From the course: Women Transforming Tech: Getting Strategic with Your Career

Communication style as a strategy

- To get really strategic about your career and make sure that you're being seen and your work is being noticed by your superiors, you have to have really direct communication. Really great example of this came up in business school. We were having a discussion about how you get noticed if you're in meetings or your working on a project. And so many of the women said, "Well you know, over time I'll just drop little hints "or leave a report on my bosses desk "or try to bring up things in meetings." And I have one classmate, a man, who I'll never forget, he said, "Why would you do all that? "Why would you waste all that time?" He said, "I'd walk right into his office "and I would say, this is what I've been doing, "I've done this, this, and this, "I'd lay it out in an email if I had to." And it was just so game changing for us as women because we were like, wow, we just wasted six months trying to drop hints and here is being very direct in a way that we couldn't even dream of. And so I think taking that risk is really critical and being direct in that way is really important. I think the biggest thing to do when you come in is to figure out where the most help is needed. Come in, figure out where the problems are, show your value early by working on that. And at the same time, there's two schools of thought. So on the one hand, somebody says, "Be a problem solver." Come in, find out where the issue is and work on the issue, right? Because nobody likes working on problems. It's hard, it's kind of nasty and messy and nobody really likes it. But it's a way to show value early. On the other hands, or the other school of thought says put your best people not on your biggest problem but on your biggest opportunity. And so if you come in and find out where the company is doing well and exponentiate that growth or help the folks on that team or on that project that will be identified as showing value very, very early. So figure out kind of where on those two schools you fall but definitely the bottom line is show your value early in whichever way you can.

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