our performance will guarantee a successful career is a dangerous one. This assumption results in thousands of women being blindsided. And it happens every day.
Where does this assumption come from? As young girls, we are taught academic success is a must. Don't you remember what a great feeling it was to come home with a good report card and have your mom and dad tell you how proud they were? I recall it well. Receiving good grades was important, and I worked hard to excel in school. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I got the message that doing well in school was necessary for me to be successful in whatever I chose to do in life.
Success in school is based on industriousness. You work diligently, study, and prepare, and you are rewarded with good grades. This belief and behavior, however, does not translate to the workplace.
Early in my career, I worked for a national health care organization. I joined this company as a regional manager and after eight years worked my way up to area vice president. I was a rock star! I won every top-performance award for my region and loved the work and the people I worked with. So I wasn't terribly concerned when we started to hear rumors about reorganization. I had survived a couple of mergers and acquisitions and had always landed on top.
The reorganization became a reality, and one day we had a conference call with the CEO to announce the changes. There were two ways this would impact me. First, there were some changes in the structure of my region, and a new vice president role was created. Second, I had a new boss, a buddy of the CEO from outside the company and another industry.
I was excited about the possibility of a promotion to vice president. I asked for the promotion. I lobbied for the job. All of my 18 direct reports called the new SVP and recommended he choose me. I was confident the job was mine.
And then I was blindsided. The vice president position went to someone else from outside my region. I was devastated, angry, and frustrated. After investing eight years of my time, energy, and talent, I had been overlooked. I felt betrayed.
What else did I need to do to move up? I had a history of great performance, and I had worked the politics to some degree. After all, I had asked my new boss for the promotion. I had talked to my direct reports to let them know I was interested in the new position. Many of them recommended me for the job. I thought I had done everything right. But did I?
No!
I learned many lessons as a result of this experience. I learned that I was very naïve. I learned that focusing on my work alone was a mistake. I learned that understanding the way decisions are made in your organization is critical. It is essential to know who has the power and influence over the decisions that impact your career. And it is paramount to build allies and champions across the organization.
I failed to build a relationship with my new boss because I didn't like him. I didn't understand how the decision about the vice president position would be made. I didn't understand the politics.
In the workplace, the rules of the game are not as simple as you'd think. Although hard work and performance are important, they are not the sole basis for advancement. Yes, your track record is critical, but unlike school, the workplace has different criteria for success. Often promotions are based on personality, on the ability to engage in the organization's politics and promote oneself with intention, and to network and build relationships.
Can you see what happens when we ignore these things? We are still working on an assumption that helped us reach academic success. We behave as if this assumption is valid. But it doesn't help us in the workplace. In fact, it works against us and sets us up to be blindsided.
Potential land mines for women are everywhere. We would like to believe that gender bias has dissipated, but many organizations now have a subtle form of bias that is much more challenging to anticipate and navigate. This unconscious bias adds to the complexity women face when navigating the political landscape. This is why this book is so important. While it's true that both genders need to embrace the culture and politics of their organization, women face different challenges. Due to their exclusion from the inner networks of power and influence, unconscious bias can ambush them at any time.
I have written this book because I believe wholeheartedly that women must get savvy about workplace politics if they are serious about their careers. We need to get serious, not only because we deserve it, but also because companies need the expertise and perspective of both genders. Sure, there has been a lot of research and discussion about the challenges we face as women in attaining leadership positions. But I know, and I'm certain you do as well, that we have the talent to lead and that our leadership helps organizations prosper.
We need to be at the table! We need to be there because we bring value and a unique viewpoint, but getting a seat is still complicated for women. There are people in your organization with different agendas and allegiances that you need to understand in order to be successful. Political savvy is about relationships and a focus on what others think and feel. It's about aligning yourself with key stakeholders and building relationships of trust and influence. You need these relationships in order to thrive. You need information about the politics of your workplace in order to survive! It's important to understand that attaining a leadership position not only helps your career but also helps your company.
For those of you who have missed out on a promotion, this book is for you. For those of you who still believe that your talent and hard work are enough to assure you a successful career, this book is also for you, because you are on a dangerous path covered with political land mines!
Everything I learned about how to navigate the realities of the workplace and get promoted is included in my Political Toolkit, which I'll share with you in this book. These tools helped take me from an entry-level position to running a national company, and they have helped hundreds of women get promoted in competitive male-dominated industries. So if you are serious about your ambition and ready to do the work, you will find in these pages a proven process to get ahead and stay ahead.
The tools provided here will show you a painless path to navigating the workplace effectively so that you can achieve the career of your dreams. So, let's begin!
1
Politics in the Workplace
How It Works and How Women Fit into It
Sallie Krawcheck, once named the most powerful woman on Wall Street, said it felt like she was fired when a restructuring at Bank of America eliminated her role in 2011. She was asked to join the bank to turn around its Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust wealth management businesses. What seemed like a perfect role for her turned out to be a blindside. Bank of America was a mixture of several cultures due to acquisitions and leadership changes. Though Sallie attempted to navigate and understand the ever-changing political landscape, she was considered an outsider with few ties to any of the powerful cliques within the bank.
Sallie, based in New York, found it challenging to build relationships and camaraderie with her team and the key stakeholders who were in the corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina: “It's hard to be part of the inside jokes when you're not there or you aren't having a few minutes swapping stories while grabbing a coffee between meetings. I was never part of the meetings-before-the-meetings, or the meetings-after-the-meeting, or the ‘real’ meeting; I was just part of the official meeting (which in some companies can be the least important meeting of them all).”1
Sallie wasn't in the “in crowd.” Not only was she not located at the corporate headquarters, but she was still viewed as an outsider to Bank of America culture. She was not invited to these informal meetings where the real politics play out, where important decisions are made. Despite her attempts to gain access, she was unable to maneuver through the complex politics. Because Sallie was astute, she understood her vulnerability as an outsider. But, like many of us, Sallie also believed that her business results would help to maintain her status and substantiate her value to the bank. “I realized I wasn't part of the ‘inner circle.’ But I mistakenly believed that if my team delivered strong business results – and, as I repeatedly told the team, if we were the business no one had to worry about – we would be successful. But on the day I left, the business was ahead of budget and gaining share.”