Navigating Your Career Inside Your Company

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at the Chicago GSB to help you advance in your career.

Today we're really delighted to have Scott Eblin, who is an executive coach, professional speaker, and author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success. Scott is a former Fortune 500 executive and is founder and president of the Eblin Group, where he has coached more than 200 senior-level leaders in some 30 organizations, including America Online, Capital One, Booz Allen Hamilton, Johnson & Johnson, and the World Bank.

He is a graduate of Davidson College and Harvard University, and currently serves on the faculty of the Leadership Coaching Certificate Program at Georgetown University. He lives near Washington, DC, with his wife, Diane, and their two sons.

Scott, we're really excited that you're here today. And I know you and I had a previous conversation, and I think some of your insights are going to be very valuable to our students and alumni.

Scott Eblin: Thanks, Anita. I'm really pleased to be doing this. So thanks for the opportunity.

Anita Brick: Well, sure. And, you know, one of the things that I really appreciate is that you've done a lot of research about how to successfully move from one level to the next. And, you know, I certainly hear of people who get stuck at a level and they just can't make it to the next. But one thing I found really interesting in the preface of your book, I think it's on page xiii, it said that 40 percent of newly promoted managers are no longer in the same position 18 months later.

Scott Eblin: Right.

Anita Brick: What happens?

Scott Eblin: Well, quite often what happens is failure. You know, people rise to the next level in their career. And what they fail to realize is that what brought them there doesn't keep them there. A lot of folks, when they move up—and I think this is true of most people, really—you've made your reputation because you are an expert in something, and that's usually a functional discipline or a particular skill set that you're the best at in your organization, or at least you're one of the best.

And when you move up to the executive ranks, even at the junior executive rank, the expectations around results are much different. And they're not just about the functional results that you deliver, although that's still important. But there also are expectations around organizational leadership responsibilities, and the game changes. You know, the results, the expectations change. And it's that old definition of insanity doing things the way you've always done them and expecting different results.

You have to start doing some different things in order to continue to succeed at the executive level. It's about picking up and letting go of behaviors and beliefs: picking up some new behaviors and beliefs, and letting go of some other ones. Even if they've served you well in the past.

Anita Brick: Well, give us some examples. Like what kinds of behaviors and beliefs trip you up as you move into more senior ranks?

Scott Eblin: Yeah. You know, the research that I did, I interviewed about 30 successful executives, and I sometimes joke that my threshold definition of success was that they had been in their jobs longer than 18 months. But really, they're folks that have been in the role at the VP level or above for five years or more.

I interviewed a few CEOs as well, but what I really found helpful are the people that had been in the roles five to 10 years—long enough that they had learned some lessons and had some time to reflect on what worked for them, but not so long, maybe, that they’ve forgotten what it's like to make that transition to the executive level.

And what I heard back from them—and in the interviews, when I went back and looked at a thousand pages of interview transcripts—it turned out to be a model around leadership or executive presence that really breaks down into three big category arrays. There's personal presence, which is how you view yourself and how others view you. There's team presence, which is all about leveraging and leading your functional team to get bigger and better results.

And then there's organizational presence, which is how you show up as a leader in the broader organization. And within those three categories, I heard three distinctions around what to pick up and let go for personal, team, and organizational presence. So if you like, I could talk about a couple of those.

Anita Brick: Sure. I think that would be great.

Scott Eblin: Well, why don't we start with personal presence? You know, the very first thing I heard about is that you have to pick up confidence in your presence and believe, really, that you should be there and let go of doubt and how you contribute. And that may not sound like something that most people would be struggling with.

You know, you've reached the executive level. Why is confidence an issue? But what makes us confident? And I heard … So many folks that I interview talk about this: what makes us confident is what we're comfortable with and what we know. And so if we've risen to the executive level, if a person has risen to that level because he or she is an expert in what they do now, you're suddenly in conversations where your expertise doesn't really apply or it's not directly called upon.

You might be a marketing expert who's in a conversation about the strategic financial plan for the company or product design strategies or whatever it might be. And you're expected, as an executive, to have a point of view. And so what a lot of people get hung up on is, well, I don't know enough to contribute to that.

And I had several people tell me, you know, if we invite you to the executive table, we expect you to make a contribution. And that contribution needs to be based on your judgment and your experience, broadly speaking, and not just functionally speaking. So it's letting go of that little voice inside your head that says you don't know enough to be here or you don't have the experience these people do.

That's right—you don't. But you've got to lean into it and develop the experience and build the relationships and understand people at an individual level so that you're comfortable in the conversation and you know what the expectations are and you push yourself a little bit to get into those conversations.

Anita Brick: Anything else around personal presence?

Scott Eblin: Mm-hmm. Pick up regular renewal of your energy and perspective and let go of running flat out until you crash.

Anita Brick: That's a good one.

Scott Eblin: Yeah, that's a good one. It's one that I … I've done so much speaking lately, over the last six months or so, since the book came out, and I've had an opportunity in presentations and speaking with groups to really reflect back on the last six years of being in the coaching business. And I've come to the conclusion, when I think about it, that every year of the last six has been a crazier year for my clients than the year before—that as the technology changes around BlackBerries and emails, the expectations are changing. And just about everybody that I meet these days is available on a 24/7 basis. And it's like we've forgotten any kind of idea of boundaries that we had around personal time.

Anita Brick: Well, and so given that, how do you find … how do you carve out time in a 24/7 world to actually take a breath, renew your energy, and at least get a fresh perspective?

Scott Eblin: Yeah, I think it's important to really have a clear idea of the answer to this question. How am I when I'm at my best? What are the characteristics that describe me when I'm showing up as my definition of peak performance? That's going to be a different set of characteristics for each of us, because we're all wired differently and we all have different strengths and skills.

But once you understand that, then ask, what are the routines that I need to incorporate into my week, into my day, to make it more likely that I'm going to show up at my desk? And no one's going to do that for you, but you.

Anita Brick: Good point.

Scott Eblin: Self-care starts with yourself. And just because everybody else is available 24/7, I don't necessarily think that means you have to be. You can determine some times in your day, especially in your weekends, when you will and when you won't be available.

Anita Brick: It's interesting, though, because I think the expectation, at least with people that I know, is that if everyone else is doing it and you don't, it could negatively impact the way you're perceived within the organization.

Scott Eblin: Yeah, I think even with that …. So I think there are boundaries. I've heard the opposite. I talk to people all the time … when I'm doing feedback interviews for a client, occasionally I'll hear from their colleagues: You know, I get emails from this person at three in the morning, or I'll email them and it doesn't matter what time of day I email them, they're immediately back to me on their BlackBerry. And I wonder, do they have a life?

Anita Brick: Well, that's good to hear. It's good to hear that there is that. Now, I noticed also, you talk about custom-fit communication. What do you mean by that?

Scott Eblin: Yeah. And that's the last of the three distinctions in personal presence. What I mean by custom-fit communications is, it’s the opposite of one-size-fits-all communications. And letting go of that habit is just the opposite of, you know, if you're good with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Custom-fit communications is about understanding two things.

First, what's the outcome that I'm trying to generate with this communications exchange, and two, who's the audience and what do I want them to think? How do I want them to feel? What do I want them to do or believe essentially as a result of this communication? And it's shaping the content and the way in which you deliver that communication to the outcome you're trying to create with that particular audience and really putting yourself in their shoes.

I guess another way to describe it is empathetic communication: taking the point of view of the audience and meeting them where they are.

Anita Brick: And so you mentioned team presence as the second kind of area to let go of certain things and pick up new things.

Scott Eblin: Yeah. And to me, a team presence … I've done a lot of research since I wrote the book. I have an assessment instrument, a 360-degree assessment instrument based on the book that I’ve administered to well over 100 people by now. And so I've had an opportunity to kind of analyze, you know, what the rollup is on the results, and the team presence area is the one where most new executives stumble. That's the initial stumbling point.

And then when we talked earlier about the 40 percent who fail, the very first thing to pick up around team presence is to pick up team reliance and to let go of self reliance. Most folks who reach the executive level for the first time in their career, you know, have a reputation as a stellar individual contributor. They get things done. And even if they've been leading a team prior to getting to the executive level, which most people have, when push comes to shove or it really gets to be crunch time and it's got to get done, their habit has been to step in and do it, or to step in and correct it if their team didn't really didn't do it up to the standards that they had hoped it would be done.

And at the executive level, you're responsible for too many results, or you're accountable for too many results to continue to just rely on yourself and the crunch time or at the 11th hour. So you've really got to have the right people on the bus, in the right seats, and learn to rely on the team.

Anita Brick: Well, how do you actually define what to do in that context?

Scott Eblin: Yeah, well, that's a great segue to the second distinction around team presence: it’s picking up, defining what to do, and letting go of telling how to do it.

When I talk with clients, when I talk with groups, I'll often ask them, think about a time in your career when you have developed the most—where your learning curve was really steep, but the experience you gained was super saturated, when you just learned so much in a short period of time. What was going on with that? And what most people say is, when I was put in a job where I was in over my head, or they just told me what they wanted—what the objective was—and they told me to figure out how to do it.

And that's the whole thing: learning how to do it is where the development comes. And executives can only go as far as their teams will allow them to go. As you move up to the next level, your team has to move up with you in terms of their capacity and their capabilities. And so giving them space to figure out how to do it within the parameters of you defining what the objectives are or what to do is really a big step in that team presence direction.

Anita Brick: And so the third one is accountability. Is it personal accountability, team accountability … ?

Scott Eblin: It’s I guess both, really. The way I think about it is it's picking up accountability for many results and letting go of responsibility for a few results. And that's maybe a sort of a fine semantic distinction. But the way I think about it is this: it's the difference … Some people like to cut their own grass. There was a time in my life when I used to like to do that, not so much anymore. But if you ask people, those that like to cut their own grass, why is that? Well, I get satisfaction from doing something. I can see the results immediately. It's a relatively short amount of time invested for a visible result.

Accountability versus responsibility is like the difference between cutting your own lawn and owning a lawn-care service that cuts 100 yards a week. There's no way that anybody can be personally responsible for cutting 100 yards a week. It's pretty unlikely, anyway. But if you own that lawn-care service, you are accountable to all your customers, your hundred customers for the results that your lawn-care crews are responsible for.

And so the distinction really is, can I get satisfaction by achieving results through the work of other people? And that's where accountability comes in. In order to be accountable in a successful way, I've got to put systems and processes and communication chains in place that allow me to sample the results that my team is achieving, and allow me to check in on the progress against the milestones and the key metrics.

And it's making that shift from being a doer to being, in some ways, an overseer—and using those accountability systems to follow through on that.

Anita Brick: OK. So we started with personal. Now we're looking at team.

Scott Eblin: Right.

Anita Brick: And the next stage is organizational. So what are the key aspects of organizational presence?

Scott Eblin: Yeah. So let's go back to that opening statistic about the 40 percent failure rate after 18 months. There was a study done several years ago by the Corporate Leadership Council in which they asked colleagues of people who had failed—people who were in a position to have an impression or an opinion of why people failed—what the reasons were for the executive failure.

They gave the respondents a list of things to choose from, and you could choose more than one. The item that was selected most frequently—82 percent of the respondents chose this item—was failure to build relationships with peers and subordinates, and particularly with peers. So the first distinction to think about at the organizational-presence level is to pick up the habit of looking left and right as you lead and let go of the habit of primarily looking up and down as you lead.

I'm not saying completely give that up—looking up to your boss and down to your team—but not overdoing it. I call that vertical tunnel vision. I'm looking up to my boss and down to my team, up to my boss and down to my team. And I miss what's going on in my peripheral vision—what's going on with my peers, to my left and to my right.

And that's where the real gold is for executives—matching up my individual agenda, or my functional agenda, with the functional agendas of my peers. So collectively, we're moving the business or the organization forward in a coordinated way, and we're supporting each other in that process.

Anita Brick: Well, you know, it's interesting, one of the questions that came from one of the alums at the GSB really relates to that. And he asked … he was talking about how his boss, who he had a great relationship with, received a promotion, and he's now reporting to one of his peers. And so he's having some challenges on two fronts.

Number one, he hadn't necessarily built the .. he didn’t have a bad relationship with his peer, but he had a distant relationship with his peer. And he's having some ego problems: like, why it didn't happen to him. And so how do you think someone like that could handle both the ego issues and creating a positive relationship with this new manager who used to be your peer?

Scott Eblin: That's a great two-part question. So on the ego thing ....

Anita Brick: That's a tough one. It's really tough.

Scott Eblin: Yeah, it is, and I'm going to give what sounds like very simple advice. It’s easier to say, maybe, than it is to do, but it's let it go. It's essentially, get over it. And the reason that this is the secondary question, or the question that I would ask first if they were my client, is what's it doing for you? What benefit are you getting from hanging on to this ego issue?

Anita Brick: That’s a good point. So how does he now build a positive relationship or create a positive relationship when he didn't really have a strong one to begin with?

Scott Eblin: Yeah. I've been in a lot of conversations about this exact topic lately. And I think the first thing is to ask for a conversation—you know, can we go to lunch together? Can we go to Starbucks together or whatever? And let's talk and let's acknowledge that this is a different situation. You know, let's be upfront about that and then move very quickly into what can I do for you and what can we do together to make sure that you're successful and we're successful as a team.

And it's a bit of focus on the results that we need to achieve together. And it's a bit of focus on the relationship that we need to have together in order to achieve those results. But you've got to be sincere in that conversation. And that's why I think the first part of this is about let it go—that's in the rearview mirror.

Now, the fact that your colleague was promoted and you weren't … so now we're in the present, and we're looking forward. Let's deal with those two time frames rather than the past, because, you know, dealing in the past … we're not going to get anywhere in the future based on that.

Anita Brick: True. One other question that came that also seems to apply to this in a slightly different way is that someone was hired into a position, and when he got there, he realized it was a more junior-level position than he thought, and also kind of under his level of expertise. What can someone do if that happens? And now they're reporting to people who are really at the level that they should be at, and how do they not intimidate that person?

Scott Eblin: Oh, that's a good … that last part is ..

Anita Brick: That’s a tricky one too.

Scott Eblin: Yeah. But that's the really interesting part of the question. And so let's start with the first part. My first instinct or, you know, this sort of instinctive response before you got to that last little kicker about the intimidation factor, is to do a great job where you are … You are where you are, and so the organization, for whatever reason, felt like you were the person for that role. So make sure you live up to their expectations and exceed them. Now, in the exceeding is where the intimidation factor can come in. I actually went through this a couple of times in my own career before I started the coaching business. And what I've learned from experience and what I've learned from my clients’ experience, is the importance of open communications and really being clear with your boss about what's important to them and really being clear with them about … especially about the different conversations you're having.

You know, I'm in communications with these people on this issue in order to move the ball forward on, you know, on this topic, whatever it is. I find that that can be a real source of insecurity for some bosses, is when their subordinates are having conversations that the boss thinks, well, you know, I should be in the loop on that, and I'm finding out that I'm not. Well, why am I not in the loop on that? And what's my subordinate doing? You know, maybe even behind my back. I mean, these are the stories that can develop in a boss's mind. So I think openness and honesty are the best policies in that kind of situation. Usually. Usually that's the way to go.

Anita Brick: Well, and I guess really paying attention to the cues coming from that other person because maybe you can be completely honest and maybe … you don't want to be dishonest, of course, but maybe you need to be kind of savvy as to how you communicate.

Scott Eblin: I think that's a perfect point. I mean, personally, I would never encourage anybody to be dishonest. I just think that's a losing strategy. But yeah, I think you need to be sensitive to, you know, where is this person emotionally? You know, at some level, I think just about all of us, maybe with the exception of the Dalai Lama and a few others, you know, all of us have some level of insecurity … in our personalities. And in fact, you know, that's true for bosses, too. And some are more insecure than others. And I think it's important to, you know, tune in to that and do what you can to reinforce the positive emotions and the positive points of view and do what you can to downplay anything that might stimulate insecurities.

Anita Brick: So one thing I was curious about. The second aspect, the organizational presence, is an outside-in view rather than an inside-out view. How does that play as you're moving up the ranks?

Scott Eblin: What I'm talking about is an outside-in view of the business and letting go of an inside-out view that starts with your functional perspective. The way to sum it up is at this level, at the next level, the executive level and above, it's business first and function second. And so you're thinking first as a business leader, even though you're still the leader of the function.

Sometimes what you'll see is, people on the executive team will act like and behave like their individual agenda is far more important than the collective agenda. And that shows up in the way that they hoard resources or the way … you particularly see it in budget season. When we're making our divisions and allocation of scarce resources in budget season and they fight so hard for their budget and everybody else's budget can kind of go to hell, frankly—that's the kind of behavior that gets noticed in a negative way.

And instead, what you want to show up with is, OK, collectively, what are we trying to do together? And I probably will have to make some sacrifices from everything that I would like to do for my part of the business in order to make contributions of resources and time and whatever else, to support the broader business.

It's about making offers to your peers: where can you help them? And then also making requests of them from time to time, if not where they can help you, but it's all in service. What are we trying to get done together as a business or as an overall organization?

Anita Brick: So someone else, one of the students had asked, how do you—and it kind of comes into play with this—how do you know when it's time to really push for a promotion? In fact, the question was how much time do you have to serve before the next move? And both if it's a new company, so you're in the company, you're there for a short period of time, when should you push for the next level?

And maybe you've been around for a long time in many different levels, but how aggressive should you be, and how quickly can you expect that next promotion?

Scott Eblin: So one of my favorite answers is the economist's answer. And the answer is it depends. Right? But here's some general rules of thumb. And then we can talk about some of the stuff underneath that. If you're a high-potential person in an organization, particularly in a larger organization where there are lots of different functions and different levels of leadership within those functions, in a lot of organizations the high potential is going to be expected to stay in their current role for 24 to 36 months before they're asked to take on the next role. Right?

So I'd say somewhere … anything less than 24 months, you really don't have—again, it depends, but you usually don't have the opportunity to go through… well, for sure, an annual business cycle. Usually less than that—you're dealing with one or one and a half business cycles.

And two, there's usually some objectives that need to be accomplished. And the more complex the objectives, the longer it takes to fully demonstrate that you've accomplished them. And that's from a developmental standpoint: that you've learned what there is to learn in that role. Right?

Anita Brick: Right.

Scott Eblin: 24 to 36 months is a pretty decent rule of thumb to think about. OK, have I learned everything or most everything I can learn in this role? And of course, you've got to do a great job. Naturally. You know, that's the first thing. And people have to understand that you're doing a great job. And that's not about self-promotion, but it is about promoting and letting people know about the results.

And it's particularly … I always like to encourage people to talk about, here's what my team did. Or you should know that as a team, we said that we're moving in this direction and getting periodic updates on where your team is against that longer-term objective. And then when you reach it, say, we said a year ago or two years ago, we're going to do this, whatever this is, and we've done it. It's speaking for the work.

You know, I often say that, the idea that … some people believe that if I just do good work, it'll speak for itself. I don't think that's exactly right. I think you have to speak for the work. That's a subtle difference between speaking for yourself or blowing your own horn and speaking for the work in the context of the overall business and what we're doing.

Anita Brick: So really, Wow, I did a great job. It's like, here are our business objectives. And here's how we've met or exceeded them.

Scott Eblin: We've delivered against them.

Anita Brick: Yeah, we've delivered against them.

Scott Eblin: It's all about context, right? You know, where were we? Where are we now? How did we get from here to there? This is really a key part of that.

Anita Brick: Yeah. So another question that kind of relates to … there's a follow-on question from another student. Is that all right? So now you've hit that 24, 36 months. Maybe people even say, you know, we see a promotion in the near future, but it just doesn't seem to be forthcoming. How do you know when it's time to move on and either change employers or change divisions or business units?

Scott Eblin: Yeah, that's another great question. I think it's, well, the obvious answer, I guess, is a couple of promotional opportunities have come and gone and you weren't selected, so then you've got some homework to do and you can ask some trusted advisors and mentors about what you're missing.

Anita Brick: What if there just aren't any opportunities? It's not that they don't love you and think that you would be great, and they'd love to find an opportunity for you, but there just aren't any.

Scott Eblin: So two thoughts come to mind. One is staying within your organization, and the other one is about moving to a new one. Staying within, are there opportunities that you can create? I mean, do you see opportunities that the organization could be pursuing to great advantage, but perhaps is not? And do you volunteer to take the lead on that, even if it involves extra work on top of the job you're currently doing?

So you go out and you create a new business or a new line of business within the organization, and you're the person that created it, and you create that kind of opportunity. That's just one idea of how to kind of set it up inside. And then maybe there's not that kind of opportunity. I think sometimes you do have to move on to move up and, you know, you reach points in your career where that happens.

If you look at people that … well, take Alan Mulally at Ford. He wanted to be the number one guy at Boeing. And he had been there for a number of years; he was on track for that. But they selected Jim McNerney from P&G and 3M to take the top job at Boeing. So Mulally moved to Ford. Now he's the CEO. So that happens a lot. And sometimes, you know, if you've got your eye on a certain kind of job or a certain level of job, you may have to make the decision that you're going to look outside to get it.

Anita Brick: So how does this relate to the kind of third point under organizational presence: a big-footprint view of your role?

Scott Eblin: Yeah. Pick up a big footprint view and let go of a small footprint. Yeah. And what I mean by that is understanding that as an executive, as a member of the organizational leadership team, you are always on stage and people pay attention to what you say and do. And it's surprising to me. And if you look at, let's take an example, look at Bob Nardelli at Home Depot.

The Wall Street Journal ran a big article on him when he was asked to resign from the top job at Home Depot a few weeks ago about what were the reasons for that. But one of the big reasons that they cited in the article, and a lot of the other reportage on Nardelli, was he was sending a message throughout the Home Depot system that people didn't like.

I mean, and so there was mythology—it wasn't mythology because it was apparently based on fact. There were all kinds of stories going around about Bob Nardelli, about being autocratic, about not listening to people's opinions, about—and you saw it in the compensation package that he got—about him putting himself above the rest of the organization in terms of the perks that accrued to him and just the way he led.

He had a very big footprint in that company, and he didn't really manage it very well either internally. I mean, apparently there were cheers at Home Depots around the country the day he resigned. And he didn't manage it well with the shareholders. The great example of that was the shareholder meeting they had last year where he was the only representative of management or the board at the meeting, and they limited the shareholders to one-minute questions.

And the meeting was over in 30 minutes. And, you know, they had some big institutional shareholders that wanted more interaction than that. Again, he didn't manage his footprint. And, executives at levels far below Bob Nardelli’s level at Home Depot, that's an important thing to do: is to manage the image that you have in the organization and think about how you interact with people and the messages they're going to draw from the way you interact.

Anita Brick: How do you, number one, create awareness around that? Because sometimes people are not all that self-aware. And number two, if you notice, if there's a miscue, how do you correct it?

Scott Eblin: Let me take the first question, or the second question, first. If you've recognized that there's a miscue? Apologize.

Anita Brick: Very good point!

Scott Eblin: Pretty straightforward. Just say I'm sorry. You know, an example of that, Richard Clarke, the guy who was the counterterrorism czar under Clinton and then Bush, who resigned a year or two after 9/11. And when he spoke before the 9/11 Commission, he opened his testimony by saying to not just members of Congress, but all the family members from 9/11 that were behind him in the audience and pretty much everybody watching on TV, “I'm sorry. I and my colleagues were the people in charge of keeping you safe. We failed.”

You know, that was a powerful, powerful moment. And, you know, most executives are not nearly in the kind of stakes or dramatic situation that Dick Clark found himself in, but just that power of the emotional connection that you establish by saying sincerely, you know what, I messed up. I'm sorry. And here's what I'd like to do to correct it going forward. Really powerful.

Anita Brick: Yeah. And I think you have to have that second part. Otherwise, you say you're sorry and you're out the door. You have to have the solution as well.

Scott Eblin: Exactly. It's not just the problem, but it's the solution. And I think … the first part of your question a minute ago about how do I tune into that? You know, there's a phenomenon that Dan Goleman, the emotional intelligence guru and others coined, called CEO disease.

Anita Brick: Oh, OK.

Scott Eblin: Have you heard about that one?

Anita Brick: So maybe you could share a little bit about that.

Scott Eblin: CEO disease is the phenomenon of the higher up you go in an organization, the less likely you are to get the truth.

Anita Brick: Oh, that's true.

Scott Eblin: And it's true about your performance. One of the people that I interviewed for the book was a fellow who's a retired two-star general from the Army named Steve Rippe, and I'll edit this for a broad consumption. It's a little earthier in his telling, but there's a saying in the Army, the further up the flagpole you go, the more your rear end shows, right?

Anita Brick: Right, right.

Scott Eblin: You're very visible as an executive leader. And you've got to ask for feedback. You've got to demonstrate through your actions and through your words that you're approachable and make yourself accessible to people. And when they bring you news that's less than pleasant, either about the performance of the organization or about your own performance, you've got to demonstrate that you're open to it: “I wasn't aware of that. Tell me more. When is it that you see me doing that? And can you tell me more about the impact?” Really solicit the feedback and be open to the feedback when people who are brave enough and care enough to present it to you … be open to it when they do.

Anita Brick: That's great. Just one final wrap-up question. If you were going to think of three pieces of really important advice for someone managing their career inside their company, what would you tell them?

Scott Eblin: Three pieces of advice. Well, let me think about that. I could sort of narrow it down to three.

Anita Brick: Well, I think if you were coaching someone and you … obviously, if you give people 40 things to do, yeah, they'll be overwhelmed and they'll pitch it. So when you're working with someone, and you're saying, OK, well, here's a few things we can start with. What are those things that you would highlight?

Scott Eblin: Great. So the first thing … thank you. That helps. The coaching metaphor helps if you think about it. So the first thing is I would adopt the habit of having a swing thought. That's a term that comes from golf. If you watch Tiger Woods where he takes a shot, he'll step back behind the ball, look at the ball, and then look up to his target and look down and look up to his target again.

And what he's doing is visualizing in his mind the outcome he's trying to create. And that's the first thing I would say. That's a tip that relates to personal presence is, develop a swing thought. What outcome are you trying to create with the audience or the person that you're interacting with? So thing number one, or tip number one, swing thought.

Tip number two, build a team and learn to rely on it. Because you're going to be … there's no way that you can perform at the executive level without that team. And then finally, build relationships and do it in a sincere way, in a way that combines true concern and interest in the individuals with the substance of the business. So the relationships are in service of the results that we're trying to create together.

So swing thought, build a team and rely on it, and build those relationships with peers.

Anita Brick: Great. Scott, thank you so much for sharing your perspective on getting to the next level in your career, and taking the time. I know you're very busy, so thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

Scott Eblin: Anita, thanks. It was fun. Great questions. Thank you.

Anita Brick: Oh, well, thanks. And thanks to the students and alumni who submitted some of those. You know, in addition, if people want to see some additional resources, they can actually go to your site, Scott, at the Eblin Group, which is Eblingroup.com.

Scott Eblin: Exactly.

Anita Brick: Right. Eblingroup.com. Yeah, terrific. And thank you all for listening to this podcast, this issue of CareerCast. So go out into the world and get to that next level. Keep advancing. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.