How to Propel Yourself Towards Success

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of co-leader a call on career development with the Assistant General Manager of the Gwinnett Stripers, Erin O’Donnell. The call was a part of a bi-monthly series of calls for the Minor League Baseball LIFT Program. Now what is the LIFT Program? LIFT stands for Leaders Inspiring Future Talent. It is a mentorship program created by women at the MiLB headquarters to develop the next generation of female executives while retaining talent in Minor League Baseball.

I’m sure you’d love to know what makes Erin and myself qualified to lead such a discussion? Erin is in year two as the Assistant General Manager of Gwinnett. She has a background of 14 years of experience in Minor League Baseball, spanning across roles with the Birmingham Barons, Sacramento River Cats, Memphis Redbirds, Northwest Arkansas Naturals, and Corpus Christi Hooks. Erin’s extensive experience not only taught her copious lessons on career development, but she is constantly hiring and training future executives in her current role as AGM as well.

As for myself, I don’t have nearly as many years of experience in industry, but I’ve certainly made the best of my time. Starting off part time as a Box Office Manager for an MiLB team in 2017, I then moved to an Inside Sales role with an MLB team. From there, I became an Account Executive with a Single A MiLB team in late 2018 and was promoted to a Corporate Partnerships role with a Triple A MiLB team in late 2019. Some people might say that upward mobility grants me the right to speak on the topic of career development.

Alright, so let’s get to the bread and butter of this post. After a lot of positive feedback from women that listened in on the call, Erin and I decided it may be beneficial to recap it for a wider audience to see and learn from. First, Erin started off by discussing the broken rung, as referenced in Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In. Erin then went on to explain some of the ways to fix the broken rung. I then hopped in to talk about how to be clear and intentional with your leadership team. Erin then mentioned another important rule of career development – don’t wait for someone to give it to you… ask for responsibility. I then discussed the ABC’s of career development, as well as how to develop yourself on a personal level. Erin polished off the conversation with one last rule for career development, which is to be an advocate. This presentation lasted somewhere around an hour, so bear with me as I do my best to give the most stripped down but impactful version of the conversation (don't worry, it's still long...HA).

If you have not heard of Sheryl Sandberg, she is the COO of Facebook, an author, and the founder of LeanIn.org. Through Lean In, Sandberg discusses the broken rung. What exactly is the broken rung? Based off a five-year study, Sandberg’s team discovered that entry-level women were much less likely to make the jump to a manager position than men, and that stunted their growth throughout their entire career. The study found that 62% of the people that make the jump from entry-level to manager were men, and only 38% of them were women. Now there are many factors that can play into this, but we are here to talk about career development, so we will discuss how to fix the broken rung.

62% of the people that make the jump from entry-level to manager were men, and only 38% of them were women.

There are three major ways that the broken rung can be fixed – through manager support, having a sponsor, and through adopting a clear criteria. Manager support is one of the most important ways to fix this broken rung. If you are a woman in a management position, it is especially important to give the women under you the support, guidance and training they need – manage down! If you are in an entry level position, then manage up. Having a sponsor is also important, and by that, I mean to have someone in your organization or another in a position of power that can speak on your behalf. It is helpful to have a voice that is respected to work with you and to help your voice be heard. Finally, as a leader wanting to continue to develop female leaders, work with your HR team to make sure that you have inclusive and unbiased hiring processes. If you identify anything that you think is not clear, bring it to attention and make sure that you are giving opportunities to all diversities (race, gender, religion, etc). Make sure to set goals for diversity as well.

Another way to continue to develop your career is to be clear and intentional with your leadership team. The most significant factor in impacting your job satisfaction is your relationship with your manager. So, manage up, ask questions, and communicate. When managing up, get to know your boss as a person. Where did they come from? How did they get to where they are now? What are the lessons they learned along the way? Understand your boss’s goals and anticipate their needs, but also remember the importance of aligning their goals with your needs. This is all important towards building that strong, mutually beneficial relationship.

Manage up, ask questions, and communicate.

To be clear and intentional with your leadership team, it is also imporant that you ask questions and communicate. While the age old saying "there's no such thing as a dumb question" may not be completely foolproof, it still carries a lot of weight. If you feel that you have an important question, ask it. The very worst case scenario is that you get told no, or your question isn't answer. If you don't ask, you'll never find out. Also make sure to express and communicate what you need to succeed for your organization for your boss. For example, while working with a previous team, I was thrown into a role that I had zero training or background knowledge of. I was upset that I wasn't getting the training I knew I needed, nor was I being helped with setting actionable goals. Everything that I needed for sales success from my direct supervisor was not happening. I finally worked up the courage to talk to him, and it was one of the best things for our relationship. He was able to understand where I was coming from, and help me to move forward. After all, in order for him to succeed as a manager, I needed to succeed as well. We gained a lot of mutual respect for each other by learning to keep those lines of communication open.

Regarding promotions, the employees that communicated, asked questions, and made clear what their goals are, those are the employees that managers will think to first.

Additionally, you can develop your career by asking for responsibility instead of waiting for it to be given to you. Women are typically more comfortable or shy when receiving credit, versus men who own it and take the credit to show off how bad ass they are. Take the credit!! Erin used to never take credit for her work or ask for responsibility but thankfully after a while in the industry she finally learned how and it helped monumentally in propelling her career forward. The more she asked, the more responsibilities and opportunities to learn were given. It is better to be well rounded in your work place, especially if you're looking to one day lead an office. With that being said, there's always a catch 22 of making sure you're not asking for too much. You never want to come across as ungrateful or too big for your britches.

Whether you're in sales or not, at one point in your career you've heard about the importance of ABC - ALWAYS BE CLOSING! I decided that it's not fair that sales people get all the fun rules and acronyms, so I wanted to coin a term that can be applicable for everyone when it comes to career development - ABC!! Always be creating opportunity. Okay so technically it's ABCO, but that doesn't have as good of a ring to it... So how do you always create opportunity in your career? You network, practice mindfulness, and work it(own who you are). We'll go further into detail on each of these below.

Always be creating opportunity.

Networking - we've all heard of it. Some of us love it and some of us loathe it. Newsflash: learn to love networking if you want to get ahead. Learn who all the coworkers on your team are, not just their names but more about who they are and their backgrounds as well. Learn the clients. Put yourself out there, not only in your community but it the sports industry as well. Just because you aren't in sales does not mean you can't benefit from networking. You never know whose path you'll cross that will forever change the course of your career for the better.

Mindfulness is another imporant aspect of creating opportunity. At the end of my work day, I like to sit down and ask myself the following questions: are these the people I want to be with? How did I handle the situations I was in? Did I perform any activities that will further my cause? Am I on the right track? Are there any opportunities that I may have missed? Doing this daily mindfulness exercise will create more opportunity for yourself and put you on the right path to success.

The last part of the career development ABC's is to work it! Own it! Be you and be so confident in your abilities. Nail your elevator pitch. Your elevator pitch will always remain important, and if you have it down to a tee you will always come across more confident when presenting it. Hiring mangers like confidence, it impresses them. If you aren't confident in yourself then why should they be? Another way to own it is to inject a little humor - it makes you more personable and it's easy for others to create a connection with you right off the bat (baseball pun intended). You can also own your success and confidence by becoming a leader. Just because you are not a leadership position in titles DOES NOT mean that you are not a leader. Simply put, leadership is defined as the art of motivating a group of people towards acheving a common goal. Leadership is not a title. When you lead, everyone around you recognizes that as a positive trait. Promotions will follow.

Leadership is not a title.

Not only is it imperative that you create opportunities, but you also need to develop yourself. Develop yourself outside of your career because the more you understand your true self, the more self-assured you will become. Self assurance = confidence. You can develop yourself by self educating, developing your brand, living a healthy lifestyle, finding a mentor, or even picking up a hobby. Self educate by learning a new skill (such as sales related ones, Adobe or Microsoft Products, or public speaking), taking online classes (I highly recommended "The Science of Well-Being" on Coursera, and reading books (the #1 that everyone should read is "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie). Branding yourself is important as well; what are your core values and what perspective of you do you want others to see? You can brand yourself in so many ways, whether its through networking, LinkedIn, or creating a blog, vlog, or podcast on something you're passionate about. You can also develop yourself by living a healthy lifestyle. Exercise daily, take time to medicate, relax with yoga, write in a journal, and plan out nutritious meals. Pick up a hobby! Kayak, roller skate, travel, volunteer, join a recreational league - pick up something that will keep you busy and exercise your brain in a healthy way. A healthy lifestyle leads to a happier state of mind. You can conquer the world when you're in the right mental health space.

This last part of developing you to develop your career deserves a paragraph separate from above. Get a mentor or be a mentor. I have been so blessed to be connected to Erin through LIFT. With her background in marketing and my background in sales, there is so much to learn. We focus less on technical skills and more so on relationships and self polishing. As a mentor you can become a better leader, gain new perspectives and ideas, exercise emotional intelligence, and change someone's world. As a mentee you will gain more knowledge, become better at your craft, expand your network, and further your career. If you're still reading and aren't in a mentor/mentee relationship, stop now and get one! I recommend utilizing Bob Hamer's platform called the Clubhouse from Sports Business Solutions. There are plenty of mentors on the site that are open and ready to chat.

If you're still reading and aren't in a mentor/mentee relationship, stop now and get one!

Last but not least, you can develop your career by being an advocate. Competition is healthy, tearing down others is not. Stop viewing others as competitors, view them as tools to help support each other. Acknowledge the invisible. If you see a social injustice within your organization, speak up. I'll have to quote Ghandi here and say, "Be the change you want to see in the world." With that, you can't be what you can't see. Advocate for your rights, advocate for others, and learn from other pioneers in the industry that have paved the way to success.

If you've made it this far into reading, congrats! I'm glad I didn't bore you too much. Be sure to leave a comment or shoot me an email ([email protected]) to give feedback or get a conversation going. If I don't know you, it's the perfect reason to reach out and expand your network. I'll leave you all with one final quote from Sheryl Sandberg, "Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder." Keep working your way through, remain the toughest kid on the playground, and hang on tight. You've got this!

To view mine and Erin's presentation slides, you can click here.