Webinar: ‘An Interview with Michael Wenderoth – Proven Strategies for Getting Ahead at Work’

Keith Wolf:

Thank you for joining us. Excited for today. So I’m Keith Wolf. I’m the managing director of Murray resources. We’re a national recruiting firm. We’re based here in Houston and I’m also the CEO and the co-founder of resume spice. So we are a career coaching and resume writing service. So together Marie resources and resume spice, we bring you today’s webinar. And I’m extremely excited about the webinar because I’ve known today’s guests for a long time.

Keith Wolf:

So I’ve just kind of doing the math. And it’s been about 20 years that I’ve known Michael. We worked together in Silicon valley at a company called align technology, which was very little known at the time. It’s the maker of Invisalign, which is a lot better known now. So I’ve watched him and observed him progressing his career. He’s lived in a number of different countries. He’s worked in a number of different companies and across cultures and is experienced a lot. And we’re going to get to that during today’s webinar. And it’s going to be a lot of fun because we’re gonna, it’s going to be challenging and it may even be uncomfortable at times. And I, and I’m, I invite that and that’s one of the reasons I’m so excited to have Michael on because there’s a lot of generic career advice out there. And they’re just not a lot of people who are going to tell you like it is.

Keith Wolf:

And what I mean by that is, you know, there are certain things that people do to get ahead in their careers. And sometimes they’re pretty, sometimes they’re not. And I, regardless of what they are, I think there’s always things that we can learn. And I really appreciate that about Michael and, and the work that he’s doing. If you’ve been to our previous webinars, you know, we do a pretty good job of ending on time, but I always say, if we go over then, Hey, that’s bonus time. You can drop off after 60 minutes. I know people have things to do, but you can always go back and watch the recording. I do think there’s an advantage of being here live because how many of us really go back and watch recordings, right? If, and then also you can ask questions live. And so we have a chat box that you can do that.

Keith Wolf:

All right. So let’s get into it. I’m going to give Michael A. Little bit about your background. You’re an executive coach, Michael. He helps executives rethink their assumptions about power, not this authenticity to help them become more effective at work and rise in their organizations. He focuses on building power and navigating office politics and managing up. So prior to becoming an executive coach, Michael served 20 years in senior roles of multinationals in China, the us and Europe, in addition to his private coaching practice, he CA he coaches and Stanford business school’s executive education program and the lectures at [inaudible] business school in Madrid, Spain, he speaks to top companies he’s been featured in international media. His writing has been published in the Harvard business review, HBR, ascend, and Forbes, and he holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA from Carleton college in Northfield, Minnesota. And I can just also say from working with Michael way back when he’s just a good guy and really good at what he does. So super excited to have you here. And I welcome you, Michael. Thanks for being here.

Michael Wenderoth:

Thank you for the invite, Keith. It’s a great pleasure. I’m looking forward to it.

Keith Wolf:

Well, very good. So let’s get into it. Let’s talk about your background more. Let’s talk about what drove you. You could do a million different things and you’ve done a lot in your career. What drove you to become an executive coach and why focus on power building power at work, navigating politics, managing up those difficult subjects? I feel like there’s a backstory.

Michael Wenderoth:

There is a backstory. I’ll keep it. I’ll keep it brief. Maybe to start with the topics of why I was interested and what got me into that area of executive coaching. So as you mentioned, I had a long career. I actually started in journalism. I then spent a lot of time in marketing sales, general management. And what fascinated me about marketing in particular was studying people, right, because they are irrational. And that was, it’s always the interesting aspect of marketing, but when you really look at it and you kind of get down into the evidence, people are irrational, but in very predictable ways. And so just that kind of general fascination as I, as I started to rise in my career when we knew each other and beyond I kind of turned that gaze of looking at customers and people out there inward into the organizations I was working.

Michael Wenderoth:

You know, at the same time I was watching kind of classmates, whether it was for college or from graduate school as they kind of ascended or progressed in their careers. And what was really interesting from that was that the people who were rising were not always the ones who you expected. So they didn’t always resemble right. This, you know, the ones who were the hardest workers, the smartest even necessarily kind of top performers, right, who hit their numbers or so forth, and yet they were rising. And so the question was kind of you know, why aren’t those people rising. And some people who maybe were very political, like very polished had good relationships with people. They seem to be rising. So this question of why, and at the same time, and this is, you know, leads into why I went into coaching was I saw some very talented people, like smart off the scale, you know, hardest workers.

Michael Wenderoth:

They just weren’t getting ahead. They get stalled out or they hit glass ceilings or they got derailed, right. You know, there’d be a shift and like this great person would be elevated from the organization I’m talking fire. Right. So, so there’d be dramatic, things like that. And so I became very curious about it, right? The journalists the market are kicking in. And so I, I do what I kind of do is I kind of look at, Hey, is there research or evidence written about these things? And in fact there was a lot, it’s just people don’t read it cause there’s some of it’s academic, but it’s very, very useful. And it does explain exactly what we’re going to talk about today. And I want to share some of that, but why certain people, you know, tend to rise faster organizations. So I think it’s important to understand why, because there is good research, but more importantly, and why became a coach, was what you can do about that to help yourself or even protect yourself. And so that’s why I chose these topics because I think there are a lot of people who are not exposed to them or shy away from those topics. And it’s very important because they could get stalled, they can get the rail, or they’re just not getting what I think they actually deserve. So I like to say I help smart, hardworking people get ahead and break through glass ceilings.

Keith Wolf:

Well that, so let’s, let’s start there. Let’s just start with maybe some of the misconceptions that people have about top performers and maybe how they got there. What are some of the things? Is it that everybody thinks they’re hard workers and that’s not really it, what are, what are some of those things and what just off the bat are some of the things that those folks do differently.

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah. So first I’ll kind of challenge a little bit of a, the, the labeling we’re using here. So, you know, you’ve kind of said what causes top performers get to the top? The hard truth is, you know, the hard reality is a lot of the top performers don’t get to the top, right. They maybe hit their numbers or they’re like amazing at producing stuff. And they’re not the ones who rise. So I would prefer to kind of reframe this and say, you know what our cause is, what leads to certain people rising in the organization, whether they are top performer or not you know, do go right at what you said, you know, there’s the belief that performance drives your, your ascent. And the research here would actually show that, you know, performance, if we measure that in hard work or ability to produce results is not enough.

Michael Wenderoth:

In fact, it has like very little correlation to, as you kind of really rise. And so the question is what are the things that do cause you to, to, to rise in organizations? And I will cause I will probably going to talk about these in depth. So I’ll just kind of hit a couple of them. You know, the first one is this whole dimension around your political skills. Okay. So political skills, we can, we, we can, we can label that in different ways, right? If you want to be negative, it’s kind of the, a self promoter influencer, networker, maybe backstabber, right. But basically political skills, if you break it down are look at your attunement with what other people’s agendas are your ability to influence them, your ability to kind of network around. And so these dimensions of political skills are shown what propels, right.

Michael Wenderoth:

Very good research, going back, Gerald Ferris in the, in the eighties, seventies out of university of Florida. And you can take a political skills inventory kind of look at which your your, your skills are in that dimension. So political skills a whole nother dimension around networking. Okay. And this, we need, we’d need to break it down, but essentially it’s, you know, who, you know kind of in the organization that may help you get things done, they may give you new information that may help lift your ascent right at that person’s hiding in the organization or the sponsor or even right. Your position in the network. I’ll I want to talk about that because people have this notion around networking is going to mixers, and there’s some very strategic that the research would show that you could do in terms of choosing positions in companies or roles that benefit you in out-sized ways, political skills, networking this whole dimension around your brand or reputation what people think about you or do they even know you, you know, this thing about, you know, if we go back to marketing, it’s like, you cannot recall what you do not know, and someone above you notarization, cause they are the ones who promote you.

Michael Wenderoth:

You cannot promote who you, someone you do not know. So this whole piece around branding reputation, a whole nother dimension around, we should break this down executive presence, how you show up versus like what you know, or the content of what you’re sharing, which is around communication skills, gravitas, but it’s all bundled in executive presence. And then finally, there’s certainly a dimension around maybe some personal qualities of, you know, not everyone wants to rise an organization. So do you have the ambition kind of just areas around them and then skill, right? If you might have ambition, but then can you execute on those things to attain the things that you want? So I would say those are kind of five areas and just briefly why people don’t want to believe these things and why we believe that performance drives us and causes our and organizations very simple.

Michael Wenderoth:

We believe number one on that the world is adjust place. Okay. So we are, you know, bred in, you know, certainly I my mother was Chinese and there’s all this about hard work, keep your head down and you will rise. And that there’s stories in every culture of that. So we believe that the world’s fair. Well, it’s not okay. Okay. as, as I think the quote is attributed to Gloria Steinem is that the truth will set you free, but first it’s really going to you off. And those will be things that we talk about here. So people believe in adjusts world. I think that is fueled by the leadership industry. The Ted talks out there. This is, we want to hear these things about, you just got to the top of your hard work and we don’t want to believe other things because who you are.

Michael Wenderoth:

And so these are the biographies leaders, you know, those who make history, rewrite it in ways that make them look good. That types of stuff sells. So if I talk about Machiavelli and that’s not going to get a lot of likes on the web and then finally, you know, you know, you can see all this in the leadership industry going on, but finally we tend to hold ourselves back because there may be things that feel uncomfortable. Like, oh, if I’m, that’s not fair, or if I’m building a relationship with someone influential, that’s like cheating. So we tend to self-sabotage when in fact these are very useful skills that help you get things done. And ultimately we want to get things done in organizations.

Keith Wolf:

Let’s, let’s take that and just talk tactically. Okay. So if I’m fine, I’m coming into work. And I walk in the door, I go to my desk, I’m really focused on doing my job and working hard. What sorts of things can I do just on a day-to-day basis? Or what, what are I, I can’t use top performers anymore, but folks, folks who get ahead, what are they doing in their day that maybe some others aren’t and then kind of riffing on that a little bit, you know, just thinking about, let’s say you’re starting a new job or, or coming into a new organization with two folks who really send quickly do differently than maybe some others.

Michael Wenderoth:

Okay. Yeah. So, so some things that you could be doing, I mean, I, I’m not saying that, you know, performance doesn’t matter. Okay. it, it, it will take you so far, but those things that we talked about, right. You know, be in tune with who is in power, how decisions tend to be made in your organization where things tend to lie. Right. Because it’s not, you know, a computer algorithm, there is someone who has an agenda and if things feed their agenda, they’re probably happy with it or they’ll support it. People may have identities that they’re locked up in certain things, and they like that again, this is the irrationality, right. That’s going on. So be in tune with, with the way your organization is operating, I would say don’t be chained to your desk. You know, Keith Ferrazzi wrote a great book, right?

Michael Wenderoth:

Never eat alone never eat lunch alone and be in tune with some of these things that we’ll talk about here of, you know, do you have visibility are you taking on interesting roles that, that are useful to the organization or to people in power? So I think that that’s, you know, very important in terms of things you can be doing. Your question about going and joining a new organization. And these are two things like in my coaching that we kind of do right away is, you know, one of them is to map the power structure. It’s not always the org chart, right. And this is understand who makes decisions, understand who influences some of those decisions who acts and some people that don’t matter. Right. now those people will tend to be whoever, you know, have decision-making authority and so forth, tend to be higher in the organization, but then know stuff about their backgrounds.

Michael Wenderoth:

No stuff about what’s in their self-interest, what are their agendas, right. In of what’s going to make them look good at the end of the year, or even what are their egos attached to, and the things about background, right? We’re we’re people, right? So did you root for a certain football team? Should you come from a certain hometown? Those are opportunities to kind of build relationships with people. So mapping the power landscape and I’d say the other very valuable thing we could, we could go on about a couple tools, but the other most important one is take a look at the organization and who’s been rising. Okay. And so you can do this, right? It’d be a little bit of an anthropologist, not what people are saying, not what HR is putting up on the wall. Right? All these traits, right? Authenticity, vulnerability, positive. You know, this is all the feel-good stuff out there. I’m not saying it’s bad. But look at who has been promoted, who are the fast risers, who are the people that are getting stalled and then kind of look at who do they spend their time with? How are they acting? Okay, what types of projects were they on? What path did they take to get there? And what you will see very quickly

Speaker 3:

Is

Michael Wenderoth:

What the organization is promoting. Okay. So this is just kind of the, the reality of organization is promoting X type of person who does this type of role who shows up really strong. Okay. And then based on that, or I spend time in a certain organization, right. Or we’re rose up with a certain person then based on that, you can kind of say, this is what the organizations promoting. I let’s just boil it down. You can have like three strategies here. One is you may need to adopt some of those things to help you rise, or it may facilitate your rise up, right? If you know this individual, if you have to act or behave in a certain way, if you have to be on a key project, et cetera, you may also say that’s difficult, right? It’s all certain type of people who are getting promoted and that’s not you, or you don’t want to do this stuff.

Michael Wenderoth:

You can also think creatively about breaking rules. Okay. And this is what powerful, ambitious people do. You may also decide that this is not a place. If I play the odds that I’m going to do very well. And I ought to be thinking outside. Right. A lot of people stay in positions too long, right. When they’re not growing. So you can kind of look at those three strategies. And I’ll just say the thing on breaking the rules, because there may be younger people here. I just give an example, right. You know, you may not be able to take the path because there’s all these, you know, strong men and women in traditional marketing ahead of you.

Michael Wenderoth:

But let’s say this is social media starting or AIS starting. And that’s something that you’re more exposed to or the kind of the millennial market. Right. So you kind of take that upward in the organization, say, this is an area we could grow with. It kind of gets, you noticed it fills the people at the tops agenda because it helps grow the business. And you then have a faster ascent because you’ve kind of broken the traditional path. So I think there’s opportunities in there, right? Like, you know, we ratchet it back, you know, I would say most of the marketers in their forties right now just don’t know much about AI and stuff like that. But people coming out of college or younger do. And so this is kind of a, an area where they can kind of leapfrog or break rules and we can talk about more of strategic ways to break rules.

Keith Wolf:

So along the lines of leapfrogging, talking about, you know, you have a manager and, and you’re sort of talking about charting out the power structure, which may get made maybe along the lines of the organizational chart or not. What if you have a manager and there’s really no power that resides there. What about, you know, what about the politics of skipping a, you know, skipping a level? You know, cause I think people are probably concerned about stepping on landmines and especially when you’re new to an organization. I mean, how do you think about that?

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have to be careful navigating that. You know, clearly if your boss has no power and your boss is the one who helps you rise or get key projects or resources that are going to help you, that’s the number one sign you shouldn’t be looking around and building relationships and other places. Okay. Because you’re either not going anywhere or your group’s not going anywhere or it’s like a Widowmaker role that you’re in. So that would be number one. Now you can get like really micromanager bosses who are totally paranoid and stuff. So that requires a little bit more savviness. And we probably don’t have time to go into lots of techniques here. But sometimes it’s, you know, finding ways and sometimes they’ll steal your ideas. So socializing ideas quickly sometimes it is kind of surreptitiously doing a skip level in a strategic way.

Michael Wenderoth:

Let’s one example from a an executive I coached, he kind of was always getting his ideas stolen, wasn’t getting promoted. And so he kind of looked up who’s someone very influential because he had a new breakthrough product idea. And it was actually an alumni that he had gone to college with or from his same college. And they wanted, he wanted to ask for kind of like a mentoring conversation with that skip skip level. They had a good relationship and out of that kind of came this business idea and that executive liked it and said, you know, you should come and present it. And so someone up above, right, his manager really couldn’t say anything about that and kind of had to go along. But that was a way of, of dealing with this. But I’d say if you have kind of a weak boss you need to be thinking about that and whether your boss is weak or strong, et cetera, you should also be managing your boss. You know, managing a little bit of the narrative of how you’re being reviewed or how that boss is even talking about you. Cause you don’t know right in the closed room if he or she is taking credit, if he or she is how they are painting your performance, talk

Keith Wolf:

A little bit more about that. So I mean, effectively managing because I think new managers in particular, they’re, they’re worried a lot about how they’re managing their team, which makes sense, but what are some different tools approaches to managing up and how important is?

Michael Wenderoth:

Well, I think it’s really important because you know, your, your boss at the end of the day in almost all organizations is doing your review you know, being the one who’s talking about you and, and giving opportunities. So I think one thing is to always go in, typically if you’re going to a new organization with kind of an open mindset, how do you build that relationship? You know, the number one way to someone off is like publicly, like criticize them in a meeting, right. Kind of a rookie mistake. You know, not being in tune with where their triggers are, you know, you know, they like it presented in a certain XL kind of go along with that, right. Their format or their way of thinking. Also what is their agenda? Like very few people go in and ask their boss what makes our division hum this year, what’s going to get you promoted or where do you want to be in two years?

Michael Wenderoth:

And how can I help you get there? And so that is immediate way of kind of building that relationship saying you’re kind of an ally. And then your boss has a certain agenda and what’s going to make him or her look good. How can you help with that? And then once you have a good relationship and we know this from all the social science, right. If people feel like you’re helping them, they feel an affinity to you, they will tend to like you more. And that’s really how, I mean, if you want me to cut, cut to it, that’s how performance reviews really are swayed. I mean, this, you know, one to five and someone gets a 4.8 and a 4.6, it is really subjective. So these are things that are, that are critically important. And I would say also you need to look out for yourself.

Michael Wenderoth:

So, you know, the projects that you take, what we would probably talk about networking and network position, but those things are, those things are important. And the last point, which goes to being kind of very real politic about this is always know your market value. I mean, you are, I am talking to a recruiting agency, but you know, have relationships with recruiting agencies. Know what your market value is out there because you know, if you’re not getting promoted and you’re getting held back, there’s nothing like going in and saying, I got an offer to go somewhere else. And then you immediately know how valuable you are. And I’m not saying to hold that over you know, your employer, but corporations, these days are just not loyal. I would say they’re pretty toxic in a lot of cases. So I say, take care of yourself. And we know from negotiations, right? That, you know, you’re stronger than ambitious as the power of your alternatives.

Keith Wolf:

Well, I know we’ve got focused on the more job seeker candidate, professional side and the folks who are in HR and hiring managers and employers. And if you’re starting to feel uncomfortable with the conversation, tell us, I want to hear about it. So say it in the chat, but he also, if you have questions love to hear those as well. So do you see some questions coming through and it is going to be recorded. Somebody was asking if we’re going to share the recording. So yes, if you signed up, you’ll get the recording, but we’d love to hear more, more from you guys. Any, any areas you want us to explore? I just saw a question come through right now that we’ll get to in just a second. Cause we’re, we’re going to go there in just a minute and talk about you know, any, any extra considerations, additional considerations for minorities, for women. We got an I’m loving this a lot, so good job, Michael. Talk about, if you could just power, you know, power, executive presence, how important is it? How does one display it? Is it all about charisma? Is it natural? Can it be developed this, you know, kind of talk about that if you can.

Michael Wenderoth:

Okay. So there’s two parts there, right? So one is about power and then there’s around executive presence. I’ll be brief on power. Power is, is something that we’re very, a lot of people are uncomfortable with. We don’t want to talk about it, right? That I’ve got more power than you or I can use power to, you know, get my way or my agenda. It’s like this invisible force. And it was said many years ago, right? It’s the organization’s last dirty secret, right. That people don’t want to talk about, but it’s omnipresent. And really the way to think about it, a very simple definition is it is the opposite of dependency. So if you and I, Keith, right, if I have more power over you, I’m able to kind of get my way in the face of your opposition. I’m not dependent on you.

Michael Wenderoth:

And so, I mean, when you break it down, powers like super useful. I worked for years as a project manager, we can talk about it’s cousin influence. I had no resources. I had no head count and you know, you’re continually like controlling, influencing people to make things happen and get things done. Whereas you have power and we can talk about the source of power. Maybe it’s positional authority, maybe it’s because you control the budget, you have veto power. And, you know, from those resources, the ability to award favors to metal punishments, maybe technical knowledge, but any, in any case of these sources, right? The more power you have, you know, you can get stuff done. And frankly, in a lot of organizations, not a stuff, a lot of stuff is getting done these days, right? It’s like workplace engagement is low, et cetera. People are frustrated and power, I think because it scares people.

Michael Wenderoth:

I just say, think about it like fire, fire can, yeah. You could burn the whole place down, but if you’ve got fire, I mean, you could like the whole city of Texas. Right. You know, if you’ve got fire, you can provide energy and light and, you know, eliminate things. So it’s, you know, but if you don’t have any, then it’s hard to get things done. Like you’ve got it. You can get more stuff done. Executive presence. Okay. Which is one of these components that we talked about that tenderize. And I mean, I ask everyone, right. You know, have you ever gone to like a meeting? And you said something, I know we’ve all had this. And then later on, someone else says the same thing and the boss thinks is like, brilliant. And you’re like, I, I already said that, right. I used to joke. Cause I worked with a British guy, nothing against the British, he would say the same things I did. And this was when I was in Europe, I had the American accent and then he would say the same thing. And he had glasses on top of that. Never it’s like, that’s brilliant.

Michael Wenderoth:

You know? So, so part of this may be the way that he in this case came across or communicated it. Because a lot is not what you say. It’s how other people take things in. Right. at the same time, like, you know, have you ever gone to one of these talks from like a senior leader, right. That, you know, these CEOs trot in from, you know, business schools and like you leave the talk like super inspired, like, wow. Like I want to join this company. But like, if you’re asked what the person really talked about, you’re like, I don’t remember right. Leave with this feeling of like this greatness or you want to do it, or you’re like pumped up. But like, you really couldn’t pin down like any concrete idea or intelligent thing that the person said. So these are kind of component components, right?

Michael Wenderoth:

I’m exaggerating over here of executive presence. So you can have the best ideas, but it’s this point. Can you communicate them? Can you get them through to people executive presence if we kind of break it down. So we have a kind of working definition here. It’s again, how people are perceiving you or you come across. But generally it’s kind of viewed as kind of having three components your attire, your communication skills and this other thing called gravitas. Just real quickly attire, I think pretty much speaks for itself. You’re grooming you so forth. This one seems like such a no brainer, but maybe it’s because a part of my practice or a kind of, I’m not going to dump on engineers or other things like that, but they don’t sometimes pay attention to these things. You’re clearly the marketing guy, the managing director, Keith you’ve shown up well, but I’ll get on a zoom call and you know, exactly the other side, we’ll like kind of either be in a t-shirt or even not paying attention to your background.

Michael Wenderoth:

Right. It’s like a messy background. And that’s a simple thing that kind of reflects on you. So this thing about, you know, grooming attire, I mean, that’s just an easy one. I would say kind of pick it up a notch. You don’t have to kind of, you know, you understand your culture, but be, be aware of that communication is, is a big one. But I would say this, that, you know, people make snap judgements of you very quickly. The, the research is really, you know, whether we like it or not five seconds, they’ve kind of, you know, thin, sliced, and they they’re going to hold an opinion of you. And more of your body language, your tone carries weight than necessarily the content of what you’re saying. So what does that mean? Right. We all like when you put together a presentation, most employees are spending like two hours on the content of the PowerPoint when they might better think about how am I going to open, how am I going to show up, how am I going to frame things and how am I going to keep this very simple, right?

Michael Wenderoth:

It typical, you know, people remember three ideas, you know, in marketing, if it’s more than four, it’s the same, right? People just get lost and confused, and that will reflect on you. The researcher would show, you know, this person seemed to have orderly thoughts. They’re convincing, they’re confident. And you tend to see in certain people, they might use the limiting talk. Like if I’m suddenly shrinking and I’m saying, well, Keith, I think the research might say this and maybe it’s that you’ve suddenly lost total confidence and kind of me, right. Or credibility. So, you know, we can liken, there’s very good articles in this leadership is a lot about acting. Sometimes it’s how you show up and how you present your ideas. And then that last one gravitize is kind of your poise. And, and that can also be learned right. There is things around charisma.

Michael Wenderoth:

It does break down to like maybe 10 things that you do. You’ll notice, right? When you’re doing ideas, like I might say one, two, three, it seems very focused, orderly, you follow it. I seem kind of authoritative in that presentation. Now all of those things I would argue can be learned and we won’t go back to kind of the days we work together. But I was an introvert in college. I mean, I barely spoke up in class and even in business school and you know, it was very, you know, awkward public speaking and I’ve, I’ve worked on that. And so there, there may be certain things, right? You can’t, if you’re five feet tall, you can’t become, you know, six foot eight, right. Which is commanding and so forth. But there are lots of things you can, how you communicate. And this all feeds into executive presence.

Michael Wenderoth:

And the research shows that, that a lot of that, and it’s with a lot of executives I work with, it’s like what I call the gating factor, their 360 or their 180 reviews will say, I liked that person, but they don’t show up as a leader. What does that mean? So when I’m having the conversation on a 360 review about a particular individual I’m coaching, it’s like, what do you mean? Can you give me an example? Well, here, she kind of comes in and reports the news, like a, like a, like a manager would, but doesn’t really tell us what the strategy should be like a director would, or they don’t seem really confident in their ideas or they seem nervous and that’s maybe natural, but it’s reflecting and they’re saying, Hmm, I’m not sure I want to put that person in charge of like the whole division.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Michael Wenderoth:

But those can be developed. They absolutely can. I work with a lot of my clients on it.

Keith Wolf:

So, you know, politics, power, I mean, all these, all these different things we’re talking about, you know, for everyone, I’m not saying, you’re saying exactly this, but to a certain extent, looking out for yourself, watching yourself that, you know, some companies are toxic, are we making the workplace more toxic? Right. If we’re all just focused on ourselves and our own power and our own development overall, is that worse for the organization?

Michael Wenderoth:

Well, what I would say, I mean, maybe Marie is a great place, but I mean, a lot of workplaces are, are not that great. They’re dysfunctional, so I’m not sure we can make it any worse. A lot of them but I mean, what I would say is this is that you know, if you don’t go in with a kind of realistic view, I’m a pragmatist.

Speaker 3:

I mean, you’re just going to

Michael Wenderoth:

Get crushed in those, in the, a lot of these environments. And so you can go in with the fantasy that you can speak your mind, you can share all your vulnerabilities. You can, you know, when, when the research would show and most organ shows that is, is not necessarily going to help you unless you’re like in a total safe space, right. Which is very unique and organizations, and I think organizations do need to create that. So I think you need to be a realist and understand how the world organizations operate versus, you know, fantasy stuff. That’s not really based on the evidence. And I would say to the point is I think people should take care of themselves. And I think people should protect themselves. I mean, it’s, my practice is 70% women minorities who hit glass ceilings, and it’s not fair. Let me just make it real clear.

Michael Wenderoth:

It’s not fair. There’s systemic things that exist biases. And, you know, the power structure by default wants to protect itself. And so I think it’s, you know, people who have power, don’t kind of relinquish it easily, right? They don’t, they don’t change the rules that are already benefiting from them. So I think you need to kind of go in and understand how that works and that’s going to help you. And we can go back to the thing I said at the beginning, right? Maybe you have to shift some of your views. It’s not to say you have to change yourself, but you can learn from strategies. Or you might just say, this is not a place I want to be, or I’m not, I mean, just play the numbers, right. I’m better off using this as a platform for awhile, gaining some skills and then working somewhere else or creating my own company or get into a position of power where you can change the rules.

Keith Wolf:

Yes. Let’s talk about that just a little bit more. So minorities you know, females, introverts, you know, all, all folks who may be in our extroverted world we’re both white males. You know, what sorts of things, and you touched on this a little bit, but what, what things can those folks do individually? Should they, should they call out injustices? Should they make political alliances? I mean, w what are the, what are some of the different approaches, just more specifically about what they can do.

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah. So again, if you kind of map out and understand what the organization’s promoting, I think that’s very helpful to see what, what kind of behavior strategies things are useful. And, you know, you can probably do some of those or adopt those strategies in ways that worked for you, like getting unimportant projects, right? This is not something that is confined to any kind of one racial group or gender. Right. you know, you can think about things. We, we can talk about networking, but, you know, work on getting sponsors and mentors higher in the organization and organizations are starting to respond to that, but don’t wait for organizations to do this stuff for you. I think sometimes there’s this tendency also with, with certain groups kind of hold yourself back and humble and let your good results speak for itself. But, you know, powerful people who rise, they ask for things, they are ambitious.

Michael Wenderoth:

And, you know, most of us kind of underestimate that, that, you know, asking for things and people, the willingness to people say, yes, we underestimate it by more than 50%. So there’s things there that they can kind of do to help them. And then on these different things, these dimensions, there may be subtle differences like around executive presence, like a white male might show in us up in a certain way that, you know, a female or someone else can not totally mimic and get the same perception. Okay. So maybe not like being angry or bang on a table, because that’s a signal for kind of authority or so forth, but a woman might be able to channel that in a slightly different way, right. In terms of delivery and so forth, or in that kind of a manner of saying things. So you kind of have to be aware of some of these gender biases or other biases. But you can still be, you know, an agent and think about how you can react or be proactive and using some of these skills.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. I mean, we just had a question come through about understanding yourself and being aware of, of how you’re presenting, what are some ways that people can do that not everybody’s aware of how they’re coming across.

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah. So, so one of them is, you know, getting, you know, if you get a chance to get kind of 360 feedback I think this is a fantastic one. You know, everything comes with some bias, right? Some people may not want to put stuff in writing or so forth. That’s, that’s one way, if you develop coaches, mentors, or sponsors that have a good relation with your boss, you have to kind of achieve that level of trust. But if you can do that and get kind of feedback on yourself, that’s incredibly valuable kind of a developmental conversation. And so I would say those are two things. In fact, a great strategy is go find someone you think in the organization does something particularly well, right. Higher up and go have a conversation, say, you know what? I really admire the fact that, you know, you’re an engineer like I was, and you’ve ascended, and you’re really good at presenting, you know, here to the, to the board or to the executive team.

Michael Wenderoth:

I I’m trying to develop that skill. Would you coach or mentor me around that one that’s flattery and is asking someone’s advice, which is saying, you know, we always feel good when people ask us, right. And, and then also you could create an ongoing relationship and you’re doing it with someone up in the power structure. And so that’s a very useful way, and they’re probably going to see things or they may be more in tune, give you feedback and maybe right. Cause you’re top of mind say, oh, so-and-so would be great on this next project that we’re launching. That’s one, one strategy that, that could be very effective

Keith Wolf:

Just to find a 360 feedback. Cause I think there’s at least one question what exactly it is and how do you, how do you get it? So can you request it? Can anybody ask for it? And what’s, what’s the process. If the company doesn’t have one,

Michael Wenderoth:

So you’re more in the HR field, but I mean, a 360 review is exactly that you are getting opinions of yourself, perceptions of yourself above you, peers, you know, reports in different parts of the organization. And presumably in the way they’re asked, you can, you know, you’ll get these questions asked about how you show up, how you lead things. And then you’re also answering the same questions then. And you’re kind of looking for these gaps of your perception is that you’re really friendly and helpful to people and other people think you’re not. So there’s kind of a gap. And then it can help identify in terms of training development areas that you might focus on, which may be to say, Hey, you’ve got strengths and you can redeploy your strengths and use those strengths in different ways. Or you might have blind spots and you might be able to reverse a blind spot, or at least you’re aware that it’s there, which is incredibly useful. Yep.

Keith Wolf:

So we’ve got about 15 minutes left and lots of questions, less questions I still want to ask as well. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about anger because you wrote about it in Forbes, it got a lot of attention. You talk about bringing anger to work to the workplace and how that’s not necessarily a negative and you can help you in sort of develop a leadership presence in some way. I’m going, gonna let you talk about it and give folks your, your thoughts on it. I personally, don’t like working with angry coworkers, so it struck me, so, you know, changed my mind.

Michael Wenderoth:

Okay. Yeah. So either I did not, I I’m very proud of that article. I’m very careful, but it was written at a very sensitive time also. And I’m very judicious with my words as a writer. And I had lot of prominent people kind of review and look at it first before I released that. So either I didn’t make a good argument or you didn’t read it closely, but let’s take the first one here. I think here, I want to distinguish, I am not saying like we should be flying off the hanger handle angry all the time. Okay. The title of my article is actually channeling anger. Okay. Strategically using anger. Okay. Or more forceful or more displays that may signal, right. Credibility, power, et cetera. So let’s, let’s dive into this. Okay. First I want to make that distinction. And I think it’s important here to kind of distinguish first, also what drives people’s perception of you.

Michael Wenderoth:

Okay. now your immediate response, there was, I don’t like kind of angry people in the workforce. Right. And so we tend not to like anger, right. It’s it’s, it’s, it’s kind of viewed as this out of control force. People are off the handle, et cetera, but let’s take a flip side and I always say kind of, you know, be curious about these things. I mean the first one is that when with angry people sometimes just don’t want to cross them. Okay. So it is, you know, this, we are averse to conflict. Okay. So people don’t want to mess with you, which can be, can be useful in certain situations.

Speaker 3:

Okay. The

Michael Wenderoth:

Second part, and here’s where I would just kind of summarize research here is that in studies okay. That when people kind of show up angry or they show up kind of apologetic or so forth, that those who showed up angry, they’re really not liked. Whereas people who are apologetic, you know, warm, et cetera, they’re, they’re more liked. But in that same research, the people who were viewed as kind of angry, we’re viewed as more powerful as more authoritative of more kind of leader, like whereas two or more apologetic, submissive, Hey, they were much more liked, but they weren’t viewed kind of as leaders. Okay. So you’re kind of looking at these kinds of two dimensions and so anger. And we can look at this as a spectrum. Again, I’m not saying to fly off the handle, like extreme anger does not benefit you, but kind of moderate or channeling it, or the signals can be useful to you because it can signal that you mean business.

Michael Wenderoth:

It can signal that you’re credible or authoritative based on some of that research. Okay. And what I’m again saying, and this was research that even showed kind of women who showed areas, right. There is a double bind, right. If a woman shows up angry, she’s called certain things. Okay. So there’s where you kind of have to navigate this double bind where, okay, it’s not anger like banging your fist on the table and yelling, but it may be using a strong tone or a may saying, directing your anger in a certain way, like not making a personal, but I’m really upset that our organization would let a mistake like this happen. But now when I’m saying that to you probably feeling, or the research would say that, Hm he’s quite authoritative he’s, you know, means business here. He’s serious. Okay. Where’s this where I show up.

Michael Wenderoth:

Like we, we don’t exactly know. We’re so sorry. I don’t know what the root cause was. You know, patients are out there dying. You’re probably going to get fired. Cause you don’t look like you’re in command. So I’m not saying that, you know, people should be angry in the workplace, but I’m saying as people dismiss it, when it can be very powerful force, if you channel it or think about it in the right way. And I’ll go to one point that you said here is you do need to kind of manage your emotions. Right? All the neuroscience research would show that when we get super angry overrides, any ability to think strategically, so you do need to be able to calm down. I know you and I both have kids, like, it’s the number one thing with teenagers. You’ve got to like calm down first and then right. You can be strategic of how you’re going to react in the moment, which may be like a certain signal, right. Or something like that. But you do have to kind of be manager your emotions in order to channel that effective.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. We got someone who was asking for the link to the anger articles. So we’ll send that out when I send out the recording, we’ll send that out. And I was actually just going to ask this question that we had someone just asked, now you’re talking about power anger, but you also talked a little bit about likability and the importance of that. And so let’s go into performance reviews because I want to touch on that. And how does somebody balance, you know, being powerful, maybe exerting anger appropriately, then also the importance of being likable at work and in the context of performance reviews.

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah. So I think there’s, there’s this balance, right? Ideally you want to be kind of warm and likable and perceived as competent and powerful. Right. They’re almost like inversely correlated. I’m bad with my hands here. And so you kind of want to be in the top, right, right. Where you were, but the research would show kind of first established competence and credibility, and then it’s easy to show up warm. Right. You know, then you can do the self-deprecating joke, you know then you can kind of bring cookies to the meeting, but if you kind of flip that around, people are like, Hmm, they’re compensating for something, right. Or they’re overly nice. Or sometimes you get pushed around. So there is a balance that you need to strike. And I mean, this doesn’t fly in PR and against what I was saying earlier, you want to have a good relationship with people in power. You want to be viewed as credible and competent, but you want to have some level of, you know, of relationship there as well. And your question here was what is this do with kind of a performance review? Well,

Keith Wolf:

Tying into performance reviews and you know, I know it’s most companies have them, most employees hate them. Most managers probably hate them more than the employee hates them. I mean, it’s stressful all the way around, right. So let’s just dive into how one approaches them. So what do folks who get ahead, do they prepare for them? Do they, how do they take the feedback? What are, what are some approaches that, you know, folks who are getting ahead and getting promoted do with performance reviews?

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah. So, so number one is, is, is the, the performance review is not a one-off thing. You are kind of managing this over time. Right. It’s kind of like you ever show up to a meeting and like everything was already decided cause there was a meeting before the meeting, right? Yeah. So this is also a kind of a performance review. And I think this is good from the manager side too, right there shouldn’t be surprises there. But if you on the employee side of managing that kind of narrative or things and not like this is the first time you’re being evaluated, because again, there is so much subjective bias that could be introduced. We won’t necessarily go into that. But I think you need to think about this a continual thing. Because there’s like this recency bias, we only remember things that happened in the fourth quarter before the review and we forgot all that awesome work you did in the second quarter.

Michael Wenderoth:

So, you know, knowing that there’s a recency bias, I tell everyone, keep a brag sheet, right. Keep a little Excel thing on your laptop, desktop, and always kind of write in the stuff that you can bring up, whether that’s review time or kind of before. I mean, a lot of companies that have moved now to like quarterly reviews or ongoing conversations. So I’d say you need to kind of do that on an ongoing basis, keep a brag sheet. That’s good for your CV as well. Remember there’s all these biases recency bias, or did you do something that off the boss? You know, you know, when they’re evaluating you because recognizing, and I think this is hard for certain people who believe very much in the just world or kind of more quant or engineering types is they believe everything’s objective and it’s really not so subjective.

Michael Wenderoth:

Right? You see a lot of people who don’t miss their numbers they’ll get great reviews. Right. you know, you see CEOs who run their companies into the ground, get golden parachutes and so forth, right. I mean, I’m not going to make a direct connection there, but they’ve clearly managed their bosses or the way they’re evaluated. So to the extent when evaluations are happening or your goals are being set, have a stake in that, you know, propose them first, right. Not to set up things in ways that you will achieve them. But yeah, set up things in ways that which will make you look good, or it will highlight certain things that, you know, may be important that people aren’t recognizing. Those are really important things that you could do. I,

Keith Wolf:

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna touch on something. Because we are remote, right? Most people are working remote, how much changes? What can people do? What are some strategies living in a remote world, doing a lot of stuff over zoom, can you have the same sort of influence? How do you exert power? How do you get around politics? You know, all those sorts of things. What just touch on a few things. I know we don’t have too much time, but I do want to see if we can squeeze in a couple more question.

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ll, I’ll keep talking. I love this topic. And if it’s helping people by all means, people can also reach out to me or you can compile questions and we can answer them later. So in, in a, in a, in a virtual environment, okay. No doubt that it, it, it can be tougher, right? Because you don’t have some of those informal conversations, et cetera. So you have to be, you know, you have to be proactive and strategic about how you’re doing things. There are people in his kind of mindset. Also, if you believe that there’s nothing you can do well, then there’s probably nothing you can do. But you know, if you flip this around and say, what you know is the new medium or the new means change quite a few introverts are benefiting from the pandemic. Because for example, I can show up right here on zoom.

Michael Wenderoth:

I can control my environment. I could have notes in the background, right. Then you wouldn’t have like an interpersonal meeting. And sometimes you can also kind of ask for meetings for people from people that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. And in a crisis or when there’s problems, it’s always a chance for opportunity. So it people right now it’s like their job is to keep the lights on. So no one values what they do, but all of a sudden, like an it person is like so valuable. Now an it person goes out, this is another way you just jump up to the top. They go and service all the top people in power. Like, let me help get you through this, walk you through it. And you have the conversation, right? You get visibility that way and you’re helpful and you’re making things get done. So, and then companies in a crisis, I don’t know what’s going on in each particular company. They’re also willing to try new things. So if revenue is getting hit and they need something else and you come up with an idea and can present it or do a pilot, I’ve seen like government organizations or people that I’ve coached to. Like, I couldn’t do this for 10 years. And all of a sudden now, like people let me run with this program.

Michael Wenderoth:

So take a crisis and turn those into opportunities.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. There is a this Vimeo just went public this week. I don’t know if folks saw that. So it’s sorta, sorta like YouTube and the director of marketing there had an idea and brought it to a board member and the board members said, you know, run that project. So she was director of marketing at the time. There were several layers above her and it took off and few years later, she’s the CEO and took the company public. So that’s a, that’s an example of, you know, the store, you know, just someone running an experiment and becoming a CEO from that. Let me see if we can go through a couple of these questions. Yeah. Let’s,

Michael Wenderoth:

Let’s crank on them. I’m happy to do that. Body

Keith Wolf:

Language is one. So people make assumptions or judgments based on body language. How do you combat that? You know, how does somebody even become aware of their body language and how it’s being portrayed and what are some methodologies to combat that?

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah, I think, I mean, here’s the value of feedback. You know, getting someone you either trust or a lot of companies will have communication programs where you’ll get videotaped, there is power to videotaping yourself and you’ll cringe when you watch yourself, but it is the number one way to kind of get better. I mean, getting a little bit of coaching around that, there may be like a nervous tick you do. Or when I started really speaking publicly, I would say, I maybe have done in here, I would say. Right, right, right. All the time. And that was made aware to me from a guy who I asked, I said, can you watch and just give me some feedback in certain countries when I speak, I move around too much. And so that makes people nervous. And so being aware is the first step. And you can get that through these mechanisms. I mean, there’s good training programs out there, and I think videotaping yourself or having yourself videotaped that’s you real live and then deliberate practice, right? You don’t become a good tennis player or, you know, whatever gone the first time out,

Keith Wolf:

I guess I say ride a lot too. I was also given that feedback. Maybe we learned that together. I dunno. So how does this, another question came through, how do you, how do you understand a company’s structure from the outside? You know, if you’re coming in and you touched on this a little bit as an employee, so I feel like you covered that, but maybe if you’re presenting, making, like who’s the right person to be presenting to, maybe you’re a consultant. How do you understand and influence decisions at accompany? This is almost, almost goes into sales a little bit. You know, if you’re from the outside, how do you understand the company’s power structure and get a sense for that? Any, any cues you can pick up on?

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah, this, this definitely dives into the whole world of sales, which I spent a long time in sales, a sales trainer. You know, you have to kind of diagnose things it’s a little bit harder, especially a big organization. You have to kind of get in there and one of the number one things you can do, and this is kind of the same idea if you’re inside an organization, but you, you, you know, build a relationship where you start developing someone who’s like an inside coach who will start to give you kind of Intel or share, right. Or thinking about the types of questions you ask. So you’re in the interaction of like, so what would be the next steps? Does someone else have to come in and approve this bingo, there’s the person who actually has the decision-making authority. It’s not the person you’re talking to. But I would say for people who are interested that looked at strategic sales, particularly kind of B2B sales Miller Heiman has a whole lot of very good information around that Madison and company out in San Francisco. So that’s how I would think about things.

Keith Wolf:

And I’ll give a plug for Sandler. We had Brad fryer on the on the webinar last webinar. So he he’s a great resource as well. And if you haven’t seen that, you can watch it. We also have speakers, professional speakers as well, giving great tips on. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Wenderoth:

And I’ll, I’ll say this, everyone craps on sales. But it is probably the number one skill because it’s all about persuasion and influence. And if you think about it, any of you out there who are doing kind of a white collar job, or you’re a teacher, you’re a lawyer, you’re a medical doctor, you are selling. And so, and so that’s incredibly useful skills.

Keith Wolf:

Well, let’s, let’s wrap up. Let’s talk about your coaching practice. How can folks reach you? What is, what is sort of the next steps? Where can they find you?

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah, so my website is Chang wenderoff.com, C H a N G w E N D E R O T h.com. I mean, we can send that out later. People connect, connect to me on LinkedIn there’s resources. I have a power map tool on my website. You can’t find it. So you’ve got to kind of contact me, but and I have a lot of the articles I’ve written. We didn’t get into networking, but I think those articles are very useful. The ones I wrote around office politics, the one around anger, they’re all on my website for free. But that would be ways to reach me and to really think about these dimensions,

Speaker 3:

Think about

Michael Wenderoth:

How power politics has played out for you in your career or your work being maybe a little less judgmental and kind of study these people who you think are not smart, but they might be smart in a different way. And you don’t have to become those people, but no strategies is what the evidence would say. Political skills, networking ability, executive presence, branding,

Keith Wolf:

And that can be learned. Yeah. A couple of people asking for your email, we’ll, we’ll email out the recording and resources out to everybody who signed up. So if you got it, you’ll get that. You’ll get Michael’s email as well. Let’s wrap up there. I don’t want to take any more of your time. I want to be considered to everybody who joined. So thank you a huge pleasure to have you on great to, we’ve been connected. We’ve been chatting for a while, but it’s good to to see you in this this environment over zoom and everyone who attended live. Thank you. I think it’s just a lot of advantages to be able to ask your questions. Michael will be a resource. You can also reach out to us, you know what we do recruiting and resume writing career coaching as well. Love bringing you these webinars. If you found them valuable, the best compliment you can give us is just telling your friend forwarding the emails that you get to a friend, having them sign up as well. Michael, you’re getting a lot of a lot of thank you very much and people who enjoyed it. So

Michael Wenderoth:

Yeah, helping people. And like I said, at the beginning, you know, if this helps people accelerate, not get derailed you know, and, and lead kind of a more fulfilling work or life, you know, cause you take stuff that’s negative at work and you take it home. You do not want to take it home. Right. So if it gives you one tip, go and apply it, go think it and you’ll do better.

Keith Wolf:

All right. Well, thanks again. Thank everybody.