In the Workplace, Training Pays Off

Just three weeks after attending the IWMF's Women Reaching for the Top: Initiatives for Media Leadership workshop, held in New York in February, Tanisha Mallett, a reporter for WTEN-TV in Albany, New York, had the opportunity to put the training to the test. She had been at the station for only four months when she “snagged an exclusive story” that meant taking a crew to New York City and camping out to get an interview.

Rather than let the opportunity pass her by, Mallett presented the idea to her news director and got the go-ahead. “I was nervous about going to my news director, but I decided to take the shot,” she says.

“I’ve always been pretty humble,” says Mallett. In a business dominated by men, she is quickly learning that well-timed assertiveness can pay off.

The workshop, which covered assertiveness and self-promotion, career mapping, conflict resolution, communication in the workplace, managing relationships and risk-taking, was the first in a series of U.S.-based leadership workshops for women journalists in mid-level positions being funded by the McCormick Tribune Foundation.

A panel discussion, Strategies for Success: How do women in the media rise to the top? included such speakers as Carolyn Lee, assistant managing editor, The New York Times; Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president for news, CBS News; Lynn Povich, new media consultant; and moderator/host Susan King, vice president, public affairs, Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Different Viewpoints

Edith Chapin, Deputy Bureau Chief and Managing Editor at CNN in New York, is on the IWMF’s leadership advisory committee and also took the workshop.

“The workshop was challenging and helpful to me in that I was one of only a few managers represented in the group. So I found the comments of other individuals about their managers interesting from my perspective as a manager. In situations where I was a neutral party, I was able to provide some suggestions to the individuals while thinking about a situation through the eyes of a worker and her manager,” she says.

Chapin had the opportunity to see situations from an employee’s viewpoint as well. “As an employee who reports to a manager myself, I was provoked to think about how I would raise similar issues with my boss if they ever came up. I found it incredibly helpful to intellectually hop back and forth across both sides of the perspective fence.”

Back in the CNN newsroom, Chapin has been able to apply what she learned. “I'm very familiar with the people I manage, having worked with many of them first as a colleague and then as a manager for five years. I try to keep the voices from the seminar in my mind as I try to find the best work environment for the staff to thrive in and in which to produce the best journalism.”

Although Chapin hasn’t had to negotiate her own raise since the seminar, that issue is coming up in the months ahead. And now she can go in armed with some new tools and new ways of thinking about the negotiation.

Another part of the training that Chapin found useful was the delicate art of self-promotion. “I think I've learned that you can toot your own horn without being distastefully egocentric. Self-promotion when done appropriately is both normal and necessary.”

The training covered such topics as how to determine the proper occasion for speaking up for yourself and what to do when others try to take credit for your work.

Adds Chapin, “I am perfectly comfortable being clear and assertive in giving direction about journalism, but speaking up for myself is something I have seen done badly and offensively by so many that I tend to not do much of it for myself.”

Taking Advantage of Opportunity

Rachel Konrad, former technology writer for CNET, a San Francisco-based online company that publishes a technology news site, attended a later workshop held in San Francisco in June. She confesses that she came to the workshop because she needed a day away from her job. “I had been covering business journalism for nearly nine years and felt completely pigeonholed and unable to escape my rut,” she says.

The best part of the workshop, she says, was the opportunity to network with other attendees, an opportunity that literally turned her career around. She met Martha Mendoza, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative writer for the Associated Press who was also attending the workshop. “Martha had heard me complaining that I felt pigeonholed and wanted to get out of strictly business writing. She informed me of an upcoming opening that might interest me: correspondent in the San Jose bureau of the AP.”

Konrad followed up with Mendoza and discovered that the job did involve a lot of technology and business writing, because it is based in the Silicon Valley. But, she explains, “the correspondent is also expected to write news, features and profiles of every major story in the region, ranging from earthquakes and wildfires to mayoral elections and the sorry state of public education.”

It was the perfect way to leverage her business experience and salary requirements with a job that allowed her to broaden her horizons, says Konrad. After an interview and style test, AP offered her the job, which she immediately accepted. “None of this would have happened had I not attended the IWMF workshop,” she says.

Tooting Your Own Horn

Mae Cheng, a staff writer at Newsday in Kew Gardens, New York, covers immigration and demographics. She says that as an Asian woman, she finds it particularly challenging to be self-promotional and found the assertiveness training especially helpful. “You grow up thinking that if you do good work, you’ll move up. But sometimes in this business you have to point out the good work you do,” she explains.

“The first couple times I had to explain to management that I had beat other papers with a story was difficult.” She now realizes the value of “tooting your own horn,” which is something that even senior-level journalists such as Chapin agree is never easy.

Cheng is not sure whether she aspires to be a newsroom editor or not, so she’s testing her management skills to see if she wants to go in that direction. The workshop addressed issues of career planning to help attendees in evaluating the direction of their careers. Cheryl Epps, the workshop trainer, covered such career planning topics as goal setting and establishing objectives, the importance of maintaining flexibility, and the importance of mentors and networking.

“With career mapping, I have an idea of where I want to be and where I want to go,” says Mallet. “You are filled with so many negative images of where you can go in this business. But this [workshop] helped me be more proactive and helped with my confidence.”

What Cheng found most useful during the workshop was access to such an exceptional group of successful women. “To be able to sit down and talk to them about how they got where they are and the obstacles that they’ve had to face has been especially valuable.”

During a break, Cheng was able to talk with one of the speakers for nearly an hour about her career. “It’s so rare that you get the chance to talk to someone who has such a successful career who sits down and talks to you about how they got where they are,” says Cheng.

Konrad also appreciated the forum for meeting and talking with other women working in media. “The most valuable part of the workshop was the opportunity to network with the other attendees,”she says.

Mallett agrees. "You gain a sense of empowerment when you’re with other professional women. … Strong powerful women in action reminded me of what I can do,” she says.