by everyone and fit the best I guess in the organization
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And so he can replace that person with a better decision maker, someone who has the potential
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to create more value at the top and create value in that way
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Well that demonstrates something that's common across most organizations that individuals move up largely more because of fit than they do on a level of particular competence
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That is, the importance of your competence at a given task or undertaking diminishes
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in importance after a certain amount of time. As long as you meet a threshold for competence for what people expect from a position, exceptional
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competence doesn't necessarily move you up, it's that fit. Now early on in the career for the first 10 years, exceptional competence might be what
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moves you up but later on again it becomes how you fit with others and that you don't
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make waves, that you don't make the enemies that are going to halt the opportunities that
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present themselves for you
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