1. HOW TO AVOID FALLING WHILE ASCENDING THE CORPORATE LADDER
Learned–
20Lessons
Corporate HQ
7550 IH 10 West
Suite 940
San Antonio, TX 78229
(210) 340-0098
www.ylconsulting.com
TONY STREETER
SVP, CMO Y&L Consulting
March 18, 2015
E
xperience is a wonderful teacher! Over the past
20+ years, I’ve had the good fortune of learning some
valuable lessons throughout my career working for large
corporations. Following are a few key ones that I encourage
you to master to avoid the pitfalls along the gruesome climb.
I’ve either personally stepped into, or watched others walk
into each one of these land mines. I hope you will find
them to be of some benefit as you ascend your way up the
corporate ladder. Watch out for the slippery rungs along
the way!
1. Don’t sacrifice good enough for perfect. Nothing
is ever perfect and no one will ever approach you with
a perfect solution. Sometimes the solution provided is,
however, good enough to keep things moving forward
and you have to be open to accepting “good enough”.
2. Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve. People
shouldn’t know everything you’re thinking and feeling.
Professionally, reserve your negative thoughts, anger and
frustrations, keeping them to yourself the best you can.
When in a meeting, don’t fold your arms and pout if you
don’t think you are being heard, or if someone disagrees
with you. This is childish and immature.
3. Don’t say anything about anyone you don’t expect
to get back to them …one way or another. I was in a
meeting once and someone attending, conferenced in by
phone, said something I thought was pretty dumb. I rolled
my eyes. Big mistake! I got blasted for it because someone
around the table had noticed and reported it back to
the speaker.
4. Being a “loose cannon” appears
boisterous, but you are not Bruce Willis in
the latest Die Hard movie, and running around
half-cocked generally doesn’t work out well for
the rest of us. If management thinks you’re a
loose cannon and they don’t know what you
will say next, they will not put you in front
of senior management (or at least not very
often and without scripting). Off-the-cuff
thinking and creativity are good in the right
environments, but your boss doesn’t want to
be surprised or upstaged in front of his peers
or superiors by something that comes out of
your mouth.
5. Never say “can’t” or “no”. Two words
that back you into a corner in two ways. First,
it comes across that you are not a team player,
which exposes you as a person who insists that you know
everything. No matter how brilliant you are, there is always
someone smarter and there usually is a solution or, at least,
a compromise possible. Second, “can’t” or “no” gives you
nowhere to go. Someone could insist that you come up with
a solution anyway, or someone else solves the problem and
you look foolish having said it was impossible. Remember to
leave wiggle room!
6. Don’t be seen as a roadblock. No matter what you call
it -- a roadblock, gatekeeper, obstacle -- it doesn’t matter.
What it translates to is you are stalling progress. If you
have an objection, put it into as positive terms as possible,
such as, “I understand your point, however, help me to
better understand how doing this will help us…. or, will
address….” But be careful, if you are not savvy enough, your
leading questions can appear to be a trap by the receiver.
Discuss their ideas honestly and openly, and invite them
to more fully explain how they will work.
7. The devil is in the details. When you are presenting
an idea or solution, make sure you have done your
homework, practiced what you are going to present and
that your presentation is as flawless as possible (bullets
on slides are clearly stated, few slides, absolutely no
typographical or grammatical errors). An error on a
slide will bring everything into question, especially your
thoroughness and professionalism.
8. Never sell a big idea to a group. Always, always,
always pre-sell! If it is something that needs significant
buy-in, go to each member on the committee and present
the idea one-on-one. Find out who likes it and who doesn’t.
For those whom have objections, make note of them and

2. Corporate HQ
7550 IH 10 West
Suite 940
San Antonio, TX 78229
(210) 340-0098
www.ylconsulting.com
TONY STREETER
SVP, CMO Y&L Consulting
March 18, 2015
get back to them with how you would overcome those
specific issues before the meeting. Never, never, never say,
“Well, I just spoke with John, and he thinks…is a great
idea”! This will damage you in two ways. First, the individual
will know you are pre-selling them and people don’t like
to be manipulated. Second, trying to make someone feel
their objections are unfounded by stating another person
doesn’t have the same opinion immediately puts them on the
defensive. Also, the person who is in favor of the idea may
not have thought through those objections and if the person
you are discrediting goes to that individual and tells them
their concerns, they might agree with them, and now you
have lost two people. It is all very much a game of chess –
think three moves ahead.
9. Be proactive. Frequently offer ideas that are well thought
out. Become the idea person, but don’t be obnoxious about
it. When you have something to say, speak up and make it
good. Usually, the person thought to be the most intelligent
is the person who speaks the least but when they speak,
their words mean the most.
10. Don’t pat yourself on the back. People hate this.
Don’t go around telling of your latest accomplishments. If
your boss knows, and thinks enough of what you’ve done to
tell your peers or their superiors, this is more than enough.
People who go around boasting what they did and how
fantastic they are, generally are seen as someone needing
a lot of ego stroking and are thought to have self-esteem
issues. An unsightly view!
11. Be flexible. Listen to everything with an open mind,
even the inane. This doesn’t mean be wishy-washy. It is okay
to have convictions, but it is better to hear what people have
to say and work together to find a solution.
12. Let them think they came up with the solution.
Which is more important? Coming up with a solution
that the person you desperately need buy-in from doesn’t
buy into or letting them think that they came up with the
solution and therefore own it and drive it with you? The
answer is it depends on what your biggest battle is. If you
need to own the idea for some reason, that’s one thing,
however, if the idea can be given away to achieve the greater
good, keep that in mind. This parlays into the idea of
picking your battles – same philosophy.
13. Get to know people on a personal level and
understand what makes them tick. Understand the
personalities you are dealing with and also know something
about their lives. Don’t get nosy, but if you overhear events
or activities they or their children are in, show an interest.
If you are an “all-business” person who is a cold fish and
doesn’t ever let anyone in, people will not trust you and
probably won’t like you much either.
14. Celebrate the small successes. If someone working
for you has done something fantastic, make sure everyone
else on the team knows about it. And, if you are not into
big displays of appreciation, do something small like giving
them a handwritten note (not an email) telling them why
what they did was so great for the company and how
much you appreciate them being on the team. Don’t wait
around for big successes, small ones are more frequent and
celebrating them spurs people on.
15. Don’t lie, about anything, ever. And, don’t take
credit for something you didn’t do or that you played a
minor role in. Always give credit away to others. People
love true humility and hate glory hounds. Seeking out
credit gives the appearance that you did it all on your
own and very rarely is that ever the case.
16. Don’t make other people feel inferior. Especially
if you think you are smarter, faster, or work harder than
them. You don’t know their situation and if, in fact, you are
smarter, making them feel stupid doesn’t build you up, it just
makes you look like a jerk. Plus, it’s a crappy thing to do.
17. Understand the political climate around you.
You are surrounded by politics and in-fighting. Politics
is a colossal waste of productive time, but, it is there. You
have to acknowledge it, understand what is going on and
carefully step around as much of it as you can. It would
be nice to think that you can get ahead just through hard
work; we would all love to achieve the level of Senior Vice
President based on our accomplishments alone. And, if you
move around – job hopping from one company to another
marketing your accomplishments, you can sometimes get
there. However, if you plan on staying in one place and
climbing the ladder, you have to carefully pick your allies.
Involve yourself in just enough politics to keep things
moving forward for you, but don’t become a professional
politician. Unless, that is all you want to do with your career!
18. At the end of the day, you don’t own the company.
So, don’t get an ulcer or create heart problems for yourself
worrying about everything. The company will let you drive
yourself into the grave, so you need to know when to push
back. Make sure to exercise, have other interests, and don’t
come into the office every Saturday. There is a great saying
that no one on their deathbed ever said, “If I had just spent
one more day in the office!” Also, don’t ever think for a
minute that you are indispensible. Everyone can be replaced
and generally are, often.
19. If you push too hard on an idea or position and
a Vice President says in anger, “Fine, go ahead!” you really
should reconsider. This is an invitation by which you are
being given rope to swing by or hang yourself. And if they
are angry, it is the latter. This happened to me once at the
beginning of my career. I went ahead with my way of doing
something and almost got fired. I was supposed to know
that my boss really didn’t mean to go ahead, and she was
really mad that I did.
20. Don’t fight an open battle at a conference room table.
Sometimes this is unavoidable, so you can always say,
“I understand you are passionate about this point, and if
we can take away some of the emotion, I would like to
continue to discuss it openly.” This will do one of two
things; (1) the person will realize that they have just been
called-out publically for losing their cool and will recoil or;
(2) because they think you are telling them to calm down
they will really blow up and will make a complete fool
of themselves. Both are okay. You, however, continue to
maintain your professionalism. You can always offer to take
the discussion “offline”. This is a really good thing to do if
you feel unprepared to further defend your position and
want some more time to think about it. n