How to Build Your Network: Above The Median Newsletter #3
*A newsletter for the ambitious future leaders of our world*
Introduction:
Hi everyone! This is our third newsletter and we already have over 1,000+ viewers and a 65% open rate. The response is both overwhelming and motivating. I hope these newsletters continue to be valuable and I welcome ALL feedback in how we can make it better for each and every one of you. Please never be shy to reach out!
Question: I hate the idea of networking and don’t really know where to start. Is it really that valuable? If it is, how can I learn to become a powerhouse networker?
You may have had that experience of questioning how “so and so” got promoted when you know your work was better. Or maybe you’ve heard another colleague announcing they “closed the deal” after spending the entire night drinking with a client. It often (annoyingly) feels like the most likable or popular person progresses more quickly in the workplace. Indeed, according to research, well networked people get further in their careers. Multiple research reports demonstrate that career-related networking, which is considered a core dimension of career self-management, is important for career success (e.g., Abele and Bettina, 2008; De Vos et al., 2009; Wolff and Moser, 2009). Furthermore, according to a LinkedIn global survey, almost 80 percent of professionals agree professional networking is important for career success. The Economist goes so far as to say “the modern economy depends on how well people connect with others.”
Managing relationships and growing your network is important. But why does it feel so difficult? “Slimy”,“Social climbing,” and “Insulting” are words we colloquially throw at someone who networks too aggressively. Harvard Professor Francesca Gino’s scientific report proved that networking can make people feel physically dirty. Women in particular struggle with networking as a core tenet of career development.
Luckily, we have three Above The Median women to help us navigate what we dread and yet need. Because relationship building is critical to career development, the following two newsletters will provide detailed breakdowns of how we think about relationships with others. For Part I, we will focus on general networking tactics. Next month, in Part II, we will provide guidance on how to navigate networking outside your firm and how to build your personal board of directors.
Let’s dive in!
October 2022 ATM Spotlights
Liza Landsman
Liza Landsman grew up in Philadelphia dreaming of developing into a prima ballerina. She trained rigorously through high school focused on her vision of performing in front of large audiences. Unfortunately (or fortunately), a serious injury changed her path. Today people watch Liza lead board meetings, metaphorically dancing through KPIs/OKRs for public and private companies. Liza has held roles as a Director of Business Development at IBM, Managing Director at Citi, Managing Director at BlackRock, CMO at E*Trade Financial, CCO and President of Jet.com, and is now a General Partner at NEA (New Enterprise Associates.) Additionally, she sits on multiple boards including GO! Project, Choice Hotels, and Squarespace.
Liza has clearly been successful in her career. She also has a successful personal life with a strong marriage and mother of a son and a daughter. When we spoke over zoom, Liza made a point of bringing her laptop into the kitchen to introduce me to her husband, Matthew, while they were making dinner together. As he waved and said hello, she gave him a kiss and then proceeded to take me out to the patio. Her desire to introduce Matthew was a lovely way to share the depth of their relationship.
Liza attributes her success to many things (hard work, decisive decision making, and optimism) but, through our conversation, it appears her superpower is actually more nuanced. Liza’s skill is her ability to build, manage, and maintain relationships.
“Most work gets done because of relationships, not because of processes,” says Liza. Ambitious people often think “harder work equals better outcomes.” This is not necessarily how life works. For example, consider the race for the most powerful position in our country, The President of the United States. In 2020, politicians spent collectively $14.4 billion dollars to win the favor of the American people. Trump and Biden were not sitting at their desk writing memos but were shaking hands, creating media campaigns, and building alliances. To move up, you have to ensure people know who you are. The term “office politics” extrapolates to everyone (A future newsletter will cover how to tactically navigate politics and promotions.) As Carla Harris, vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, puts it: “You can’t let your work speak for you; work doesn’t speak.”
Liza provided us with numerous rich pieces of advice and we picked the four most relevant to building a personal network:
Tactic 1: Schedule networking as a work event
Think about relationship building as time you have to allocate in your work week, especially if you are trying to have a family or other interests.
Liza explains: “Spending 30 minutes with a colleague on another project who you don't have another reason to talk to or getting on the calendar to hear a senior person’s story feels like an indulgence. But the truth is - most of the work gets done because people have relationships - you know who to call when something goes wrong, you know who to call when you get stuck. You understand the unwritten rules of an organization you are in.”
Tactic 2: Have a plan for senior meetings
When you get time with someone senior in your organization, ensure you have a gameplan. Liza elaborates,“I hate when people put time on your calendar and then do not have anything to say. I will make time for any one once but will not meet with them again if it is not structured. Have an agenda.” Ensure you are specific and concise.
Some structure for questions to ask senior people when trying to build rapport:
“I am interested in how you arrived in this role, can you tell me your story?”
“I am trying to think through a specific problem XYZ”
“I’d like your help with A or B”
Tactic 3: Look up, side to side, and dive into the center
Liza encourages young leaders to think about building a dynamic and diverse set of relationships in your organization. Don’t focus on meeting only the c-suite. Below are examples of elements of relationships you should consider building:
Styles/approaches different from your own. “It’s too easy to develop one set of muscles.”
Work on projects closer to the nucleus than on projects on the concentric circles. “Focus on learning from people who are in the center rather than just who is senior.” For example - the person who runs Alphabet’s Ads unit (responsible for >80% of Alphabet’s revenue) has more gravitas in the company than someone running Google Nest in Latin America.
Upper middle management. Don’t try to get coffee with just the CEO. It’s actually the group of people in upper middle management that hold the most weight, see the most, and are most likely the next top leaders.
Go at least two levels north (ideally three) of where you are for getting mentors and sponsors when you are early in your career
Tactic 4: Prioritize competency over likability
One of the most powerful pieces of advice Liza gives is that you do not have to “befriend” everyone to have good co-working relationships. Liza elaborates, “I don’t need to have a beer with this person. My role is to judge whether they are qualified/able to do the job. Are they a cultural fit for their organization? We don't have to hang out and braid each other's hair.”
Sheila Patel
Sheila Patel was born and raised on Staten Island in the 1970s to an Indian father and Irish-Scottish mother from Brooklyn. With a view of the Statue of Liberty from their backyard, Sheila’s parents always hoped that their daughter would grow up to experience the iconic American Dream.
She worked hard to see that dream become reality, and with a Princeton and Columbia degree under her belt, Sheila rose up the ranks of Goldman Sachs, one of the most storied investment banks in the world. During her time at the firm, she held leadership roles in two divisions and on three continents, managing a variety of businesses globally, including serving on Goldman Sachs’ Firmwide Management Committee, Partnership Committee and the Inclusion & Diversity Committee. Last summer, in July 2021, Sheila closed out her 18-year career at Goldman Sachs as the Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. She is now the Vice Chair at B Capital, a multi-stage global investment firm with $6.2B AUM led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. There is little doubt that Sheila’s parents are proud of their daughter and her accomplishments to date.
Much like Liza, Sheila’s success derives from a combination of hard work and people skills.
On the work side, Sheila gets it done by being a self-proclaimed night owl. “You can burn the candle at whatever end suits you, but I outworked people by enjoying the midnight quiet.” It might feel like we are overemphasizing the diligent effort commentary, but we want to highlight that even while networking can dramatically improve your career, you still need to incorporate a top-tier work ethic. At the end of the day, it is you versus someone else for a position. Hard work is a necessity.
With hard work checked off, we can now explore Sheila’s tactics for networking:
Tactic 1: Meet everyone you can when you join a firm
When Sheila began her new role at Goldman Sachs after leaving Morgan Stanley, she expected her first month would be dedicated to learning how the internal systems worked. She didn’t realize it would be “people systems.” Instead of sitting in front of a Bloomberg terminal, her manager, Michael Daffey, sent her out for the majority of the month to meet everyone she could in the firm.
Sheila recalls, “I remember Mike told me, ‘If you are going to integrate here, you have to understand the way things get done. Meet everyone at the senior level. You will learn more about this company through people rather than any deal or client.’ It was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got.”
Sheila also advises people to use the “I am new here” as an excuse for people to say yes to getting coffee with you. It becomes difficult to use that line after 6+ months so capitalize on the novelty factor to learn from everyone you can in an organization early on in a new role.
Tactic 2: Networking social events: Play to what you know
Golf? 77% of players are men. Whiskey? 70% of drinkers are men. Cigars? 98% of cigar smokers are men. Late-night poker? 96% of players are men.
Oftentimes these are the commonplace networking events in business and yet none of the aforementioned activities are broadly populated by women. Admittingly, if I were to look up spa facials or chardonnay tastings, I know the percentages would probably be flipped. It does beg the question: as a woman, how do you ensure you can thrive at networking events where you may be neither interested nor skilled in the proposed activity? It is clearly a quandary: if you abstain from the activity then you might miss a big client introduction or the opportunity to build a more senior relationship.
While Sheila is an avid golfer and belongs to clubs all around the world, her variety of interests beyond the obvious has served her well throughout her career. Sheila’s tactic to navigate networking opportunities is to “play to what you know.”
She recalls a specific event, “Everyone got invited to an outing at a big hedge fund manager’s home in the Hamptons. I was not invited. When the team got back everyone was debating what type of gift to get as a thank you. I knew that this client was one of the top three art collectors in the world and I knew art. I spoke up and bluntly told the team, “He’s not going to want some cheap piece that you all are suggesting.” Everyone stared at me. No one else knew the client well enough to know his love for art. They all leaned on me for advice on what to get.” Reading non-financial content helped her discover her client’s love of art and gave Sheila a leg up among her colleagues. From that point on, they all took her suggestions more seriously.
“People are interested in a lot more than late-night beers despite what the stereotypes suggest,” says Sheila. “If you can lean into what you are authentically interested in, you will find commonality with your peers more than you think.”
Linnea Roberts
When Linnea was 17, she walked into her room one afternoon after school to see a newspaper clipping attached to her mirror. Linnea’s mother had taped an article about public accounting for Linnea to read. Linnea was the youngest of four and raised in a single parent household. Her mom was working to make ends meet and was committed to ensuring Linnea consider all the options available to her.
Linnea hadn’t yet decided what she wanted to be in her late teenage years but she had proven that math was her strong suit. The public accounting article pushed her to consider studying finance in college. That led her to enroll at Valparaiso University, where Linnea earned a bachelor’s degree in business and worked as an accountant for several years She returned to school in worked for many years to be a competitive business school candidate. In 1988 at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’s MBA program.
For her summer internship, Linnea knew she wanted a job on Wall Street. She interviewed for a variety of roles and applied to several dozen firms. She received just one offer: from Lehman Brothers.“All you need is one,” says Linnea.
During her tenure at Lehman, Linnea specialized in software and large cap tech and was on the ground floor of tech banking.. Linnea recalls, “It was not popular to work in technology when I started. There was a herd mentality around other industries. And then in 1995 and the 2000s tech and telecom were the number one groups.”
Linnea advises emerging leaders to avoid “group-think” and the quest for instant gratification. “If you can be part of building something it will make you that much more valuable,” she says.
Linnea’s decision to join Lehmans’ tech group indeed unlocked growth potential for her career. In 2004, she was recruited by Goldman Sachs, which at the time was expanding their TMT Growth practice. Linnea worked her way up at Goldman culminating in the prestigious Managing Director role.
In 2016, Linnea left Goldman to launch her own venture capital firm, Gingerbread Capital, dedicated to backing women founders of high-growth potential startups across all industries.
Linnea affirms that strong relationships are what moves a career forward. “As a woman, you have to stand out and be memorable,” says Linnea. “My colleague bluntly told me: ‘We have a lot of mediocre guys, do we really want a lot of mediocre women?’ ”
Tactic 1: Be in the boys club
Linnea grew up with three brothers and has a comfort level working with men. Linnea emphasizes the importance of delineating between malice and ignorance. “Guys say stupid thing and gals say stupid things, assume positive intent.” Additionally, Linnea advises not to wait for your male colleagues to set up time with you: “They might be intimated to ask you! So ask them.”
Tactic 2: Network constantly
Linnea gave the commencement speech at Chicago Booth in 2016 to a sea of 6,000 aspiring graduates. . At the end of her speech, Linnea offered her contact information and told the students that they could reach out to her. She heard back from 10. . Two of the 10 were founders of fledgling startups that Linnea later invested in; and 1 of the 10, Linnea hired. “That’s a 33% response rate to those who reached out,” she notes, and advises:. “Don’t let someone else take your spot and walk through any door that is opened to you.”
Conclusion:
Liza, Sheila, and Linnea help us see how important it is to build networks within your company. Business gets done because of the inextricable linkage between hard work, and interpersonal comfort. Be bold. Ask for people's time. Send an email to someone more senior to you to get coffee or lunch with them. Most importantly, be prepared for a meeting when he/she says yes.
Content we are reading:
Text Your Friends. It Matters More Than You Think. - New York Times article
CNBC Article: Kevin O'Leary on his Best 'Shark Tank' investments ever: '75% of my returns have come from companies run by women'
Some additional quotes from our guests along with a few additional reading/listening recommendations:
Liza Landsman: “Volunteer your opinion. Young women are socialized to have a deference for seniority. Young men use data and deal flow and feel comfortable advancing. Find your voice.”
Liza’s book recommendation: Good to Great by Jim Collins (describes how companies transition from being good companies to great companies, and how most companies fail to make the transition.)
Sheila Patel: “Build a network before you need it and you’ll need it in ways you never knew”
Sheila’s book recommendation: Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neil Stephenson (Science fiction book about silicon valley games entrepreneur) & Reamde by Neil Stephenson (About death and the ways people avoid unintended consequences)
Linnea Roberts: “It may as well be you. Raise your hand and speak up. Stop apologizing. Believe you are worthy.”
Linnea’s book recommendation: The Competence Code by Claire Shipman (An informative and practical guide to understanding the importance of confidence—and learning how to achieve it—for women of all ages and at all stages of their career.)