Blog for Week April 18, 2011: L-E-A-D-E-R
L-E-A-D-E-R: Are you a great authentic leader?
Over the last 2 months as I have been speaking to various groups, I have increasingly been getting the question, “What do you consider to be the characteristics of a great leader”? I believe that strong, powerful, effective leadership begins with authenticity, but also involves being decisive, clear and efficient with directions and respectful of the people and the talent that you are managing. If people believe that they are experiencing the REAL you, then they are likely to feel more comfortable believing what you SAY, understanding what you DO, and therefore, more apt to feel confident in following you. In addition, there are a few more summary thoughts that I have regarding effective leadership. Over the next 6 weeks, I will share a few quick thoughts about being an effective leader, letter by letter.
L is for Leverage
Great leaders understand leverage. They understand that there is no monopoly on intellect that they will not ALWAYS have the best idea, the best answer, and the best strategy and therefore, they understand how important it is to leverage others’ ideas and thoughts. Great leaders know how to inspire and harness the best thoughts/ideas/strategies of others and use them to inform or develop the best product, outcome, or execution for the team, project or company. Good leaders strive to create an environment where their team will want to assert their ideas and thoughts. The people that work for you, should understand that they are all invested in the team‘s success and should want to contribute. A great leader creates an environment where their people are not afraid to fail and are motivated to put forth the creative, out of the box, risky idea. They create an environment where leveraging someone else’s idea is encouraged because the team wins, not just one person. The leader can then leverage their team’s ideas and efforts in a way that everyone benefits.
A good leader also understands that he/she should be a point of leverage for his or her boss or senior management as well. No matter where you are in your career there is always someone ahead of you. If you are a Vice President, there is an Executive Vice President or Senior Vice President ahead of you. If you are a President, there is a CEO, that you answer to and if you are a CEO, there is a Chairman of the Board that you report to. No matter where you are, your job is to leverage your position to make your boss’ job easier or in old professional parlance, “to make him or her look good.” Whether you like him or her or not, is almost irrelevant, part of delivering your assignment or role with excellence is outperforming their expectations in order to continue your ascension to the top or maximizing your success.
If you want to be a great leader, LEVERAGE your people, your talents, relationships, networks to consistently achieve BEST outcomes.
Carla’s New Album…
March 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under Blog, Buzz Worthy, Featured
Praise Be: Morgan Stanley MD Goes Gospel
by Kyle Stock (excerpt from FINS.com)
Don’t let anyone tell you Wall Street has no soul.
Carla Harris, a 23-year Morgan Stanley veteran, has just released her third full-length gospel album on iTunes.
Goldman Sachs’ analyst/rapper Allen Mask may have brought his firm some colorful publicity, but Morgan Stanley is working to improve its status with a higher power.
“It’s original gospel and it’s hot,” said Harris, a 48-year-old managing director in bank’s investment management arm, where she advises companies and public pension managers on their portfolios.
Harris started singing as a child in Jacksonville, Fla. She sang her way through Harvard and Harvard Business School and stuck with it as she started her career an analyst at Morgan Stanley.
She sang in New York churches and clubs — even Carnegie Hall. In fact, Harris occasionally croons for her clients.
“I try to graciously decline, but if I’m pressed, I’ll do it,” she said. “I bring Carla the singer wherever Carla the banker goes.”
This week’s release follows “Joy Is Waiting,” Harris’s latest effort from 2005 and “Carla’s First Christmas,” her first album from 2000. The newest installment is titled “Unceasing Praise” and sells for $9.99. All of the proceeds go to a Catholic school in the Bronx and the high school Harris attended in Florida.
If you work under Harris, you’d be smart to get it on your iPod. Or, go see her belt it out on Sunday’s at the Church of St. Charles Borromeo at 211 West 141st Street in Manhattan, just west of 7th Avenue — a long ways from Wall Street.
If you love Gospel music, this is the CD for you. In her second Gospel CD, Carla has brought a fresh, new twist to Gospel while sticking to it’s origan roots. This is clearly her best effort to date. I highly recommend this CD and her other two. Unceasing Praise
Blog for Week Feb 7, 2011 – Creating Performance Currency
Work on Purpose/Work with Purpose: Creating Performance Currency
As I discuss in Chapter 2 of Expect To Win, it is important that you have an agenda if you want to maximize your professional success. Know WHY you are doing what you are doing? Did you take the seat that you are in because you wanted a specific experience, a certain salary, to build a network of colleagues, mentors, sponsors, etc.?
As I have said countless times in my speeches, if you have an agenda and you know why you are doing what you are doing, then it will help to keep you focused on delivering excellence in everything that you do , avoid internal and external distractions and will keep you from making emotional decisions about your career. No matter what is going on around you, you will be able to stay the course because you are prosecuting YOUR agenda.
This week, I ask you to work ON purpose and work WITH purpose. In all that you do this week, remind yourself that you are choosing to be in the seat that you are in, you are choosing to expend your energy in this profession, at this particular organization, and with the people that you are working with. Therefore, if you are making those choices, you should deliver whatever your job is with excellence. As the old saying goes, “if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.” Anytime that you consistently do an outstanding job, no matter what your task, you create performance currency for yourself.
Performance currency helps to position you for better job assignments, for greater responsibility, for higher pay and for new and myriad opportunities both internally and externally. You should be deliberate about doing an outstanding job at all times so that you can create flexibility for yourself, in other words, WORK ON PURPOSE. Do a great job on purpose so that you can use the performance currency to negotiate or “purchase” greater success. You will not be able to ascend in any organization using political currency alone. Sure, political currency is valuable and it can and will help you to ascend up the ladder, but at the end of the day, performance currency is more powerful and it has staying power. Political currency is highly dependent upon the current players, the current regime, the current environment and it is fluid. Performance currency transcends the current players, regime or environment and can create a platform or springboard in times when political currency may be inconsequential or irrelevant. In environments that are more meritocratic than not, performance
currency is the most valuable currency you can have. Aspire to excellence with every opportunity that
you have, do it ON PURPOSE, WITH PURPOSE to create the maximum amount of performance currency
available to you.
Blog for Week January 31, 2011
Law of the Jungle: Know that YOU ARE COMPETITIVE
As some of you know, I had the awesome opportunity to visit South Africa recently and to go on safari.If you have never done it, I highly recommend a safari experience if you have a chance to do it. In preparation for our first “ride” the ranger gave us a briefing of the do’s and don’ts while out in the bush with the animals.
One of the things that he said was, “Remember that the lions, and the other animals, but the lions in particular, see you as competition. Man is the highest form of predator and they see you as competitive. If you come upon a lion or another animal, look them in the eye to establish your authority, your position as a worthy competitor, and then slowly start to back away, until the animal backs down or loses interest and also begins to walk away.”
As he finished the “briefing”, I had the epiphany that the REAL jungle probably did influence the creation
of the term the “corporate jungle” and that the rules are perhaps quite similar, if not the same. In fact
this rule, of standing your ground, looking the competition in the eye, is essential to your success in the
work environment. What is even more important than the competition seeing you as competitive is
that you see YOURSELF as competitive. How often is it that you discount yourself, your competitiveness,
your ability, your intelligence? You have to know that you know, that you know, that you did not get to
where you are by accident. You have a track record of accomplishments and “firsts”. Sure you may have
made mistakes or had disappointments or setbacks, but the important question is “did you learn from
it?” Did you get the blessing of the lesson? If the answer is yes, add it to your tool chest, and then move
on triumphantly and confidently. You should be confident in your track record, your intelligence, your
ability to work hard, to learn quickly, and to produce results. See YOURSELF as competitive, and if you
have a legitimate weakness or something that you need to improve, own it and resolve to fix or improve
it, QUICKLY.
You should never discount yourself and thereby create a competitive advantage for someone else.
If you are not competitive, or are not seen as competitive, then in the jungle where there is only
competition and prey, then you must be……
Own and underscore your strengths, use them aggressively. Since you are seen as competitive in the
jungle, BE COMPETITIVE and maximize your success!
Blog for Week January 3, 2011: HAPPY NEW YEAR
HAPPY NEW YEAR: HERE’S TO AN AWESOME 2011
Happy New Year and I hope that you are gearing up for an awesome 2011. If 2010 taught us nothing else, it reinforced how FAST time is moving and how it is more important than ever to plan and have a strategy for your professional and personal success. Without a plan, it is easy for time to move along and then you find that in the first quarter of 2011, nothing has really changed for you, then its spring, then we are planning for Memorial Day weekend and then uh, oh, it’s June and half of the year is gone! In this first week of January, reassess 2010, how you spent it and more importantly how you ended it and if you haven’t already done it, ask yourself the question, what has to happen in 2011 for you to say, “wow 2011 was an awesome year!” ?
Pick 5 things that need to happen for you to look back on December 31, 2011 and say that 2011 was the best year yet. I suggest that of the 5 things you choose, pick two things that need to happen professionally, two things personally (these could include, health, relationship, financial, material goals), and one thing spiritually. In order to accomplish each of these goals, I suggest that you come up with a 3 month and a 6 month plan as to how you will get there. For example, let’s assume that one of your professional goals is to position yourself for a promotion this year. In the first month of this year, you should sit down with your manager or boss and make sure that he or she understands that this
is your goal for this year, articulate what you think you need to do in order for it to happen and more importantly solicit their response on the plan and understand whether or not in his or her mind, you are eligible for a promotion and what the key requirements are for or obstacles to getting there. Assuming that there are no obstacles, and the promotion will be based on your concrete performance and the your relative performance to your peers, then put a plan in action to put real “points on the board” in the first quarter of this year. If you are in sales for example, set a goal to increase sales with existing clients and strive to bring in 2-3 new clients in the first 90 days of this year. Set a schedule for check in meeting with your boss at the 6 week, 9 week and 12 week mark. If you are an engineer, set stretch goals for the execution of the project that you are working on and more importantly define them as stretch goals with your boss and the proceed to meet and hopefully, exceed them.
The key of planning for your success this year, is to 1) understand what success at the micro level (in your bosses mind) and in YOUR mind, set a time goal for achieving the success and put a plan in action that you will execute by DAILY.
In this weekly blog, I will commit to providing you with tools and perspective that will help you maximize your success professionally. Each week, I will add some perspective on the tools of the trade that I have learned and I will also answer questions that have come in from readers of Expect to Win or that I have received from people that I have met on the road or at various speaking commitments.
You can also e-mail me questions at Carla@carlaspearls.com. I will of course, answer the questions without reference to the name of the person asking the question
Let’s all have an AWESOME 2011!!!!
Blog for Week October 30, 2010:
What happens if my sponsor leaves my organization, where do I begin to look for another sponsor?
First of all J., as you get more and more senior, it is important that you have 2 or 3 sponsors for exactly the reason that your primary sponsor, could leave the organization and you are uncovered. If your primary sponsor leaves the organization, you can still use the power of their relationship, their capital, to get a warm introduction to a new potential sponsor.
The conversation goes like this: (let’s call your sponsor, Tim), “Tim you have been an incredible sponsor for me over the past ____ (years/months) and I greatly value how you have used your capital and your influence to shepard me through the day to day political landscape and through these last two promotions. Your leaving the organization is a loss to us as an organization, but most importantly to me as a professional. You and I both know that it is important for me to have a sponsor for my continued success. I would like to get your thoughts about who you think might be able and interested in playing that role for me. Would you be willing to make a “warm” call for me to explore the idea and then I will follow up?”
It is important to remember that just because your sponsor may be leaving an organization does not mean that they lose all of their political capital or influence within that organization (unless they are leaving because of extremely negative circumstances). You want to take full advantage of their reach within the organization while they are still there and even immediately after they leave. Hopefully, as in this case, Tim will call someone he trusts and someone who he knows has the power to help you and say, “J is one of the people that I think is a star/strong player/up and coming key player and I would like for you to look out for him/her. He/She will need your help, as I am leaving and I trust that you will help to keep them on a good trajectory. He/she won’t let you down; they are a good use of your capital.”
After that call has been made (within a week), you should follow up and seek to get on that person’s calendar to begin a relationship. Go to that meeting prepared to talk about your history at the company, focusing more on what your current responsibilities are and where you are seeking to move next. You also want to spend approximately a third to one half of the conversation talking about your new sponsor and what objectives or challenges are on his/her agenda because you would like to ideally find a way to be helpful to them as part of your new relationship. Lastly, you should follow up with Tim after the first 2 or 3 meetings that you have with your new sponsor to let him know how the relationship is progressing. The purpose of this is three-fold: 1) you want to maintain a relationship with Tim even though he is no longer at your firm, he is a useful member of your network; 2) you want Tim to confirm that this sponsor was a good choice; 3) and lastly if the relationship is not developing, you want Tim to know sooner rather than later, so that he might be able to redirect you to someone else if possible.
CNBC: Another Accolade for Carla…
Airtime: Wed. Oct. 6 2010
Insight on women in the banking business, with Diane Reyes, Citigroup global head of payments; Shelaghmichael Brown, BBVA Compass; Susan Ehrlich, Sears Financial Services; Carla Harris, Morgan Stanley Investment Management; Michelle Van Dyke, Fifth Third Bancorp; and Barb Rehm, US Banker.
Blog for week of September 20, 2010: Choosing a Sponsor
Choosing a Sponsor
As I write in Chapter 5 of Expect To Win, a sponsor is the most important professional relationship that you need to have if you want to maximize your success in your environment. You can survive a very long time in your career without a mentor, but you will NOT be able to ascend within any organization without a sponsor.
A sponsor is the person that is using his or her professional and social capital on your behalf. They are carrying your paper into the room, as I like to say. Behind closed doors they will argue passionately on your behalf as to why you should get the promotion, stellar bonus, or the new opportunity. The question that I frequently get when I am speaking about “the Pearls” is “what is the profile of an ideal sponsor?”
Your ideal sponsor is someone who has had significant exposure to you and your work output. They do not have to be your direct boss or supervisor, although sometimes this can be the case. The person needs to have enough exposure to you and your work, so that they can be credible at the decision making table when arguing why you should get the great opportunity or promotion. Secondly, the person must have power within the organization and must be a respected voice. If the person does not have a direct seat at the decision making table, they must be able to influence someone who does have that power. As I like to say, your sponsor needs to have juice. They need to be able to get it done on your behalf, whatever “it” happens to be a raise, bonus, promotion, etc. Lastly, the person needs to be passionate about you, what you have done for the organization, and your career trajectory. They must be passionate and a believer in you. They should also be willing and able to recruit others to your success team and garner more support for you within the organization.
A sponsor is the most important relationship that you can have within your professional career. As I have said many times before, you cannot do it on your own. Your intelligence, hard work, and experience are necessary in your objective of maximizing your success, necessary, but not sufficient. You will need relationships and other people and the sponsor relationship is the most important one that you can have.
3rd Quarter Review
Here we are, almost at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2010! One quarter left to go to fulfill your professional goals of 2010. It is important to stop and take inventory of where you are and to have those important conversations regarding your expectations about promotions or new assignments.
As you prepare for the discussion, you must do the following:
- Review your personal agenda and the “report card” that you agreed upon with your manager at the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010; Everything that you agreed that you would accomplish this year should be COMPLETE by the end of the 3rd quarter.
- Make a detailed list of your accomplishments as well as a list of the one or two things that you will complete by Sept. 30th
- Schedule a quick meeting 15-30 minutes with your manager where you review what you have done during the first three quarters of this year and agree upon those things that are remaining for the year. This is also the time to reiterate that you are focused on your promotion or new assignment. You want to understand from your manager that you are on the right trajectory. Obviously, he/she cannot make any guarantees at this point (after all there is still a quarter of performance to go), however, this conversation will open the door for them to give you a heads up if things don’t look good for you, or if there are some previously unforeseen obstacles that you need to be aware of and will have to work through in the 4th quarter. You should also ask your manager if there is anything else that you could do to make their job of sponsoring you for promotion any easier.
This is also an excellent time for you to check in with your sponsor to understand if there is any data in the market place that you should be aware of concerning your candidacy. You should also make sure that your sponsor (assuming your sponsor is different than you direct manager), is VERY aware of your key accomplishments and ANYTHING that you think could potentially be an impediment with an explanation of why you don’t think that the issue is insurmountable.
Assuming that that you get the tacit green light from your manager and your sponsor is also constructive about your prospects, plan to finish your annual plan by September 30th and then focus on the 4th quarter with continued strong performance, a great attitude, adequate time spent continuing to invest in key relationships, and looking for opportunities to do something extraordinarily value add.
Blog for Week of July 4, 2010
Happy Independence Day and welcome to the beginning of the THIRD quarter of this year!
Yes, 2010 seems to be going faster than 2009. It’s time, if you haven’t already done it to take inventory of where you are in this year’s professional goals.
If you did not do the following in June, at the end of the second quarter, commit to the following in the next 10 days:
-Review your professional agenda:
- Have you completed the projects you started to work on?
- Have you had the experiences that you wanted to have, been exposed to the key people that you wanted to get exposed to?
- Have you had at least 3-4 conversations with your mentor?
- Have you had at least 2-3 conversations with your sponsor?
- Have you chosen a sponsor, if you realized at the end of 2009 that you did not have one or your sponsor had recently left your firm?
- Are you clear on what it takes to get promoted this year if that was your aspiration/objective as we started 2010
- Have you compared your report card and your understanding of what it takes to get promoted with your firm’s report card?
- Have you had a mid-year evaluation or conversation where you reiterate your expectations about how this year should develop?
- If you are behind on your projects at work, commit to overtime or early morning time this week to catch up. Do not let July 15th catch you still way behind.
It’s the 3rd quarter, time to get it in gear , so that this year will END as YOU intend!
