Real stories

Trust Yourself and Take Your Own Path

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I turned 40 this year.  I don’t know about you, but in my 20s, I always thought that 40 year olds were very responsible people. I also thought that 40 year olds seemed to know what they were doing — they seemed to have life more figured out. They were usually married, with a house, career, and 2.2 kids. At that time, I may not have wished to be old, but I wished I and life more figured out. ...  read more

Don’t Care Too Much at Work

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It may sound counter-intuitive for me to recommend that you shouldn’t care too much at work.  However, after reading this story, hopefully you can understand and appreciate why you should not care too much, if you want to accelerate your career success.

On Monday, I had a morning phone meeting with one of the data team leaders who was doing some reporting for our enterprise level initiative.  I was not looking forward to it, as the lead person is one of those less-than-competent folks I mentioned in my recent article, How to Deal with Others’ Incompetence.
 ...  read more

Transition to Managing People is a Roller Coaster Ride

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roller-coaster

If you want to advance in your career, advancement to people management is an important milestone to achieve.  It takes 5-10 years to get promoted to manager.  That’s like the initial climb into a Roller Coaster ride.  The top looks wonderful and it’s thrilling to keep climbing up and up the team member ladder until eventually you reach the day where you are promoted. ...  read more

Someone Took Credit for Your Work – What to Do

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In the work-place, is it better to ensure you individually are given credit for your work, or that the team benefits from your work?

My team recently submitted a proposal of which I prepared more than 75%. In fact, of the 25% my analyst (who is junior to me) prepared, I had to revise significantly. The final paper was jointly signed by both of us. Our Chief Risk Officer reached out to my analyst commending his great paper, cc:ing my boss. My boss then congratulated the analyst on his great work as well. ...  read more

Recovering from a Work Setback – Dos and Donts

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I had an important meeting to lead yesterday. After six months of managing this project, I was hoping this meeting would be the final one needed to get there necessary agreement from all the key business stakeholders. Everything was looking good — we already went through 4 rounds of feedback, and addressed all the concerns voiced over emails or on previous calls. Some of the key stakeholders that I thought would have serious objections were now big supporters of our reject output. This last meeting was just going to be a formality to put the bow on the final product. ...  read more

Speaking Up in Meetings – Why and How to Do it

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speaking up

When I first worked at McKinsey after college, I was pretty scared of speaking up.   I distinctly remember sitting in the large conference room with another analyst, our manager, the senior manager, and the Partner on the project, to discuss our strategy for a consumer business client.

The Partner discussed a strategy that frankly didn’t make sense to me, but he had 10+ years of experience, so I didn’t say anything. I was convinced that I didn’t know any better — I was only an Electrical Engineer with little business experience. I had some thoughts and suggestions, but I wasn’t sure if they were sound. ...  read more

Dealing with Difficult Personalities – What Not to Do

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difficult-personalities

How should we deal with difficult personalities?  I have been thinking about how to write about this topic for three weeks now.  I realized it’s hard, because there are so many potential dimensions and scenarios to this question:

  1. Who is this person that you consider “difficult” – a senior executive, boss, peer, colleague, customer, vendor, or support staff?
  2. What is your definition of “difficult” – does this person appear elusive, rude, incompetent, belligerent, passive aggressive, unreliable, back-stabbing, etc..?
  3. What do you need to accomplish with this person, but it’s been “difficult” – are you trying to get information, delegate work, reach a common goal, get a buy-in, etc…?
  4. What could you accomplish if this person stopped being “difficult” – would you get more done, have less stress, feel happier at work, etc.?
  5. What are the risks to your job if this person continues to be “difficult” towards you – tense work environment, slow work progress, cannot work around them, etc?
  6. Does this person seem “difficult” to everyone, or just you?

I decided to use one of my past experiences with a “difficult personality” to illustrate how we can deal with these types of situations.  At my last job, I had to work well with a lot of cross functional colleagues in order to get information and achieve results.  I remember the first meeting I had with a new colleague (let’s call her Anna).  Anna is a data team lead who provided invaluable data analysis for my projects.  She had a great reputation for being smart and excellent at her job.  I also met her casually in the hallway, and thought she was quite nice. ...  read more