Career Hazard #5: Technically Strong, Interpersonally Deficient
We have all known someone who has a brilliant scientific mind but is inept in situations that involve working closely with others. In another Bio Online career essay, I discussed individuals who struggle to make the transition from the world of the academic researcher to the interdependent world of the biotech project team (see "The Secret Ingredient for Industrial Employment"). But scientists are not the only ones who experience problems working in the team environment.
Jerry, a manufacturing associate with a young biotech company, told me that he was getting very frustrated because he was not progressing at his company. After doing essentially the same work in the pilot plant for four years, he wanted to turn his sights to the outside. He had a marketable skill -- fermentation process microbiology. When checking his references for a client company, however, I found the reasons for this career plateau seemed to lie in Jerry's inability to become an extension of the pilot plant team.
After what was primarily a positive reference, his former supervisor commented, "Jerry is a productive person, no doubt about that. He has great job-related skills. The problem with Jerry is that he doesn't seem to care much about the group in general. Sure, he has friends and is well liked. But he doesn't put much effort into seeing that his colleagues learn from their association with him. Most concerning, I could never rely on him to help the team accomplish it's goals. He always seemed more concerned about his own progress." This supervisor painted the picture of a very talented person who had never taken the time to understand the "glue" that holds a team together. She wanted her team members to know each other's jobs so well that they could be almost interchangeable. Several years into his job, Jerry faced stagnation because of his inability to do just that.
Interpersonal Awareness
Becoming an integral part of a well-functioning team is not easy. Here are several questions to ask yourself that will help you focus on your interpersonal weaknesses:
1) Do you fear losing control if you let others into your area of responsibility? If so, do you think that they might detect this and avoid offering advice or other perspectives that might be valuable?
2) When you work closely with another team member on a project, does your partnership work effectively, with both of you sharing and learning as the project moves along to completion? Or, does one of you end up calling all the shots?
3) Do you hold back healthy disagreement because it might be viewed as disloyal to the team? Perhaps it is that expression of your expertise that is the missing ingredient on some important aspect of the team goals.
Some people fear that getting actively involved in a team will look like "politics." I've found over the years that most technical people have a great aversion to anything that sounds like office politics. On the other hand, there is much difference between "taking initiative" and "grabbing turf". Which do you see most often in your organization?
Healthy attitudes about team building and interpersonal relationships are prevalent in the leading biotech companies. If you feel that your career needs a tune-up in one of these areas, you can be darn sure that your boss came to that conclusion ahead of you. I went through the first 10 years of my career with some problems that I didn't even recognize. Then, at my wife suggestion, I took a Dale Carnegie Course. What began as an effort to placate my wife turned out to be one of my most valuable life experiences.
Career Hazard #6: The Inability to Negotiate
One sure-fire way to remain locked into a particular level at a company is to believe that negotiation skills are only for upper management -- the VP of Business Development, for example, and the company sales force. It's true that learning to negotiate comes early and often for those on the "deal making" side of a business. Still, any employee who wants to progress into new areas of responsibility, or who feels that an upcoming salary review should be more than a minimal cost-of-living increase, needs to negotiate in a careful and studied manner.
At a former employer, I was charged with dispensing the company year-end bonuses to the troops. These were "discretionary" bonuses, as many of them are. After a year or two of history on how the bonus worked, it surprised me to see that the employees would break down into two groups: Employees that negotiated their way to larger bonuses, and those who were content to receive whatever their manager deemed fit. Watching the way that different people treated this issue was a learning experience. There were always the shoe-polishers, who would start getting real cozy to the boss several weeks before the holidays. (These were the employees who had somehow confused "negotiation" with "manipulation"). In contrast, I remember one or two people who would approach me and ask what was expected of them in order to earn a larger bonus. After a bit of negotiation, we would both walk away from that meeting with expectations that were mutually understood. I had no problem in extending a fine bonus to anyone in that circumstance.
Negotiation Basics
This is a fascinating subject, taught in a wealth of good books and outside training programs. Here are two suggestions that many of these resources share in common:
The "feel/felt/found" approach. This is a rapport-building style of negotiation that works well when you need to build a better relationship on which to negotiate. You can answer any argumentative statement from the other person by suggesting that you understand how they FEEL, and that they are not alone. Many other people have FELT the same way. Luckily, you have studied the problem and have FOUND the solution. Does this sound manipulative? It's not. You have simply given the other party a smoother transition to your side of the argument.
Avoid "take it or leave it" scenarios. It is much better to enter a negotiation with some position of latitude, than it is to go in hard and fast without a hint of flexibility. As a recruiter, I am involved regularly with companies and candidates -- and the process of putting together salary offers that work for both sides. One situation that I recall vividly was a fellow who was being offered a position of Director of Protein Chemistry for a major biotech client. Instead of making his requirements known to us with a hint of flexibility, his instructions were that he would insist on a particular salary as a bottom line, and that nothing, no matter what it could be, would move him from that stance. The client company wanted to extend an offer to him but had a similar conversation with the fellow. No flexibility was evident, and so we went elsewhere to fill the position. At a meeting some months later, the prospective candidate told me what his real bottom line was - a mere $500 from the offer that the company had extended his competitor. Instead of putting him in a position of strength, his "take it or leave it" attitude had cost him that job.
In Closure - Win/Win Solutions
The only real successful negotiation is one in which the solution works for everyone. As Roger Dawson says in his book Secrets of Power Negotiating, everything you want in your professional life is either owned or controlled by someone else. It is up to you to find the "win-win" solution that gets you these things without jeopardizing your ethics in the process. Your developing skills in this area could be one of the greatest reasons for your long-term career success.
