Let’s start this chapter with a rather surprising research finding uncovered at the Change Anything Labs. A whopping 87 percent of the folks we surveyed say they have bosses who’ve prevented them from getting the pay, promotions, or other opportunities they wanted because of a concern they’ve had about their performance.1
From within this same population, close to half of the respondents also believe they are in the top 10 percent of performers in their company. So it’s easy to understand why more than two-thirds of these employees have been surprised by the negative things their managers have said about them in a performance review. They believe in themselves and their accomplishments, but their bosses have a far less rosy view.
Now, if the fact that your boss doesn’t always think you’re among the tip-top performers were merely a statistic without consequences, then the idea that your boss undervalues you would just be annoying. But if as a result of that view, your boss doesn’t give you, say, the 2 percent raise that is being offered to a select few employees—and if you’re thirty years old, earning $60,000 per year, this loss of a 2 percent raise adds up over your career to $59,780. And if, heaven forbid, you were denied a promotion you deserved, over your career this could cost you more than $250,000.
In addition to taking a financial hit, what happens to morale and work effort when people who think they are solid performers feel they’re underappreciated and under-rewarded? According to sociologist Daniel Yankelovich, discretionary effort takes a real hit. That is, the gap between how much energy, effort, and creativity an employee is offering today and how much the employee could give your firm if he or she so desired is surprisingly large. More than two-thirds of employees report that they have much more discretionary contribution than they currently give.2 In one study we conducted at the Change Anything Labs, more than half of the employees we surveyed suggested that when it came to effort at work, they did the least amount possible without getting fired.3
So, what’s a person to do? You think you’re doing well; your boss holds a less enthusiastic opinion. Or you think you’re a top 5 percent performer and your boss puts you in the top 30 percent. Either way, this gap in appreciation is costing you money, it can be a real drain on your morale, and both you and the company are suffering. What will it take to get others thinking what you think and get your career back on track?
To see what it takes to turn a career around, we’ll follow the story of one of our Changers, Melanie R. Like many hardworking people, she was always able to figure out how to get ahead. She waited tables to put herself through college and took night bookkeeping jobs to pay for her MBA. But now, six years into her career, she’s stuck. She’s just learned she’s been passed over for a key job assignment—for the second time.
Melanie knows she’s one of the smartest and most productive people on her team. But in spite of her tireless effort, she seems to be spinning her wheels. In fact, if she can’t get her career on track, she’ll be at risk of being pushed out of the firm. What does she need to do to get her career back on track?
To answer this oft-asked question, we’ll look at research into the common behaviors of top-ranked performers. These are the folks out there who are getting the bonuses, plush assignments, and promotions. What are they doing that others aren’t?
Over the past couple of decades we’ve studied the most influential and respected employees in more than fifty companies and dozens of industries. We entered organizations and asked thousands of employees (including the bosses) to give us the names of the three people whose opinions, work, and abilities they most admired. We wanted to find the go-to people—and we did.
When we looked closely at these highly valued individuals, we soon learned that they hadn’t been singled out because of a popularity contest. Rather, they had won a productivity contest. They weren’t politicians; they were valued resources.
Next came the real work. We had to uncover what these high performers did that made them so valued—by peers and bosses alike. Here is what we found. Across organizations as different as sawmills, government agencies, tech start-ups, and charitable nonprofits, top performers practice the same three vital behaviors.
1. Know Your Stuff. Okay, we admit, this sounds a bit vague, so let’s clarify what we mean by “stuff.” Top performers put regular effort into ensuring that they are good at the technical aspects of their jobs. If their job is to sort lumber, they fall asleep at night pondering sorting strategies. If they’re in marketing, then they voraciously acquire the best marketing knowledge available. You get the picture. They work hard at honing their craft.
2. Focus on the Right Stuff. In addition to performing their craft well, top performers contribute to tasks that are essential to the organization’s success. This is important to grasp. Not all contributions are equal. Highly valued employees help manage what Stanford University’s Jeffrey Pfeffer calls the company’s “critical uncertainties.”4 If a company is having trouble manufacturing its product, top performers find a way to help resolve that problem. If the firm is fighting legal challenges, top performers apply their specific expertise to that issue. If nobody has figured out how to market the product, top performers are hip deep in solving that problem.
And how do top performers get these mission-critical assignments? First, they are intensely interested in understanding where the organization is going (with emphasis on the key challenges). They study their own company. Next (and this is their true genius) they equip themselves to make their best and highest contribution to the core elements of where their company is going. Top performers work on their skill set and their access to critical tasks.
3. Build a Reputation for Being Helpful. But doing your job well and ensuring that you’re helping deal with the company’s most important challenges isn’t enough. It’s necessary but insufficient. Individuals who are singled out by their colleagues as the go-to folks in the company are also widely known across their teams and sometimes even their entire organizations. They are far more likely than average to be recognized by name, and, more importantly, people describe them as experts who are generous with their time.
Taking time to help their co-workers puts top performers at the hub of important networks. Take note: This is not your typical networking observation. Top performers don’t get to know people simply to build an impressive collection of business cards. Theirs is not primarily a self-serving motivation. Top people are widely known and respected by others not because of their frequent contact, charm, or likability, but because they help others solve their problems.
Now that you know what it takes to be a highly valued employee in general, you’ll need to tailor these three generic vital behaviors to your specific circumstances. For instance, what aspects of your job do you really need to nail? You have what’s written on your job description, but does this document cover some of the more subtle, yet essential, components of your job that distinguish top performers from the multitude in the middle-performing ranks? Next, what are the “critical uncertainties” in your company, and how do you even find them? Finally, who exactly should know you and see you as being helpful?
To answer these questions, let’s return to Melanie, our accountant who felt stuck in her career. In spite of her energy and intelligence, she was at risk of being dropped at the next reduction in force.
Melanie began by measuring herself against the three career vital behaviors. She asked, “Do I know my stuff?” “Do I focus on the right stuff?” and “Do others see me as helpful?” But she didn’t ask just herself these questions; she sat down with her boss and asked him as well. He took a bit of coaxing, but as he sensed Melanie’s sincerity, he began to open up. Here is what he had to say.
“Melanie, you came here as a good accountant. Your grades were right in line with what we want, but you’ve kind of sidetracked yourself. You’ve volunteered for a couple of big HR projects, and that reduced your billable hours.”
Melanie had been working on the wrong stuff. She was spending too much time on something that interested her as opposed to what was important to the organization. She was lagging in billable hours, and none of the other contributions she made could make up for that. So, she volunteered to work on a major account where she could rack up some serious time. And she was turned down flat.
Melanie made a lunch appointment with Tara, the manager who had turned her down, and learned two more important bits of information. First, Tara didn’t want anyone on her team who hadn’t already been “bloodied” at another major account. She told Melanie that she needed to prove herself with a tough and demanding client before coming to work on her team.
Second, Tara looked at Melanie’s HR assignments as evidence that she wasn’t up nights studying ongoing revisions to tax law—and she was right about that. Melanie had been working long days and weekends trying to complete the HR projects and still maintain her billable hours. She hadn’t been using her extra hours to study tax law. And now she was behind. She didn’t know her stuff the way she should.
At this point Melanie was a bit disappointed, but at least she knew where she stood on the three vital behaviors:
She no longer knew her stuff well enough. She needed to skill up on tax law.
She hadn’t been working on the right stuff. She needed to boost her billable hours.
She wasn’t viewed as helping out on tough jobs because she had never been assigned to a major account. She needed to prove herself with an especially demanding customer.
Now, what will it take for Melanie to turn her vital behaviors into vital habits? Mastering tax law meant taking a company-sponsored seminar that met twice a week. It also meant she’d have to do an hour of tough homework every night. Building her billable hours meant giving up lots of personal time and agreeing to travel almost every week. The demanding customer would come naturally if she worked the billable hours she planned.
As we now know, Melanie has no hope of turning these behaviors into habits unless she is both motivated and able to do so. So she started with a gut check for motivation. Melanie’s first question was, “Is it worth it?” Her immediate answer was, “Absolutely!” She had already invested in a college education and a master’s degree. Getting her career on track would mean she could double her salary in the next five years. Failing would mean disgrace in her own eyes.
With this in mind, Melanie was realistic about the barriers she’d face in changing her own behavior. The extensive study and travel were going to take some adjustment. She knew it would take more than a motivating moment to stay on track and achieve her goals. So she created a six-source plan to influence her own behavior. The plan included several tactics from each of the six sources.
The real challenge to Melanie’s personal motivation came when she had to put her TV away in a closet, sell her season basketball tickets, and stay after work and study tax law. These enticing distractions made up her crucial moments, or times when she was most tempted to toss her plans out the window. At these moments, when Melanie was at her weakest, she really needed to focus on her long-term future rather than her fleeting pleasures. She had to find a way to make the distant and murky future more salient, plausible, and compelling.
To get started, Melanie told the whole vivid story. She examined each step in her career and what each would really mean to her. Then it hit her. Melanie had taken a picture of a beautiful vacation home she had stayed at during a company retreat a few years back and decided that one day she’d own one just like it. So she put the picture next to her computer to remind herself when she sat down to study each night of what she might enjoy one day if she stuck to her guns.
Next, rather than beat herself into doing work when she didn’t feel like it, Melanie made a rule that she could choose to slack off—but only after reciting a Personal Motivation Statement she carried on the screen of her mobile phone. Notice how Melanie used value words: “I’d like to see myself as a talented contributor. I’d like to increase my income so I can buy a house. I’d like to have the respect and admiration of the smartest people in our company.”
After slowly reading this statement, more often than not Melanie felt more motivated to set aside the present for an even better future. She rarely slacked off when she used this tactic.
Next, in order to love what she hated, Melanie visited her default future by taking a hard look at several co-workers who had leveled out early in their careers and worked the same job for a couple of decades—without promotions or real pay increases. She took time to imagine exactly what her life would be like if she followed the same path.
As Melanie continued shaping her new habits, she set up an automatic e-mail to arrive in her inbox on days when she expected to struggle the most to keep on task. The e-mail contained the organizational announcement of those who were promoted the last time she was passed over. Seeing her name missing on the e-mail list reminded Melanie of the future she would continue to face if she let herself get distracted.
Finally, Melanie made the whole process a personal competition by keeping a score of her billable hours and posting them on a big poster in her living room. She made a game out of trying to increase the numbers every week.
These tailored-to-Melanie tactics became her way of learning to love what she hated. Whenever Melanie felt dispirited, bored, or exhausted with the demanding plan she had created for herself, she would run through these motivators, and they would help her persevere.
When Melanie originally searched for her vital behaviors, she completed a skill scan. After learning what she needed to be good at in order to succeed at work, she decided to become an expert in the new tax laws. She figured she could master these laws in a few months.
Melanie then attended a company-sponsored tax-law seminar and volunteered to take notes for others who couldn’t attend. After she wrote up her notes, she met with the instructor to make sure they were accurate.
Melanie quickly learned the value of deliberate practice. At first she took notes, studied more, and then took more notes—but it didn’t take long until she realized that she needed to apply what she had learned, and then get feedback from an expert. Otherwise, she was going to forget everything. So Melanie wrote recommendations for each of her clients (based on the new tax laws) and asked her manager and the course instructor to review them. They gave her feedback, and she quickly made changes. Melanie then repeated the process with the clients.
In a matter of a couple of weeks, perceptions of Melanie began to change. People appreciated her willingness to pass on her newfound skills to them. She was surprised at how quickly people had softened what she thought had been deeply entrenched attitudes about her.
In order to make use of social motivators and enablers, Melanie held a transformation conversation by talking to Tony, her life partner, to make sure the extra work involved in getting her career back on track would fit into both their long-term aspirations and their daily life. Historically Tony had been an enabler—encouraging Melanie to “carpe diem” and not do so much at work. But after hearing Melanie’s goals and plan, Tony agreed to support her by encouraging her to take classes and do homework—rather than tempting her with entertainment options. The two of them also agreed to opt out of their softball league for the year.
Melanie took additional steps to ensure that when it came to her new plan, her boss would be a friend—and not an accomplice to her old work habits. He had hired her and wanted to see her succeed. She met with him every two weeks to keep him updated and to make sure she was pursuing his priorities. She was careful not to appear insecure with constant demands for attention—but used these modest check-ins to synchronize with his priorities.
Melanie also added new friends by connecting with two people from the tax-law seminar. The three pooled their notes, shared insights, quizzed each other, and encouraged one another to keep on track. Before each lecture they called each other, talked about what they had read, and ensured that they would be attending class.
To make use of financial incentives, Melanie placed some of her own hard-earned cash at risk and then asked Tony to be her referee. Melanie put ten twenty-dollar bills in a jar. Every Friday, if Tony agreed that she had made her goal for the week, she took one of the twenty-dollar bills out of the first jar and put it in a second jar, labeled “New Bicycle.” If she didn’t make the goal, she had to put the twenty-dollar bill into a jar labeled with the name of the political party she opposed. At the end of ten weeks, Melanie had made every career advancement goal and had $160 to put toward a new bicycle. And she’d sent only forty dollars to her least-favorite political party.
Melanie made her new habits easier to practice by enlisting the help of her physical surroundings as well. First, she used cues. As described earlier, she positioned a photo of her vacation home next to her computer, she placed a motivational message on her cell-phone screen, and she e-mailed herself the promotion announcement that was conspicuously missing her name.
Melanie also built fences. Rather than face the temptation of cutting class and going to a basketball game—consistently for an entire season—Melanie sold her tickets. No use revisiting that choice over and over again. She also made a firm rule that it would be okay to slack off from her plan, but only after she read her Personal Motivation Statement.
Melanie used tools. She audited her calendar and found that two of her smaller customers were taking up more of her time than they should—causing her to spend too little time with her larger customers. So Melanie set up a plan to touch base with her key customers every week and decided how she would throttle back with the smaller customers.
Melanie also set aside an hour every day after work to study her course work. She found she had to structure this time into her schedule in advance or it just never happened. She made a recurring to-do reminder in her calendar that beeped and buzzed until she scheduled her next study session.
Our Changer Melanie R. was eventually successful in getting that next promotion, but only after she studied the three career vital behaviors. She asked herself: “Do I know my stuff?” “Do I focus on the right stuff?” and “Do others see me as helpful?” To answer these questions, Melanie talked with her boss and other key people and discussed how each high-leverage action applied to her particular career. From there Melanie created her own vital behaviors along with a six-source plan to keep her on track. No single tactic kept Melanie motivated and able, but when she used them in combination she learned what worked and what didn’t and eventually succeeded.
Before you work up your own plan, let’s make sure that your circumstances fit the advice that follows. If you work for a ten-person company, the three people above you are all owners, and you want to advance, you don’t need career advice; you need a new job.
However, if you have had opportunities to advance but have been passed over, then read on. If your performance reviews have included negative surprises, or if you feel like you’ve been set aside and left to flounder, or if you believe that the entire promotion and review process is a mystery, unfair, political, and random, it’s time to shine a light on what’s really going on and to take your career in your own hands.
With some personal problems such as smoking, using harmful drugs, or spending in excess, the vital behaviors you need to enact are clear—stop doing what’s bad for you. It may not be easy to stop, but at least you know what to do. With career challenges, though, it can take some work to tease out the unique behaviors you’ll have to bring into play in order to get unstuck.
Earlier we mentioned that Melanie talked to her boss about her vital behaviors. For Melanie, it took some coaxing, but her boss finally explained to her exactly what he thought Melanie needed to do. Let’s take a look at what “coaxing” can look like. It can be challenging.
Let’s say you’ve explained to your boss that you want to be a valuable asset to the company and are seeking advice on what you should do to improve your chances of advancement. Or perhaps you’re trying to respond to recent concerns your boss expressed during a performance review.
In either case, your boss explains that your problem is that you’re not a very good “team player.” He seems earnest enough and believes that he’s given you valuable advice. In truth, you don’t know what your boss means. So you ask him what being a team player actually entails. He pauses for a second, takes a deep breath, and then explains that you need to be “easier to approach.” This has you curious. Since when have you been hard to approach? What does that even mean?
The problem here is that you’re looking for behaviors you need to enact, and your boss (like most people) isn’t very good at describing them. First he describes a quality or characteristic—the kind of things you find at the top of a performance review form. He says you need to be a “team player.” Qualities such as these are not behaviors and don’t tell you what to do.
Second, your boss describes a result. According to him you need to do something (and this is what you’re trying to discover in the first place) so that others will think you’re easy to approach. In this case your boss has told you what to achieve, not what to do. He just thinks he’s told you what to do. This type of advice is akin to a coach who tells you that you need to “score more points.”
Results masked as behavioral advice are typically nothing more than a painful reminder of the blindingly obvious. In either case, whether people are describing vague qualities or obvious results, you must stick with the conversation until the person advising you identifies the specific actions you need to take in order to know your stuff, do the right stuff, or gain a reputation for being helpful.
To get at your vital behaviors, ask for the latest example of the problem you’re trying to solve. Ask what you did or didn’t do. Probe for your specific action until the behavior becomes obvious. If you don’t identify behaviors, you certainly won’t have found your vital behaviors.
There’s a second problem with finding your vital behaviors. In the previous example, individuals were unable to give you a behavior description because they confused results and qualities with behaviors. But sometimes the people you talk with don’t want to tell you what you need to do to improve. They fear that the feedback will be too embarrassing or insulting, so they hide the truth.
This problem calls for a confidant. As you’re trying to find the career vital behaviors you need to enact, include in your search a co-worker who is willing to be frank with you. When it comes to getting feedback, you don’t need accomplices who pretend that your current skill set is just dandy. You need honest coaches who will tell you where you need to improve.
So, lay out your plan for discovering your vital behaviors. Ask: Do you know your stuff? Do you do the right stuff? Do you have a reputation for being helpful? How are you going to discover where you’re coming up short? Whom are you going to talk with, and what will it take for them to describe your vital behaviors?