A beloved coaching client didn’t get promoted. He missed it by one vote. Unfortunately, it was his skip’s (his “skip level” — his boss’s boss) vote.
“How do your other clients manage upwards?” he asked me, describing a pattern of cool and unhelpful relationships with his executive management over the course of his career.
So I told him about a client, a senior technical director at a large health care organization, who had asked me a similar question. Her direct manager didn’t seem interested in her work.
“Our one-on-ones are brutal,” she had told me, describing their weekly meetings. “I feel like I struggle to get his focus on what I’m doing, to get him to understand, and I can just see his body language shutting down and his tone changing, getting defensive.”
I asked her to think about those one-on-ones more strategically. “What does he want to talk about?” I asked her. “What’s he interested in? What’s he good at?”
She told me that he’s good at people. “He loves talking about interpersonal challenges and conflict,” she said. “I hate that stuff.”
“Maybe you could talk about that with him instead,” I suggested. “You want him to feel good about his interactions with you: It’s good for your career when your boss likes interacting with you. So bring him problems he’s good at, where he can feel like he’s adding value.”
She agreed to try bringing a juicy interpersonal issue to their next one-on-one — something that she was genuinely puzzled about. (Importantly, she would update him on the technical aspects of her job in a separate status email.)
“He was actually helpful,” she told me later. “We had a great conversation.”
“Yeah, but Kathryn?” the beloved client sitting in front of me asked. “I don’t think my VP wants to have a warm and fuzzy conversation about interpersonal issues I might be having.”
“What does your skip want?” I asked him. “What does he want when he talks with you?”
My client was silent for a moment, looking inwards. “I think he wants me to listen,” he said finally. “I can be really aggressive and jump into answering without listening to what he’s actually asking.”
We talked about specific instances when he’s been able to slow down and really listen to the person he was talking with.
“I worked on this in business school during job interviews,” he said. “I knew I needed to answer the actual question, so I would consciously take a breath before opening my mouth. It was a self-awareness thing.”
If he can remember to take that breath, my bet’s on him getting that promotion next cycle.
First published in The Seattle Times. Read my archive of Seattle Times Explore columns.