Expect to Win

Key Concepts

“AUTHENTICITY”

“No one else can be you the way you can; this is your source of power within the organization.” (p. 1)

“If you are preoccupied with trying to play a role or trying to behave, speak, or act the way you think others want you to, your mind won’t be free to perform at your highest level, be flexible, and be able to adapt to changes. Putting on an act eventually becomes exhausting and uses up valuable mental capacity that could instead be directed toward making important contributions at work.” (p. 2)

“At all times, you must be able to explain why you belong in a particular position, why you deserve a promotion, why you deserve the raise or the highest tier of bonuses, or simply why you are so good at what you do.” (p. 4)

“Part of being authentic is choosing a job and an environment that you are comfortable working in, one where you know that you can comply with both the written and unwritten rules.” (p. 7)

“Life is way too short to walk into a job every day feeling like you are not operating at 150 percent and excited about doing a great job. If you are resenting your environment or your job, then your authentic self will get lost in that company, as will your competitive advantage. Further, it’s likely that your career trajectory will stall and not move upward, or, worse, will head downward.” (p. 8)

“When I’ve had difficulties in my career, it generally has been when I had lost sight of who I really am or of what my goals were. It was those times when powerful Carla, who easily speaks her mind, was not present, and fearful, unsure Carla was at the table.” (p. 14)

“BE THE ARCHITECT OF YOUR OWN AGENDA”

“Your agenda will help keep you on track, help you stay in touch with your goals, and ensure that you garner satisfaction and enjoyment from your job on a daily basis. Unpleasant things will happen in the course of your career—that’s reality. You’ll get a bad boss, the market won’t cooperate and you’ll have some deals go bad, or there will be layoffs and management changes. By staying on your personal course you’ll be able to stay focused on your goals and what you need to do, no matter what is happening around you.” (p. 32)

“Without an agenda, it is easy to get distracted with what’s going on around you or to get discouraged when you are having a challenging time in your career.” (p. 34)

“Sure, it is important that you generally be in the rhythm of timing for promotions or new assignments, but they must be relevant and right for you.” (p. 36)

“The Ninety-Day Rule”

“In your first ninety days in any new job, assignment, or responsibility there are three things that you must accomplish to establish the foundation for what you can do, will do, and where you will fit into the organization: 1) you must learn the basic skill that is necessary to perform the job; 2) you must learn the unspoken rules of the game (the informal politics of the environment), and 3) you must get to know who the pertinent players are in the organization and understand the key relationships that you have to develop.” (p. 55)

“This is an important point, because it’s the first ninety days you are in a job that dictates your success trajectory. It is usually around this time that the company starts to assess if it has made a good hire. If you make a good impression and the opinion of you is good, the trajectory will lean toward outstanding. People will think you are a smart, capable person with great potential to add value to the firm. You have succeeded in starting to establish your “halo.” You have heard of the “halo” effect: Once people think you are smart or that you are really outstanding in your job, then essentially you can do no wrong.” (p. 62)

“How People Perceive You Will Directly Impact How They Deal with You”

“+ Your Self-Presentation + The Baggage of the Beholder = The Perception about you in the Marketplace” (p. 82)

“I am often asked, ‘How do you deal with knowing someone has a certain perception about who you are and your capabilities because you are a woman or, particularly, because you are a woman of color?’ The first thing I do is to remind myself that if they are meeting me for the first time, then they don’t know anything about me firsthand; I did not contribute to any perception they already have. Second, I tell myself to be careful not to pick up their baggage and carry it as my burden.” (p. 86)

“Approaching your nonfans can be a little intimidating at first, and you may not feel that you are getting very far in the initial meetings. The way they approach you may not change immediately; it may take two or three such meetings to change their minds about you and your abilities.” (p. 90)

“In the case of the people who are not fans of yours, you will create a different impression of who you are in their minds simply because you solicited their opinion. You send a very clear message that you are interested in their opinion, and that you also intend to try to be the best professional that you can be.” (p. 90)

On mentors and sponsors

“Because the mentor/mentee relationship is so personal, you have to rely on your gut and instincts regarding the level of trust you place in this person. If you don’t feel comfortable honestly sharing all of the dimensions of what is going on in your job with this person, then they should not be your mentor! You may instead want to consider them an adviser.” (p. 105)

“Ideally, your sponsor should be your boss. But that does not always have to be the case. In an environment where decisions are made in a committee structure, your sponsor can be anyone on that committee.” (p. 121)

“Consider your sponsor. They are benefiting you by using their political and social capital to help you achieve your objective. But, in return, they will want to know, to use an investment term, what their ROI, or return on investment, will be. In other words, what will they receive in return for their expenditure of their capital on you? Professionally, the ideal return is the credit or the increase in power they’ll receive by being associated with making something, such as a promotion, happen for you.” (p. 124)

“HOW TO USE YOUR VOICE”

“Think about the perception that you want to create and then use words that will support it. For example, if you want people to think that you are analytical or quantitative, then you should incorporate numbers into your language. When someone asks your opinion on something or why you used, for instance, certain assumptions in a model, you would want to answer something like, ‘There are three reasons why I think . . .’ or ‘I used five key assumptions when building this model.’ If you want people to think you are creative, then say things like ‘I like to think creatively, so I tried to incorporate a few out-of-the-box ideas when developing this solution,’ or ‘This problem called for creative thinking, since this is one of the toughest challenges we have seen yet, so I . . .’” (p. 132)

“By using this type of language, you set the listener up to think of what you are saying within the framework you have defined. If you do it repeatedly and reinforce it with your actions, they will come to see you in the way that you have defined.” (p. 132)

“Your voice is not only important to help you communicate in meetings, but it also will help you articulate your career goals as well as what you expect to receive in the way of opportunities, promotions, and compensation. There is an old adage in the sales and trading business that says, ‘You have to ask for the order.’ Women, especially women of color, must understand that to receive the order you have to ask for it.” (p. 140)

“Let’s say you expect to be promoted next year. Then you should ask for your promotion this year. You should have conversations with your manager and supervisors letting them know your goal in enough time to clear up any skill or experience deficiencies. If you wait until near promotion time to have this conversation, then you might hear responses such as, ‘You are not ready because you haven’t achieved this level of sales or had exposure to this type of product,’ or ‘You haven’t managed enough people on your platform,’ or ‘The job you have is not one that will get you promoted to the next level.’ If you wait too late to get this feedback, then you are too late to apply corrective action.” (p. 142)

“HAVE A PENCHANT FOR TAKING RISKS”

“I would argue that in today’s dynamic, fast-paced corporate environment, the proliferation of information and technology has somewhat leveled the competitive knowledge landscape; and what differentiates you is your willingness to take risks.” (p. 151)

“Achieving Success and Moving Ahead = Performing Extremely Well + Aligning with Internal Politics + Taking Risks” (p. 151)

“It is my belief that there is never any real danger in taking well-thought-out calculated risks. In my many years on Wall Street, I’ve never seen anyone who has taken a risk that hasn’t eventually paid off for them. No one I know who has ever stepped out and taken a risk later turned around and said they regretted it. In fact, it’s usually the opposite.” (p. 162)

“Ask yourself the following three ‘test the waters’ questions:

1. “Is this new opportunity going to give me skills and experience I would not have if I stayed in my current position for the next twelve months?

2. “Will the new position expose me to people and relationships that I would not otherwise be exposed to if I stayed in my current seat for the next twelve months?

3. “Will the new job create new branches on my decision tree of opportunities going forward that will give me more choices after I leave the new position at some time in the future?” (p. 166)

“Show Up with Your Best Self Every Day”

“When I was eighteen years old, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be successful at whatever I wanted to do. But as a few things went wrong, my internal language, the things I thought and said to myself, started to change. Rather than know I could achieve all I wanted, I started to think that maybe I would be successful; I started to hope things would work out. These were mediocre thoughts, and I was getting mediocre results in my career.” (p. 201)

“You have to tell yourself every day that you know what you want to achieve will happen. And if you don’t truly believe it, you have to, as the kids say, act ‘as if.’” (p. 202)

“The reason is because if you are bored and not challenged in most careers, it’s hard to stay sharp and motivated. In the state you won’t perform in the way you need to in order to remain relevant. You don’t ever want to get too comfortable. If you are sleep-walking through your day, you simply won’t be as effective.” (p. 208)

Quotables

“Hard work and smarts are not enough to succeed. For the success equation to be complete, hard work, skills, and intelligence need a few more additives, such as strategy, relationships, politics, tenacity, and faith.” (p. ix)

“Before you start to blame the organization for not seeing what you offer, ask yourself, Am I showing them that I can penetrate or influence client thought? That I can win client business? That I care about being promoted? Or am I assuming that the organization should know this or observe this on its own? Am I bringing my contributions to the table in a visible and compelling way?” (p. 7)

“We all have bad days. But when you find yourself entertaining these kinds of negative thoughts, stop dead in your tracks and refocus on these facts: You won this job because you were the best for the job. You are smart, quick to learn, and can quickly acquire any skill you might be lacking.” (p. 20)

“Your hobbies and interests could be exactly what open the door to a relationship that, over time, could help you seal the deal with a client, be invited to an important meeting, or be that added element that helps you get the promotion.” (p. 25)

“It’s what you do when things don’t go the way you hope and you find yourself saying, ‘They did this,’ or ‘They did that.’ ‘They won’t give me a fair shot.’ ‘They just don’t want to promote or pay me.’ When you find yourself saying ‘they, they, they’ every time you start to explain why your career is not moving in the direction you’d like, then it’s time to check yourself.” (p. 42)

“Do not let the fact that you made a mistake become your focus and a distraction; this only draws your energy away from moving forward in the direction of your goals. You must work to be forgiving of yourself and your mistakes. Seek to learn from them and quickly move on, and eventually, no matter what your career goals, you will achieve them with grace, professionalism, and much success.” (p. 48)

“People tend to value and reward traits that are similar to theirs—it is human nature. Looking back over my career, I can draw an exact correlation between times when I was lined up with that part of the ecosystem that is consistent with who I am as opposed to the times when I was not aligned and my level of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, with my compensation.” (p. 52)

“Let’s go back to those three adjectives again. When thinking about three words you would choose to describe yourself, keep in mind that those adjectives must be ones that are consistent with who you really are and be attributes that are valued within your organization.” (p. 95)

“Your adjectives will change over time, because what is required to be successful at each level will change, and frankly you will change and grow as a professional. There are expectations that exist at every level of seniority in an organization, and there are perceptions that exist about what a person at the level should speak, act, and look like.” (p. 99)

“When I was a third-year associate, I was traveling with a woman senior to me at the time, and she said, ‘Carla, your main problem right now is that you are too willing to show it when [you] don’t know something. You are way too honest about that. When you appear unsure of a fact or an answer to a question, people start to doubt that you know what you are doing. Let me share with you a little secret that ‘the boys’ taught me early in my career when I was a young associate: Frequently Wrong, but Never in Doubt. It means that you always answer with confidence even if you don’t know the answer. Show no doubt, even if you are wrong.’” (p. 135)

“Your network should consist of at least four kinds of relationships: upward relationships with senior people; lateral relationships—those with your peers and the assistants of senior people in your network; downward relationships with people junior to you; and external relationships with people outside of your firm or industry, such as people on nonprofit boards that you serve on, at volunteer organizations, or colleagues at other firms both within and outside of your industry.” (p. 190)

“You must have something that you are passionate about that makes you feel alive, that brings you joy to balance out the professional life that, no matter who you are or what your title, will never consistently fulfill you.” (p. 192)

“No matter what stage you are at in your career, you must look at your job, at your life, through the lens of a winner. Challenge yourself every day to be creative and masterful. Expect to win and you will!” (p. 210)

“One of the most important pearls, however, and the one that has been and continues to be the most powerful, is the pearl of understanding not only who I am, but whose I am” (p. 211)