Onboarding: Succeeding in a New Job During the First Three Months

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking to Nance Guilmartin. And she is an executive advisor and organizational consultant with a background in politics, media, and, of course, the corporate world.

She's the author of a really amazing book. Thank you for writing it. It has some very, very good stuff in it. And it's called The Power of Pause: How to Be More Effective in a Demanding 24/7 World. The whole topic of onboarding. The number of questions really exceeded my expectations. And I know we won't get to all of them—we have a fixed amount of time—but it seems like there's a great deal of interest, both for people who are about to start a new job and also, maybe unfortunately, some people who started a job without that framework and mindset. Just at a very basic level, what is onboarding?

Nance Guilmartin: I think it's a great question that we're looking at today, because I think that we're all reinventing it. There is more expected of us today—that we hit the ground running more informed, more tuned in to what's expected of us than ever before. I think if we were talking about onboarding 10 or 15 years ago, people really did have three to six months to get the lay of the land. The world has changed. That's why the questions that people are asking are so on point, because they can feel behind from day one.

I think that onboarding right now means taking responsibility from the minute that you are hired for reconfirming your understanding of the job you've been hired for, taking responsibility for realizing that when you show up weeks or months later, that job may very well have changed from the job you accepted. And also not assuming that what you thought they hired you for is what they are able to have you execute by the time you start.

So onboarding is really taking responsibility for understanding what's expected of you, how that might change, and what kind of skills and abilities you need to demonstrate as well as cultivate right from the start.

Anita Brick: That's a great definition, and one of the evening students said that he received an offer in late 2009, starts in late August of 2010, and I think there were two questions that actually go together. How soon is too soon to start? And the person who isn't going to actually start a job until August—what, if anything, should he be doing now?

Nance Guilmartin: I got curious about that. So I talked to a couple of colleagues of many of us who are working with people who are taking on new jobs because people are being hired. And yeah, the reaction was, tell them it's never too soon to start.

Anita Brick: OK.

Nance Guilmartin: Expectations are higher. We have the internet now. We have Google, we have Bing. We have people who are out of jobs, people who are mentoring people. So I would say you start the minute that you signed the papers. The second thing I would say to people—and there are plenty of people who have been hired and then their hire has been delayed and they're coming on board maybe six months to a year later—again, the job you were hired for, dollars to donuts, has changed.

It's not a problem to check in very responsibly with your boss and say, I want a check. How have things changed? Let me make sure we're on the right page with what the priorities are, what you're looking for from me in the first month and maybe the second month. And then let's recheck our priorities so that we can make sure that as things continue to change, I'm tracking to what is most important.

Anita Brick: And it's true, because I think this person went through an on-campus recruiting process, and it's very typical for them to be hired in the autumn, almost a year before they actually start. I remember the day I started in banking, my manager, who I had been hired specifically to work for, left and took 10 other people that day and everything was up for grabs. So I think you're absolutely right. And to not get fazed by it. Like if things change, not to get crazy.

Nance Guilmartin: That's a really good point I wanted to make. People who are listening to this ought to write down, how can I demonstrate that I am resilient, that I am not going to break simply because things aren't what I expected? They've changed. The industries changed. I accepted this job thinking I was going to have this staff. That staff doesn't turn out to be who I thought they were. Some of them may have quit.

I was coaching somebody in the last couple of weeks. The job this person accepted changed dramatically between the time they accepted it and the time he took it, because some of the people who were still there decided to take little pieces of the job before he showed up.

Anita Brick: Hey. Oh no.

Nance Guilmartin: This is not to make people out to be good or bad. Perhaps that was essential in the interim time that you haven't been there. Other people have work to get done. Other people have talent, abilities, and ambitions. So again, to your point, don't take it personally. If things have changed, if anything, you will have a higher value, no matter what your job, if you can demonstrate your capacity to accept change, to be resilient, to bounce back from a disappointment or something just not being the way you were told it was going to be.

Anita Brick: Good point. An alum asks, how would the internal culture impact preparation in the first 90 days? And then a question that goes along with that. The first month is probably the best time that you are able to acquire new information. How do you make the best use of that first month, and how do you also pay attention to the underlying culture, as that may impact how you approach things?

Nance Guilmartin: When you're onboarding is the most important time to establish your relationship with your boss, with your boss’s boss, and with people who can be early mentors. So I would say you look like a leader if you say to the person hiring you, I want to hit the ground running, and I want to make sure that I am mapping to what works best for this company at this time. Can you advise me as to what is most important for me to handle in this first month, based on what's on your boss's plate?

Anita Brick: Right.

Nance Guilmartin: We're worried about what's on our plate, but when we can come on board and be mature enough, even if we're new to the culture, the country or the industry have done all those things. And sometimes you move from the North to the South or the East to the West or the Midwest. It feels like another country. It doesn't just have to be across the borders.

Regardless of what you feel new to, if you can put your boss's priorities first—let me make sure I understand what's on your plate, what's on your agenda. I want to make sure I know the schedule around here. The schedule can be a different calendar year, a different budget year, a different type of midyear performance checks—they might be not at six months; they might be in the first or third quarter. You don't know. But help me get the lay of the land based on what I can be focusing on right now, given your priorities, so that I make the best use of my time?

Anita Brick: It's a very good point. What if you walk into a situation? There was another question. They just started a job a month ago and it's not really going all that well. His boss wanted to hire someone else, so at the point that you're already there, you're a month into it. Now you're having some conflict. What would you advise someone to do to mitigate some of that?

Nance Guilmartin: I think that's a very common dilemma, that you may be hired into a politically charged situation, and you get the feeling that they wanted somebody else. Don't make that assumption, because you don't necessarily have the facts.

Anita Brick: Right. Good point.

Nance Guilmartin: Be careful that you're not assuming. There may be some other reaction to you. I would step back first from my own disappointment over feeling like I'm not really getting along well with my boss, and notice how the boss is treating other people. Is it me, or is there something else going on that's having the boss not be able to get along well with me? So I wouldn't take it personally. I'd get curious rather than make assumptions.

The second thing I would do is listen. We're all mature, and bosses appreciate people who can put issues on the table, not wait until they get beyond that point, and say, I've noticed that … I'm not sure I am in sync with our common agenda. What can I do better? Or, what can we do differently to make sure that we're both on the same road to success?

Or what does success look like right now in the next couple of months based on working together? Just let them know you're aware that something just doesn't seem quite right. You're not sure what it is, but you're mature enough to check in and find out. Is it me? Is it something else? What can we do about it?

Anita Brick: It's a good point. Sometimes there are things below the surface and as you bring them up and of course, again, it depends on the culture. In some cultures everything is below the surface, and in other cultures there's a lot of directness.

Nance Guilmartin: Let me just jump in here real quickly, because this is a phrase that will help your listeners. And it's something that has really piqued a lot of readers' interest when I'm giving programs. Part three of the book is all about what don't I know. We're all working so fast, and the smarter we are, and the more experience and education and responsibility we have, the more we think we're paid to be right and just do it and make snap decisions and move on and finish the to-do list. However, you need discipline and a methodology to, in the middle of all of that, even when you don't have time, to step back without taking it personally and ask yourself, what don't I know? I don't know, good point. What don't I know I don't know? What might I have misunderstood? What might they have assumed? What might I have assumed? You may not get all of those answers, but just stepping back will diffuse your energy when you go have the conversation with your boss.

Anita Brick: Good point. So there were a few questions around sort of behavior when you first get into the job. So the first one—this is from an Exec MBA student. What's the right balance of too little versus too much networking inside my new company? I want to build connections without overwhelming them, which I have been known to do.

So I think it's good that this person's aware that they might be a little bit overbearing. How do you decide, or how do you identify or pay attention to the environment so you know how much internal networking is good and how much is not appropriate?

Nance Guilmartin: Timing is everything. And in this case, I would use the maxim—Business Network International is the most famous networking group, one of them in the world, and their motto is “givers gain.” When you come across as being out for yourself to network and find the smart people, the strategic allies, you're going to look like a user and a mover rather than somebody who ought to be there learning from the people who are there and demonstrating what you could be a resource to others in.

So to me, when you first hit the job, you want to get a sense of, wow, I wonder how I could be of help to some of the people here. Not because you know it all, but what might your expertise, or even potentially your personal interests, might be of use to people? What do you want to be known for?

What do you want to be accountable for? How can you begin to be a resource for people so that they can come to you for some help, rather than you going to them and network, network, network? So that would be the first thing I would do in that early time. And then secondly, in terms of balance, you really want to be careful about looking like you're trying to learn too much, too fast and look like a know-it-all.

And again, you can be protected from being misunderstood in your eagerness by beginning to get a reputation for being somebody—well, that new person, she is really … I had no idea because they are in marketing that they could be so useful over here.

Anita Brick: It's an interesting point because there was another question from an Exec MBA who—but I think you already answered it—that said, well, how do I develop the right strategic partners? Of course, pay attention to who has power and influence, but again, see where you can contribute before you line up with them to make you look good.

Nance Guilmartin: As a matter of fact, the dean of the business school at Florida International University and I, we teach a program, a leadership program. It's a five-day leadership intensive, and it's about 20 hours a day. So it's intensive. We do a section on power and influence and what she tells the students is—these are already executives who are out in the world, and they're running corporations and divisions and so forth, so they have a lot of responsibility, and they're looking to move up the ladder to become general managers or CEOs or CEOs or country heads.

And what she says in terms of networking is make sure you volunteer. Find out who's got a committee, who has a task force, who has a project. Whether it's during office hours or after office hours, there's not enough expertise available to people, often, when they're assigned to a project, and they've got to go get the next group of busy people who don't have time to be even busier.

So what she says is, before you start needing help, see if you can become known as somebody who looks a little overboard. But even if you just work on one project really well, do something really well so that other people can know that you're somebody that they can turn to. And they could ask, gee, I know you helped so-and-so over here. I'm wondering, do you have any expertise in this area?

Anita Brick: It sounds like then you can see who you want to be aligned with and you're doing it on this, as you said, this “givers gain” without being overly manipulative and like it's all about your agenda.

Nance Guilmartin: Exactly. Really trying to learn how to be a resource for the company.

Anita Brick: Got it. It's a very good point. And I think sometimes for some people it's scary because they want to make sure that they're with the power people, but often that shifts so quickly. If you do it for me, I'm going to exploit this particular situation. You could be aligning yourself with the wrong person too. If you get a reputation as someone who's going to jump in and do and provide and contribute and actually make things better, it helps you across the board.

Nance Guilmartin: And if you don't know where to go, say to your boss, I'm looking for an opportunity to be part of something that's important in the company—it can be at a small level, it doesn't matter—so that I can build some relationships in ways that help people rather than waiting until, oh my gosh, I'm on deadline and who can help me?

If something comes to mind, you can also say to your boss, I'm on the lookout for that and I may not see it as quickly as you do. So if you know of somebody who's got a project and they could use some help and you think I could be of use, please let me know.

Anita Brick: Cool. That's good. Again, this is a question from a weekend student. As he put it, how do you walk the fine line between looking like a workaholic, which could create all kinds of bad expectations and dissension and conflict with your colleagues, versus being a hard-working professional?

Nance Guilmartin: These people are smart, who are your alums. I know they are.

Anita Brick: Oh yeah. Students and alums are totally … yeah.

Nance Guilmartin: Put your radar up and find out who seems to be respected in this organization. It's all about respect. Respect is part of the key to power and influence. And it's not about a title. Who do people talk about as someone they trust or they admire or they enjoy working with? Take a look at how that person is balancing their work and their personal life load, or their workaholism versus setting limits load.

If you have a concern about it because of your own personal situation, and you're concerned that you might be misunderstood because of the hours you're working, or if you've got some flex time or however you're onboarding, you could again check with your boss and say, I'd like to check with you about what are the practices and what is the culture here about work-life balance.

And obviously by now your boss knows that you do or do not have a family, or that you do or do not have any special considerations. And you can't always assume, because some companies have very private policies that allow people to have certain flexibility. I used to come in at six in the morning when I had my first big, huge promotion working at Westinghouse Broadcasting.

By 9:00, I was so far ahead of everybody, it was really funny. And one day my boss came in and said, Nance, you're making me look bad. And I said, oh my gosh, boss, what's the matter? He says, you are not allowed to get in before I get in. I said, well, when do you get in? He said, 6:30. I said, oh OK. And he said, stop staying so late, because I was getting in at six and leaving at 10.

Anita Brick: Oh my goodness.

Nance Guilmartin: Well, I was just enthusiastic … in television, and I would never have enough time to do all the research I was doing, and I was saving the world and all of that jazz, and I was in my mid 20s. But when he came to me, people had been concerned that I was taking my job too seriously.

Anita Brick: Got it.

Nance Guilmartin: I think sometimes if you don't go to the boss, the boss may come to you.

Anita Brick: It's true, it's true. You know, one of the things that probably wasn't true, you know, a decade ago, but certainly is true now …. One of the alums asked the question. He works in a virtual environment, and he said, how do you get to know people in a virtual environment? And the other thing, he went from a company that had 6,000 to a company that has more than 50,000 employees globally. So when you're not seeing people every day, how do you build those connections virtually?

Nance Guilmartin: That is a great question. And what I would say is that the size isn't what matters. People are people, parts are parts. So I would not be fazed so much by the size, because his job is not to become known by everyone, at least not right away. But it would be—look at his priorities. What is on his plate that matters to his team, to his customers, to his colleagues, to his stakeholders?

Whatever the language is there and within that small niche, do a good job of learning about other people. Show that you're interested in other people. What do you want to know about them? What might you want them to know about you so that they don't misunderstand you? We're often misunderstood when we start up a new job, whether it's our email etiquette or our parking etiquette or our hours, or the way we write or how we communicate.

I would think big and start small. I would build momentum through my performance. I would let people get to know parts of my personality rather than be judged as always serious or always a cutup, and I would let people know I'm interested in getting to know them. And the virtual environment, oddly enough, has created a form of sometimes authentic and sometimes false intimacy where people are a little lighter. They do exchange photos in ways we never did before.

Anita Brick: Yeah. Good point.

Nance Guilmartin: They do make appointments to get to know one another in ways that you didn't have to when you were passing each other in the hallway. So I think with a little bit of levity and a little bit of curiosity, the person can find out what works for other people in this new company and then develop their own persona.

Anita Brick: Oh, very good points. An evening student who is going to be joining a new company in about 30 days, and she is going in as a marketing person, really a strong brand person. Her longer-term goal is to be a general manager, and she's wondering what she can do during that onboarding process, and really beyond, to not be typecast or pigeonholed as a marketing person so that she can really be viewed as broader than that?

Nance Guilmartin: Well, I'm not sure whether she's trying to go from marketing to general management at the company where she's starting.

Anita Brick: Yeah, I think so. I think she just doesn't want to be only viewed as marketing. She wants to be able to contribute in other ways, too. But she's being hired as a marketing person.

Nance Guilmartin: I would be really careful not to send the wrong signals from the get go.

Anita Brick: Good point.

Nance Guilmartin: Her boss has hired her to solve problems in marketing. What you want to start off doing is rather than worrying about being typecast, I would focus on how can I demonstrate how ready I am to help my boss look good, help my team succeed, and learn the big picture? Like, how do we fit in this company? What does marketing look like in this company?

In some companies, marketing is marketing, branding, public relations, community relations, external relations, regulations, internet protocol. I mean, it can be so many things that it wasn't 10 years ago. So rather than her coming in thinking marketing's not good enough, they may be thrilled to be getting her in marketing and want her to become a star in marketing. And she can, on her own, I think—I don't know how well schooled she is and what it takes to be a general manager at this new company, but …

Anita Brick: Good point.

Nance Guilmartin: She could pay attention to what kind of management experience are they looking for? She's coming in as part of a team. I don't know whether she's ever managed anyone. What kind of leadership skills do they want people to have in this company? As she starts meeting people, she could start paying attention to what are the characteristics of some of the leaders here, and some of the managers here? Who might eventually make a good mentor outside of marketing?

She could also become well versed in some of the new literature in leadership and management. She can also find out where some of the general managers have come from. So I think she's got some research and due diligence to do on the side.

Anita Brick: Good. No, a very good point. You know, there were two questions about, OK, now you're in a situation and it's not exactly what you thought it was going to be.

Nance Guilmartin: Oh yeah.

Anita Brick: And there were two. One was someone … is VP of operations, an alum, for a large established company. He's actually the only person who is college educated and has an MBA in his division. And he wanted to understand, how does he straddle this? Not looking arrogant, but being able to bring in a more strategic perspective.

And then the other person is in a more entrepreneurial venture and again, is trying to straddle. How do you meet the needs of the group that's brought you in and also make sure that you keep them informed and that you respect them?

Nance Guilmartin: I'm a big fan of being who you are. And this word “authentic leadership”—to me, leadership is about leading in the midst of uncertainty and having the humility to acknowledge what you don't know. The fourth chapter of the book is all about how is humility a strength in leadership?

For those of your students and alums who are fans of Patrick Lencioni, in his book about leadership, talks about trust is at the bottom of the pyramid, meaning if you don't have it, you don't have leadership. So I'm giving all of that as a preface for what my advice is going to be. Put your cards on the table. In this case, success is not a poker game. We do not have time for people to have poker faces and be trying to second-guess everyone.

If I were either one of these people, I would say, I'd like your advice. Could you guys help me here? You're asking these people, could you help me help you? It would be helpful for me to know—here, I've got this training and I've got these ideas, and we have this situation, and I want to know what are some ways I could throw out some ideas?

I don't have to be right, but it could take the conversation in a different direction and we can work on it together. Last thing I want to come across as is a know-it-all, and I could. I could come across that way, and I don’t want to. Same thing with the other person in the entrepreneurial setting and meeting their needs. I would never assume that I know what their needs are. Even if they say, what I really need is more people.

There's a story in my first book when I was coaching in the hotel industry, helping them go from three star to four star in less than a year in a 100-year-old property—which had never been done before. There was a case where the housekeeping staff, which is the heart and soul of rating any hotel's upgrade, better have that housekeeping taken care of. They're the lowest paid and the least respected, usually, in most of the hotels. This is not unlike many companies, where the people closest to the customers actually have the greatest customer intelligence of what it will take to make those customers happy.

Where I'm going with this is what they wanted to do their jobs better is—everybody else was getting new equipment in the hotel so that they could show that they were better, smarter, and they should get a higher ranking. So suddenly, there was a request for several thousands of dollars worth of new vacuum cleaners. Turns out there was nothing wrong with the vacuum cleaners. They just thought they needed new equipment so they could look like everybody else.

So I would say to the entrepreneur, when you want to help people meet their needs and you're very creative, don't just react to what people say. Use your exceptional listening skills by going beneath the surface of what it seems the problem or the want is to genuinely show them, no matter how smart you are with your newly minted degrees or promotion, I want to make sure I really understand what the problem behind the problem is and what caused the problem, so that we really take care of preventing the problem, and we solve it in a way that makes us feel great, right?

Anita Brick: Someone asks the question, is there something special, different, that—as they put it—an older worker needs to know in the first three months?

Nance Guilmartin: No one wants to be known in terms of age. It's more about we're all in the same boat because we all have to keep up with fast-changing technology, right? Politics and industry rules. Nobody imagined the speed with which the internet was going to change the world. Or apps—apps were thought to be something that Apple didn't want. And now they’re a new advertising medium.

Anita Brick: Right. No. It's true.

Nance Guilmartin: So I would say that whether you're the older worker—come on, the younger workers often feel at a disadvantage too, or people returning to the workplace who aren't older. If we typecast ourselves as us versus them, we're not saying we're in the same boat or on the same team. So I thought about this, and I talked with some other people about this question.

What we all came back with is, yes, we may feel older and we may have more learning challenges, but we all have the same pressure, which is we have to keep up with change. And maybe we're a little more resilient and a little less thrown off by the latest crisis, because a lot of us who are older have been through three or four or five or six recessions.

Anita Brick: Right.

Nance Guilmartin: We've been through a lot of layoffs. And what do we have to contribute from our experience that might have nothing to do with technology, but might be of use to somebody else? Where's the trade-off?

Anita Brick: That's a good point. And there was actually an alum who probably could be helped by this person because he was promoted three months ago to a new position in a different country. He had a crisis in month one, a crisis in month two, and a third crisis in month three. He said he's completely tired and frustrated. He said, what would you advise me to do so there won't be another failure in the next month? It sounds like it's a resilience question.

Nance Guilmartin: Yes it is. The need for resilience is ongoing, and the way to be resilient is to acknowledge when you make a mistake or when you don't know what to do, how to ask for help and get that kind of input right away, rather than pretending that you have the answer.

Anita Brick: From the things he described, everybody was on holiday one month, somebody left the next month, that it was his fault. Maybe part of what he needs to do is dig down and think over the last 90 days, what contributions did he make? And I think it's good for everyone in the first 90 days, and probably beyond that, to be documenting the things that they have contributed, because at some point, maybe it's six months or a year, someone's going to ask during our performance review.

Nance Guilmartin: So in essence, the key to that question that you most want answered is—can you just run that by me again?

Anita Brick: Well, I think you answered it. I think it is about resilience, and it is about a person being able to regroup and understand what's worked, what hasn't, and that not everything is this person's fault. They probably just need to take a step back and also look at the value that they have created, not just the challenges, which may have been exhausting to them.

Nance Guilmartin: I like what you said, which is we live in an era where the art of the apology is not about being humiliated, and the sooner that you make it, or the sooner that you acknowledge that there was a misstep or a misunderstanding or something that didn't work the way that was expected, you gain respect. You gain trust. Make it easier for your boss to do the same thing with you, or for your team, or for a colleague who had an expectation of you.

And so what I've been saying to people—whether you're the president of a university, whether you're the head of a bank, whether you're the head of a new division, whether you're in human resources where they expect you to be perfect, or marketing where they expect you to be fast, whatever your job is, or tech where they expect you to know the latest thing—the power of a pause is to step back, like you said, and take a moment of reflection. It's not about going on vacation or turning off the computer. It is to show that you have the maturity to say, let me take a moment here to think about what really happened. Maybe we were going so fast. Maybe we jumped to some conclusions based on facts and evidence that really weren't the whole story.

Anita Brick: Good point.

Nance Guilmartin: How can we not take it personally, even if people have come after us, and demonstrate that we have—resilience is sort of a plasticity. We have the flexibility to not let it get to you, like you said. You have to be able to say, I made a mistake. I lost my concentration. They don't use excuses, but they acknowledge it didn't work out and they look at what they can do differently next time. And sometimes they get a little coaching or they get a little training.

Anita Brick: True, we do that with every event that we do. We're like, OK, what worked well and what would be better?

Nance Guilmartin: And what didn't I know that I know now, why didn't I know it? And how can I make sure that going forward, the next time I'm taking on a new project or a new person, or I've said yes to a deadline that really I shouldn't have said yes to, how can I do it differently?

Anita Brick: Got it. Do you have time for two quick questions?

Nance Guilmartin: Yes, I do.

Anita Brick: OK, cool. One that’s interesting, and I bet there are more people who will be experiencing this—one of our Exec MBA students said, I have a new position and start in three weeks. I'll be spending the first three months in New York and then move to Southeast Asia and be part of a different team. Anything that you would recommend for this two-part onboarding? Because I have to onboard twice.

Nance Guilmartin: I think that this person has the right idea. It's the first time they are in a US company with US culture and US rules, and they're new to the company. So that's phase one. And I think they're asking some of the same questions that we started this conversation with: what's most important in this next three months? You could also get advice about how to handle the interface between one country and the other, what's expected from the people once I go over to the other country? There are an awful lot of communication and cultural snafus when you've got a virtual worldwide company situation. So find out from the people on one side of the pond how they would prefer to work with the people on the other side of the pond and treat it as two separate experiences.

And then once you're over in the other country and you're doing the same thing, how have you learned it's best for us to communicate back over to company number one. Oh good point. What helps people when they first get here may have nothing to do with the company. It may be adjusting to the time zone, to cultural mores.

Workaholism may not be a good thing. Deadlines might be very different in one culture than another. Making mistakes and dealing with them might be very different, as is conflict. So some of it may be the emotional intelligence issues in a different country as opposed to just the content.

Anita Brick: That's a good point. And even if you didn't have two different actual job locations, you might still experience the same thing as you work with teams in different parts of the world.

Nance Guilmartin: Well, and let's face it, the reason people fall apart on a job often isn’t about content. It's about how they come across to people.

Anita Brick: It's true.

Nance Guilmartin: It’s about what happens when you're misunderstood. So something I would say to some of your people, if they're going on board as managing others is, I have a whole process when I help people start up. One of the first things you really want to do is ramp up your listening skills.

And there's plenty of books on listening. I happened to write two of them, so both of my books help you with listening skills, but you may have some other ones and you really want to demonstrate you have more to learn from listening than you do from speaking. So I would say be quick to listen and slow to speak.

The second thing is to be really clear about what's expected of you, what you expect of yourself, and what you expect of them and what they can expect of you. And lastly, put it on the table with a sense of humor. Look, people, I'm not saying I'm not perfect. I don't expect you to be either. We're going to make mistakes.

We work in a competitive, high-speed environment, whatever that is. If I let you down, if something I said isn't what you thought I meant, if somehow we have a snafu, please don't wait until you can't stand it anymore. Here's what works for me—whatever your system of checking in—and here's what you can expect of me. If something's gone awry and I'm having a bad day, and this is what I say, here's how you can handle me.

Anita Brick: Good point. And I think you actually began answering—the last question I was going to ask you is, if you were going to give someone advice on how to have a successful onboarding process, what are three things that you would tell them? So listening and really setting expectations is one. Are there any other things that you would add?

Nance Guilmartin: Well, listening is one on its own. In fact, a lot of my people do what I call a listening tour. And I train them in listening skills. And one of the things I've invented, actually, is called reverse rephrasing. And it's not just rephrasing what you think you thought somebody else said. I believe leaders have to take responsibility for asking people, could you run by me what you think you thought I was talking about, because I want to make sure I was clear?

Anita Brick: Oh got it.

Nance Guilmartin: And I teach people how to do that in the book. And it's got a process to it, but it is a leadership skill. And don't just say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I got it and then start talking. So listening is actually its own category. The second thing is setting expectations and checking what's expected of you. And the third is beware the tendency to—another word I made up that people have fun with—”assumitis.” It's like laryngitis. Assumitis is the condition of making too many assumptions.

Let's face it, we do judge books by the cover. We do judge people, and you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But you're really looking for many second chances to make that impression, right? So what I say to people is, look, you're human. You're going to be making assumptions. They're not all going to be right.

Make sure, particularly since you're expected to hit the ground running so much more quickly than in the past, that you check your assumptions with people inside and outside. That's another power of a pause, so it's hard to not make them, but you better check them early, often, frequently, and from multiple sources.

Anita Brick: Thank you Nance, this is great. This is a topic that so many people have an interest in. And there are so many potential pitfalls that you could make. But I think if you go in, as you said at the very beginning, giving first, really paying attention, and all the things that you just mentioned, it will help a great deal. And it sounds like people who are actually on the other side, bringing people on, could benefit from the same information.

So thank you for sharing that, and thank you for making the time. I know you're very busy. And I guess lastly, thank you for writing The Power of Pause. It really sets the stage for a much more productive and also respectful environment where people are acknowledged for the stuff that they do positively and, you know, correct it in good ways too, for the things that maybe could be better.

Nance Guilmartin: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity. And there were great questions, and I wish people luck. And then they should start blogging and posting and telling us how it goes so we can have our own little workbook on making this up for the 21st century.

Anita Brick:. There we go again. Thank you very, very much. And for those who were listening, there were also some questions about resources. So on the page that you're probably on as you're listening to this, or if you've downloaded this through iTunes, go to the CareerCast page under publications on the Career Services page. And Kim Whalen, the librarian at the Career Resource Center, put together a great list of tools that she vetted and put some commentary about so that can be there for your resources, too.

And again, thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.