Jennie Marshall | 14 March 2013
As a learning consultant, I get asked this a lot. And, I’m always a little embarrassed by it. For the most part, I get the question from people who are in their twenties. They want to know “the secret path to the top of the leadership ladder” or they just simply comment, “I just want to be a manager and in charge!”
This past week, I had a discussion with one of my delegates. He
said, "I have a masters degree, but I must have missed the course
on fast-tracking my career because I'm still not in a well paid job
with authority. If you had to boil it down to one thing, what would
you recommend to a young, aspiring person such as myself?"
I'm not sure I could boil it down to one thing. Life isn't usually
that simple. But if I really, really had to boil it down to one
thing, I would say this: responsiveness.
So many people I meet are unresponsive. They don't return their
phone calls promptly. They don't answer their emails quickly. They
don't complete their assignments on time. They promise to do
something and never follow through. They have to be reminded,
prodded, and nagged. This behaviour creates work for everyone else
and eats into their own productivity. Sadly, they seem oblivious to
it.
When I was a kid, we used to play 'tag'. The objective was simple:
keep from becoming 'it'. If someone tagged you (touched you), you
became 'it' until you tagged someone else. Whoever was 'it' when
the game ended, lost.
Business is very similar. People 'tag' us in countless ways every
day. They place calls. They send emails. They mention something to
us in a meeting. Suddenly, we are 'it'. And, just like the game, if
you stay 'it' too long, you lose. The only winning strategy is to
respond quickly and make someone else 'it'.
Reality is that we live in an 'instant world'. People want instant
results. They don't want to wait. And if they have to wait on you,
their frustration and resentment grows. They begin to see you as an
obstacle to getting their work done. If that happens, it will begin
to impact your reputation. Pretty soon people start saying, "I can
never get a timely response from him," or "When I send her an
email, I feel like it goes into a black hole," or worse, your
colleagues just roll their eyes and sigh at the mention of your
name.
Yet, these are the very people who will push you up or pull you
down. You cannot succeed without the support of your team mates and
direct reports (if you have any). Go back and re-read that sentence
again.
As I was making my way on my own career ladder, my old boss used to
ask everyone I worked with, "What's it like to work with Jennie?",
"How's she really doing?", "Do you think she could take on more
responsibility?" In responding to him, all they had was their
experience with me. If I hadn't been responsive to them, how do you
think they would have responded to his questions? "More
responsibility? Are you kidding me? She can't handle what she has
now!" It wouldn't take too many candid responses like that to
nosedive my career.
And yet this happens to people all the time. I can't tell you how
many meetings I have sat in where people are complaining about
someone else's work habits. "He always waits until the last
minute." "She never plans ahead." "I can never get him to respond
to my emails." You may think that the people who are making these
comments are too far down the food chain to matter. I can assure
you they aren't. They have a way of bubbling to the top when the
decisions about your career are made.
The truth is, you are building your reputation - your brand -one
response at a time. People are shaping their view of you by how you
respond to them. If you are slow, they assume you are incompetent
and over your head. If you respond quickly, they assume you are
competent and on top of your work. Their perception, whether you
realise it or not, will determine how fast your career advances and
how high you go. You can't afford to be unresponsive. It is a
career-killer.
My basic rule is this: respond immediately unless there is a good
reason to wait. Obviously, this isn't always possible, especially
since I spend so much time in a training room. Nevertheless, I
rarely let messages sit longer than a day. Twenty-four hours is the
outside edge. If you can't respond now, then at least acknowledge
that you have received the message: "I received your message. I
don't have time to give it the attention it deserves right now, and
you can expect to hear from me before the end of the day
tomorrow."
The great thing about being
responsive
is that
it will quickly differentiate you from your peers. People love
doing business with responsive people. Nothing will advance your
career faster than this.