If you want to get ahead at the office, shaking some salt on your pappardelle may be hurting you more than you think.
According to Frances Cole Jones, it’s little details like your business-lunch habits, the state of your desk and grammatical miscues – and what those things say about you – that could be holding you back.
The New York-based communication consultant and principal of Cole Media Management wrote her recent book The Wow Factor: The 33 Things You Must (And Must Not) Do to Guarantee Your Edge in Today’s Business World as a manual for executives looking to reinvent themselves, job seekers looking for a leg up and anyone reeling from the recession.
It’s so inadvertently easy to make people feel like you’re not listening to them or you don’t respect their opinion.
Ms. Jones explained to The Globe and Mail why you should always accept a glass of water, change your homepage every week and mention your Ultimate team on your CV.
A great deal of your book focuses on etiquette. How much does having an edge in business mean having good manners?
It’s more than good manners. It’s just being able to read people and know how you’re going to make them comfortable. It’s so inadvertently easy to make people feel like you’re not listening to them or you don’t respect their opinion. So it’s just about those really small courtesies.
One of those courtesies you suggest is accepting food and drinks when they’re offered. Why?
If someone’s making the effort to offer you something, it’s nice to say, “Oh, yes, I’ll have coffee” or water or whatever. I mean, you don’t want to go to [the extent of saying] “Oh, I’ll have a no-fat, no-foam, mocha, skim cappuccino,” but it does kind of give a little bit of a camaraderie to a group session.
You also say that salting your food before tasting it during a business lunch not only insults the chef, it sends another message altogether.
This was something that was told to me that’s more prevalent in the financial community, but they see it as poor impulse control. You haven’t assessed the situation before making a decision about it.
What other unexpected signs might others be looking for?
One of the other things that I’ve heard, based on the amount of clients I have in that [financial] world, they find it very reassuring to have you mention team sports on your résumé or on your website or on your bio. They like the idea that you have worked on a team.
Why is keeping a clean desk so important?
That [section of the book] is called “Don’t work in a goat’s stomach.” And the idea is we’ve all heard of the phrase “look good, feel good,” and that’s great, but if your office or your cubicle looks like a goat exploded, then it really undermines your credibility. I’ve had the experience with a lot of CEO clients of walking down the hall, and we’ll walk past three or four offices and they’ll get into their offices, and they’ll be just fuming. And they’ll say “Did they think I just didn’t notice?” So you can never assume that people aren’t watching everything. They might not say why they’re not promoting you, but there may be that kind of a reason. If you look like your work area has been stirred up by a stick, then you’re going to get passed over.
You raise the idea that we should strive to be “renaissance men” – that “specialization is for insects.” Can you explain?
