This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
We do want to get to our next guest. We're excited about talking to her as well. She's worked in a lot of culture and DII rolls over the last twenty years. She's worked in communications and culture at the money and metals company BHP Billetin. She's also worked in DEI rolls at The Unsued Women.
And she's done.
More than that. Yeah.
She spent a year as Netflix's director of Diversity and Inclusion and is now a managing director at a DEI consulting firm. Michelle King is also the author of a brand new book. It's called How Work Works, The Subtle Science of Getting Ahead Without losing Yourself. She joins us on Zoom from the UK. Good to have you with us this afternoon. Michelle, how are you.
I'm good. Thank you so much for having me.
Well, thanks for joining us. I was really interested in reading about the book in terms of the strategies that you have for getting ahead without losing yourself, and so much of it involves physical being in an office with somebody else and like interacting with them and looking for cues, and I'm wondering how in the world of twenty twenty three, when so many people are in these hybrid rules and you know you're joining us on zoom for example, how you do this?
Yes, So I mean the book try to cover, you know, how the world of work is hybrid, whether we like it or not. I know a lot of businesses have moved back to being in the office, but I think the reality is the data points about seventy to eighty percent of companies see this as you know, here to stay. So I think the reality is we've got to learn
how to do this in a hybrid environment. I think what makes it a lot more challenging when it comes to things like informal networking or sharing informal information as examples, it's a lot harder when you're doing that virtually because you can't read the non verbal cues, you can't sort of see somebody's border context. So I think what that
requires is actually being a lot more intentional. So you know, most people don't actually manage their careers, you know, so finds they tend to to sort of let it volve organically or hope their company will help them advance and the reason I wrote this book is I wanted people to see, Look, the world of work has changed, and really it's up to each of us now to manage our careers and carve our own path.
What's the biggest mistake people make in today's environment when they are trying to get ahead.
Yeah, the number one mistake is people focus.
On what they do, not how they do it.
So eighty three percent of us have to collaborate with other people in order to do our jobs.
That's incredible.
So if you think back to the nineteen fifties and you know sort of companies like Ford Motor Company and mass production lines, you could go and do a task, go home and not really have to engage too much with anybody that has gone So how we work really enables what we can achieve because we have to work with others to do our jobs.
Do you think companies are still taking DEI seriously. We heard a lot of it in the wake of George Floyd, in the wake of twenty twenty. Are they taking it seriously today?
Look, I think the backlash we're seeing is pretty inevitable. So, you know, I think whenever there's progress, there's some form of backlash. I think what this tells me, though, particularly as a researcher, having spent maybe all of my career also in academia, is that, you know, we haven't really
engaged white men in understanding how this benefits them. The one study I conducted with eight hundred and thirty five men and women, I found for men in particular, they saw sort of the number one barrier to their advancement at work being de initiatives focused on women. And that's because men don't really understand what's in it for them. They don't really understand, you know, why they should engage.
There's no personal case for change. And I think in many respects, you know, DEI initiatives have failed white men because we haven't engaged them in understanding how this benefits them and quite honestly why.
They need this more than anyone.
And my first book really, you know, try to make the case the why we need to engage everyone in the fight for building workplaces that work for everybody.
Interesting. Well, I guess it kind of speaks to you got to get them on board in order for it to really happen, since they are predominantly in the senior roles. No right, it's an interesting is that kind of basically what you're saying that if you don't get them on board, then it's going to be hard to really move forward.
Well, we need everyone on board, and I think, in all honesty, that's why I wrote this book. I wanted to show people that the old world of work that we know and love, the traditional hierarchical, command and control, dominant, assertive, aggressive, typically masculine workplace cultures, that's gone and it's going.
And the reason it's.
Going is because workplaces, the innovation, the creativity, the productivity they want, everything is on the other side of building workplace cultures that are more inclusive. And what I wanted to share is this is actually a career imperative. So you know, if you want to network, for example, right, you know, seventy percent of all jobs come through then formal network. You cannot afford to only network with people who look like you.
You could have maybe.
Back in the nineteen fifties when workplaces were dominated with one type of person, but you can't do that today.
You know that that was actually something Michelle I wanted to ask you in terms of building networks, I get it, like the importance of having a diverse network. But I mean, what is the right network to build? Is it people? You know, we've talked about sponsors and mentors in the past, but what is diversity?
I get?
But if you really want to move ahead, you know, people talk about managing up and like, you know, making sure that you're kind of in with the people who are making decisions about hiring or maybe pulling you over to a new job. You know, what else do you we need to kind of be smart about when it comes to networking.
So I actually share in the book how you can map your informal network. So when you think of an informal network, most people think of a cocktail out and it sort of dredges up horrible images of having to introduce yourself to strangers. That's not an informal network. So if you were to write a list of everybody you go to for their information on how to do your job, advice or social support, that's your informal network, and generally
it's about twelve to twenty four people. Now, to build a healthy, helpful informal network, you really need sort three core ingredients. So the first to your point is you want to try and have a network that's made up of people who don't really share your background. But the second thing you want to think about is are you building relationships that are mutually beneficial?
Because we have limited.
Time and energy to invest in relationships, so we have to think about, you know, where we're spending our time. So it's okay to not network with people who don't have your back and where they don't have your best interest at heart, but it's.
That group where you're unsure.
So ninety percent of anxiety at work comes from five percent of the people in your informal networks. So you want to make sure you're not investing in those ambiguous relationships right where you're not sure if this person has your back. You want to invest in those mutually beneficial relationships. And then finally, you really want to make sure you've got a mix of what we call close versus loose connections. So most of the job information or information on vacancies
or opportunities comes through what we call loose connections. So people who more like acquaintances that you might sort of catch up with relatively sort of infrequently, but those close connections, that's where you get all the social support. So you really want to mix. So it's those three things are the magic ingredients for having a strong network.
What if you don't have a choice about whether you invest your time with these people who are not you know, it's not mutually beneficial. What if you have to because they are colleagues you have to work with.
Yeah, So I think that's it's different from a formal versus informal network.
So an informal network is.
Where you can make a choice in terms of where you're spending your time. I think if you're an in an ambiguous relationship with somebody, so where you're not sure if they have your back or not, I think what you have to recognize is that is an ambiguous relationship. So it's actually the not knowing that does our heads and where you have an interaction, you walk away and then you're like, oh, you know, how did that go? Why did they do that? You spend all that mental
and emotional energy. That's what causes anxiety, That's what causes stress. So I think it's actually being able to categorize, Hey, you know, what category does this person fall into when it comes to is this mutually beneficial relationship or not? So just the knowing is helpful I think the second thing though, is recognizing there are people you have to engage with as part of doing your job. That's more
of a formal network. The informal network, though, is where you're spending your time and to grow that you want to think about, you know, while your network gives you access to information, advice and support, if you want to grow your informal network, so you see people who you would like to develop connections with.
One way to do that is to.
Pay it forward by giving them access to informal information, advice or support.
That's how you grow a network.
Yeah, that makes it not an awful lot of sense. Michelle, Thank you so much, really appreciate it. Michelle King, author of a new book How Work Works, The Subtle Signs of getting ahead without losing yourself. Joining us on Zoom from the UK. But it is interesting, like the subtle
differences between the types of networks. Right, there are networks you have to work with and then there are those that you think about, Okay, wait a minute, like maybe by developing this relationship it'll be beneficial to me.
So different in person versus hybrid.
Yeah, it has to be right,