work

Listening to the gut feeling

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It’s probably a weird hobby, but I tend to go to a lot of job interviews, even when I am not  actively searching for a job. Sure, I don’t apply for anything I wouldn’t want or for which I am not qualified (obviously I wouldn’t be invited to an interview without qualifications). I have probably written somewhere before that I think keeping the interview skills sharp is important, and even if I can’t claim to be brilliant at interviewing skills, despite my keeping my “hat in the ring”, I would be even worse if I weren’t actively practicing.

Because this is a common enough occurrence in my life, as a hobby, I give the process and the part of the process that involves gut feeling, a lot of thought. Possibly I am more interested in worklife/human resource linguistic anthropology than in getting jobs. I’ve written before about red flags and alarm bells experienced in interview situations. Sometimes, though, things are even more subtle. You get a sense for a company culture by the small things you see and observe. You might be wrong about the impression you get, but ultimately those impressions matter. You probably aren’t going to feel particularly comfortable in these places if you do get these inexplicable feelings or unusual observations.

I am thinking now about a few other examples. I had a great series of interviews with a company but to start with they rescheduled interviews multiple times throughout the process. I am flexible, so this was okay, especially when we were doing Skype calls and could be flexible. But then they invited me for some final interviews, which required moving around a lot of my schedule and traveling at the last minute. I flew to the city where the company was located. And late in the evening the night before the interview, they emailed to ask if I would mind postponing an entire day. Not just a few hours but an entire day. I already had my tickets to return home in the evening, after the originally scheduled interview. Looking back, maybe I should have said no. Instead I agreed to the change but told them that it was really inconvenient.

In the end, even though the interviews went well, I noticed as soon as I went to the offices that everyone I saw in the office except for a receptionist, everyone I talked to, everyone who was referred to as being a part of the global organization, was a man. And when they talked about their customers, they kept referring to the men who use these products and their wives. It may well be that the majority of their customers are men, but the framing was (unintentionally) gender imbalanced. And later, when they called to tell me it had been a hard decision, narrowed down to one other person and me, they ultimately hired the other person – a man. I don’t necessarily think that was conscious or had anything to do with it, but it was something that I clearly observed. The gender imbalance coupled with the multiple last-minute shifts in schedule led me to think that it was a good thing that things didn’t work out.

Photo by Rostyslav Savchyn on Unsplash

 

 

 

the soup and noodles of compassion

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How important is compassion? Or empathy? Can you “compassion” your way through life? Can you just as readily “compassion yourself out of” experiences and connections? Every time I meet a new person, and they ask me what traits are important or attractive in others, or even what drives me, I can only reply, “Compassion”. I think they are expecting a more glib or easy answer, and “compassion” often confounds the listener. It is almost as though they don’t know what it is or how to talk about it. As time goes by, though, I can’t think of another answer. There are other things that are important to me – empathy, learning – but compassion surpasses them all. And to see the looks on people’s faces when I voice this, you’d think I was speaking an alien language.

Strange, then, to see a number of articles pop up in business press emphasizing the importance of compassion and empathy in leaders (and in innovation). All such articles mention the fact that compassion is sorely and quite visibly absent in most corporate leaders and missions (certainly in practice if not in theory). Perhaps I have been ahead of the curve, even if my commitment to compassion, in practice and daily life, still sees me on the outside looking in. After all, the presence of these traits is rare, and these articles I cite only point to the need for compassion at an executive level, not necessarily the need for compassion in every interaction we have, every action we take. I, for example, shift myself into a place inside to find the compassion each time I am tempted to unleash my inner annoyance, frustration, judgment, crankiness, tiredness, boredom. It’s not that those feelings do not exist. They just need to take a backseat, belt themselves in and let humility and thoughtfulness take the wheel.

The intersection of compassion and corporate life, though, is something else. Something interesting, actually. Lately (as in the last few years), I find myself answering questions in job interviews and professional situations in the exact same way I do when I meet people in other, more social situations.

“What do you think the most important attribute in your arsenal is?”

“Compassion.”

I know I am expected in these moments to talk about a skill or experience that makes me suited for whatever role I’m discussing. But I return to, and ramble about, compassion. This always seems somewhat out of place in the moment, but I continue to push it because it is needed. The fact that interviewers or colleagues give me blank, deer-in-the-headlights stares proves to me that 1. compassion needs to be pushed, and 2. (in interview situations) I don’t want to work in that place anyway.

This idea – letting compassion guide and inform your choices – can make life harder. It’s something of a luxury to be able to choose or not choose with this one principle in mind. I consider, for example, that an environment bereft of compassion and empathy, in which power can accumulate unchecked, leads to corruption at the top, and a culture in which ethics are not valued, and trust becomes non-existent. Responsibility has no meaning. While most of what I have read that ties into my thinking focuses on looking at leaders/CEOs who have been blinded by power and the burdens of bottom-line decision-making, I’d argue that deeply corrupt or flawed leadership has trickle-down effects, and thus poisons an entire organization and its culture. (Hence my not wanting to work in environments in which someone looks at me strangely or rolls out the slow, “Okaaaayyyyy…”-style response to my comment. If the HR department or the hiring manager or future colleagues or current colleagues cannot intuitively understand the link between compassion and the good of/functioning of the company and its culture, I don’t necessarily want to be there to fight against that.)

From HBR.org:

“…the research of neuroscientist Sukhvinder Obhi, who has found that power impairs our mirror-neurological activity — the neurological function that indicates the ability to understand and associate with others. David Owen, a British physician and parliamentarian, has dubbed this phenomenon hubris syndrome, which he defines as a “disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years.”

It is not that every leader lacks empathy; in fact, their leadership role and its responsibilities take a toll on the ability to empathize. The decision-making at the scale and pace at which people in power must do so apparently rewires the brain, making the consequences of these decisions more remote and less human. This rewiring does not have to happen and can be reversed, and compassion is the key:

“While empathy is the tendency to feel others’ emotions and take them on as if you were feeling them, compassion is the intent to contribute to the happiness and well-being of others. Compassion, therefore, is more proactive, which means we can make a habit of it. By doing so, we can counter the loss of empathy that results from holding power, and in turn enable better leadership and human connections at work.”

Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, was recently profiled in a Wharton article that focused largely on Nadella’s view that avoiding hubris, valuing learning and embodying empathy lead to success and innovation. Apart from the obvious nods to leadership-style change, i.e. Microsoft’s attempt to shift from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all”, which is in itself a huge step toward understanding: you acknowledge that you don’t and can’t know everything but that you are always and voraciously willing to keep learning, Nadella credits empathy as a significant underpinning to real innovation:

“This is a quality one doesn’t typically see on a list of top CEO character traits. But in Nadella’s view, empathy is, among other things, a key source of business innovation. He said that although many regard it as a “soft skill,” not especially relevant to the “hard work of business,” it is a wellspring for innovation, since innovation comes from one’s ability to grasp customers’ unmet, unarticulated needs.”

I can get behind this with relative enthusiasm (I only have so much of it), but I was curious in reading about Nadella’s perspective as to how and why people can only seem to come to a place where they are willing to introduce and admit empathy (and compassion) into all aspects of their lives only after they have experienced their own personal adversity? And even then, do you only empathize with those certain things you can relate to? Moz former CEO Rand Fishkin, who recently departed Moz, posted a farewell-to-Moz, hello-to-SparkToro (his new company) letter, in which he cites empathy as one of the most important/best skills he developed – yes, developed – because, he writes, it does not come naturally.

Can empathy only be felt when you have experienced similar things (while, as the HBR article posits, compassion is more about the intent to contribute to the well-being of others, regardless of your ability to relate to or feel the feelings of others)? Perhaps this depends on how you define and interpret “compassion”, which I think folds thoughtfulness, patience, empathy and this ineffable ‘intent’ into one big fluffy ball. I don’t know that I buy it, and in some way, find it disappointing, if true, that people are only capable of empathy by learning to be empathetic through their own experiences.

Still, any and all empathy, no matter how and when it arrives, is better than none.

 

Image (c) 2018 Naomi/Paddy Litvak

Against silence: Ellen Pao versus high-fiving white guys

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Yesterday’s talk of silences and sharing was obliquely personal, but it did then make me think about an earlier moment this year when I read Ellen Pao’s book Reset, detailing the harassment and toxic culture in which she (and many other women) worked during her time as a VC at Kleiner Perkins. The timing of the book’s publication coincides with the contemporary tidal wave of public sharing/silence-breaking taking place en masse, but it seems Pao’s gender discrimination legal case came a little bit too soon (at least to deliver her a legal victory). Nevertheless her actions, as difficult and costly they were for her personally, certainly paved the way (however invisibly) for those who have finally found a voice with which to speak up.

I didn’t find the book riveting, nor Pao’s experiences shocking or surprising. In fact it took me a long time by my standards to get through the book. It’s not boring or badly written – it’s just that this is all so familiar. We (women) have seen this same story and had these experiences, all the silently slammed doors, slights, harassment, our part (as women) being cast only as ornaments or quotas to fill but who will be, as Pao asserts many times, compliant, hopeful and helpful enough to do all the grunt work, and to keep delivering ideas, progress and revenue under the radar. All the while, standing just on the edge of the action, we watch the high-fiving other people (usually men) do as they take undeserved credit or undercut or interrupt us. It sometimes feels like they do this because they are threatened; at other times it feels like they do this because we are invisible because this is the way the world is set up – mostly white men steering the ship while the women of the world are just bobbing along in the vast ocean hoping these men will benevolently deploy a liferaft.

And it’s a quiet, almost silent, kind of suffering – you don’t even realize you are in the shit until you are well and truly in it. Pao does a good job describing that first moment of realization – that it’s not just you on the outside. No, it’s the existence of an entire culture of discrimination that dawns on you. You might at first blame yourself, think you are overly sensitive and just not used to the way things are done. But even when you realize this is an offensive and hostile environment, and that you are not the only one to think so, what recourse do you have? You are invisible. OR you are the squeaky wheel, the bitch, the “difficult to work with” one. And it is only when you have exhausted all your options that you move to the extreme (in Pao’s case, litigation). And it’s then that all the energy and resources these men have channeled into insignificant frippery, such as paint colors on their private jets and discussions on porn stars and their ‘attributes’, are turned with full force toward discrediting any source of discord in their world.

And it’s crafty. I am first to admit that when the Kleiner Perkins PR machine churned into gear and started writing unflattering and defamatory stories about Pao (about whom I knew nothing at the time), I was inclined to believe the stories because I simply was not thinking about it critically. But when you think about it – why would well-respected, mainstream publications go on the attack against this individual woman in the vicious way they did unless there were something really big at stake underneath it all? Unless someone with deep pockets felt she had to be silenced? On the surface, it would be (and was) easy to look at her allegations in almost the same way the general public scoffs at the story of the woman who famously sued McDonald’s for being burned by hot coffee: it seemed frivolous. And why? In part because the general public has no understanding of the legal tenets of the case, the actual and physical damages (third degree burns) or the fact that McDonald’s knew their coffee could cause this level of harm – and showed during discovery that they knew and had had more than 700 similar complaints over the years – and did nothing to rectify the situation. But the other, bigger part of why the public vilified the woman for her litigious greed and to this day laugh at the case as an example of America’s sue-happy culture gone-too-far is because the PR machine was at work doing its ugly smear job.

Again. Still. As always.

Perhaps the book didn’t enlighten me in any way, but I certainly noted while reading Pao’s account that sometimes pushing the worst nightmares of your life into the light is your only recourse. Even if you get burned.

Photo by Isaac Benhesed on Unsplash

the operating system of the job interview

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I think we’ve all had job interviews during which red flags were raised and alarm bells went off in our heads, cautioning us to take a step back and consider whether we really want to work with these people. I certainly have. By the same token, I have also had interviews with people who were immediately engaging, whose intelligence and vision made me immediately want to join forces.

I was thinking today about the former kind, the “this isn’t good”-gut-feeling interview. That is, the interviewer is late, is rushed and stressed, fiddles with their phone or email for a few minutes once the interview has begun, apologizing but nevertheless continuing.

I’m thinking: This is a first impression, dude. And it’s not going so well.

Then the discussion begins. I’m thrown off my game a bit because they have already created this atmosphere. The tone is set. They use words that only certain kinds of people use, “Anyone who works for me will tell you this.”

I’m thinking: In this day and age, who really says ‘works for me’, especially when they’ve been touting the flat, almost-non-existent hierarchy and lack of pretense? Yes, maybe I would be part of your team… but say instead “anyone who works in my team or anyone who works with me”… . The use of “works for me” immediately conveys a kind of (possibly unconscious) structure from within that person’s mind, which strives (again, possibly unconsciously) to establish a power dynamic. And yes, maybe that person would be my manager, but I don’t want a manager who chooses that particular language. I am at a stage in my career and life where I choose with whom to work, not for whom to work.

Once the discussion ends, 45 minutes into the appointed time, right on schedule in fact, they adopt a sarcastic and accusatory tone: “This conversation has gone well over time.”

I’m thinking: Oh, I think not.

And… it was okay for you to disrespect my time at the beginning of the interview but then to get an attitude when you mistakenly believe I have overrun your time?

I don’t love being a nitpicking asshole. I don’t love being overly sensitive. In this case, I don’t like being something of an analyst about minute word choice. I have found, however, that when I dismissed these concerns in the past and convinced myself I was being overly sensitive, I have ended up in some of the worst professional situations I’ve ever been in.

And no, I don’t need that.

Photo by David von Diemar on Unsplash

friends or… work friends?

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In almost every job I’ve had, I gained one of the most valuable possible things: not just a work best friend (along with many nice acquaintances), but lifelong friendships that developed from these close work friendships. When I look at jobs in which I didn’t make friends (particularly close ones), I recognize exactly how empty those jobs were and how much harder it was to feel as motivated. Yes, as a recent HBR article maintains, these friendships can indeed be tricky. And I suppose that is why, as the article posits, only something like 19 percent of those surveyed (Americans, by the way) reported having close friendships with a colleague. This is framed as at least partly cultural (non-Americans may be more trusting, collaborative and less “fiercely independent” or bent on personal privacy?).

I have seen some of this dynamic in action. When a global company in which I worked all came together for a global meetup in Europe, the European and Asian colleagues became a more cohesive group, while the Americans seemed standoffish, less social, more formal and “observational”. That is, two years in a row, the American contingent seemed to stand on the sidelines and make observations about how the activities we were engaged in would never be allowed in the US, how we’d have been required to sign liability waivers (in case of injury, etc.). It may also depend on other demographic features (age, etc.) but the Americans’ uniform reserve always struck me as an interesting given how “loud” and “outgoing” Americans are generally perceived to be.

But this is a diversion.

One of my best friends started off as my “office nemesis”. For a year at least, we disliked each other but eventually ‘warmed up’ to become, incrementally, friends.

Another best friend became a friend almost instantly. We went out for dinner together on her first day working in the company, and we lost track of time until the restaurant owners were staring at us, waiting for us to leave so they could close. It was an immediate and deep connection that has only continued to grow, long after our lives changed, long after we stopped working together. And we have since become colleagues again. I cannot imagine my work life – former or current – or, more importantly, my life at all – without her.

I’ve never experienced the ‘tricky complications’ as outlined in the HBR article, but I can recognize that many of the points made could be issues. I suppose for me the depth of the friendships has always been valuable and deep enough that the relationship mattered so much more than just a job. In that sense, I guess, these friendships transcend the idea of a “work friendship”. I happened to meet these people through work, but our friendships had no real connection to the work itself. And you can feel and see a difference. Another good friend, whom I met through work, is a fabulous and intelligent person, and we are still good friends despite not working together any more. But there is a sense that the piece of the puzzle that bound us together closely and gave us something in common is missing, even if we still have a great time together. The impetus and intensity can be driven by the mutual passion or misery created by a job/project.

Overall it seems interesting because friendships are reportedly difficult to make in adulthood, and I suppose they are – where else can you make them than work? Unless you are involved in activities outside of work, or end up being forced friends with, for example, your kids’ friends’ parents or something, it is not exactly like a social smörgåsbord out there. I am not particularly social but don’t feel like I’ve done too badly…

Photo by Hannah Rodrigo on Unsplash

On second thought

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“So wrapped up were they in the minutiae of whether she was his ‘type’ that she failed to realize that he had ceased to be hers.”

Sometimes things seem resolved, she thinks to herself standing in the tram, keeping her balance while rounding a corner, but they keep turning around and around until they no longer are. That is, resolved or sensible. It’s so easy to ignore all the underlying debris, just being glad for the semblance of resolution. It doesn’t matter that what’s left isn’t what is wanted – or needed.

The tram stops. The bustle of the busiest stop in a not-terribly-busy city causes her to shift her place. Without realizing, her place is shifting all the time. A place standing in the rickety, ambling tram as much as a place in the lives of others. The pseudo-aunt to friends’ children; the daughter, the sister, the sister-in-law with all the connections; the invitations to all the events she never attends; the go-to, last-minute, “she’ll save this project from the fire” person when chaos ensues. It is no wonder, she thinks, leaning against the railing, that it always ends up being this way: what someone else wants and me trying to comply. I can’t fucking say no.

She keeps wanting nothing; she wonders, Is that lack of want the problem? Does it not imply that I’d cling by the fingernails, with a mix of fight, fortitude and relief, to something just to triumph, to say I fixed it, to hold fast to belief in illusions? To believe I’d seen a project, an opportunity, a clear path, a spark, an idea, a personality, an intellect, a humor, a humanity, a problem-solution axiom, an openness, a compassion, a depth, a cure, a caring, a kindred spirit, a team, a folk song, a story, a beauty, when in fact all were proven incomplete or figments of my imagination?

The tram winds its way to the other end of town, the outskirts, one of the places she never wants to go. She promised more than a year ago that she’d never go again, but here she is. Jumping off, heading toward this place she’d eagerly departed, everything feels like a soft ultimatum. Ending up here, with hand-wringing automatons or a pit of vipers, depending, still fighting against the long-irrelevant tune of the eternal freelancer: feast or famine. She feels like merchandise on a shelf, with a set of traits that can be picked and chosen, handled, and cast aside when it’s not quite right or when the novelty’s gone. A mute toy, still silently filled with the weird internal exclamation of elation, I’m a toy that was picked up and played with! Thankful, grateful, lucky, relieved for a split second, thinking she has a chance to show that she is worthwhile, and is in fact capable of doing anything.

But, goddamn: Just say no.

Current grove/Fuck a fox

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J: “It is not uninteresting (be wary of men who express themselves using litotes).”

I’m working and working, and completely unlike all the previous years of my life, sleeping at least the recommended number of hours. I used to fight against sleep and loved being awake for as long as possible, but now sleep draws me in. Then I am awake and make coffee but forget I’ve made the coffee, leaving it to get cold. Repeat.

I’m reading and reading, and the more I read the more I want to read. So many random titles and themes are thrown at me constantly, so the mix of things is incomprehensible to many, who like to stick with well-trodden paths (that is, some people are strictly fiction, some non-fiction), but I am all over the place. Monday, instead of finishing a project, I grabbed Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration as a quick, spontaneous read after reading about it in The Atlantic. It’s an interesting semi-sci-fi/alt-universe thing with an airship called Edgar Allan Poe and the repeated exclamation: “Fuck a fox!” (Which, in literary terms, always leads my mind back to Kerouac’s The Subterraneans and Mardou Fox, but whatever.)

I’m writing and writing, and something totally different from what I had imagined. It’s also collaborative, which is entirely new for me, and that makes the process more energetic and speedy.

Workplace lessons

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I started writing this a couple of years ago while working. Haha. Trying to delete old drafts, it made me laugh.

Lessons:

  • “Slapdash” is not “agile”
  • “Make a video” does not equal “marketing campaign”

The Rayburn

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“You should ask for more salary for all the work you do,” she advised.

“But I don’t feel like I do that much work.”

“I’m not talking about your feelings.” Harsh but hilarious.

(“You should get more money for doing the Rayburn.”)

 

Photo (c) Paul Costanich

Workplace fire extinguisher

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Sometimes you work with people who are natural firestarters – not in a good way. Everything they touch starts to burn, slowly at first, but eventually the flame turns into uncontrolled fires of epic proportions. Some workplaces have firewalls in place who protect most of the other people working there from getting burned too many times. And you really notice when those firewalls are absent.

In those times, you feel a bit like the guy in this Kids in the Hall sketch, following the pyromaniac with a fire extinguisher – frustrated both by the person starting the fires and by the boss who drags his feet doing anything about it.