114. The One Percent Career Hack Nobody Talks About

**Kendall Berg** (0:00)
Careers generally don't transform from one giant big break that you get, but from compounding very small advantages over time. So a lot of the time, we talk about on social media, or we see some story of this giant leap somebody made, right? They went from a entry-level analyst to a CEO in three years, or they had a huge promotion that skipped two levels. The reality is that is incredibly, incredibly rare. And even when it happens, it likely comes with some type of scope change, right? So if you're going from a manager level to CEO, odds are the company got much smaller, right? Or they became a founder of the company themselves, things like that. So oftentimes when we're in our careers, we're focused on these big shifts. We're like, what can I do that's gonna totally change the game? What can I do that's gonna totally overhaul my career and make everything better? And with the exception of starting your own business, that becomes wildly successful and puts you in a CEO of a Fortune 100 seat, which if you're able to do that, good for you, and I love that. Call me and be a guest on my podcast. A lot of the time, it is really compounding very small changes over time consistently until the results start shifting. Welcome back to this episode of Secrets of the Career Game. So many people are trying to navigate a corporate world that is laden with secrets, cleverly hidden and unspoken rules to a game that most employees don't even know that they're playing. On this podcast, we try to give you a peek behind the curtains and some tips and tricks to ultimately make you successful in your career and help you progress a little bit faster. So we talk a lot about hockey sticks in the corporate world where, hey, we're going to do this, we're going to have a hockey stick of growth. It's going to grow so much faster. But the reality is that the first part of the hockey stick is a decrease. It's, hey, I'm making small changes. They're not really adding up to much. OK, we're at a turning point. Here's where we're starting to increase, increase, increase, increase, and then we grow. And so when you think of your own career, you may be at the bottom of your hockey stick. Things may be slowing down. You might be feeling less and less progression. You might be feeling less and less success and whatever that success definition is for you. We want to start compounding small changes that take you back up the other side of the hockey stick and lead to long term, large growth. So the first thing we're going to talk about is what are those compounding effects? What do you do and how does that ultimately help you grow? So the first is the 1% daily improvement. So a lot of you guys have seen this trend on social media talking about just get 1% better, 1% better. If you do that every single day, it's going to compound over time. If you are investing in soft skills, which I expect you are if you're listening to this podcast, if you followed me for any amount of time, if you are investing in your soft skills, it takes time, a lot of time, and a lot of grace to yourself to start to see that 1% increase in your communication. We're all naturally reactive. We're all naturally emotional. We're all naturally frustrated by the system, by the process, by our coworkers. And so in order to start to see a change in your communication, it's not going to happen with one thing. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and communicate more effectively with executives. You're not. Even if you're going through coaching, even if you're training, even if you're reading a book, like Secrets of the Career Game, it's going to take time, but you have to invest in learning and continuing to develop. I had a client over the last few years who's worked with me on soft skills, and we built a few practices, right? Reaching out to understand expectations, documenting roles and responsibilities more proactively, ensuring that we're communicating trade-offs, right? We've been building these skills over the last year. So think 12 months of every day getting just a little bit better. And just last week, she called me and said, hey, I'm working with somebody who I had a really strange relationship with a few years ago. And they said that they've noticed a huge change in my communication. And it made me really, really proud. That's awesome. But that also took a year, right? Those small 1% changes. So if you're looking to improve in an area of work, whether that's communication, handling conflict, that's executive presence, that's confidence, that's self-efficacy, it's going to be small changes. You're going to feel like there are times you slide backwards. You're going to feel like there are times where you didn't handle things as well as you wanted to. But you're going to continue to grow in that area. Same is true of visibility. Every time you get to present your project is a win. Every time you get in front of a senior leader is a win. Every time that your project gets recognition is a win. It doesn't mean that today you're an intro analyst and tomorrow you're a director. It means that you're growing in perception. You're growing in visibility and leadership acumen over time. And then the last area where this one is really true is in relationships. So many people will come to me and they'll say, Kendall, I don't get along with my coworkers or my boss is just too busy. I don't get any time with them or I don't have enough engagement from my stakeholders like complaining about their people issues. But people take time investment. If you think of any relationship that you have in your life that is worth having, you probably invested a lot of time in it. If you are married or nearly married, you probably dated and invested time and had arguments over beer at a bar. You invested in that relationship, same way as your closest friends. You may have met them and said, oh my gosh, we hit it off so great right away. But then you continue to invest, you continue to spend time with them, you continue to connect with them. And that's how you build deeper relationships. The same thing is true at work. I don't know why we step into the corporate office and we go, everybody should just love me and put up with my abrasive attitude and my poor communication because I'm good at my job. No, no, you have to invest in those relationships. In our last episode, we talked a lot about building trust capital, following through in the things you say you're going to do, reaching out and investing time with people. This is so key. But again, it is a 1% thing. You're not gonna take a coworker with whom you have difficulty and turn them into an advocate in 30-minute session. It's not gonna work. It's gonna take time and it's gonna build and it's gonna grow. And that's why we say these things are compounding. They don't just happen at once, but every little shift is building on the previous little shift that's helping you get towards your goals. Second thing is there are some small risks we wanna take. We want to take, want to take. These are good risks, okay, that are also gonna compound over time in a positive way. These are asking for feedback, all right? Most people don't ask for feedback, and if you do ask for feedback, you probably don't actually take that feedback very well. I'm looking at all of the eldest daughters listening at this episode, okay? If you are asking for feedback, and then you are arguing about that feedback, you are getting defensive, you are not implementing that feedback in a positive way, you're arguing over it, then you're not asking for feedback, okay? All you're doing is building walls. You need to be proactively asking for feedback, and you need to be applying it. Okay, we have all gotten bad feedback. I'm going to share a personal story so that you guys can see some of the bad feedback I've received in my career and what I did with it. So I've talked before on this podcast about how when I was coming up in my career, I was told that I wasn't very likable, right? People loved working with me because I was so productive, but they didn't like working with me, right? I was difficult, I was argumentative, I was defensive, and so they would avoid me if they could, even though they needed me. That is a great example of looking for the truth in the feedback of like, okay, great, then how do I fix that? How do I become likable? How do I collaborate better? How do I build better relationships that are more constructive and more productive? How do I make people feel heard? Those were takeaways from the feedback, right? Feedback may not have been delivered that way, but that's how I chose to consume it. Same thing was true a couple of years after that feedback. I was told by a boss once that I was a diva. Okay, now I am an extrovert by force, introvert by nature. So I talk a lot in situations where I am uncomfortable or where other people aren't speaking, right? Podcasts are perfect for me for that reason. I like to fill the space with sound. It took many years of leadership coaching for me to learn when to be silent and when to allow others their space, okay? But at that stage of my career, I was still struggling with cutting myself off. And I believe that that feedback was well intentioned when it was given to me, that I was a bit of a diva. But what I didn't know when I received that feedback was how to take the kernel of truth that was in there and turn it into something tactical and tangible for me that was going to improve my career. I didn't know how to interpret diva in terms of work habits and work communication. So what I did with that feedback, one, I gave myself an hour to cool off before I talked to anybody about it. This is a good practice when somebody says something that bothers you. Do not run into your chat and ping your work bestie and be like, you'll never believe what Steve said. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na. Don't do that. Also, don't go to your boss or your boss's boss. Be like, this person said this, na, na, na, na, na. Don't. Give yourself time to cool off first. This is good in marriage. This is good in friendships. Right? So I chose to leave campus, get lunch, give myself some time and some space to really like decompress, digest that information and try to apply it. And I came back from lunch. I was no clearer on how to apply it, but I did feel like, listen, I know that this individual likes me. We get along well. We work together well. They meant it in a way that was supposed to be constructive, even if I don't know what that constructive way was.