Read Online I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know by Kate White - Free Book Online
Authors: Kate White
Ads: Link
you haven’t overstepped your bounds in an obnoxious way. And you’ve also discovered that your boss may not be the type you want to stick with for very long.
Ask yourself, “What’s missing?” A great way to go big is to add something new and valuable to a workplace that no one has contributed before—especially if it doesn’t cost anything, tax the system, or cause unnecessary grief. That’s what Hannah Storm did. “In the beginning of my sports career—on the radio in Houston—I was supposed to mainly report scores of the local teams,” she says. “But I convinced my bosses at the station that it was important for our listeners to have a sense of live reporting from the big sporting events like the Super Bowl and the Final Four. So I paid my own way to those events and did phone-in calls to the station. It was a total win-win situation. I got great experience reporting from a live event, and the radio station got something interesting for listeners.”
And you know what really pays off? If the tasks you take on or the ideas you generate not only provide special dividends for your workplace, thus setting you apart from the pack, but also allow you to begin developing your own unique specialty.
In my first year or so as a writer at Glamour , I worked on a lot of small items for a section in the magazine called “The How to Do Anything Better Guide.” I enjoyed writing these, but I also knew I wasn’t going to make much of a mark for myself with pieces like “How to Get Rid of a Pimple by Saturday Night.” So I started pitching ideas for big reported pieces. But the editor in chief told me I didn’t yet have the reporting skills to do that kind of article.
I could have tried to beef up my skills with short reported articles, but another strategy began to form in my head. As a young single woman in Manhattan, I was wrestling with so many issues, but there was rarely anything in Glamour on that topic. We ran service articles, not essays. So without an assignment, I went ahead and wrote a wry first-person piece about being single and dropped it on the editor in chief’s desk. Two hours later she walked down to my cubby and told me she loved it. She published it in the next issue and we received lots of letters from young women saying how much they related to the piece. From then on I began writing personal essays for the magazine and eventually my own column. There was a kind of gap in the magazine and I was able to fill it, thanks to a wonderful editor in chief. But I was also beginning to develop a specialty—different from my peers—that would serve me for years.
Ask for more. Bosses love this, as long as you’re already doing your main job well. One of the best approaches is to volunteer to take on a task your boss doesn’t have time for or one that was previously handled by a colleague above you who was downsized. The beauty of this is that it will prove that you’re capable of tackling something above your pay grade.
Fix something that that no one else has ever gotten around to fixing. One of the fascinating aspects about so many workplaces is that there is always something that doesn’t function perfectly or hasn’t been figured out yet. It’s like a bedroom bureau with a broken leg that has been propped up with a block of wood for months, even years. And guess what? It’s yours for the taking. You can score points by being the one who comes to the rescue.
When I was at Glamour , the magazine routinely rated every item and feature in the magazine for overall reader satisfaction. The findings were generally pretty straightforward, but there was one result involving “The How to Do Anything Better Guide” that editors found baffling. Though the section was one of the most popular in the magazine, the overall rating could vary as much as twenty points from one month to the next. The managing editor, who was in charge of the section, worked hard to put together a good batch of items each
Ask yourself, “What’s missing?” A great way to go big is to add something new and valuable to a workplace that no one has contributed before—especially if it doesn’t cost anything, tax the system, or cause unnecessary grief. That’s what Hannah Storm did. “In the beginning of my sports career—on the radio in Houston—I was supposed to mainly report scores of the local teams,” she says. “But I convinced my bosses at the station that it was important for our listeners to have a sense of live reporting from the big sporting events like the Super Bowl and the Final Four. So I paid my own way to those events and did phone-in calls to the station. It was a total win-win situation. I got great experience reporting from a live event, and the radio station got something interesting for listeners.”
And you know what really pays off? If the tasks you take on or the ideas you generate not only provide special dividends for your workplace, thus setting you apart from the pack, but also allow you to begin developing your own unique specialty.
In my first year or so as a writer at Glamour , I worked on a lot of small items for a section in the magazine called “The How to Do Anything Better Guide.” I enjoyed writing these, but I also knew I wasn’t going to make much of a mark for myself with pieces like “How to Get Rid of a Pimple by Saturday Night.” So I started pitching ideas for big reported pieces. But the editor in chief told me I didn’t yet have the reporting skills to do that kind of article.
I could have tried to beef up my skills with short reported articles, but another strategy began to form in my head. As a young single woman in Manhattan, I was wrestling with so many issues, but there was rarely anything in Glamour on that topic. We ran service articles, not essays. So without an assignment, I went ahead and wrote a wry first-person piece about being single and dropped it on the editor in chief’s desk. Two hours later she walked down to my cubby and told me she loved it. She published it in the next issue and we received lots of letters from young women saying how much they related to the piece. From then on I began writing personal essays for the magazine and eventually my own column. There was a kind of gap in the magazine and I was able to fill it, thanks to a wonderful editor in chief. But I was also beginning to develop a specialty—different from my peers—that would serve me for years.
Ask for more. Bosses love this, as long as you’re already doing your main job well. One of the best approaches is to volunteer to take on a task your boss doesn’t have time for or one that was previously handled by a colleague above you who was downsized. The beauty of this is that it will prove that you’re capable of tackling something above your pay grade.
Fix something that that no one else has ever gotten around to fixing. One of the fascinating aspects about so many workplaces is that there is always something that doesn’t function perfectly or hasn’t been figured out yet. It’s like a bedroom bureau with a broken leg that has been propped up with a block of wood for months, even years. And guess what? It’s yours for the taking. You can score points by being the one who comes to the rescue.
When I was at Glamour , the magazine routinely rated every item and feature in the magazine for overall reader satisfaction. The findings were generally pretty straightforward, but there was one result involving “The How to Do Anything Better Guide” that editors found baffling. Though the section was one of the most popular in the magazine, the overall rating could vary as much as twenty points from one month to the next. The managing editor, who was in charge of the section, worked hard to put together a good batch of items each
Similar Books
