Highlights Episode | How To Step Up The Career Ladder

Tired of being stuck in your career for a while? This episode gives highlights of Season 4 of Small Talk with Rainkraft where Subha and Hasita give career lifting tips. The conversations range from how to handle layoffs to managing your own manager. To dig deeper, tune in to the series and accelerate your career growth.

Discussion Topics: How to step up the career ladder

• Introduction
• Your career doesn’t need the pressure of being your passion
• Why do I struggle to delegate?
• How not to take a layoff personally?
• Can we do goal setting differently this year?
• Damn good storytelling
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
• What to do when your manager needs managing?
• It’s not always about money
• Dealing with bad bosses
• How to enhance your career by cultivating executive presence
• Why startups need a people strategy
• How to elevate a pitch

Transcript: How to step up the career ladder

Hey, Small Talkers thank you for all the love you have showered on Season Four of Small Talk with RainKraft career-lifting conversations. We’ve been quite intentional this season, trying to keep the focus on how you can be better at the work that you do with the challenges that today’s workplace brings for each of us whether we’re running a business, or managing a team, or trying to grow something that has to take its shape and form over the course of time. The challenges are plenty. People management continues to be a top challenge in whatever shape or size your business is in. We’ve tried to address some of those. We’ve also talked about setting goals, we’ve talked about our own personal needs, about struggles, in terms of the work we do, whether it’s a career, or it’s a passion, and then sometimes the challenges of just waking up one day and finding out that the job is no more. It hasn’t been an easy year for many whether you’ve had to let go of people, or you’ve been let go. I’m sure the decisions were hard, and I’m sure the emotions ran high. And I’m sure you continue to turn up each day, trying to put one step before the other as you grow, as you build, and as you discover new challenges and new goals for yourself. So let’s just recap Small Talkers, and enjoy the best of Season Four. We started with

Episode One, your career doesn’t need the pressure of being your passion.

Subha: One of my favorite kinds of business icons, is Mark Cuban. And that’s really what he says that the current generation at work he says that I like to see that they bring in a lot of kind of all of themselves to the decisions that they make. They factor in a lot of things about the work that they do. It’s not just that, hey, I get to walk into this big brand organization at night in the morning, and I leave 12 hours later. And that in itself should be satisfying to me because they’re paying me to do that. That thinking is gone. And it’s about whether it ticks multiple boxes that it should because that’s how I want to live my life. And that’s important to keep in mind that for many of us, and I think it’s really not just the young generation, I think it’s those of us who are in our 30s 40s, and 50s and working and knowing that you have to be at it for another 20, 30 years we are realizing that there’s a lot to learn from this young generation too. And maybe the pandemic was that shot in the arm that we needed to make us rethink a lot of what we took for granted.

Hasita: So true. And the more I hire in content roles, and especially creative roles, this is becoming that much more evident. The youngest of folk, they are no longer saying, Okay, let me give it a shot, or let me see how I can be good at this. It’s come down to whether will I even enjoy being good at it. Eventually, it has to be satisfying to me that if I’m going to be putting in an X amount of time into an experiment, then the results have to be reasonably promising across multiple domains, I think and a big one is self-fulfillment, growth of the self as a holistic individual, and not just as somebody who has come from a certain pedigree, or has served a certain number of roles in certain kinds of companies. But also what have I taken away in the process, how much time have I spent nurturing my own priorities, whether that be cultivating relationships, whether that be forming meaningful connections with the people that we work with, which could be a huge priority today. I think 10, or 15 years ago, anyone speaking about building meaningful relationships at work would have been seen as an oddity. But today, it’s almost non-negotiable. And I think we all want that.

Episode Two, why do I struggle to delegate? Here’s a mindful approach for every business professional.

Hasita: I think sometimes when we delegate, people also feel more empowered, they feel like they own the system. In fact, I’ve had this person come up to me and say, Hey, all that knowledge you have is just composting in your own head when are you going to get it out and share it with us? And that was a huge wake-up call for me that the intent is there, but I have not figured out the how as well. So is there a process? How do you delegate? What do you look for?

Subha: Actually, for the art of delegation, there is science too. So what I point people towards is a simple thing called a skill will matrix. And I mean, any Google search will give you that, but it simply says this, when you’re looking to hand down or downstream a task, you have to look at two aspects. One is what is the skill? Or what is the ability of the person to do that task? And then what is their will? What is their intent, aptitude, and inclination towards work like that? So, the minute you have two parameters, any behavioral scientist will make it into four quadrants. So we have four types of people or four buckets into which folks could fall. That’s important because typically, you’ve reached this stage out of frustration, right, you already want to get this task off your list, and you want to hand it down to somebody, unless you know, and have a good idea of what is the kind of person you’re handing over to in terms of skill, and will, you will then not be allocating enough time for that transition. You’re expecting that from the next second on, I’ve given you all a brief overview now you pick it up and run. Now they will pick it up and stumble and fall, reinforcing your view that this was a bad idea to start with. Other kinds are, for example, you have, like an intern or a fresher, extremely high energy, like they want to please you, they want to do a good job, but they don’t know how to do it yet. So there, you allocate more time and say, Okay, let me guide you through this, bring me to draft one, bring me to draft two, I’ll tell you what’s going right, what’s going wrong, till they reach a stage where they are better at that task.

An Episode that really touched a chord,

Episode Three, how not to take a layoff personally.

Subha: I think it’s important in today’s context and business realities that in a way, like you said, it’s not something that happens only to someone else. Interestingly, even in the initial days of COVID, for a lot of us, it felt like someone else could catch COVID but I won’t, like I’m better off or whatever. And this is good to do as an employee anywhere, or in whatever form your employment takes, stay alert, and be aware of what’s happening in that industry. what kind of work is finding more work, what kind of products and solutions and services are finding more customers, where is there some kind of a drag, where is there some kind of a slowdown, keep close tabs on your organization’s performance, know the big picture, at least that, Hey, Q4 was better or worse than Q3, where are the areas that we’ve struggled, how could I possibly be impacted, who were the clients that we tried and didn’t get, what is that say, who are the clients who are kind of downsizing their work with us, what should that tell me about my own work and contributions, etc. You talked about funding in smaller companies and startups and sometimes even being wary of too much good news or if there’s just rapid hiring in some streams without seeing the client list to back it up or even the vision to back that up. Yeah, and keeping that resume ready and keeping your network kind of connected to the right people, or start thinking about who you should be talking to and what you should be exploring.

Episode Four, can we do goal setting differently this year?

Subha: Definitely, your career and the finances associated with it. And I would even call them out as two different things, right? There’s a career and what you do. And then there are your finances and your financial success, independence, and comfort. There’s family, and home, there is friends and relationships, there’s your physical health, there’s mental health, there’s spiritual and emotional health, and there is what are you doing for enjoyment and leisure and just happiness. So, so many parts of us which I feel we’ve been kind of excluded from the goal-setting process. What do you say?

Hasita: I actually hadn’t thought of it on those lines at all because like you said, it was always okay I’m this person at work, and then I’m this person outside of work. And if something doesn’t go very well in either of those contexts, then it’s probably in fact last two, or three months, there has been a period of just laying low, or taking it slow, doing less than I did before. And it felt good at the time. But I think I see now where this discomfort is coming from. Because in that sense, I’ve done a disservice to the work goal in the interest of the wellness goal. And because I had not seen it that way, there’s that little bit of discomfort in terms of how I’m looking at it perhaps.

Subha: Right, like even I look back at the year, and I say, Okay, work goals were X Y Z, and I hit them. And there were periods of lull or periods where I chose not to do something which we’ve talked about, like, taking a back step on the whole content agency bit. But those were also the same periods when I got to spend a lot more time with my daughters, one of who’s going to potentially leave the nest the next year. That’s been like a wonderful time spent with very meaningful high quality. But because there’s no goal or box to tick, it doesn’t seem to count.

Hasita: Yeah, oh, but it does count.

The wonderful holiday crossover with the Damn Good Marketing Podcast where we did some damn good storytelling.

Hasita: Also in the marketing context, sometimes the whole skill of storytelling has been hyped up to such an extent that we’ve begun to feel like it’s the domain of the few like only some people can go out there and tell a good story and the rest of us are just don’t do absolute nothing less. Sometimes it all exists on a spectrum, and because we’ve made it up to be this huge thing, which needs a coach and a guru, and a this and a that, we forget that we are all products of stories, the earliest human beings bonded around a campfire by telling each other stories, a lot of the texts that we’ve read and grown up on our stories, you know, the authors that we admire, they’ve all started somewhere telling a story, in fact, about Harry Potter there is an extremely well-known example. But I thought I should call out the fact that JK Rowling was rejected innumerable times before Bloomsbury decided to publish her first Harry Potter book. So it’s not so much that we don’t have it, sometimes we have to have some faith in it. And the three pillars of storytelling, which is context setting, and mic drop, so to speak, will always remain the same. And if you notice some of Barack Obama’s speeches, you’ll see that he’s got this way, even if he says only two sentences, you will see the context, you will see the setting in which it happens. And you will see the mic drop moment happen. So there are ways to learn it, I think in ways that we like. For me, one great way to learn and sometimes be inspired is to just be out there in the world.

Episode Five, and the dreaded question, where do you see yourself in five years?

Hasita: Feels like things are changing very quickly. And I think the world does belong to those who can ride that tide over and over and over again. And I’ve seen this with folk in the family, I’ve seen it with friends, older colleagues, the people who have been humble enough, I think, and open-minded enough to keep reinventing themselves, they seem to do just fine in life. So a very curious thing.

Subha: It is and I think that those who are kind of reinventing themselves for those of us who are seeing them, from an outside view, I have a feeling the individual is not so much reinventing, but just continuously living in the present. They’re just continuously saying, hey, what do I want to be doing today? What do I know? And hence, what’s the gap? And what else should I know? And justcontinuey working on the person they are today knowing that the future me is just going to appear.

Hasita: Maybe very different. You know Subha, that reminds me of a very particular person. And she was a colleague to both of us at one point. In fact, she started out as a client with RainKraft, and then she started working with me, and now she’s in her third role in the time that we’ve kind of known her. And I think that’s so true, because every time I talk to her, it’s always very reassuring because she sounds like someone who was exactly where she belongs. And I envy that so much, you know, in the sense that I look at her and I see someone who has not been afraid to. I was thinking that it was reinventing, but I see now that all she was doing and she was doing it with so much passion, but she was being present for whatever opportunity presented itself. I’m just thinking that going from being somebody’s client to somebody’s employee it’s not easy, especially on the ego. I’m saying it’s not always an easy transition to make.

Subha: And then many times the biggest barrier is the Ego, right? Why do people think? Or how can this be me? And that’s sometimes the biggest barrier.

Episode Six, what to do when you manage your needs managing?

Subha: So I think just start with, ask your managers to have that conversation, saying, Hey, what are the challenges that you’re facing? If I had to hear it from your point of view, because I know what problems I’m facing, like, do they even see it? Or what are they seeing? Where is their set of constraints coming from? And say Hey, in terms of a goal over the next six months, which ones are you going to solve for because it requires your own time and attention, and which ones do you think need a larger solution for the system. So set of goals could emanate from that, you could have a manager who says, Hey, I think I have not identified the right person for the right thing, and I need to delegate better, or I need to manage better, or I need to just sit down with them and give them the clarity because see you can role model, but unless you tell the other person, what behaviors you are expecting from them, they are just going to be a bystander and saying, Hey, wow you’re greeted this, thank you. So the conversation with your key team, I think, is a great starting point. And it will give you certain goals in terms of, you know, what processes and systems that you need to invest in. And I’m sure one of the key processes and systems that you need to take ownership of setting up is performance management. You know, 9 out of 10 employees, if you ask them, do you get feedback? They usually say no. Because they are expecting some kind of formal communication in some kind of review, some kind of assessment.

Episode Seven, it’s not always about the money.

Subha: No, it’s true, even from an employee perspective, have those conversations, initiate them. Maybe your manager is kind of lost in a world of other challenges. And this has not kind of hit their line of sight yet, but go and have or initiate that conversation saying, Hey, I am not fully here for this, this reason so what can we do about it? And help them be part of that process to change maybe the kind of work you do, the kind of people you interact with, the kind of output that you’re generating, or even how you’re being recognized and rewarded. But yeah, you’re right, some of it, you have to vocalize for yourself, mind reader, and you have to call it out, at least in today’s environment everybody is willing to hear that other view.

Hasita: I think finally, it all comes down to being seen and being heard on both sides.

Subha: Very true. I think, ultimately, yes, money is important. But it is one of the forms of reward and recognition that an organization can use, and you have to have to explore all of the others. And you’ll have to be mindful that that individual’s Money Story is something you have no clue about. So you have no point, in making assumptions, you can only learn more about it as you have these conversations. But otherwise, it’s just unfair to think of money as the one way to handle all of your employee’s troubles.

Episode Eight, dealing with difficult bosses, clients, and colleagues.

Hasita: So especially if it’s a new system, and you’ve just found yourself there, and somebody else is taking credit for your work is that bad? Or is that toxic? And how do you kind of get out of those loops?

Subha: No, that’s I think very real in this competitive environment where you don’t want to be the person holding any kind of pink piece of paper and you’re making sure that the system knows what you’re doing and how much effort and work you’ve put in. But what I like about the generation at work that I’m seeing now is that more and more individuals are feeling empowered to call it out. And I think that’s very important. That’s something that we didn’t do so much in the workplace 10, 15 years back where we said, Hey, the boss is the authority or someone who is senior to me by age, there was a huge kind of way to set the hierarchy, that if they’re even one batch senior to you, then you defer to them. Today, the founder is probably 10 years younger than you.

Hasita: And it just makes it that much more complicated as well. Right?

Subha: Yeah. So you have to say, Okay, I’m not going to take this personally. And I’m not going to hence be a bad employee, because the environment is not supporting me. But to assess the situation, and have very simple, clear conversations with the people involved. Think it through, structure it, don’t rush into it with a hot head, like, don’t rush into it at that moment where you feel slighted or where you feel betrayed, or you feel like they needed to share the credit, but they didn’t. But plan for it, call for that conversation that, hey, I’d like to just have 10 minutes of your time to talk about what happened in the meeting last week, and think through what you want to say, what is the problem you’re going to present, what do you see some options for the two of you, and also keep some space for emotions, you are a person.

Hasita: I was just going to say that because it’s so hard to not be hot-headed in situations like this. You did this, how dare you not? And I know, that’s the feeling that we’re kind of trying to get out. But maybe that’s not the most productive, but yeah.

Subha: Correct. So then keep space for those emotions by trying to think through how am I going to articulate this. So to say, hey, when that happened, I felt very hurt. I didn’t expect it from you. I thought we had the understanding that you know, we both worked, so try and articulate it as best you can.

Episode Nine, how to enhance your career by cultivating executive presence.

Hasita: So in the context of this conversation, say I want to actively go about building a strong presence. My goal is that in the next six months, when I enter a room, I want people to pay attention, I want people to know, even before I’m there, that I’m going to say something of value. Is there a recipe for really doing this? And if I’ve never done it before, where do I even begin?

Subha: And I’m glad that you’re coming from it from an angle saying, Hey, how can I be better at this, because that itself is an important awareness, or acknowledgment of the fact that this is a skill that you can add to your basket of skills. And it’s not something that, you know, we usually dismiss it, as hey, he or she is born with it, and I can’t be that person, and I’m not so charming. I think charm is something that gets mixed with presence. Charm is something completely different. And charm is yes, you have a very positive impact when you walk into the room when you’re able to get people to listen to you. But the executive presence in the context of work is a little more or is much more of a skill that you can acquire. And if I deconstruct it for you, I think two, or three things are important. A couple of them are easy ones, which a lot of people say hey, don’t judge a book by its cover, etc., etc. But I think appearance matters. And not in terms of Oh, you have to be good-looking and glamorous, etc. But it’s about how you present yourself at the workplace or how you present yourself for an occasion. Are you just dressed for that occasion, and are you carrying yourself in a way that kind of respects the occasion. The second is just simple communication skills. You don’t have to be overly eloquent and use big words, but you need to speak in a confident and concise manner. Always have data or even anecdotes to back up what you’re saying.

Episode Ten, why do startups need a people strategy?

Subha: You have hired them for lack of a better word as followers, so they are there to follow your vision, your ideas, your direction, and unless you take the time to keep showing it to them, how are they going to know which way to go? So they may know which way to go from a pure Hey, I’m here to write code for this particular piece of the product. But what else am I expected to do because you brought me in saying this is what I have to do and I’m doing it and suddenly you’re expecting me to do more and more because we’re growing? And so there are many ways in which it hits the founder and founding team, or the top management team very hard because suddenly, I hear from founders that, hey, these guys were so good and hence they came with me from my previous company. But now three years into this, and still, the entire burden seems to be on me. I have to wake up every morning and say, where are we on this? And where are we on that? And who’s doing what? And the people just don’t seem to be stepping up. What more do they want? Like I’ve given them such a great start.

Hasita: In that context, don’t you think having a people or a growth process and essentially, then siloing people into a certain vertical or a trajectory, is that not more harmful than helpful?

Subha: See, if you don’t do that, then you will find that there are a bunch of folks who are from their career and individual growth perspective, a little lost and meandering. They don’t know what to take ownership of because they don’t know that it’s their function, or it’s their job, or that doing so will get them certain rewards. I mean, at the end of the day, there’s some kind of reward we’re looking for.

Episode Eleven, how to Elevate a Pitch a good story about Yourself.

Subha: So let’s just like own it and say it. But I think in a way, what we want you listeners to take away is when you do get airtime, in any kind of forum, that the very stereotypical stuck in the left with your CEO, kind of 60 seconds, you know, even rooms that you enter, and there are two, three new faces in that room, or you get onto a conference call with a new client just do prepare for these situations, which you know, are likely in your life.

Hasita: Fair enough. And yeah, I don’t want to be noticed, right? I want my work to be noticed. And I want to be recognized as XYZ. And if that’s going to take a certain amount of practice in front of the mirror, then that’s what it’s going to take and practice with my dog or whatever, you know, finally.

Subha: Even the nuances of our language matter so much.

Thank you so much again, for listening. Please do remember to follow us on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts do leave us a review on Apple, it helps us grow in the charts. And that’s a wrap on a wonderful season four. Thank you again, Small Talkers for listening, and for helping us grow in the charts. We’ve been doing very well in the career category on Apple podcasts. And that’s thanks to your reviews, your ratings, and your listening. So please do keep that up on Apple and Spotify and keep listening and we’ll be back for an even better Season Five very soon.