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Ropes & Gray attorneys provide timely analysis on legal developments, court decisions and changes in legislation and regulations.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Welcome back to the Culture & Compliance Chronicles, the podcast that gives you new perspectives on legal, compliance and regulatory challenges faced by organizations and individuals worldwide. The clue is in the title—culture is at the heart of everything. It’s the endlessly shifting patterns that govern our environment and behaviors. The magic is in amplifying certain patterns and dampening others. Let’s see if we can pique your curiosity, get you to challenge some of your perceptions and give you space to think differently about some of your own challenges. I’m Nitish Upadhyaya, and I’m joined by Amanda Raad and Richard Bistrong. Hello, Amanda and Richard. Happy New Year, everyone. Great to be starting another year of the Culture & Compliance Chronicles.
Richard Bistrong: Hi, everyone. And Happy New Year, Nitish and Amanda.
Amanda Raad: Thank you so much—Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to all of our listeners. To sum up where we were last time, we heard from Annastiina Hintsa, where we were talking about health and well being, and the connection to performance. Who do we have here today?
[1:10] Getting to Know Dorie
Richard Bistrong: I am absolutely delighted to welcome Dorie Clark. Dorie has been named three times as one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 and was recognized as the #1 Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith [Leading] Global Coaches Awards. Dorie is a consultant, a keynote speaker, she teaches executive education at Columbia Business School, and is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of The Long Game, Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, Dorie has been described by The New York Times as an “expert at self-reinvention and helping others to make changes in their lives,” and I can personally attest to that, as Dorie’s book, Reinventing You, had a significant impact on my life, reading it while I was incarcerated, turning my mindset from one of despair to hope. And we’ve been working together ever since—since 2015. So, welcome Dorie.
Dorie Clark: Thank you so much, Richard. It’s great to join all of you today.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Dorie, let’s do a rapid-fire round to help our audience get to know you. Give us three things we should know.
Dorie Clark: My most recent book is called The Long Game, and it is about how to be a better strategic thinker in an incredibly short-term world, so that’s something that I talk about and think about a lot. I really love cats. I have two presently and I feel very moderate and conservative in my cat acquisition, because when I was growing up, I had 10 cats, which was amazing, but I realize now that would probably not be a cool situation. And number three—something about me—my great passion of late has been reading biographies about Fleetwood Mac, the members of Fleetwood Mac, and people affiliated and associated with them. So, if anyone needs any trivia questions answered, I feel like I’m in a strong position to assist.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Well, I’ll do my best not to put some terrible Fleetwood Mac puns in the conversation. Now, tell me one thing that you’re curious about.
Dorie Clark: One of the things that I’m extremely excited for, when it comes to AI and watching AI development, is I really want AI to help us figure out the ideology of confusing diseases. In particular, the amyloid theory of Alzheimer’s seems to have a lot of holes in it—it’s been this kind of rabbit hole that researchers have gone down, and I don’t know if it’s actually the right one. And I really, really want ChatGPT and all of its friends to solve it so we can finally figure out what causes Alzheimer’s disease.
Nitish Upadhyaya: What a great use for the AI and human collaboration efforts, to come to a really soulful and useful conclusion. Give us one thing that surprised you recently.
Dorie Clark: Literally this morning, I went for a walk with my wife—we’re in Cambridge, Massachusetts right now—around Fresh Pond, which is this little reservoir. And there were these miniature frogs—she is incredibly good at this, I am not at all—she can spot these little frogs that are camouflaged. You look at them for five minutes, and they actually do just look like lumps of wood or this little cluster of leaves in the pond, and they’re somehow able to camouflage themselves so incredibly. She literally took pictures and blew it up for me so that I would believe her that it was a frog. I am so impressed with nature, and I am so impressed with camouflage skills, and so, I’m very surprised and curious about that.
[4:55] The Importance of Non-Transactional Networking
Richard Bistrong: Thank you for those responses and for sharing a little bit about yourself with us. Dorie, for many of our listeners who serve in ethics, compliance, and other functional roles, networking with their commercial peers is mission critical to success. It’s how they get to know what’s going on in the field, it’s how they get to know what’s going on with their management peers, yet networking might not be intuitive or easy for those working at headquarters or regional offices. And as you share in The Long Game, this is about networking with what you call the “right people” in the “right rooms.” So, before we drill down, how about an overview from you on why you think networking outside our immediate circles or function is so important?
Dorie Clark: The first big picture and most important thing is it’s about leading an interesting life. I think that we get a lot of the networking conversation wrong because when we talk about it, oftentimes it’s in this very short-term, “What are you going to get immediately out of it?” People talk about, “Networking is a form of sales strategy.” And it can be, if you have your network established, because then you can reach out to people and just be like, “Hey, got some work,” or whatever, and it’s fine because people love you and they’ll be like, “Sure, no problem.” But in the early days of establishing a network, it’s never like that. And so, one of the principles that I talk about in The Long Game is what I call the “no asks for a year” rule, which is exactly what it says—when you are getting to know someone, you should not be asking them for anything of political value or import for a year. Of course, you ask them to hang out—that’s how you get to know them. Of course, you can say, “Richard, that’s a great shirt. Where’d you get that shirt from?” That’s not an offensive thing. But where we get into trouble is you pounce too soon, and you try to extract something—you try to extract work, or you try to extract a connection to someone more powerful, and that can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. So, I think the most important frame is: do you want to make friends with people? I hope that the people who are listening to this, who are in the compliance field, like the vibe of other people in the compliance field. I hope so because you’re drawn to it because of similar interests, similar personalities, perhaps a mindset, and if you can just literally imagine getting to connect with and vibe with other people that you resonate with, that’s actually incredibly fun to be with likeminded people, and good things come from it when it is non-instrumental.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Dorie, there’s so much passion there about networking and people. Slightly off-piece question: what do you like about people?
Dorie Clark: It’s such an important question because there are plenty of people I don’t like—let’s be clear. If you’re the kind of person that thinks it’s okay to walk on a sidewalk in New York City while looking at your phone, I don’t need to network with that person. There’s a whole subgenre of peoples that we can just get rid of, but I do find that when you’re amongst your people, that really magical things happen. Something that I’m looking forward to: Richard and I are going to hang out later this week. Richard is part of this group and we’re going to all hang out and talk about business and trade ideas and just expand each other’s mind. Sometimes, it’s about the questions that they ask you, which are insightful, because they know you and they have contacts for you. Sometimes, it’s just by osmosis, about hearing what other people are doing, how they handle it and how they think about it, so it’s really a good growth opportunity. It’s especially fun and meaningful, I think, because, of course, we all have friends that are specifically not-work friends—maybe they don’t even get your work—but you can have fun talking about sports or talking about movies or things like that, and that’s great. But I find that it’s even better—it’s like a twofer—if you like them as a person but then you can also vibe on the work front because, number one, not only is it, depending on your jurisdiction, tax deductible to hang out with them, but additionally, it is a way of just getting so many benefits—it’s like you’re bouncing with ideas as a result of it.
Richard Bistrong: Thanks, Dorie. And believe me, when we get together, I will not be the person looking at my smartphone while we’re walking to dinner. So, thank you for the warning on that.
Dorie Clark: I never would’ve suspected that, Richard.
[9:30] The Importance of Informal Networking Opportunities
Richard Bistrong: What we hear from our clients is that ethics and compliance and legal leaders, they might have the opportunity to attend commercial meetings and leadership meetings, but they’re not invited to speak, even though they may want to speak. So, what are some of the ways those folks can get to know their peers at those gatherings so that the following year, people want them to speak? Can we get granular here?
Dorie Clark: Yes, absolutely. So, you’re absolutely right, that getting to speak is often one of the best things, because that’s what draws people to you. It’s always easier when the power balance is shifted that way—because you’ve just given a talk, people like it, they come up to you—rather than knock, knock, knock, “Hi, I’m a random person, can I talk to you?” Which is definitely awkward. I think in that situation, the move that I would suggest for most people is if we’re thinking about the overall 30,000-foot context of this—if you’re not speaking, if maybe you don’t know a ton of people already, you’re a random peon in it—you need to figure out how to create a context in which you are the king and not the peon. And so, that is why I would do something like organize a dinner and have your own thing that you can control. Maybe beforehand, you can scrutinize the guest list. Certainly, you know the list of people who are speaking, but in some cases, you might have a list of attendees or at least reasonable suppositions based on who’s likely to go to it, and so, you can curate a dinner. It’s often especially good if you can get one person in the bag who is well known and desirable for other people, because then they’re your lead domino here. It’s like, “I’m organizing a dinner. Richard’s already coming. Would you like to come?” And then, it becomes a special thing—they know that it’s going to be small, it’s going to be intimate, it’s a little bit special, there’s scarcity involved in it, and so, then you can have this. As many nights of the conference as there are, you could have dinners—you could just keep having your own private thing to make yourself the baller so that everybody wants to come to you. And next year, they’re like, “Hey, can you invite me?”
Richard Bistrong: I love it.
[11:40] Walking into a Room Where You Don’t Know Anyone: Don’t Panic!
Amanda Raad: I love it too. And I also love that that’s practical advice for what you can do to plan ahead, to make sure that you put yourself in the best position you can put yourself in and make yourself as comfortable as you can be in that situation. But there’s always these situations, and I have to admit, I still face this a lot, where despite my best planning, I walk into a room and I don’t know anyone or I fear that they don’t know who I am. I always find the most uncomfortable part for me is that initial introduction, the icebreaker. And then, I also get very stuck in conversations—it’s hard for me to move out of one into another. What do we do if despite our best planning, we walk into that room and we panic?
Dorie Clark: Early in my career, I worked in Massachusetts politics, and there was a fundraiser once that I was helping to organize for one of my candidates. He was a not-super-famous guy, but as big politicians do sometimes—in order to engender favors and good will—Ted Kennedy came to the fundraiser, and he was the headliner. It is not a surprise that Ted Kennedy is there, and everyone is there to see him. Nonetheless, Ted Kennedy walks in—and this made a big impression on me—and he goes up to every person, and he shakes their hand. He says, “Ted Kennedy, how are you?” He recognized that it would be weird and set a weird tone if it’s like, “Everybody knows who I am. Of course, they know who I am.” It’s a reciprocal prompt because, “Okay, he just told me he’s Ted Kennedy—I now need to tell him my name so that he remembers my name.”
So, what is the lesson in all of this? I think that we often get way hung up in our heads. If you’re in a situation where you know the other people but you’re not sure if they know you, going up and just with no amount of weirdness, just being totally cool—you’re Ted Kennedy here—you can be like, “Hey, I’m Amanda Raad. We connected two years ago at the blah blah blah concert. How has it been? I saw on LinkedIn that you just got back from a conference in Finland. How was the conference?” And all of a sudden, they’re just like, “Oh, number one, she knows me. Number two, I don’t really remember her, but I need to really engage here and pretend like I do. And number three, she knows something about me and seems invested and is thoughtful. Okay, I’m going to go all in on this conversation right now.” At that point, they’re going to be your best friend because they’re feeling like they need to play catch up. So, this is actually a very good power situation for you if you seize it. That’s number one. Number two, a slightly different decision tree here, if you go into a room and you actually don’t know anyone, one of my favorite things—again, there is strength in admitting where you are in your position—just walk up to a random person. It’s better if they’re by themselves—it’s weird if it’s two people because then you might be interrupting something—but if it’s a slightly larger group or it’s one person, you just walk up, you say, “Hi, I’m Amanda. I don’t know anyone here. Can I talk to you?” And that works like a charm.
[14:40] Conversation “Extraction” Strategies
Amanda Raad: How do you move out of that conversation? So, once you actually get going, and you’ve succeeded in either of these scenarios, how do you gracefully, without being rude, move to the next conversation?
Dorie Clark: If you are wanting to move on, there’s a few different ways to do it. Again, the most important thing is people understand that you need to mix and mingle—you just want to do it in a way that doesn’t make them feel bad, like you’re skulking away or something. So, an easy thing is if there’s somebody else that you can think of to introduce them to, you can say, “I should probably be mixing and mingling here, but I see my friend so-and-so. Do you know him? Because I think you guys should really connect. Let me bring you over and introduce you.” And then, you can deposit the person with the next person. Another one though is really just to be honest. You can say, “Gosh, Amanda, this is such a great conversation. I love this. I probably should keep circulating because I always promised myself that I need to talk to at least three different people at these events, but let’s connect on LinkedIn. Here, can I connect on LinkedIn with you?” Then, it’s like, “Okay. She doesn’t think I’m boring. She wants to stay in touch. She just has this rule she has to follow.” And that’s a pretty smooth and easy way of doing it.
Amanda Raad: I love it. And you can button that with the “no ask in the first year,” which takes off the pressure of trying to make some big, huge achievement out of every conversation that you have, which is also helpful, I think.
[16:10] Making Time for Meaningful Conversations
Nitish Upadhyaya: Dorie, you’ve given me many more ways to exit a conversation than just saying, “I really need to have a comfort break,” because there are only so many times, I think, you can use that excuse. So, we talked a lot about networking, about how you get in and how you get out, but that presupposes you’re there in the first place. Now, a lot of people have their heads down, “I’ve got to go, go, go. I’ve got to get this thing done. I’ve got to get all of these things out the door.” How do you encourage people to make time for these conversations or to even to have the space that these things might happen and then eventually they might be useful? Do you have any tips for getting out of that busy spiral?
Dorie Clark: It’s really hard for all of us, because there is a tension that we feel when our to-do lists, and our inboxes are full and overflowing. We want to reduce that tension, but, of course, the problem—which we certainly know intellectually, and yet we keep finding ourselves in this pattern—is that it’s constantly replenishing. When you send emails, you get more emails—that’s what happens. I’m back briefly in Massachusetts. I used to live here 20, 20-plus years ago, and I ran a nonprofit. I was walking yesterday through the Public Garden in Boston, which is very pretty. At the time of running this nonprofit, my office was literally a block and a half from the Public Garden, and I used to think to myself, “I should eat lunch in the Public Garden more often. That would be really nice.” And honestly, in the two years that I ran this organization, I probably did it a couple of times because I was always so busy—I would have lunch at the computer, I would be doing emails, and I would not get out to go to this beautiful garden where I could be eating lunch. And I was thinking about it— those emails I sent 20 years ago, did any of them have any import? Absolutely not. It wouldn’t have been hard at all to say, “Every Friday I’ll have lunch out there.” But I didn’t do it because of these seemingly incredibly exigent pressures that honestly didn’t matter in the scheme of things. So, I think we have to just get a little more disciplined at understanding, “Is this a thing that is really going to cause a crisis if I don’t focus on it now, or in the scheme of things, does an extra hour actually matter? Does anyone really care about that?” Because it’s easy to get our thinking distorted in the minute.
Amanda Raad: You just made me think of a story that I had to share, Dorie, because it wasn’t that long ago that as I was walking through Hyde Park, and there were a bunch of people outside of the Tube stop in beautiful weather, enjoying the grass, laying in the sun, and I thought, “Gosh, that would be so nice. I’ve lived in London for almost 12 years, and I’ve never done that.” I was actually on my way to meet Richard, who happened to be in town, and you know what I did? I sat there and I enjoyed it, and then I had one of the best meetings I think I’ve had with Richard of our many years we’ve known each other. I think the reality is, it cleared my head in a way that I thought about something else before I transitioned from one thing to the next thing. I think we take it for granted so much. I’m so glad you brought up that story, because a light bulb just went off as you said that.
Dorie Clark: That’s a great one.
[19:30] The “Currencies” of Networking
Richard Bistrong: And I’ll double down—that was a great conversation, Amanda. A Financial Times reporter, a friend of mine, when you email him, it’s like a perpetual “out of office,” and it says, “I’ll respond to your email when I can. But did you really need to send it?” So, that goes down as a good one.
Dorie, in The Long Game, you talk about the currency of creating and leveraging relationships. When we think about networking, we’re probably thinking about the currency of face-to-face interactions. But what are some of the other currencies that our ethics and compliance friends can think about when it comes to networking other than face-to-face interactions?
Dorie Clark: The currency of networking is an interesting question. One of the things that makes people uncomfortable sometimes is looking at the value that you can provide people with, because they assume that sometimes even asking that question is sort of a Machiavellian thing, “You’re inherently looking at people in an instrumental way if you’re thinking about, ‘What can I give them, or what can they give me?” or things like that.” And I think it’s important to separate out the question of treating people in an instrumental way versus understanding the dynamics of a relationship. You want to understand the dynamics—you’re operating in the dark in a really weird way if you don’t. For instance, if there is a celebrity that you would like to meet, that’s fantastic, but you’re going to get yourself in a lot of trouble and be very unsuccessful if you don’t acknowledge that they have a lot more people who want to meet them than you have wanting to meet you. And so, you have to do different things in order to stand out or to seem interesting to them because it’s just a supply and demand issue. When we’re talking in the business world, it’s a little less extreme than that, but it is true that there’s power differentials and people who are in demand for different reasons.
So, when I think about the question of currency, and what we do and what we offer, it’s important to understand: are you on a peer level? When you’re on a peer level, sometimes all you need to do is just talk shop. “It will be really super fun to get to know you and just hear how you do things, and I’ll tell you how I do things.” And that is a perfectly great offer. Sometimes, of course, it’s a little different and you’re doing people a favor. “Richard, I want to be you when I grow up.” People say things like that. “Tell me, how do you do that? How did you land that deal? You speak around the world. How do I get to do that?” And so, then that’s a favor thing where, “Okay, I’ll pay it forward—I’ll do it. I’m probably not going to get a lot out of it, but okay, I’ll be nice.” And it’s fine.
But then, the big question is for people who are more in demand: what can we offer them? And we have to really interrogate that question. An interesting thing is that it often is on a different matrix than where their success is, because if a person genuinely in your field is more successful than you, you probably have very little that you can offer them in those things. They have more connections, they have more clients, they have more money, and so, you might need to offer them something completely different, which is maybe you discover that they’re a big runner, and it turns out you’re an even bigger runner, so you could get together and talk about that and you can help them. Or they are planning a big trip on safari to Africa, and you have just been last year on safari to Africa, so you can tell them all about it and how you were able to travel hack, and your great tips and what have you. It’s just looking for different ways to make yourself interesting and compelling, and thinking through the questions of what is the currency that you can deploy.
[23:10] Cross-Functional Networking for Ethics & Compliance Professionals
Nitish Upadhyaya: I think there are some really great tips for networking in and amongst the compliance community. I want to just take a beat on how compliance teams—legal, audit, risk, HR—network with their stakeholders in the business. Is it any different?
Dorie Clark: I feel like you guys probably know, I’m sure, the compliance world much better than I do. Can I push it back on you to get your take first and then I can weigh in? How do you guys currently network within your orbits? What do you do now? What are you comfortable with? What are the parts where you’re not so comfortable, but you wish you were more? What does it look like as you play it out?
Nitish Upadhyaya: One of the things is just actually that real interest in people and not just the business piece, but it’s the stuff that surrounds them. I tend to remember one thing off the back of every conversation that is interesting about the individual, and that’s something I’ll ask them about next time. It might be about their kids, it might be traveling, it might be something that we have a mutual interest in, or something I am just naturally curious about. And that tends to work because, again, it’s not a lever or a genuine interest in what they’re about, and that then tends to lead to some interesting conversations further down the line. So, there’s one general networking tip from me.
Amanda Raad: If you are a compliance professional or ethics professional and you’re trying to work with someone that their job isn’t compliance or legal but is instead purely in the business or sales world, I think some of the explanation you were just sharing, Dorie, might be applicable. I would think that you would have to think about how you can be helpful. What is it you can offer as a compliance professional to the business professional to actually help them? And maybe it’s something that is compliance-related, but maybe actually it’s not—maybe it’s about building the relationship first so that then when you need to have the more difficult conversation or make the more difficult ask, or whatever it may be, the relationship already exists. Is that a fair take on your advice?
Dorie Clark: I think that that is a great take on it. Ultimately, in almost all cases, the relationship comes first, and so, having a strong foundation where they like you as a person gives you the entrée into everything else. The hard part is that the work that you’re doing is so important, and yet, it is not always welcomed by its recipients, and so, that’s really the challenge. If I’m in a huge amount of pain and I go to the doctor, I’m going to do whatever the doctor tells me because I need to relieve my suffering. The challenge with compliance is like, “Man, they’re just clipping my sails here, literally and metaphorically.” You are doing such an important thing, and yet, to the recipient, it just feels like sometimes a hassle. And so, I think that partly it’s about thinking through the “What’s in it for me?” And what’s in it for me for, say, a sales leader, is, “You do not want your people to get arrested. This is a bad look. I will help spare you that.” Then, they’re like, “Okay, well, I can see the point there.” But for a lot of individuals, it’s, “Eh.” And so, often the way in has to be through the side door of just they know you, they like you, and as a result of that, they will listen to you more rather than leading with a message, which is a little bit, “Take your medicine.”
Amanda Raad: They know you, they trust you, you’re authentic, they believe you.
Dorie Clark: They believe that you value their best interest.
Amanda Raad: Yes, which is about so much more than just the words that you say—it’s so much more of a relational issue.
Dorie Clark: Yes.
[26:55] The Rules of the Ask
Amanda Raad: Alright. So, we’ve talked a lot about not making the ask too soon and getting yourself in the right position to be able to make the ask. Richard shared with me that you also are very firm on the rules of the ask. Once you do get the chance to make the ask, there’s a good ask and there’s a bad ask. I’m certain I’ve done many bad asks in my life. What are the rules? Tell us what we should be doing.
Dorie Clark: For me, the most important thing—again, if our goal is long-term relationship building, long-term relationship preservation—you always want to make it easy for the person to say “yes,” but also, honestly easy for the person to say “no.” If someone gives a coerced “yes,” for you once, because they said they would do it, but they will never do the thing for you again. “He tricked me a little bit here.” Or, “I didn’t really want to, but there was pressure and that feels weird, and so, I need to pull back now.” If we genuinely want to have a relationship that not only is fun for us, but that pays dividends for both of us hopefully over many years, you need to be pretty chill about it. Let’s say what you want is an introduction to somebody—again, lots of room for the person to feel okay and to know that you’re not going to hold it against them. “Richard, I have a question for you. For a long time, it’s been my goal to speak at such-and-such conference. I know that you spoke at that conference last year and 100%, no worries if this is not appropriate or comfortable, because I don’t really know how things work behind the scenes there, but I would love any advice that you might have about how to break in at that conference. If you felt comfortable recommending me, I would love it. Again, you know much better how those things work, but I would love any guidance or help you could provide.” In something like that, it is showing that I’m asking for advice first, and if Richard only feels comfortable giving me advice, that’s okay. I have also mentioned I would love an introduction, but he can kind of dodge it if he doesn’t want to make the introduction. But if Richard is excited to help me, then he can say, “Dorie, you’d be perfect. Of course I’m going to suggest you. I’m going to send an email to the organizers right now.” So, it’s giving him a choice of options of how he can be helpful. And maybe that helpfulness actually is just advice, and that advice is, “Gosh, Dorie, they only have people speak who are compliance professionals. I know you have a lot of value to add in the compliance world, but because you’re not specifically a compliance professional, I don’t think it’s worth your time.” That’s cool too. So, I’m a fan of the low-pressure ask.
Amanda Raad: Can you say anything about the timing? I know you said not too soon, but I think that people get really hesitant about when is that perfect moment. Is there anything to that? Do you need to look for an opportunity when you are otherwise having an event together or a dinner, or is the outreach, a normal course, successful sometimes?
Dorie Clark: I think, honestly, sometimes people overthink it a little, and sometimes that can make it worse. I will give you an example. There is a woman that I know who I invited to an event, and then, a month later, she invited me over for dinner to her house. And I thought this was so nice— people are not always very good about reciprocating, and so, I was very touched. She was from a foreign country—she was like, “I’m going to make you a home-cooked meal to show off the food from my country.” I thought, “Oh, we’re going to get to know each other.” Literally in the appetizer course—she had made this four-course meal—she somehow let it drop that there was a thing she wanted to ask me. And I was like, “Oh no. When is she going to ask me this thing? What is she going to ask me?” And, of course, I couldn’t enjoy the meal because I was just thinking, “What’s it going to be and how awkward is this going to be?” Sure enough, the next to last course, she mentions that she’s working on this project, “Oh, would I like to invest in it?” It was just, like, “Oh no. I did not come over to your house to be pitched.” And I think in her mind, it was like, “I’m going to set the perfect situation. I’ll have her to myself. It’ll be relaxed and nice, and I’ll have done a nice thing.” But it made it feel more transactional.
So, I think, obviously, it’s not perfect science, but in general, a year is enough time to have legitimately gotten to know somebody. I think that the timing question, there are times that are worse than others. One time, someone who was working for me asked me for a raise when I was on the phone with them, and they knew I was just about to get on the subway. I was just like, “What? This is a conversation. I have to leave in a minute and a half because my train is here. This is not the right timing.” So, there’s worse times, but, I think, in general, if you’re a real considerate human, it’s mostly fine.
[31:50] Being on the Lookout for Someone Wanting to Take Advantage of You
Richard Bistrong: Dorie, as we wind down, I want to talk about that piece you just published with Ruth Gotian, 4 Signs That Someone in Your Network Is Taking Advantage of You, in the Harvard Business Review, and we’ll put that in the show notes. And by the way, I’m going to just plug that if any one of our listeners wants to write in a high-profile publication, take Dorie’s course, and we’ll put that in the show notes as well. But back to the article—Dorie, what are the signs that people are trying to take advantage of us? And what do we need to do to keep our radar on so that doesn’t happen?
Dorie Clark: There are some telltale signs that people might be taking advantage of you. The first one, of course, is do they basically only contact you when they want something? This should be pretty clear, but sometimes, if we’re just used to thinking the best of people, we almost don’t notice the pattern. They only get in touch when they’re going to be in your city and they want a place to stay, or they’re only in touch when they have a new book coming out and they want you to help promote it, or whatever it is. So, you’ve got to be wary of that.
Another one, of course, is just overly effusive praise—that can be a little bit weird. I like being praised, that’s fantastic, but it is not a great thing when it’s got this one-two punch, “Oh, Richard, you’re so amazing. Wow. I love your writing in Harvard Business Review. Hey, can you introduce me to your editor?” So, that’s a warning sign.
Another thing—which seems on the surface like it might be positive but sometimes is not—is a request to collaborate. Sometimes, a request to collaborate really is a nice 50-50 symbiosis. Sometimes, it’s basically, “You have a thing I want. Let me collaborate with you so that I can obtain it for myself.” We all have a decent Spidey sense of that, but a collaboration is where the other person genuinely is bringing something to the table you don’t already possess. If they do not possess anything that is of use to you, that’s not really a collaboration—that is a favor that you would be doing for them. And that’s not to say you wouldn’t necessarily want to do it, but again, to the point about understanding the context of relationship dynamics, if it’s a favor, they should understand it’s a favor. They should be really thankful that you’re doing them that favor, and if they’re not, and they’re trying to fob it off on, “I’m an equal partner here,” it’s like, “Well, no, you’re not, so, don’t try to gaslight here.” So, that’s a thing to watch out for.
The other last thing that Ruth and I mentioned in the article—a good hat tip to Ruth Gotian, who’s a great collaborator, speaking of which—is if you find out or see that the person just keeps mentioning you in weird ways, like, they’re talking about you too much. There’s good ways and bad ways, of course. If it’s Richard saying, “Take her course,” that’s very nice—thank you, Richard. But if you discover on social media that everybody’s, like, “I was out to dinner the other night with my homeboy, Nitish, and we did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and it’s like they’re trying to use you to somehow telegraph a form of social proof or approval, it can just be a little weird. Again, these are nuances, but it’s just understanding what is a nice, normal thing of mentioning that the person knows you, or a normal thing of praising you or introducing your work to other people versus somehow deploying you in the service of reputational gain for themselves.
[35:15] 2026 Networking Resolutions
Nitish Upadhyaya: Great things to watch out for there—so many tips. We’ve got to draw to a close, unfortunately. What piece of advice do you have for our listeners as they start their new year, maybe a new way of networking? What should they do?
Dorie Clark: So, one nice, clear goal—if we’re thinking about New Year’s resolutions—is to reach out even just to one new person a week. And when I say new, I don’t mean they have to be a stranger, I mean somebody who is not in your usual rotation of people that you talk to. Maybe it’s literally just going through your LinkedIn contacts—because there’s, I guarantee, people that you probably haven’t talked to in five years or 10 years in there—and just sending them a little note. It doesn’t have to be any weird thing—you can click on their profile, see what they uploaded recently, and be like, “I saw on LinkedIn you recently did this. That sounds so cool. It reminded me we haven’t been in touch. Just wanted to say hi.” And that can be the extent of it. Or, if you want, you can invite them for a coffee or a Zoom chat—all that is good. Networking is an area where some is definitely better than none. So, we don’t have to be perfectionists. We don’t have to make friends with a thousand people this year. Even one a week is going to put you in a better position than you were the year prior.
Nitish Upadhyaya: I love that. What a great way to start off the year and do something a little bit different. Dorie, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, your tips, and we are looking forward to having you back again at some point for another round of networking prowess for all of our listeners.
Dorie Clark: Thank you so much. Great to hang out with all of you today.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Thank you all for tuning in to the latest episode in our Culture & Compliance Chronicles series. For more information about our series and any of the ideas discussed today, take a look at the links in our show notes. You can also subscribe to the series wherever you regularly listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. Amanda, Richard and I will be back very soon for our next chapter. If you have topics you’d like us to cover or novel perspectives you want everyone else to hear about, get in touch. Thanks again for listening. Have a wonderful day and stay curious.