Now I know why I never quite made it to mega million CEO status. It wasn’t because my eyes glaze over when I see numbers. Or because I don’t own the requisite tailored black suit. Or even because I am heedlessly aggressive rather than the more P.C. “assertive” -- as well as being totally lacking in basic political smarts.
All that and more could have been overcome as I rocketed into the fast lane. But now I know I was missing a vital link that could have spun my dross into solid gold.
What was my fatal flaw? Are you ready? I never had an executive coach! I never even knew they existed until I heard one speak recently at a networking session. And I certainly never knew that executive coaches are a top manager’s secret weapon. The “dirty little secret”, as this practitioner put it, of the corporate world. All the really successful corporate officers have one, she said. Really.
An executive coach, it seems, is not a mentor. Everyone (how déclassé!) has one of those. An executive coach is someone who understands the corporate jungle because he or she has survived and prospered in it. An executive coach is an objective advisor who is not connected with your old company or your new company. Someone you pay by the hour or the day or on retainer to be there to interpret your every hiccup. Who rehearses that big job interview with you. Or deconstructs that crucial meeting before it happens. Or even dresses you for success. You can have this totally honest relationship with your executive coach because he won’t go running to anyone else in your company and tell on you because he isn’t part of your company.
Has an executive search firm come calling lately? Well don’t worry. It’s apt to have an executive coach ready to help you get that top job -- and to help you make a smooth transition into the new corporate culture. He or she will even stand behind you for as long as 6 months -- ready to nudge or even shove you in the right direction! But after that, apparently, you’re on your own. With his or her parting words – and I quote - “Always have an exit strategy because how you loose a job is often more important than how you win a job”. Right.
As I said earlier, now I know why I never climbed the success ladder high enough for the Securities and Exchange Commission to slap me with a corporate indictment. On the other hand, maybe the top officers of - say - Enron, World Com or Health South didn’t know about executive coaches either because they certainly could have used an exit strategy. Several of them.
I’ve never had an exit strategy – unless it was to wear padding because the door kept hitting me on the way out. But I at least can still collect unemployment. Kind of tough to make that weekly phone call to insist you’ve been looking for work… when you’re in jail.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Ode to Ed Bradley
Ed, I apologize. I didn’t go to your memorial service today. I thought about it. A lot. Half of me wanted to go to pay you tribute. The other half – the sad, shy, lost half – said no. And truthfully I have attended too many memorial services and funerals these past years. For colleagues, friends, and most of all – family. Like yours, most memorial services (including the one for my father) are supposed to be ‘celebrations of life”. But the reality is – even as we laugh at the funny, sweet stories -- they are being told only because their subject is no longer in the room. In any room.
It has always seemed strange to me to laugh at someone’s funeral. And don’t let anyone tell you differently; a memorial service is still a funeral. Just look at yours today – which through the good offices of CBS News (the switched camera feed) and C-SPAN I was able to watch as I tried to work here at home. It was hard enough to listen to your friends and family say goodbye to you. In words so intimate and so full of grief I sometimes felt outsiders like me and many of those sitting in Riverside Church shouldn’t be hearing them.
But it was some of the music that really did me in. Wynton Marsalis marching up the aisle – New Orleans style – playing a plaintive blues. And at the end – “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In” (or just “The Saints” as I grew up hearing it called) -- courtesy of a real New Orleans jazz band walking through the aisles. After the minister explained the tradition, the church was a sea of waving white handkerchiefs as your mourners waved your spirit up to heaven.
It was a three hanky memorial, Ed. But unlike those Saturday afternoon B-movies I grew up with – yours was an A+ life. Our paths crossed so briefly. Two dates when we were both young – and then again in the hallways when we had both made it to the pinnacle of our dreams – CBS News. You – always the consummate gentleman – insisted you remembered those dates. But I’m sure you didn’t. I was just another in a long string of girls – until you finally found the woman who became your wife.
But you were not just another guy. I remember you asking when you called after mutual friends fixed us up. “You know,” you said, “I’m black.” “So?” I said. I had grown up in a big city – an underaged kid hanging out at the slightly open stage door of a storied jazz club – worshiping the great musicians who occasionally smiled at me as they finished their sets. I dreamed of playing drums and when Louis Armstrong’s drummer showed me how to play basic time, I don’t think his first thought was “Gee, this girl’s white”.
But on that first date – both of us well dressed in business clothes – I found out what all those years of hanging with jazz musicians didn’t tell me. I found out what it really meant to be black. Even in Manhattan. We were cutting through a theater district parking lot, this handsome, educated, sophisticated man and I, when a middle aged man yelled out “Boy! Get my car!” I wanted to scream and yell and punch him out but Ed only smiled and said “Forget it”. And we walked on. I never forgot the lesson Ed. I never forgot my feeling of being violated. And I never forgot how you just put it aside as you must have put aside many similar slings and arrows – and kept your focus on the prize – your life as you planned to live it.
Probably no one will read this. It’s on my blog but no one knows how to get here. But nothing written down is ever truly lost. It’s from my heart, Ed, not the kind of polished prose I try to put here. But I wanted you to know. As you go on into that other existence, that other world whatever it is, where none of us can follow.
You made a difference, Ed. Not just be being Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. That too of course. But a difference to that 20-something girl so long ago. A difference I have tried to remember in my life and my career. I think what you taught me is something as simple as respect. And although I haven’t always respected everyone and everything on this earth – I really do try.
It’s not a bad legacy, Ed. To add to the huge legacy you left the rest of the world.
It has always seemed strange to me to laugh at someone’s funeral. And don’t let anyone tell you differently; a memorial service is still a funeral. Just look at yours today – which through the good offices of CBS News (the switched camera feed) and C-SPAN I was able to watch as I tried to work here at home. It was hard enough to listen to your friends and family say goodbye to you. In words so intimate and so full of grief I sometimes felt outsiders like me and many of those sitting in Riverside Church shouldn’t be hearing them.
But it was some of the music that really did me in. Wynton Marsalis marching up the aisle – New Orleans style – playing a plaintive blues. And at the end – “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In” (or just “The Saints” as I grew up hearing it called) -- courtesy of a real New Orleans jazz band walking through the aisles. After the minister explained the tradition, the church was a sea of waving white handkerchiefs as your mourners waved your spirit up to heaven.
It was a three hanky memorial, Ed. But unlike those Saturday afternoon B-movies I grew up with – yours was an A+ life. Our paths crossed so briefly. Two dates when we were both young – and then again in the hallways when we had both made it to the pinnacle of our dreams – CBS News. You – always the consummate gentleman – insisted you remembered those dates. But I’m sure you didn’t. I was just another in a long string of girls – until you finally found the woman who became your wife.
But you were not just another guy. I remember you asking when you called after mutual friends fixed us up. “You know,” you said, “I’m black.” “So?” I said. I had grown up in a big city – an underaged kid hanging out at the slightly open stage door of a storied jazz club – worshiping the great musicians who occasionally smiled at me as they finished their sets. I dreamed of playing drums and when Louis Armstrong’s drummer showed me how to play basic time, I don’t think his first thought was “Gee, this girl’s white”.
But on that first date – both of us well dressed in business clothes – I found out what all those years of hanging with jazz musicians didn’t tell me. I found out what it really meant to be black. Even in Manhattan. We were cutting through a theater district parking lot, this handsome, educated, sophisticated man and I, when a middle aged man yelled out “Boy! Get my car!” I wanted to scream and yell and punch him out but Ed only smiled and said “Forget it”. And we walked on. I never forgot the lesson Ed. I never forgot my feeling of being violated. And I never forgot how you just put it aside as you must have put aside many similar slings and arrows – and kept your focus on the prize – your life as you planned to live it.
Probably no one will read this. It’s on my blog but no one knows how to get here. But nothing written down is ever truly lost. It’s from my heart, Ed, not the kind of polished prose I try to put here. But I wanted you to know. As you go on into that other existence, that other world whatever it is, where none of us can follow.
You made a difference, Ed. Not just be being Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. That too of course. But a difference to that 20-something girl so long ago. A difference I have tried to remember in my life and my career. I think what you taught me is something as simple as respect. And although I haven’t always respected everyone and everything on this earth – I really do try.
It’s not a bad legacy, Ed. To add to the huge legacy you left the rest of the world.
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