Tips for women who are new to the job!

Author Liz Cornish has just published Hit the Ground Running: A Woman's Guide to Success for the First 100 Days on the Job, and she gave Women Work! a sneak preview of her book! Read on for pieces of advice for women maneuvering through their first few months in a new workplace.

Office Politics

Personal Abilities

Leadership

Personal Growth

Office Politics

There are always informal power structures. Sometimes there are subcultures, even cliques. Notice who influences the conversations and decisions and to whom people look for direction and information. Recognize the extent to which the group allows the informal leader to exert influence. Informal leaders are often out for their expertise, ability to listen, capacity to influence others, and/or personal qualities such as charisma or sense of humor. Such people are often the first to learn or approaching problems within the organization. They are an extremely valuable commodity and can be your strongest allies- or most persistent critics.

Your Boss

By now, you should know the boss's take on the organization's strategic direction and, specifically, what is expected of you. Learn how he or she wants to communicate and be kept informed. Here are some other thoughts for managing your boss:

• Part of your job is to make your boss's job easier. Examine issues from his or her point of view.
• If you are presenting a problem always offer a potential solution.
• Be sure you have the authority you need to get the job done.
• If you expect resistance to female leadership, ensure that your boss doesn't allow an end run around your authority. Make sure he or she gives you the chance to handle an employee problem first.
• Never whine or complain, even when your fellow team members are slow to accept you as a colleague.

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Personal Abilities

By understanding your own skill set and abilities, you can deliberately craft your job in a way that maximizes what you enjoy and do well.

• Learn the results of your job interview from your boss, including where you excelled and any issues that deserve attention. Create a plan to mitigate your weaknesses and take early strategic advantage of your strengths.
• Identify which of your strengths you should demonstrate quickly in your new job, and then find ways to do so. For example, if you are gifted communicator, you might network externally by speaking to the local civic clubs. Or as an effective collaborator, you might launch early meetings with disenfranchised groups.
• Encourage your boss or predecessor to introduce you by highlighting your sills and how they will contribute to the organization's agenda.
• When meeting your colleagues, describe your prior accomplishments and moments of pride. The enthusiasm you project will be natural, obvious, and contagious. Forget the outdated advice that “it's not nice to brag.” Although you may feel uncomfortable at first, self-promotion is a skill that women desperately need to develop. Just don't oversell or overtell-it's boring unless you wrestled alligators or won an Oscar at your last job.
• Evaluate what scares you about leadership, and then determine how to expanding your comfort zone. For example, if you fear losing a work-life balance – an issue that many women face –block out chunks of unstructured time. Don't sacrifice that time to schedule creep (“The report took loner than planned. Guess I'll just have to work late again.”).
• Think about how the job taps into your personal hopes and reams. This will help you identify your personal vision for your job.
• Use the answers to these question to help determine your anchors (see Chapter 3).

Determine What You Need to Be Your Best. Have you considered what circumstances promote your highest level of productivity? Think about the physical stetting, the working environment, and the goals and values of the Organization. There are probably certain physical conditions and settings in which you thrive. If you don't want your back to the door, plan ahead!

Some women seek a highly charged atmosphere of creative chaos, while others prefer structure, discipline, and order. If you can identify what you need to be your best, you can negotiate for it more effectively. The more you know, the better you can consciously influence the situation. For example, Dena loved the excitement but hated the instability of working In sales. She accepted a government position creating public/private partnerships to support job seekers. Promoting the innovative program combined with the thrill and challenge of sales with the job security of a public agency, she led the department's phenomenal growth and solidified its reputation as a premier career-transition center.

Making it Work for You

•  Seek ways to create whatever conditions bring out the best in you, be they high-end monitors, natural lighting- or regular check-in-meetings. In chapter 3, we will discuss how to negotiate for these ideal conditions.

•  If the job doesn't provide the physical environment you need, determine how to create it. If, for example, you work in a cubical and hate interruptions, you might reserve a conference room, or set up in the local coffee shop for important phone calls and meetings.

•  Discuss your findings with your colleagues. Encourage them to share their own answers to the same questions that you've already asked yourself. Work to create team understanding. For example, if you all you need quiet but your workplace sounds like Grand Central at rush hour, you can agree to set “vault hours,” when colleagues agree to avoid interrupting one another or “phones off” times.

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Leadership

You and Your “Shadow.” Shadows are your deep-rooted fears, apprehensions, and insecurities. Often buried, they can have a huge impact on how you respond to tough situations. If you avoid the very actions you suspect you need to take, perhaps a shadow is responsible. To recognize and name the fear will allow you to manage it more objectively-and maybe even profit from the lessons it teaches about yourself. The most successful women leaders seldom allow fear to dictate their actions. When there is internal debate, they make the “braver” decision. But first, you have to recognize what fear is holding you back.

For instance, Sally's fast-paced business environment often calls for quick decisions and decisive management. Unfortunately, she prefers a traditionally female, inclusive approach, often taking too long trying to garner support and pound out consensus. Sally may not even recognize her fears of either a challenge to her authority or a power struggle with subordinates. Understanding your root causes of shadows allows you to evaluate their validity and determine how to learn from them. In Sally's case, she could actively develop stronger relationships with people who intimidate her. Or she might encourage productive confrontation as a way to promote healthy debate.

It's useful to examine your automatic response, particularly under pressure. They are the behaviors that emerge when you are in “survival mode.” If you understanding your reactions when your back is against the wall, you can lean to mitigate when is not useful. For example, I have been running trails with Erline, a commodities expert, for more than 10 years. When laugh whenever a rabbit startles us, because I always freeze as Erline flees. As a young child, she learned from her five hard-hitting brothers that the best automatic response to danger was to skedaddle. She now makes a conscious effort to stand up for herself and confront assertive management at work. Meanwhile, I must work hard to manage my expressions and respond decisively rather than locking up. During organization moments of taught- when the atmosphere is tense and the stakes are high- you need to recognize your tendency to control or retreat, to reach out or shut out.

Your intuition is an important source of information. Take time to explore what happens to you physically when you experience red flags-what your subconscious signals that something isn't right. Rather than assume it is the enchilada you had for lunch, you should recognize this is an important data. Your tight shoulders or turning stomach can be valuable warning signs.

For example, during Cynthia's group interview for a senior management position, her internal alarms went of. Despite the apparently agreement amount the panel, something felt wrong. Unable to identify the issue, Cynthia ignored the hunch and accepted the job…and now she's miserable. She realized too late that the boss has surrounded himself with yes-men and yes-women, and that he undervalues her point of view. So Cynthia feels she has no choice but to restart her job search. Following her intuition would have saved months of frustration if she had worked to figure out the source of her unease.

Making It Work for You

• Ask a trusted colleague or friend to either signal you at the moment or help you role-play when your automatic response becomes counterproductive.
• Mentally rehearse responses to challenging situations (such as media assaults, challenging colleagues, attacks on your credentials) before they happen.
• Practice not taking criticism personally. This is an issue that many women face. Allowing your critics to discourage you is a career-limiting move. Don't take this hits. If you do take one, get back up, and forget that you're a girl who is supposed to play nice.
• Keep a list of your nonproductive, high-stress reactions close at hand.
• If you find yourself consistently avoiding a task you know you should complete, think about the underlying fear that may be holding you back.

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Personal Growth

• Women who succumb to pressure act out of sync with who they are and can prematurely plateau their careers. Be who you are, flaws and all.
• Though the universal tug is to become one with the crowd, your voice really comes in being unique within the group.
• When you know what contributes to your ability to be authentic, you can actively create those circumstances.

Ideas for Managing First Impressions

• Ask your boss to send an announcement letter that articulates how your unique strengths will benefit the organization.
• Ask popular individuals to give you an informal tour and introduce you around.
• Capitalize on information opportunities to participate in conversations. Connect both as a person and a position.
• Plan activities that will project your desired image. For example, if prior leadership was labeled inaccessible, choose a casual introductory reception instead of a formal luncheon or a theater-style company meeting.

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