How to attract, retain and engage talent with Harvard’s Gorick Ng

Gorick Ng [00:00:00]:
It’s not about putting your head down, doing the hard work and letting the hard work speak for itself. It’s about navigating what I call these unspoken rules.

Hannah Beaver [00:00:09]:
You’re listening to How to Make a Leader, a leadership development podcast from Big Think plus where we take the biggest ideas from the best minds in learning and development and distill them into actionable insights. I’m your host Hannah Beaver. Today I’m going to let our guests bio do the talking. As a career advisor that has interviewed tens of thousands of professionals at every stage of their career about their career development, today’s guest will be sharing lots of case stories and case studies sprinkled throughout. Gorick Ng is a career advisor at Harvard College specializing in coaching first generation low income students. He is a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley where he teaches the unspoken rules of career navigation. He is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Unspoken secrets to starting your career off right and has worked in management consulting at bcg, Investment banking at Credit Suisse, and has researched with Managing the Future of Work project at Harvard Business School. He was named by Thinkers50 as one of 30 Thinkers to Watch in 2022 and is a regular speaker at some of the world’s largest companies such as ge, IBM and Google.

Hannah Beaver [00:01:25]:
Gorick is a first generation college student, is a graduate of Harvard College and of Harvard Business School. In today’s conversation we’ll be talking about how to attract, retain and engage talent at every level, drawing on Gorek’s expertise, working with professionals at all stages of their careers. We’ll talk about some of the main barriers holding professionals back from becoming high achievers and we’ll run through the best ways to develop early stage middle management and senior leadership execs. We’ve got a lot to cover and Gorick has a lot of stories to share. So let’s meet the man of the hour. Gorick, it is great to have you with us today. Can you just tell me a little bit more about your personal story? I know you’re an expert in career development, so I’d love to hear about how your career has unfolded.

Gorick Ng [00:02:14]:
Sure thing. Well, if you were to go onto LinkedIn and to stalk me, you’d see that I’m a Harvard career advisor, a faculty member at UC Berkeley, Wall Street Journal bestselling author. That’s all the social media externally facing aspect of me. What people often don’t hear about is my first generation low income college upbringing. Proud son of a working class single mom who left school when she was 12 years old. And when I was 14 years old, I ended up learning to write my first resume. It wasn’t for me though, it was for my mom when she was laid off from her sewing machine factory job. And I say that this is where it all began because I applied to hundreds of jobs and ended up getting zero callbacks.

Gorick Ng [00:02:56]:
And it was devastating because I worked hard in school, I got decent grades and I thought that the job search and building a career was all about just putting pushing this button and seeing results. What I didn’t realize was there’s so much more that no one ever tells you. And it wasn’t until Harvard, where I was a first generation college student that I started realizing, wow, there’s so much that is handed down from parent to child and from mentor to mentee and from older sibling to younger sibling that no one ever tells you about how to get a job, how to get ahead, how to stand out, how to be seen, heard and remembered. And I can still remember this experience of mine where I was walking home from the library one day and I saw a bunch of my classmates who could call their parents CEOs and politicians and doctors and lawyers. They were dressed up in suits and ties and they were off to an invite only networking event that was put on by an employer. And it was because they didn’t just walk up to that networking table as I did and sign in and take the free swag and walk away. They were building relationships, they were having coffee chats, they were saying the right things to the right people at the right time in the right sequence. And they walked away from this career fair with coffee chats and interviews and then eventually job offers.

Gorick Ng [00:04:14]:
So it was just experience after experience after experience that led to me realizing, wow, it’s not about putting your head down, doing the hard work and letting the hard work speak for itself. It’s about navigating what I call these unspoken rules. And I’ve now made a career out of demystifying these unspoken rules for those coming after me.

Hannah Beaver [00:04:34]:
Well, I’m sure many are very grateful for you for putting a lot of these rules in writing. It’s a very. I’ve read the book myself. It’s a very practical toolkit and guide. And I know you also have flashcards and online resources as well, which I’m sure folks find very, very helpful as well. Well, thank you for breaking that down. I’d love to know you’ve worked with hundreds, if not thousands of students and professionals to develop their own career journeys as well as Countless organizations. A few I mentioned in the intro on a mission to level the playing field for talent of all backgrounds.

Hannah Beaver [00:05:07]:
Do you have a highlight or favorite story to share?

Gorick Ng [00:05:11]:
I do. And I just heard it recently from one of my best friends from Harvard Business School who went to an elite undergrad institution, who had amazing work experience and who ended up at a mid sized startup. He’s a high performer, one of the smartest people I know, and he had a great manager as well who looked after him and wanted him to get promoted as much as he wanted to get promoted himself. My friend went to his manager, had that conversation tactfully and his manager said, oh my goodness, absolutely, let me talk to my manager to see where we can get the budget. And I think it’s going to be a no brainer. The manager comes back a week later and says, hey, I’ve got a slight problem. My manager doesn’t know what you do. And just even gauging from your facial expression, it’s like, wait, what? Yeah, one of the smartest people I know, one of the most hard working people I know, who did amazing work, has a manager who, who loves him, can’t get promoted because people higher up don’t know what he does, let alone that he even exists.

Gorick Ng [00:06:27]:
And so what’s the lesson here? Well, it’s that it’s important to be seen, to be heard, and to be remembered. And it’s important to be in those rooms where the higher ups are evaluating who’s who. It’s important to be visible and it’s important to demonstrate that you could be running the show one day and that people should take you seriously. And I mention this because it’s not a story just for that intern or that contractor who’s trying to turn their temporary role into a full time position. It’s not just about being in your early career. This is a lesson that’s important for all of us because you can be the most hardworking, diligent, smartest person in the room and still not get promoted for the same reasons as my friend, which is that you’re not visible enough. And visibility comes down to those unspoken rules of putting yourself out there.

Hannah Beaver [00:07:26]:
And what most commonly have you seen holds professionals back from becoming high performers?

Gorick Ng [00:07:33]:
I’d say it’s first a knowing problem and then it’s a doing problem. So starting with the knowing problem, which is my lane, the reality is many professionals don’t know the hidden rubric that underpins successful careers. And I talk about this in the very first chapter of my book Where I introduce a framework that I call the three Cs, which stand for competence, commitment and compatibility. And the idea is, the minute you show up, whether it’s in a coffee chat, an interview, a cover letter, a resume, or a client meeting, or your first one on one with your manager, the other person is sizing you up and they’re asking themselves three questions. Can you do this job well? As in, are you competent? Are you excited to be here and to grow here? As in, are you committed and do we get along? As in, are we compatible? The three Cs your job and frankly, all of our jobs, and this includes the CEO of your company. It’s to convince others that you are in fact competent, committed and compatible and that you deserve other people’s investment. That you are going to be a future leader that people should invest in and that people actually want to sit beside you and work with you and to see you succeed as well. And I mention this because this is the hidden rubric of career building.

Gorick Ng [00:08:51]:
If you can demonstrate all three Cs all the time, you will be seen as a high performer. You will even be seen as a high potential, and you will get from further faster towards your career goals. The problem is you won’t hear these rules in your company orientation, but you’ll hear it maybe if you get to that point behind closed doors where someone is up for promotion and the committee is like, this person just doesn’t get it. And unfortunately, this person who doesn’t get it isn’t in the room and may never even hear about it. But someone somewhere is saying something about them that’s hindering their progress because they either overshot their three Cs and came across as a know it all or undershot and came across as apathetic or disengaged. And so the first step is to just recognize that these rules exist and to make everybody aware that this is how you’re evaluated.

Hannah Beaver [00:09:48]:
And what systematic barriers have you seen that prevent professionals from accessing the tools that they need to succeed?

Gorick Ng [00:09:57]:
It all begins with awareness. And awareness comes down to who you know, which then drives what you know. So if you grew up in a professional household where you’re overhearing your parents take conference calls and sell and put themselves out there, this is all going to be common sense. However, if you didn’t grow up in that white collar professional class, you may not experience these things until far later in your career, if ever. And this is where I come in, where I work with companies to get their early career and other Employees up to speed before they even show up on their first day. How do we get folks up to speed before they even show up? And then once they show up, the clock starts ticking. Because I poll these employees all the time and I ask them, at what point have you already made the decision that this is not a job for you and that you’re secretly looking left, looking right and looking for another job? And people say it’s basically that first week. So how do we make sure that everybody coming in, who you’ve invested so much time in and energy and resources in as a company actually ends up staying and being engaged and hopefully thriving here? So a lot of it has to do with level setting.

Gorick Ng [00:11:14]:
Fancy speak for just getting everybody on the same page around. These are the expectations, this is what you can expect. These are the behaviors that will be rewarded. Now it’s up to you. Once you get everybody on the same page, then it’s not a competence problem anymore, it’s a commitment problem. And of course, not every job is going to be the best fit for everybody. But you don’t want people leaving your organization because they just didn’t know. That’s a big shame.

Hannah Beaver [00:11:46]:
Let’s run through an exercise today. So let’s say I am a learning and development professional and I am curating and developing learning pathways across my organization. I think it’d be helpful to think of this in kind of three learner profiles. First, the early stage career professional and individual contributor. Second, the mid level learner who is perhaps a team and people manager. And then third, the senior leader. So let’s start with group one, that early stage professional and individual contributor. How can L and D teams align the unspoken rules with long term skill building for those entry level employees?

Gorick Ng [00:12:29]:
I’d say there are three key phases to keep in mind. The first is before someone even joins the company on their first day. So that period between when they first, first get their offer letter and when they show up. The second is that first day slash first week. And then the third is what happens after. When it comes to this first phase, it’s easy to overlook because we assume that, well, they’re not even here yet, why care about them? And secondly, it’s also a phase that we may not necessarily empathize with anymore because it’s been a while since we’ve had our first job or internship. But there’s a lot of anxiety that brews beneath the surface from when someone gets that offer letter to when they step foot in your organization on their first day. People are thinking about, okay, how do I dress? Where do I show up? What do I need to know? Do I have the skills, especially if I’m switching careers, or I don’t necessarily have the background as some of my peers.

Gorick Ng [00:13:26]:
So organizations can do a world of good if they did. Two things. Number one, sent emails to get everyone onto the same page around, okay, we know there’s probably a lot of anxieties that may be circling around your head. Here are the three things that you can do to set yourself up for success. These are optional, but just here are the three things. And secondly, and here’s a bonus, is don’t just have their hr point of contact, send this email. Have a near peer send this email. As in, find someone who can relate to the person who just got hired, who’s maybe half a step ahead of them in the career journey.

Gorick Ng [00:14:06]:
So this could be someone who’s fresh out of college, maybe is six months into their job and has started learning some of these unspoken rules. Have them reach out and say, hey, I’m so and so. And like you, I also had this major or I had had this background. We have all these different things in common. And I’m now in this role. And I want to share with you a couple of things that I wish I had done when I was in your position. It’s not about the message, it’s about the messenger. Number two is be intentional about that first day and first week.

Gorick Ng [00:14:41]:
I work with organizations to deliver workshops and keynotes on their very first 15 minutes to get folks up to speed on, hey, this is what you need to know that your manager may not necessarily tell you. And here the messenger is also really important. And I think this is maybe where my role comes in, because one of the first things I say to an audience is, look, I’m actually not an employee here. I don’t have a corporate email account. I’m telling you all the things that I’ve amassed from all of my interviews from other companies, including a couple of people from this very role. But you can be honest with me, because I’m not on payroll and I’m also not going to be evaluating you. So I play a unique role there. But of course, you don’t necessarily need someone like me.

Gorick Ng [00:15:30]:
You can find perhaps an alum, you can find a near peer who’s not in their reporting line, share some of these unspoken rules, and then it’s the rest of the journey. So making sure that there’s not all this fanfare just on that first day and a first week, but Making sure there’s opportunities for this cohort to number one, get to know each other. Number two, build relationships with their near peers. Number three, meet people across the organization. And number four, in terms of meeting people across the organization, meet people further on in their careers who can relate to their story and can show them what’s possible. It’s this cliche of two things. Number one, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. So find someone who can share their personal story and especially their struggles.

Gorick Ng [00:16:21]:
And second is you can’t be what you can’t see. Another cliche didn’t come from me, but it makes a lot of sense.

Hannah Beaver [00:16:28]:
Very interesting insights. Let’s talk psychological safety. Very important. Obviously something that most organizations, if not all organizations, are striving to accomplish to create this environment of psychological safety among their teams. So how can organizations create environments where early stage professionals feel safe to ask questions and take risks early on in their careers?

Gorick Ng [00:16:55]:
I’d say it’s two things. Number one, engaging external partners, speakers and coaches and two, having near peers be a part of one’s network in the organization. So let’s talk about external speakers. But what I like to do in my sessions is a lot of anonymous polling where I’ll have folks scan a QR code and answer a few questions like what are you most anxious about when it comes to your future career in this organization? Or hey, it’s been a few weeks or a few months. What is something that has caused the most frustration here? I’m asking for all those negative feelings which you may not want to ask about, but that you can be sure is brewing beneath the surface regardless of whether you tease it out of people. And what I do in my keynotes is I will poll folks and I will let all the responses show up on the screen behind me in real time without asking any questions around who you are and who’s submitting these responses. I just hear this gasp or the sigh of relief in the audience because people start seeing some of their thoughts echoed like, ooh, there’s so much red tape. I’m having a really hard time seeing the impact of my work or I’m twiddling my thumbs and I’m bored or I’m so overwhelmed right now.

Gorick Ng [00:18:15]:
We are so short staff. I don’t know if I can handle this or my manager is always MIA and I’m not getting any feedback or I’m scared and worried about the future direction of our company because I keep hearing about layoffs and hiring freezes and restructurings. You want to know about what folks on the front lines are whispering to each other. And having somebody external, ideally do this polling and show those results in real time can help you help them help them help you. Because you’re going to get this information out of this population that you want to know, that you should know, and that can help you make better decisions as an organization. And then the second is having near peers involved. So what I often hear from organizations is, hey, we have a mentorship program, but no one signs up. Or I just met with my mentee and we had a great first meeting, but it’s crickets and tumbleweeds from there.

Gorick Ng [00:19:12]:
Why? Well, it’s because it’s a bit too contrived relationships. If you think back to your closest friends, chances are they weren’t just assigned to you. Maybe they were your university roommate, and maybe it was a random system, maybe it was serendipity that brought the two of you together. But that’s the point that it’s not necessarily about you were matched with this person in this Excel spreadsheet. Now go on and become best friends. You need to build these organic moments for people to meet each other, to build trust with each other, to follow up with one another. And what I notice is mentorship programs often are oversubscribed by mentors and then under subscribed by mentees. And so it’s clearly not because people don’t want to be mentors.

Gorick Ng [00:19:58]:
It’s that people don’t know how to be good mentees. People don’t know, what am I supposed to say to this potential mentor of mine? What am I allowed to talk about? How do I follow up with them? And so this is where I do a lot of work around the self help. I have a love hate relationship with this term self help. But I think we need to do a better job of equipping early career professionals to make the most of these opportunities. Because organizations spend a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of energy in developing these mentorship programs. And people just aren’t biting. Not because they don’t want to engage, but because they don’t know how to. And this is where some of these unspoken rules need to be demystified.

Hannah Beaver [00:20:44]:
Let’s move on to group two, which is that mid level learner and team and people managers. As a manager, how can you create a space where employees are rewarded for going above and beyond? And then what’s the balance between encouraging that above and beyond effort and avoiding burnout among managers?

Gorick Ng [00:21:03]:
If You’re a middle manager. You have, I’d argue, the hardest job in the organization. You have to manage up and down and all around. You have to make sure that your team feels excited, feels supported, feels valued, is getting things done. You need to keep the higher ups happy. And you don’t necessarily have the formal authority to dictate the culture of the organization. So let me be more concrete. I have done a lot of sessions, especially with law firms, and one of the common complaints I hear from junior attorneys is partners overselling over promising and then expecting that somebody else would deliver.

Gorick Ng [00:21:42]:
So what do you do? You go to clients and you sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. And you tell those clients, I’ll get right back to you by this Friday. You’re not necessarily the one doing the job. You hand it off to your senior associates and your junior associates who are dying. And that’s just the culture of the organization. So when I poll these junior employees, they tell me, gee, you really need to be talking to our senior leaders and telling them that something’s got to change about the incentive structure, about how things work. We need partners to be more engaged in our day to day. Otherwise we’re just going to be spinning our wheels and nobody’s going to be happy.

Gorick Ng [00:22:21]:
What does this mean practically, day to day? Well, if you’re listening to this and you have the ability to impact the way that things work in your organization, keep this in mind that your senior leaders can’t just keep over promising and expecting somebody else to deliver. There needs to be some way to keep folks accountable. And that starts from the very top. When it comes to middle managers and what you can do, it comes back to people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. In those times where you may not necessarily be able to control how things are done and what the deadlines are can mean a great deal to a team member. If you’re just transparent about, hey, look, these are the deadlines. You’re probably not happy about these deadlines. Frankly, I’m a little frustrated myself for all these different reasons.

Gorick Ng [00:23:14]:
But let’s work through this together and I’m going to be working with you to make sure that this gets done. What does this mean practically if you’re a middle manager? If you’re a middle manager, the most important thing you can do is to keep your team members excited, supported and valued. Keep them excited about the work, as in tell them the big picture. Why does this matter? How does this propel their career forward? Provide the context, how do you keep people supported? Well, be there to answer questions. Be there doing the work with them. I remember talking to the head of a manufacturing facility who had his entire team pull late nights and early mornings and work through the weekend in the manufacturing facility. And guess where this head honcho was? At home. That doesn’t look very good.

Gorick Ng [00:24:10]:
And it doesn’t look very good. It doesn’t feel very good. And then what about rewarded? Well, this is a matter of culture as well. You need to make sure that if someone is going above and beyond that, they see a path to growth. Talk to a lot of organizations that say we’re not necessarily in an economic climate right now or in an industry that is necessarily growing that quickly. We need to find other ways to have people feel a sense of career progression. What does this look like if you can’t necessarily promote everybody? Well, can you give people more flexibility around the teams that they can work on? I pull a lot of employees about what their primary professional goal right now and double digit percentages of people in every audience that I talk to want to move laterally. The problem, there’s no system for moving laterally.

Gorick Ng [00:24:58]:
So someone is eyeing a job in another team and can’t move to that other team because there’s no process because they don’t know anybody on that other team and or because their own manager isn’t willing to let them go. How do you provide a more fluid internal labor market that helps people move to the jobs that they’re a better fit for? You solve this, you can solve a big crisis in employee engagement. The other thing is making sure that people at least just hear a thank you. This sounds really simple and I’m not talking about giving people a higher salary and a better job title, which matter, by the way. But what I am saying is when I poll audiences on what they wish their managers would say more, everybody says the same three things. Hi, good job, and how can I help? As in recognize me and not just my work. See me as a human being. Invest in me as a human being.

Gorick Ng [00:25:58]:
Thank you. When I do good work for you, don’t just disappear. Don’t just send a TKS or a thx, which implies that I’m not even good enough for you for you to write out thanks in a full sentence and how can I help? As in be there with me getting the job done. Because me scratching my head and banging my head against this keyboard isn’t helping either of us. You being there, you supporting me, you guiding me through this work, and you being there to provide feedback on a timely manner can help both of us get more done in the time that we have. So I poll thousands of employees and everybody says, these are the three things that I want from my managers. It’s really simple and very few people unfortunately do it.

Hannah Beaver [00:26:50]:
Let’s move on to Group 3 of our employees in our workshopping session, and that is senior leaders and those in the leadership pipeline. So in terms of developing the next generation of leaders, what are the key levers to pull and how might these be reflected in a leadership development program?

Gorick Ng [00:27:10]:
If you’re interested in developing the next generation of leaders, I’ve got two big tips for you. Number one is to see what’s out there. I’ve got a list of leadership development programs and rotational programs on my website. You can go on to gorick.com earlycareeremployers and you’ll see a list of the Fortune 500s and beyond that have thoughtfully designed programs that have people come into the organization, rotate through different functions and departments. The beauty of creating a leadership development program or a rotational program is that you have people be able to try out different roles in your company, see the interconnectedness between these departments, and then ultimately defer their decision until a later date at a point when they have a little bit more of an idea of where they might want to fit into the bigger picture. So even if you’re not interested in developing leaders per se, and I would be shocked if you weren’t, I would encourage you to create this type of rotational environment to give people more of a flavor of what your company can offer. It’s a lot better than just forcing somebody to make a decision before they even know your company and to be stuck in that role forever. My second tip is not programmatic at all.

Gorick Ng [00:28:24]:
All it requires is that you take a look at who has been attending and has been most engaged in the professional development offerings at your company. So I see this as a speaker and a workshop facilitator who is showing up, who is asking questions, who’s staying late afterwards, who’s engaging with their fellow teammates and employees. And what I often see are folks who feel overlooked and underappreciated, where they’re putting time into their professional development, they’re taking it back, and they’re not just saying, oh, that was a great hour, it was corporate entertainment and let me now move on with my life. They’re actually following up with me, they’re asking follow up questions, they’re asking for more, and they’re implementing what we just talked about the problem. They may not necessarily be in that leadership development program. They may not necessarily be the favorite of leadership because they don’t have the networks in the organization to be in those closed door meetings. And here’s an inconvenient truth about corporate America. Every organization has first class citizens and second class citizens.

Gorick Ng [00:29:38]:
Are you at a hardware company? Your hardware engineers are probably your first class citizens. Your software engineers maybe less so. The opposite may be true if you’re at a software company. For those who may be working in a service sector or retail environment, I often see two entry points in your organization. There are those who get into your organization at the front lines, who are working at your stores and who have zero career ladder above the store level. And then folks who swoop in at the corporate level who have a path to leadership. What would it look like for you to identify hardworking, competent, committed and compatible talent at your stores so that if they are interested in a salaried role higher up at hq, they have the path to do so? Just because someone starts off in your store or at the retail level doesn’t mean they don’t have what it takes to become the next CEO. In fact, we have many examples out there of people who started off at that level.

Gorick Ng [00:30:35]:
You just need to have systems in place to identify that talent because otherwise you’re relying on people’s savviness to break through. And savviness, as we’ve talked about, is isn’t a matter of desire, it’s a matter of maybe someone whispering in their ear. And that’s a function of privilege, of social capital, of who they have in their network telling them how things really work.

Hannah Beaver [00:30:59]:
How can we expand the leadership pipeline to be more diverse? And what are some actionable steps to take to ensure that this happens?

Gorick Ng [00:31:08]:
If you’re interested in diversifying your leadership pipeline, the first step is, is to just define what diversity means to you. And diversity is more than just what’s observable. Race and gender. It’s a matter of the things that are not necessarily observable, at least at first glance. Could be educational background, could be age. Could be neurodiversity. Could be work experience, could be nationality. Could be military backgrounds.

Gorick Ng [00:31:33]:
Could be folks who are returning to work after having taken some time off for caregiving duties. Could be folks who don’t necessarily come from the backgrounds that you’ve traditionally been hiring from. What I would encourage leaders to think about is what perspectives are we not accounting for that we need as part of our decision making process because it’s just going to help us reach our business objectives more quickly and more effectively. What does this look like? Five steps. Number one, how do you attract the right talent? How do you get them through the hiring pipeline? How do you get them to show up as a high performer? How do you get them to be engaged once they show up? And then finally, how do you make sure that they have the tools that they need to continue progressing in their careers? So think of your hiring and leadership development pipeline as a continuum. You need to first market yourself to job seekers who may not necessarily even know that you exist. You need to make sure that they’re navigating the job search process and giving you substantive answers to their interview questions. I was recently working with a Fortune 500 industrials company that wanted to diversify its leadership pipeline.

Gorick Ng [00:32:51]:
And they realized that the population that they were not reaching were non target schools. So they looked at their hiring stats and they noticed that they’re typically just hiring from about three to five major universities. They’re missing out on a massive swath of the population. So what did this mean? Well, they had to identify first the schools that they wanted to reach, and they wanted to reach more community colleges. They needed to make sure that the student leaders on those campuses spread the word and first of all get hired by the company. Then they need to make sure that once this person gets hired that they feel like they belong. This means finding someone in the organization to reach out to them, to mentor them, to stay in touch with them, and making sure they have all the supports that they need to continue developing in their careers. And then we noticed that once these talented individuals showed up, they couldn’t necessarily identify with anybody that that’s higher up in the organization.

Gorick Ng [00:33:52]:
So we started thinking about what would it look like for senior leaders to rewrite their bios, not just in terms of the departments that they’ve led and the titles that they’ve had, but their personal upbringings. What were the challenges that they experienced in the earlier stages of their career that someone in the organization could find more relatable when it came to being more vulnerable? In these executive bios, we started looking at tiny things that can really add up in terms of did this person switch majors? Did this person go from a community college to a four year institution? Did they take time off? Did they have to emigrate from one country and immigrate to another? Did they have to start all over again? Did they suffer from imposter syndrome? Are they an introvert? These are small but significant things. That form our identity that you often don’t get until you’re deep into a conversation with this individual. That we realized that these senior leaders could disclose voluntarily and humanize them.

Hannah Beaver [00:34:55]:
So from all of your interviews with leaders and professionals, what are the traits that most leaders have in common and how did they get there?

Gorick Ng [00:35:03]:
What does it take to be a leader? It’s five things. Number one, strategic thinking, two, clarity of communication, three, role modeling, four, effective decision making, and five, tactful resource allocation. What do I mean by each of these? I’m going to take this slightly out of order, but let’s start with role modeling. You can’t give off the sense of, well, it’s just a do as I say, not as I do kind of environment because it may work the first time, it won’t work the second time, and you will rot your culture if you continue doing this as a leader. When it comes to strategic thinking, this is all about being able to look up from your day to day work and see the big picture. What’s going on in the world? How is it going to affect you, your company, your competitors, and what’s your point of view around where the future will be and where your organization needs to be as a result? Then you need to have clarity of communication. You can’t just be a brilliant mind, you need to be able to articulate it in a way that everybody can follow. You can’t just speak in business jargon.

Gorick Ng [00:36:09]:
You need to simplify it down to a sentence or two that even perhaps your own kids or your own grandparents would be able to understand even if they were outside of this function or industry. When it comes to efficient decision making, I see a lot of leaders who read a lot, think a lot, pontificate a lot, but they trip over themselves about should I take path A, B, C, D, E, F or G? And you need to make efficient and effective decisions because there’s a lot of other people who are looking to you. And so if you can’t come up with a decision, you’re going to change your mind, constantly waste time, waste resources, and let employee morale slip away. And then finally it’s about resource allocation. And in life you have time and you have money. And the most effective leaders know what resources to allocate towards what projects, what to insource, what to outsource, what to do yourself, what to do with external partners, who to bring on as a full time employee, who to have as contractors. And this is all a matter of resource allocation. When I take a step back from all of the people that I’ve met and all the interviews that I’ve conducted, I’ve noticed that there’s a difference between being a manager and being a leader, and it’s important to know how to do both.

Gorick Ng [00:37:25]:
Leadership is a bit different from management, which I see as the day to day oversight of teams, of tasks, of deliverables and management comes down to three things keeping people excited, supported and valued. You keep people excited by sharing the vision and articulating it in a clear and concise way. You keep people excited by showing the impact of their work. You keep people excited by showing how small tasks that may seem menial on a day to day basis can really add up to big results that we should all be proud of. When it comes to having employees feel supported, this means working with them, being responsive, providing feedback, being a good coach.

Hannah Beaver [00:38:11]:
What’s the most memorable piece of career advice you’ve ever received and how has it shaped your approach to leadership?

Gorick Ng [00:38:18]:
The most important piece of career advice that I’ve ever received is a bit of a cliche and you may have even heard it before and it’s this. No one will care as much about your career as you. So you need to be the one to take ownership and to see yourself not in the passenger seat, but the driver’s seat in everything you do. So that next promotion, no one’s just going to tap you on the shoulder and hand it to you. You have to be the one to raise that conversation with your manager. You want to go from here to here and it’s going to take three or four career moves over a number of years. No one’s just going to say, hey, come on over. Join this team.

Gorick Ng [00:38:59]:
You have to be the one to build that relationship, have that conversation stand out in that job interview and wow people once you show up. And no one’s going to say, hey, how about you join me at this career building opportunity? You have to be the one to invite yourself so you, not your manager, not your coworker, not the CEO of your company, you are in charge of your career.

Hannah Beaver [00:39:24]:
Thanks for listening. For more from Gorick, check out the show notes where we’ve linked his newsletter, book, and website, which has helpful resources like online courses and flashcards. For more from How to Make a Leader. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’ll be back next month and every month with another expert in L&D. We’ll catch you next time as we learn How to Make a Leader.

How do you turn early talent into future leaders?

Harvard career advisor and WSJ best-selling author Gorick Ng shares the “unspoken rules” of professional growth and talent development. From career navigation to building a diverse leadership pipeline, he shares real-world insights garnered from thousands of interviews with professionals and his advisory work with Fortune500 companies. 

Whether you’re working with early, mid-level or senior employees, Gorick offers actionable strategies to level the playing field and maximize potential in your workforce.

You’ll learn:

• The “three Cs” framework for career success
• How to align onboarding with retention and engagement goals
• Practical steps to diversify your leadership pipeline
• The five traits of successful leaders
• The #1 piece of career advice (from a career advisor)

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Introducing Gorick Ng
(01:25) Gorick’s personal journey and first-generation college experience
(04:14) The important but unspoken rules of career navigation
(05:07) A real-world story about visibility and career advancement
(07:26) The “Three Cs” framework for professional success
(09:48) Systemic barriers to career growth and access to tools
(11:46) Preparing early-career professionals before day one
(13:26) The role of peer mentors in effective onboarding
(16:28) Creating psychological safety for early-stage professionals
(20:44) How to engage mid-level managers to balance growth and burnout
(24:58) Building lateral career movement opportunities within organizations
(27:10) The power of recognition and feedback in employee engagement
(29:38) Developing leadership pipelines with rotational programs
(33:52) Expanding diversity in leadership through actionable steps
(35:03) The value of vulnerability in leadership storytelling
(37:25) Leadership traits and the balance between managing and leading
(38:11) Gorick’s most memorable piece of career advice

To learn more about Gorick and his work, check out his Linkedin profile and his website. If you’d like to purchase his book, The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting your Career Off Right, you can check out this link.