Create Career Success: 11 Key Phrases for Your Workplace
How others perceive your performance and your work is heavily influenced by your communication skills. Influencing others is key to long-term success.
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers, and specific leadership advice.
Communication is critical to being successful at work. Moreover, the more your career advances, the more your communication skills will impact your ability to be successful.
One way to think about it is that an entry-level employee usually worries only about their own work. A software engineer might work on that tiny feature in that single service, and their manager or a co-worker handles any intersections or conflicts with other teams. Early on, your work is your universe.
Contrast that to a VP position, where 99.9% of the work is done by other people. You critique work, evaluate work, ask questions about work, ask people to do work, and so on. In some ways, your entire job has become about effective communication. It’s why people joke about how senior people sit in meetings all day. That’s where leadership work gets done (well… at least that’s where people decide which work should be done, how it should be done, etc.)
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Some aspects of communication are difficult to teach. I’m not sure how to teach emotional intelligence, or general communication skills. However, I think there are patterns in communication you can learn, particularly for common situations. Situations like reporting status, or asking for feedback will be done hundreds of times in your career, and doing it right (or wrong) can impact your success.
So that being said, I’m going to go over a few common situations, and what useful phrase (or phrases) you should consider using.
There’s a problem, and people are worried
Your boss is worried, or your co-workers are stressed, or the project manager knows something is wrong. Something is going wrong in your sphere of influence.
“I’ll own this. I got it. I will absolutely handle it and send out updates by the end of the day.”
As a leader, when there is something I’m worried about, what do I want to hear?
Someone on my team will take control. Not just do a task or two, but they’re going to completely own this issue.
They’re confident about solving it. Not “Uh, I'll try to fix it I guess?!”, but instead they have confident swagger. If you’re not confident, I’m going to find someone who is confident. If you’re confident, I can take a deep breath and relax. At least if I trust you.
I will get updates later. I don’t need to keep it in my head (which will stress me out). My mind can dismiss it because I know I’m going to be hearing from you proactively.
If you know when to wield this phrase (and obviously the actions to make it not a lie), you’ll build trust with your manager, and become indispensable during crisis.
My general rule is if you’re confident enough to try to own a problem, you should act as if you’re 100% confident you can solve it. You take control of that situation, and work your hardest to ensure that you’re successful. If you fail, it’s a surprise to you because you put in your absolute hardest effort. This doesn’t mean lying about things which you don’t know, or aren’t clear. It’s fair and honest to ask questions, get help from others, or send up alerts if you’re losing control of the situation.
It’s just that confidence is a key ingredient in a team performing well, and a leader being trusted. Imagine you’re on a plane going in for an emergency landing. You want the pilot saying, “It’s ok folks, I got this.”
Someone you manage or mentor is performing slightly poorly
They’re not terrible. They’re just slightly below expectations. Likely their other team members have noticed, and perhaps mentioned something to you. In most situations, they’re slowly losing the trust of their co-workers, and slowly digging themselves a hole. It’s not a blatant terrible performance, but it’s not good.
As I pointed out in the title of this section, this is not just for managers. Mentors (and even peers) should feel that they’re responsible for giving hard messages. It’s one thing to have your manager tell you that you need to pick up your game. It’s another thing if it’s a trusted peer or advisor who tells you the same thing.
“I would love for you to be extremely successful. You’re currently not performing at our expectations, which is a risk to your career here. Could I give you some specific feedback?”
As an employee, if I’m underperforming, I’m likely to be defensive. It will be difficult for me to hear feedback, and be able to change my behaviors. What do I need to hear from my manager or mentor?
They’re on my side. They want me to be successful. No one is “after me”; they’re not here with a nefarious plot to get me fired. They honestly want me to be successful. (With some employees, I’ve literally said things like, “I’d absolutely love to promote you someday, but I’d need you to do some things differently.”)
My performance is viewed as lacking, and it risks my career success here at the company. While scary, this is a clear message that I need to do something about it. That action might be looking for a new job, or listening carefully to what my manager has to say. Either way, I have an opportunity to impact the situation.
Specific feedback I’m ready to hear. In a perfect world, I’m given a chance to choose if I’m ready to hear feedback — if I’m in the right emotional state (for example, if I’m super upset after hearing I’m underperforming, I may prefer to wait until tomorrow to hear more). Once I’m ready, specific examples are key to helping me understand what I can improve.
Unfortunately, when employees are told they’re being given a final performance improvement plan before being fired, they often say, “I had no idea I was underperforming!” Having a crystal clear message early (and often) avoids that from ever being the case.
You would like feedback on why you’re not promoted yet
When we’re heading towards a promotion, many employees complain that their manager says useless things like, “Just keep doing well”. What employees really want is to feel like they have some control over the situation.
You want the ability to impact your career. If it’s not a checklist for promotion, you’d at least like one thing to focus and work on.
“I have many things at work I don’t do perfectly. For example, I (recent, small mistake you made), which I could have done better. I’d appreciate it if you could tell me one other example of something I didn’t do perfectly recently. And then preferably what I should have done.”
As a manager, it can be challenging to provide feedback. You know what helps them open up a bit?
Admit that you’re not perfect. Many employees are extremely defensive about their performance. If you start by admitting that you’re not perfect, it opens the door to providing feedback.
Give an example of a mistake you made. This helps in two ways. First, similar to point one, it opens the emotional door for the manager to give their example. Second, it models the type of example you’d like. You’re not asking for something huge, you’d just like one simple example. Everyone is better at coming up with specifics if they’re provided an example first.
Provide clear guidelines of what you’d like. You only want one example, and a description of what a better performance would look like. You’re modeling what you’re looking for, and making it effortless for your manager to provide it.
A different way to phrase the same concept?
“I’d love to reach level (next level) someday. I know how I (specific situation and behavior) was not at (next level). However, my goal is to perform my job as a level (next level) employee. Could you give me one more example of a time recently I didn’t perform as a level (next level), and what I should have done differently?”
This is very similar to the above, and has the same advantages. It’s another way of phrasing a request for feedback which is not threatening to your manager, and potentially provides you with valuable feedback.