Does online networking count?

May 21, 2014

"LinkedIn doesn't count as networking."

So said self-described 'insane networker' Mary Kopczynski when I first heard her talk about networking on an 85 Broads call last year. I interviewed Mary recently for my latest podcast, The Hell of Networking, but during the show itself we didn't get onto the topic of online networking or women's-only neworks (we did, however, cover plenty of other stuff, so I hope you'll tune in). I'm covering online networking in this blog post and will talk about women's-only networks in another post later this week.

When I asked Mary to explain her earlier statement, she took a step back. It turns out she actually bought stock in LinkedIn, so clearly she knew the platform had potential. But she did reiterate that for her, true networking is about meeting people in person, then connecting with them again later, possibly by phone or email. She said meeting someone at a conference, and then finding that person's LinkedIn request in her inbox the next day, was 'totally forgettable'. She would rather the person did not connect with her until they actually had something they wanted to ask her. As long as they reminded her of how and when they met, and were polite in getting in touch, she said she is only too happy to respond and help them out if she can.

But she does use LinkedIn to good purpose. She told me about a time a friend had got in touch with her and told Mary she was thinking of applying for a job at a certain company. Mary said, 'Do nothing - dont apply yet!', sprang onto LinkedIn, realized she was connected to the company's CEO, and immediately wrote him a message asking him to meet with her 'amazing' friend for coffee just to see if she might be a good fit for the company. I forgot to ask whether her friend got the job. 

I've found Twitter a good networking resource in that I've been introduced to people over Twitter who I've subsequently met in real life, people with whom I have a lot in common. I've also 'met' people on there who I've never met in real life but who I've had some other kind of meaningful connection with, such as finding they're a fellow podcaster and ending up being interviewed for their show. I love the serendipity of Twitter. To me, LinkedIn has a different, more formal feel, perhaps because it's so obviously about work and career advancement.

My beef with online networking - OK, LinkedIn -  is this: far too many people I don't know send me LinkedIn requests, with absolutely no explanation as to why I should say 'yes'. To my mind, this is the worst aspect of this kind of networking. 

I am always amazed that people I have never met would send a generic request with no explanation as to why I should connect with them. The whole point of LinkedIn, I realize, is to get connected to people who are connected to other people who you may eventually wish to connect with, but what motivation does someone who doesn’t know you have for introducing you to someone else? They can’t advocate for you in any way as they have never met or even spoken to you, so what’s the point? I wish people would realize that if you are going to send a complete stranger a LinkedIn request, you must tell them why it's worth your while to connect with them, what you have in common, etc. I have said ‘yes’ to strangers who have messaged me making clear why we should connect. But (feeling slightly bad about it of course – after all I am female) I generally ignore the others. It’s such a tiny thing to write a line or two explaining why you’re worth connecting with. Why on earth don’t more people do it?

But I’d be glad to hear from anyone who feels differently. I don’t believe in expanding my LinkedIn network simply to have a massive network. If you accept requests from those you don’t know, why do you do it?

I agree with Mary Kopczynski that online networking can be useful, but you have to use it judiciously. If you haven't spoken to someone for a while or you only met them once at a conference - someone you're connected to on LinkedIn - make sure to remind them, if you message them, of when and where you met. You have to deploy some manners and a bit of charm, I think, to get people to respond. 

Again, your thoughts are welcome. What have I forgotten here?

Closing the confidence gap

March 30, 2014

"When we aren't confident, we don't succeed as we should." - Katty Kay and Claire Shipman in The Confidence Code

Barbara Lynch is that rare thing: a woman running a professional kitchen. Actually she's running not one but several, all in Boston, and she also owns a hospitality group that brings in $20 million a year. Lynch, now 50, initially learned the ropes under the hard-knocks tutelage of irascible restaurateur Todd English. According to the New York Times Magazine piece about Lynch and her push to promote more female chefs, she's won three James Beard awards (Beard was a famous US chef and food writer). She's nominated for Outstanding Restaurateur, and if she won she'd be just the second woman to do so. And yet a telling detail about Lynch appears further down in the piece, as she discusses her recent appearance on TV: "I"m still not that confident in myself."

Confidence, or the lack of it, is one of the greatest impediments to women's success. It's why I started The Broad Experience, and it's something I've touched on in various shows. The reasons women aren't a larger presence in public life - or in more top roles at work - don't simply come down to childcare. One vast, towering reason is this: we lack the self-belief that comes naturally to men.

I've been wanting to do a show on confidence for ages, and I hope to finally bring that off within the next couple of months. Two nights ago I stayed up reading The Confidence Code: The Art and Science of Self-Assurance--What Women Should Know. It's the new book by journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who co-wrote Womenomics several years ago. I was so hyped up after the introduction and first chapter I had trouble getting to sleep. Hyped up because everything they write about - and back up with research - rings bells for me. They deftly encapsulate this nagging issue that runs beneath many women's lives. Lack of confidence has been a key problem for me over the years. I want to remedy the situation, but decades of self-doubt don't evaporate easily.

I've seen men I work with exude confidence, and I've seen the effect it's had on their lives. People who appear confident, as Kay and Shipman write in the book, are "awarded high social status" by those around them. They get promoted. And those people don't even have to be competent. It's all about their aura of self-assurance.

I was fascinated to read about the work habits of Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, and German chancellor Angela Merkel. Apparently both women over-prepare on work matters in order to be absolutely sure they're dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' - they want to be certain no one else can trip them up. Lagarde told Kay and Shipman that she and Merkel somehow assume "that we don't have the level of expertise to grasp the whole thing." How familiar that sounds. But it's coming not from me or one of my friends but from one of the most prominent professional women in the world. (For a great audio interview with Lagarde, listen to this recent NPR piece.)

I'm eagerly anticipating the rest of the book, and I'm keen to interview Kay and Shipman for The Broad Experience.

I received a press copy of the book, which is published on April 15th. You can attend a May webinar hosted by Kay and Shipman if you pre-order a copy from The Confidence Code website. 

Punished for negotiating?

March 14, 2014

One of the themes I keep coming back to in life and in my work as a journalist is women and negotiation. I find negotiating for more money quite uncomfortable, and so do nearly all my friends. I recommend the book Ask For It to any woman who will listen. So I was fascinated to read this piece on the website Inside Higher Ed about a recent (female) PhD graduate who tried to negotiate a job offer at Nazareth College in upstate New York. The college didn’t want to negotiate. And it went one step further – it rescinded the offer altogether.

Linda Babcock, co-author of Ask For It

Here’s a quick summation of the story (I strongly urge you to read the whole piece on Inside Higher Ed). The woman, who is anonymous, wrote to the college, beginning with the line, “As you know, I am very enthusiastic about the possibility of coming to Nazareth. Granting some of the following provisions would make my decision easier." She then went on to list them. They included an increase in her starting salary (to $65,000) and maternity leave, among others. She ended the email with, “I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others. Let me know what you think.”

The college wrote back saying it thought she was better suited to a research university, and added it was withdrawing its job offer.

The piece has been picked up by multiple blogs and sites including Jezebel (where as you might expect, large helpings of snark are added). But Jezebel makes a good point: this is the exact reaction women fear when they negotiate, or even think about negotiating, and it's why a lot of women don't negotiate at all. Would this same thing have happened to a man?

I just called Linda Babcock to talk about this. Linda is the co-author, with Sara Laschever, of Ask For It. Unless you consider yourself a brilliant negotiator, you should order a copy now – it truly will change your way of thinking about this stuff. She is also an economics professor at the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon Unvieristy in Pittsburgh, and the author of several much-cited studies on women, men, and negotiation. 

“I hate it when my research is right,” she told me. She knows from her work that women receive backlash when they try to negotiate, particularly if they negotiate in an up-front way, as this newly minted academic did. Hiring managers do not like it when a woman comes across as demanding. That behavior flouts expectations of how women are meant to conduct themselves, and can elicit strong negative reactions.

“We can’t prove it wouldn't have happened to a man, but it’s just awfully suspect,” says Linda.

But a listener of mine, a female academic who doesn't want her name used, thinks differently.

“I don't think that was a clear case of sexism,” she says. “I would never try to do that kind of negotiation in e-mail, as when done that way, it looks like a huge list of demands.” She also thought the list of requests showed a mismatch between the candidate's expectations and the reality of academic life. 

“I also think [the requests] probably really rubbed the department the wrong way," she goes on, "because most faculty who have been teaching for a while would have done so without any of those benefits, they may already be feeling like the new hire is being brought in way above their own salaries (at that stage in their careers), and it can breed immediate resentment.” That said, this listener adds that she feels the hiring committee’s response was “completely inappropriate”.

Linda Babcock says even if the faculty at Nazareth College regarded this woman’s requests as over-the-top, couldn’t they have called her to disucss them rather than withdraw the job offer? My two cents: I believe the woman made a mistake in not calling the college to talk over the offer, and sending an email instead, because the email certainly reads as rather abrupt. Linda agrees. “We want women to use a very relational, friendly approach, and it’s hard to do that in an email. The email comes off as very cold, direct, impersonal, and that is not the way people like women to negotiate." 

All the research shows women have to be extremely careful in the way they ask for more. Societal expectations are that women are ‘nice', accommodating creatures. People - men and women - don’t like it when we act any other way. This may be a case where a female candidate came across as too uppity for the faculty's liking, and was punished for it.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this below. Do you think a man writing such a blunt email would have been rejected in the same way?  

How to be a successful giver

February 14, 2014

Adam GrantLast year I read a New York Times Magazine piece about a young professor at Wharton called Adam Grant. He was 31 and an academic star. The title of the piece was Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead? I devoured it, enjoyed it, but shortly thereafter moved on and forgot about it. Until just now, when I listened to a compelling Grant talk about his research into giving. This was during another of the 85 Broads webinars I regularly log into. Below I outline his suggestions for becoming 'a successful giver', someone who is happy to help others and does better in their career as a result.

For his book Give and Take Grant wanted to research his hunch that something extra was involved in success - something in addition to things like hard work, talent, and luck. He contends successful people are more likely than others to be 'givers'.

I think for women in particular the topic of giving can be complicated. As a sex, we're expected to be kind and generous. Some of us embrace that role wholeheartedly, extending ourselves to everyone we meet to the extent that we become exhausted. More on this - and why it's a bad strategy - later.

Grant divides people's 'reciprocity style' into three types: givers, takers, and matchers. Givers are the ones who are going to show up early or stay late to help someone out. They will willingly share their knowledge with others. Takers, he says, "never want to give, only take", and we associate them with "free riding, social loafing" and leaving the grunt work to someone else. Matchers are obsessed with fairness. "They go around treating their relationships like accountants manage money, so that everything zeros out and matches up evenly."

During his research (which involved both original research and combing through others' work) Grant found that ultimately, givers were most successful at work. You might think being a matcher is the best type to be: everything fair and square. And as for givers, don't we all know someone who is so helpful they never get anything done themselves? Yet, Grant says, "Givers add more value to organizations – research on this is very strong."

One of the organizations Grant looked at was a sales firm. Givers brought in 68% more in sales volume than anyone else. But here's an interesting thing: at first, givers don't do well (he looked at this in three different work contexts). Their generosity does seem to hold them back in some ways, presumably because they're spending 'too' much time helping others rather than doing their own work, and in the case of sales, because they refuse to flog rubbish products. But over time, because of the way they relate to others, givers win out.

How to be a successful giver:

• First, being an 'unsuccessful giver' means trying to help all of the people all of the time. You're always devoting yourself to others and you make yourself "vulnerable to exploitation by takers".

• "Being a successful giver means being helpful while not sacrificing your own goals," says Grant. "They are careful about who, when and how much they help." Givers will act less generously with the greedy person, the taker, knowing that person isn't likely to reciprocate or even appreciate their efforts. Also, Grant says, successful givers prioritize helping certain people - people they know they have things in common with and are likely to be truly able to help (listen to show #26 - Get Ahead, No Guilt - to hear the Financial Times' Mrs. Moneypenny on this topic).

• Grant himself helps people in this order: family, students, colleagues, everyone else. He prioritizes by using this lineup, i.e., if a student asks him for something he considers, 'Will this affect my time with/relationship with my family?' If not, he helps out. And so on.

• He says successful givers "also differ in when they help – they're not willing to drop everything." They will set aside windows of time to help others and spend the rest of the time on their own work. Some argue this is selfish (again, see Mrs. Moneypenny) but the airplane analogy works here: put on your own oxygen mask before helping the person next to you. Those who spend too much time giving "are at risk of burnout and underperforming."

• "Givers who focus on themselves as well as others, because they sustain their energy and effectiveness, they are able to give more."

• Grant advocates 'chunking' your giving rather than 'sprinkling' it over the course of a day. He says if you devote a particular day or part of a day to helping people out, you get "a significant boost in energy and happiness." When you 'sprinkle' your giving, there's no noticeable difference in the way you feel (thus you're less likely to keep it up - at least that's my conclusion).

• "Another mistake failed givers make is they confuse giving with being nice. Agreeableness is the tendency to be warm, friendly, welcoming," but, he says, we're too apt to take those characteristics at face value when we shouldn't. And, conversely, to undervalue what he calls "disagreeable givers". These are "the people you’d describe as prickly, sometimes a bit too blunt, maybe they give blunt feedback, but they do so with others’ best interests at heart."

In short, it is wonderful to be able to help others - it gives you a warm glow (especially when they're openly grateful, but Grant warns us not to base our giving on this), and, often, the person you've helped will help you in turn. And it seems those of us who give of ourselves in just the right way may actually be more successful at work as well.

Right. I'm off to help someone out.