Hi, everyone. It's Allison. Dear HBR is still on hiatus, but I have something special to share with you from my colleagues at Harvard Business Review. It's an episode from HBR's latest podcast, New Here. Think of it like the young professional's guide to building a meaningful career on your own terms. New Here is hosted by HBR producer Eleni Mata. You may know Eleni from her articles on imposter syndrome or her videos on job hunting.
In each episode, she explores the ups and downs of an early career with help from career experts and friends. They share stories, tips, and advice that will help you build a meaningful career on your own terms. There's one particular episode of New Here that I really love, and I want to share it with you. It's about navigating the unwritten rules around how to behave in a new job. And the guest is comedian Sarah Cooper, who I've also interviewed on the HBR IdeaCast. You may know Sarah for her viral lip syncing TikToks during the pandemic.
But before that, she worked as a designer at big tech companies, so she understands how office etiquette works at places like Yahoo and Google, and she's written a few books on it. In this episode, Sarah tells Eleni how she learned those invisible rules early in her career, why they matter, and which rules she thinks you can bend. They discuss the etiquette of email writing, how to handle yourself in meetings, and when it's okay to wear your comfy pants to work. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Here it is.
I was completely clueless coming in. The only idea I had was like suits and succession and like make sure that I'm articulate and that I come prepared with prep notes for every meeting and know exactly what I'm going to say. And when I write emails, I have to not double, triple check them to make sure there's no grammatical errors. This is one of the interns I worked with recently at HBR. Her name is Hansali. And she told me that she was really stressed out about a bunch of things that are part of office life. Things that...
I was stressed out about when I first started and still get stressed out about today. Basically, it all adds up to etiquette. And not knowing those invisible rules can definitely feel overwhelming. Here's how Maddie, another recent HBR intern, put it. I thought I had to wear a blazer and I felt stupid, quite frankly, when I came in and I didn't have one, even though I was told, like, it's fine, it's casual. I'm like, no, I feel like that work etiquette is how I'll be taken seriously.
Welcome to New Here. Honest conversations and practical advice to help you play the game called work. I'm Eleni Mata. This week, we're talking about workplace etiquette. You know, all the little rules about how to behave that everyone in your office seems to know but you. When you're starting your career, figuring out these rules can be really difficult. It's not like they're explained in a manual or an orientation session.
For me, it was really about watching the VP, watching the director. How does your boss behave in a meeting? You know, everybody's sort of imitating the person or people above them. That's writer and comedian Sarah Cooper talking about how she learned office etiquette in a new job. Before her lip syncing TikToks went viral during the pandemic, Sarah worked as a designer at places like Yahoo and Google. But she didn't just crack the office etiquette game. She also had some fun with those rules.
In fact, her early comedy is all about office etiquette, like her satirical article called 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, or her coloring activity book for, quote, serious business people, unquote. Today, we'll get Sarah's take on workplace etiquette. We'll talk about writing emails, meetings, and when it's okay to wear comfy pants.
She'll tell us why workplace etiquette is so important if you want to be successful and which rules she thinks you can break. OK, let's get into it. So let's talk about the stakes here. We know that some of this might sound silly or absurd in terms of the norms you have to follow. But why do you think etiquette matters at work?
listen, you just want to get along with people and you want people to want to work with you. That's all. You want people to be like, Ooh, Sarah's going to be in this meeting. It's going to be a fun one. You know, you want them to have that feeling. And so it's really about a feeling, you know, a lot of people focus a lot on the work. Those are called hard skills, but soft skills of being able to just be someone that people like to work with. It's just like, it's so, I feel like it's 80% of it is 80%. I agree. And just be respectful.
Like just be nice to each other and figure out then what the rules and what the etiquette is. Because I think it changes. It changes and it's dependent on who you're working with, you know. So when it comes to learning this kind of etiquette, where do you start? I think of being quiet and listening and watching.
There's no manuals anymore, really. Like I think my mom back in the day, she was working in, she was HR in like the eighties. They used to have these giant manuals, like this is how the office works. And these are all the things that you do. And this is, they don't have that anymore because I think honestly, because of tech and Google, they set this whole new workplace standard of like, it's just cool to work here. So you just be comfortable. You just, you do you kind of thing. And so this, you do you.
just is different for every single office that you're in. Okay, so this leads to a more specific question. What are these like top things that someone coming in should pay attention to in terms of etiquette? Well, I worked in design. And so a lot of it was leading with your portfolio. And like, that is like the first thing that gets you in the door is some kind of indication that you have some talent. When people come in, it's this sort of
easygoing, I want to be here, but I'm not desperate vibe that you have to kind of put out. That is so hard, by the way. It is. I still don't know what that balance is at all. Yeah. See, when I joined Google, I had been freelancing and trying to be a stand-up comedian and I was $20,000 in debt. And so I kind of needed it, but I also kind of wanted to keep doing stand-up. So I went in.
to do my full day of interviews. And like that first meeting was in a conference room with eight people and I was supposed to present my portfolio. And somebody asked me, so did you receive the proper prep for your presentation? As if like, how would I even know? I don't even work here. How do I even know what the proper prep is? And so I just made a joke and I was like, oh, well, I thought I'm supposed to present it in an interpretive dance. And everyone just sort of laughed.
And, you know, it's like that sort of being able to make a little joke, put everyone at ease so that if you're like on edge, like I need this, I need this, I need this, I need to impress everybody here. Like it's just, it's not the best for you. It makes everyone else feel sort of uncomfortable and not willing to ask you the harder questions because they don't want to like, you know, make you start crying. So like it really, you have to do whatever you have to do to get into the zone where you are.
relaxed and you know your worth and don't worry about it that much. Yeah. I like your approach to etiquette because you kind of break this rule of it being, you have to be like super serious. You're allowed to kind of joke about how one, how silly some of these nuances are. But also like humor is part of conversation. Like human humor is also just part of interaction and people can.
joke. Yeah. If you can make a little joke, even it doesn't even have to be a great joke. You know, just the fact that you are making an attempt to be lighthearted is enough. And people in corporate environments, they love polite laughter. Like there's just polite laughter everywhere, you know, where you're not actually laughing, but you know what I mean? That's all corporate America is, is polite laughter.
Those are things that like, yes, in etiquette, you will see everybody sort of like laughing at a joke that might not be that funny or might be slightly offensive. Like maybe don't laugh at that, you know? It's okay not to laugh at bad jokes. It's okay not to laugh at bad jokes. I want to get into meetings because there's all these different people in a room and how are they going to talk to each other? It becomes higher stakes. You have to perform. You have to show up. It's like, oh, I have to, especially if like I have to talk.
And actually engage in this meeting. What do I do? What do I do? And I think you make this joke that like, just nod the entire time. So you look like you're engaged. Pretend to take notes too. But you should also come prepared for the meeting. Know what the meeting's about. There is a balance though. There really is. Because sometimes when you come into a meeting and you're like,
I practiced what I was going to say last night. You know what I mean? And then you're not going with the flow. You're not responding to the fact that maybe what you thought you were going to say last night actually doesn't apply anymore. So there's a balance. You have enough background, but be able to improvise. Sometimes if you have too much prepared, you stop listening.
And listening is like, number one, you got to listen to what's being said. I mean, that's the thing that I noticed about my VP is that when he came into our meetings, he was quiet. You know, he did not speak until he'd heard everything. That kind of quiet confidence is something that obviously I.
aspire to. But it's very hard because when there's silence, I'm the type of person that's just like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just break it. Break the silence, please. Yeah. But sometimes you have to be like, no, I'm actually going to, you know, wait until a good moment to say something. Yeah. Okay. So did you have to learn all new work etiquette when you started doing like delving into this entertainment industry versus like this? Yes. The corporate.
Tell me about it. Oh my God. There's so many things. You know, in corporate America, they, and their emails with cheers usually or best or whatever, you know. Thanks in advance. That's me. Thanks in advance. Oh God. I'm sorry. I honestly am trying to find like a better closing that doesn't sound corny, but it's also respect, respectful, but like. It's really hard.
But anyway, in tech also, you want to have like a very clear subject line, very clear, like every single piece of information in there. But in entertainment, a lot of times there is no subject line and the email ends with XOXO. It's so much less formal. It's also like putting your heart out there a little bit. And so like that's sort of the thing that I noticed. I feel like the biggest thing that I noticed is.
If you are in tech and you forget someone's name and you're like, I'm sorry, I forgot your name. People are like, oh, yeah, no problem. No worries at all. If you forget a name in entertainment, you're dead. You're dead. You're never working in these. You'll never be on these sets again. You'll never work in this town again. I don't want to see your face. I don't want to hear your name.
There's this woman who I have run into like four or five times. And every single time, it feels like I've never seen her before in my life. And so I say, hi, I'm Sarah. And she's like, we've met. We've done that like four times. The last time I met her, I could tell she just wanted nothing to do with me because I just never remember that I met her before. And it's awful. But I feel like that's part of it. It's just like in tech, you kind of feel like a robot anyway. So people are like, whatever, your name isn't important.
in entertainment, that proves to everyone that you don't really care about people. And if you don't really care about people, nobody wants to work with you. So that was a big thing. Wow. And I haven't learned it yet. So I want to get into specifics of etiquette. We're not in person anymore. We're now like talking through Slack or in these little squares. So these like digital communication is changing. Like what have you learned about?
how to handle yourself in those contexts with Slack, video calls, emails even, because it's hard, one, it's hard to read the room through text and you can like misinterpret anything. But what have you learned has been helpful for you? I think I really like one-on-one digital communication. Me too. The best.
Yeah. I like when I'm speaking directly to someone and it's not like in a Slack channel, like everybody's watching, even if you're speaking to one person, everyone's watching that you say that to the person. I don't know. It's just very like, you know, it's nice when you know exactly who your audience is. So the smaller the group, the better. That's what I think. I always get more nervous around smaller groups.
Oh, really? Yeah. Like you said you like one on one. Yeah, I love. So I love one on one. But when it becomes like three to five, like three to five, it's like if there's one other person here, that would be uncomfortable. Yeah, a little bit. OK, because it's like now I have to read two energies and decipher that and figure that out. That's hard.
I think it would be cool if like at the beginning of every meeting, there's kind of like an energy set, you know, like somebody sets the vibe and everybody just gets on board. Yeah. First of all, that sounds very theater. I like that approach because it allows for a less tense. Like, oh, this isn't as.
It allows you to know, okay, it's not as serious. This is an open discussion. We can actually talk to each other. I challenge someone this week to think about a meeting that they have that they absolutely dread. For some reason, they dread it all the time. And I want you to go into that meeting and say, you know what? I dread this meeting every time. And I want us to have an energy reset so this could not be a meeting that I dread. I challenge you.
Let me see if I have any meetings this week so I can do that. What is one corporate etiquette rule that we should get rid of? I think a lot of times like people, everybody's scared of somebody and like, oh, don't upset this person. And don't like, no, we should stop doing that. I want to add another office etiquette rule that I want to get rid of is not playing music out loud. Like I want one person in the cubicle or in the office to be the DJ for the day.
and play music. You want people to fight. You want people to come to blows and fisticuffs. That's what you want. Or at least, like, name me the DJ. Like, bring a DJ to the office. Coming up after the break, Sarah will take your questions and we'll explore some deeper issues, like how etiquette intersects with professionalism and code switching. Be right back.
Okay, I have listener questions that I'm excited to ask you. And so we reached out to our audience and to our outgoing cohort of interns. I love that word. Cohort? Cohort, yeah. I really hate the word cohort. I hate saying it. I gotta say that. Cohort. I feel like it's getting stuck in my throat when I say cohort. It is a very hard, it's a harsh word. But okay, so our interns asked us questions and our audience asked us questions. Here's the first one.
This one is from Luciana, and the question is submitted through text, so I'm going to read it. When should I have my camera on in remote meetings, and when is it okay to leave it off? For the record, I am mostly an introvert and prefer to work in PJs from home five days a week, but I make an effort to turn on my camera because I don't want my company to start asking people to go more often to the office to interact. I think you should have it. If you're invited to a meeting, you need to have your camera on.
Totally get the PJs thing, but throw on a blazer over your PJs and you're good. I thought I was an introvert for a long time. And I'm just sharing this because it might help some people out there who might feel the same way. I love that. But I realized that I was just very scared that I wasn't good enough.
I didn't put myself out there because I looked at everyone else and I said, they're all better than me. They all know more than me. They're all doing better than me. I'm not going to put myself in this arena because I know I'm already worse than them. That's why I was really holding myself back in a lot of ways and called myself an introvert and said, I just need to be alone. I just need to be alone. I just need to be alone. I would challenge anybody who thinks that they're an introvert to think about why and see if maybe there's a possibility for a path to
get out of your shell a little bit. Okay, the next one comes from Jennifer. She also wrote it for us, so I'm going to read it. How do you figure out your office's dress code if there isn't a formal policy? Ask somebody. Ask somebody. Find out. Don't be afraid to ask. Or just show up in a bikini and if nobody says anything, like, you're good. Then you're good and you can just wear that bikini. You can just wear that. Like, I remember when our intern started this summer.
That was like one of the first questions they asked me was what can I wear into the office? And I feel like that's a question you can – I think that's a question that it's okay to ask. Like maybe your manager, like if you have their contact before or maybe something to ask in an interview. Like what's the dress code here? Yeah, what's the dress code? Especially if you know that you're a person that has a lot of spice to your style. You know what I mean? Definitely.
I've never had to ask that question not once in my life. Really? Because I'm a very just conservative dresser. I've always been conservative. Like corporate America, basically you want to hide your body. You want to just get rid of your body. You just want to like not have a body. Don't refer to your body. Don't ask about anything.
Yeah. So I've never really had to ask that question. Yeah. But one thing that I've learned and I've seen a lot of TikToks on it. It's like, oh, I'm a creative so I can wear these like cool outfits to work. And I'm like, yeah, actually, we can. We can, though, because that's just how we express ourselves. For me, it depends on the day. If I'm just going to sit and be in meetings. Yeah. Then I'll wear like comfy pants. Yeah. There you go. There you go. That's good. OK, last one.
I want to play you a clip of our former intern, Nicole, and then I have a question. So here's Nicole. My mom worked corporate, a corporate life back in my home country. The thing my mom told me before I came to the internship was like, oh, dress up really nice. Like we bought new clothes. I got like my hair done and it was like straight, like I pressed it straight. And so when I came in and I realized like the work environment was completely different from when my mom was working. And so I felt like.
When I got here, I was really self-taught and I had to teach myself a lot of the etiquette. I've always had to deal with this. And this is sounding professional at work. And I've always felt really charged about it. First of all, my mom has worked for the state for basically my whole entire life. So I've had Massachusetts, Massachusetts. And she worked, you know, in the judicial system. So it's like, OK, great. Like this is a form of professionalism where you have to be.
super presentable. And one of the things that I would always learn is from her who was, you know, English is her second language, how to sound professional. So you attract a lot of people that way, especially like these, these VPs and these higher execs are like, oh my gosh, you're young and you're talking in, in this way, like, wow. But I always am like, I'm code switching. I can't talk like,
regular, I have to switch it up and I have to act like I have to give this voice and use rhetoric that is appropriate to the workplace so that I can still convey my message. So I always feel so like about sounding professional because it's like, yeah, you know, I've worked on my non-regional diction since I was a child. So I was correcting my parents.
accents, their Jamaican accents, I would say, you're not saying that right. I, so I always wanted to speak as perfectly as possible to the point where I don't, I can't code switch. Like this is all I have. So you should count yourself lucky that you actually, you know, code switching is actually like incredible. It is incredible. I say, you know, let some of, let some of that other side out because that's what makes you unique. You know, the way.
actually talk, the way that you actually present yourself, like all that has to come out a little, little by little until you're running the company. And then you can just be that all the time. Yeah. Like that's the goal. What advice would you give to this entering workforce about navigating, not just the assumptions the colleagues might have about you, just like navigating, working with different generations that have a different way of thinking about how to show up at work? Yeah. Like,
You play by their rules for a little while and then, you know. But these generations were created by marketing companies, okay? Like they don't, they're just so, I don't know. They really like make these silos of people and I just, I really don't like it. We're all just human beings. And, you know, if somebody does something a little bit different, don't say, oh, it's because you're Gen Z. No, that person just does it differently. Like that Gen Zers are not a monolith, just like.
any other group. So I just feel like people need to take it like one-on-one deal with a human being and not a representative of their generation. You know, I like that. What should you do if you don't really vibe with your office culture? God, that's really tough and really hard. And probably I'm not sure how that gets fixed because, um, but you should look at that, you know? Yeah. Sometimes you recreate.
toxic situations that you had in your childhood. And sometimes generational trauma is generational trauma. And so maybe, maybe if you don't vibe, you need to dig into that. You need to use it as I'm not saying it's going to get fixed. I'm not saying you're not going to have to go find another job, but if there's something that's triggering you or something that's not working really.
look at it, look at it as an opportunity to find what it is inside you that like is responding to that. I like that. Yeah. Also journal. I think I said this in every single episode. Journal. You are a journal promoter too. I, this is, I, it has saved my life like so many times journaling. It's actually the reason why I was able to realize that I needed to get out of my marriage was because I looked at my journals and I saw patterns that were not.
changing. And so the only way to break a pattern is to see the pattern. You know what I mean? So please start journaling. Just write anything down. Just write everything down. Yeah. When you were starting out in your corporate career, what made you feel prepared to navigate office etiquette? Hmm. I don't know if I ever really felt prepared. That's fair. You know, like you just kind of jump in there.
Do you still feel that way? Like, do you still feel like you're not prepared and you're just kind of going day by day? So I think I used to have this thing of just like, I'm not prepared and I'm scared and I'm going to have to like watch everybody and figure it out. And I think it's sort of evolved to like, I'm not prepared, but it's going to be fine.
This idea that there's this preparation that people have that you don't have, and there's mistakes you're going to make, that it's a very immigrant thing. It's a very female thing to think that there are...
these individual invisible rules that you're going to be breaking at any moment. So, and it really puts us in a very small box. It makes us act very small and not want to like do anything wrong. And so I would definitely challenge if you're asking yourself, how am I going to be prepared? Just do what you think you should do. And once you get there, know that you belong there. Yeah. It does feel like there's these set of invisible rules that you have to follow. And you're like, what are, what are they? You won't know until you trip over one. It's like, I didn't even know that was a rule. Thank you.
Yeah. And also realize, please, that, you know, my, my father sort of had this mentality of like one mistake and it's all over, you know? And so that fear made him not take a lot of chances and you cannot get ahead without taking chances. So don't put this in your head that you're going to make a mistake and it's all going to be over. You will always get another chance always. So take, take those chances and make those mistakes.
That was writer and comedian Sarah Cooper. Her new memoir, Foolish, Tales of Assimilation, Determination, and Humiliation, is out now. I hope you enjoyed that episode of New Here, Harvard Business Review's new podcast for young professionals, hosted by Eleni Mata.
They just finished their first season, so this is a great time to binge all the episodes. They cover topics like networking authentically, interviewing for a new job, recovering from a layoff, handling a bad boss, negotiating your first raise, and more. Binge season one and share New Here with young professionals in your life. Listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here, or you can tap the link in your show notes.
And if you want to hear me while Dear HBR is on hiatus, you can find me co-hosting HBR's flagship podcast. It's called HBR IdeaCast, and we release new episodes every week. Thanks for listening.