13: Upside of Being Invisible with David Zweig

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Hi, I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the book Turn what's Working for you into what's Next, which comes out with Portfolio Penguin in September of 2016.

In this podcast I talk with peak performers to reverse engineer their most successful career. Pivots interview experts on what it takes to be agile in a rapidly evolving economy and open the kimono on what happens behind the scenes of my book and business. You can learn to capitalize on risk, fear and uncertainty as the doorways of opportunity. My promise is that you will leave every episode with practical tips, tools and tactics. For show notes from this episode, visit jennyblake Me podcast.

If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

I am thrilled to be here today with David Zweig, author of the Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self Promotion. Dave, thank you so much for being here with me.

Thanks for having me.

First, can you define for us what is an invisible?

Well, I used to be an invisible. I worked for a number of years as a magazine fact checker and if you read a great article, I always like to use this anecdote. You never think to yourself, oh, that was fact checked beautifully. When you read something that's done well, you might think of the writer, maybe abstractly the editor. No one thinks of the fact checker. And I thought this was such a strange thing. I had this job where the better I did my job, the more I disappeared. You know, it was only if I made a mistake that anyone would notice me at all. And so I subsequently.

Eventually kind of broke out of fact checking. But my experience there stayed with me for a long time and I had always been thinking about, well, it was such an unusual experience. What other types of professions are there that share the same kind of like inverse relationship between work and recognition?

And I found there are a lot of them, of course, and that these people are basically in every industry and in every field. And I wanted to explore what, if any, common threads there were among these people who I call invisibles, really skilled professionals whose work has a direct impact on whatever enterprise they're a part of, but who generally are never thought of by the public.

Right. I love this topic because we are in this age of relentless self promotion and the pivot method is about navigating career change. And a lot of the advice is put yourself out there, become an expert, make yourself known. And in some ways, people start to do that before they really have a foundation underneath. Can you describe how what some of those common themes are that you picked up or noticed among invisibles, and how that relates to the advice that's out there today where people have to, as my friend Stacey says, live their lives while they brand the shit out of it.

Branding. Yeah. So there's a lot there that you asked about.

So.

Okay, first I'll start with the notion of. Basically, my book offers a real. A pushback against this notion of the brand itself and that everyone needs to raise their profile and build a platform and all this stuff in order to become successful. It's not that those things aren't important and that people don't need to promote themselves in different times and in different ways. But.

I argue that this ethos today where everyone is kind of striving for more and more attention for themselves, or that quote that your friend said to you about branding themselves, that I think the people in the book, the examples that I give of them, make a really persuasive case that if for a variety of reasons, if that's not who you are, perhaps you're a bit more introverted, you're shy, Perhaps the type of field that you're in just doesn't mesh well with making more of a profile that for any number of reasons, people don't want it. There's a lot of people who don't want to do this, who really almost resent this kind of pressure to have to always promote themselves. And what the examples of these really successful people, my book show is that there is an alternate path to becoming successful. And by successful, I mean both professionally in the sense of climbing the ladder, so to speak, and making a good income, but more than that, being fulfilled. And that's kind of the really interesting thing about.

Visibles is that this notion that we think we need to have a lot of recognition in order to feel good and to be fulfilled. And make no mistake, it does feel good when we're recognized for our work. But what these people show is that what ultimately lasts in like, a rich and meaningful way is not recognition from others. But, of course, being immersed in the work yourself. And this is not something new. You know, this is kind of like major tenets of religion have argued this to some extent. Philosophy over the millennia, which I get into in the book, have talked about this notion of sort of the internal being your driver, what psychologists will call intrinsic rewards versus extrinsic rewards. And that's what people show. So there's, it's a really counterintuitive, but I think highly persuasive argument that there is more than one way in our culture to become successful.

Right. I think it's so important to highlight this. And you give examples of the structural engineer compared to the architect, or the sound engineer compared to the lead singer of the band. And I love your chapter. You say many invisibles are ambivalent to recognition. It's it like you said, they, it's nice if they're recognized, but it's not their driving motivation.

That's right, yeah. I mean, so I interviewed people and I traveled around the States and I was in Asia, I was in Europe meeting with these invisibles in like a really wide range of professions and all sorts of different circumstances. To.

Skyscraper that was under construction in China, to a concert stage at a sold out Radiohead show in Europe, to an airport in the United States and all sorts of other environments. So the huge range of the types of work that these people do, but I found some common threads that tied them together. And the primary one of which, as you noted, is an ambivalence toward recognition that they just simply don't seek attention the way so many of us do, or told that we're supposed to do in order to become successful. And let me make clear, it's not that these people are meek or hiding in the corner behind their desk. They're not pushovers and they know when they need to stand up for themselves and make themselves known. It's just that generally none of them really seek attention for themselves. And the way that they ultimately became very successful and at the top of their fields was by doing excellent work. As kind of basic and lame as that sounds, but it's very encouraging. And they're not an anomaly, these people. There's some pretty intriguing research that's been done as well by academics at business schools and elsewhere that shows that, hey, lo and behold, great work does get noticed. So that's the first thing, this sort of ambivalence and that great work. And also that these people tend to subjugate themselves to something larger than themselves. That they all are what, you know, what people will call like a Team player. There's a real collectivist spirit that they all have. And again, it's a bit ironic because a number of these people work in fields where they are leaders. Again, we mentioned the structural engineer who I profiled, a man named Dennis Poon. This is a guy who is in charge of huge teams of workers. There are ultimately hundreds of people, probably maybe even in the thousands, who are operating under the umbrella of what he's in charge of as the chief structural engineer on these multi billion with a b billion dollar skyscrapers. And I interviewed a cinematographer, Robert Elswit. Huge, huge numbers of people ultimately are underneath his charge when he works on a film. The grips and the gaffers and all these other people ultimately report his department. So interestingly, these people, they're at the top of their field, these guys, and they're in charge of all these people. But they got there to be these leaders by actually being really good team players and knowing how to collaborate with others. One of the chapters in the book is called the Singular Vision and the Art of Collaboration. So it's not this notion of that you need to.

Give away who you are and the special things that you do, but there's a real talent that these people have for being able to retain their own vision while simultaneously knowing how to be master collaborators with others and knowing when to say, hey, it's not only about me, but it's about something larger. And here's the key. I don't want to give away too much.

I get into in the book is that it's not as complicated or unique of a skill.

As you may think. Because here's the trick to being able to do that. It's. You have to care about the end product more than aggrandizing yourself. So if you care the most about Robert Elswit more than like making himself known, he just cares about the film working and being just an excellent film. And he's. And when that's your primary motive, then it actually becomes quite easy to then as you walk back from there, to want to collaborate with people and just have the best end result, rather than making sure your contribution is seen, you know, above other people's contributions. So you really have to kind of start at the end point and then work back from there.

I love it. And that's something that I talk about in the pivot method too. A lot of these themes overlap, which is, first and foremost, do excellent work, have talents and skills that other people want to pay you for, and second, have a driving vision and a mission how can you be of service to others and a larger picture? So my question becomes like, let's say someone is excellent in their field and they're not at the top yet, but they're invisible. They're committed to the end product or the broader company or community that they're serving. But it can be very stressful when it comes time to make a career change because at that point they somehow have to make it known what they've done and what they're great at in order to find either the next job or launch their own business. So that kind of self marketing piece can be tricky. What advice would you give to invisibles who are looking to make a change like that?

Well, I guess the first thing is if you're looking to make a change and you know, and this is everyone has financial considerations, you know, which play into what we do and how we do it with our work. But as you and I keep saying, try to find something that you're really good at and that you really enjoy as well, you know, and that sounds sort of obvious and basic. And again, not everyone can do exactly what they want to do because maybe that doesn't pay what they need to pay for their mortgage or whatever else. But try to get to as close as you can to what you want to do. And secondly, this notion of kind of making yourself known, and how do you do that, from what I've seen from the invisibles who I met with, is that if you operate like an invisible, and by operate like invisible, I don't mean making yourself literally invisible, but in the sense as I define it in the book, with these specific traits, you're going to make a lot of allies and people will most likely come out of the woodwork to support you. If you need references, recommendations, and even beyond that, you're going to meet people in your field who.

Who maybe aren't at your company, but then they're going to let you know about an opening at their company. So this might be an odd piece of advice, but if you're thinking about pivoting to a new career or a different firm or something, one of the things I would do is maybe it's not the time yet. If you haven't really established enough people who you think got your back, you know, it's first, do a great job. And maybe that's not feasible for everybody, depending on your circumstance, but at minimum, carry yourself in a way that people are going to support you. At least you'll know you'll have some people at different places here's an interesting thing. After my book came out, I was contacted by.

A man named Mike Cotelli, who is the former chairman and CEO of Pitney Bowes, the multi billion dollar shipping and printing company, which you probably have heard of. And he talked to me and said, you know, I love your book and I just want you to know when I was at the helm of Pitney Bowes, it's like, you know, billion dollar corporation. We purposely looked out for these types of people who you call invisibles, and they had their own sort of terminology for them. And we've. We've since established a nice relationship and have gotten together a bunch of times just talking about.

People and how they function in work environments. So the reason I mention this is only that.

I think we all operate from the point of anxiety and fear a lot with this prevailing notion of how to. That you have to constantly brand yourself and put yourself out there. But what we forget is that I'm not saying he's the rule or the norm, but that there are companies and places where people are noticed for their contributions and there's just this balance of being.

Not being a pushover, but yet not screaming your name out in front of everybody all the time.

Right. It's so important, and I agree completely, that even what I see with most of my coaching clients, whether they're trying to get another job with a company or running their own business, the vast majority of their success comes from people they already know who are aware of their talent. So that just sort of quiet strength over time and then their network works for them. And I know exactly, people cringe at the term networking, but when you're genuinely good at what you do and you come from a place of giving, the opportunities tend to come to them. I mean, I've seen it a thousand times where as soon as they get clear, they're ready to change and they put the word out. The opportunity to come to that.

Oh yeah. And to that point, one other thing about Mike when I talked to them was he said that they would recognize when certain employees were really great at what they did, but that they reached kind of a ceiling with where they were in their specific department or whatever. And if they felt that this person was really great and had potential in other ways, they would take them and pluck them out if the person wanted to and pull them into some other track that had a higher ceiling. So that's actually something that may be directly relatable to people interested in your book and what you're talking about with pivoting that you know, you may be in some specific track or department in a company where you've kind of like hit the ceiling. But. But one of the things you may not even be aware, but if you have a really good boss or good management structure there, even above your direct report boss, right above you, that you may not even be aware, but there may be opportunities within the company that are, that they might be open to switching you over to if you've been doing a great job with what you're doing. And that's something I thought was really cool about what he did, that they would take people and say there are some circumstances where it just doesn't make sense. He had a medical director and it wouldn't necessarily make sense to pull him into something more executive role because the guy needed to, you know, had a very specific function. But there are many circumstances where your kind of broader professional skills and traits that you have can be applied into a different realm.

Absolutely. I've even seen a parallel which is among self employed people. They do a great job and they get results for their clients. Whether it's copywriting, editing, coaching, doesn't matter. When they're getting results, their clients spread by word of mouth and they get so many referrals and maybe they haven't even changed their external branding or marketing and they're not seeing the results from their website in big cheesy sales pages. But yet these clients keep coming to them and the clients often shift before the external marketing shell conveys it. Sometimes it's the other way around. But you've made an interesting shift. I know you get this question a lot, but I have to ask which is you were an invisible, you were a fact checker and then you published this article in the Atlantic on invisibles and sort of has snowballed from there and now you do speaking and lots of interviews for your book. Can you talk to us about that transition and how you to this you balance those two sides of yourself?

Yeah, it's funny, I do. That is like every journalist and interview is like, ooh, I'm going to give you a zinger, here it comes. You know, the reality is that I've always loved writing and you know, a lot of not everyone, but a lot of people who get into fact checking, it is a bit more of a kind of an, I wouldn't say entry level but it's a way of getting into journalism. And then from there people kind of springboard into other roles. Editing, writing, what have you. Some don't. There are fact Checkers, where that is the end game. But so here's the thing.

What drove me and what I found rewarding about fact checking is ultimately the same stuff that I find rewarding about writing, which is the intellectual challenge of the work and being engaged with what I'm doing. So it feels great. Like, it's fun for me to have my name on the COVID of my book when I write articles, having a byline. I enjoy that. It would be odd if I really didn't want that recognition at all. But what I found is that whatever good feeling I have from, like, oh, I just got a great review, or this or the other thing, inevitably that feeling is really ephemeral. That's just not enough to go by in order. And as you know, Jenny, in order to write a book, to spend one, if not several years of your life working on a project, you need to have an engagement with it. You need to have the fuel that it takes to actually embark on a project that takes that long and that much of the work is very solitary. You have to really be engaged with the work and any notion of notoriety, whatever else, it's just not going to be enough to be enough of a driver to keep you going. So to my mind, I don't view, while the work is completely different as far as being a writer versus a fact checker, in that regards, the sort of key element on the inside of who I am stays the same, which is just being engaged with what I'm doing. I ultimately left fact checking because while I love fact checking and I do it as a writer myself, that wasn't as engaging for me as I wanted my job to be in the end. So I left because I found writing to be more engaging and more rewarding, but it wasn't the notion of, ooh, I want more attention. This notion of I want to be more engaged with what I'm doing.

It's fascinating what you said about the underlying motivation, And I agree 100%, that to work on a book, which for me they do take several years at least, requires a deep commitment and a deep interest and drive. And that that is different from any of the external activities that ensue in order to promote it. And I think for me at least, even promoting something or myself is not my number one desired activity. It's just what I do to get the word out and hopefully help reach more people who may need to hear what I have to say.

Yeah, I mean, the main thing that I tell people when I'm lecturing at corporate events or Other stuff, and what I talk about in the book is.

That.

If you think of yourself as like a corporation, if you will pardon the metaphor, but that we are spending way too much money on our marketing departments and not enough resources in the R and D department. It's not that. I'm not suggesting that we eliminate the marketing department of you, you know, of yourself. It still should be there. But I think the allocation of resources is really out of whack and really distorted today. And that if people, whether it's moving up within a career or they're looking to change careers.

I think the danger for a lot of people is that they're going to start spending a disproportionate and unhelpful amount of energy on their branding and on their marketing of themselves. And that the return, the roi, if you will, and the return on that investment is going to not be as beneficial as it would be if you spent more time just on your work. The whole reason I got.

The book deal for Invisibles was that I had been working, writing a handful of articles, building my credentials toward a slightly different topic, which is something I'm working on now after Invisible. But I had this whole game plan in mind where I wanted to build my profile, so to speak, and build credentials, which makes sense and something. And I almost didn't write the article about Invisibles because it wasn't part of this, like, master game plan I had in my head about marketing myself in a certain way. But it was an idea I had in my head for a long time. And I always, I felt really committed to the idea. I just hadn't had the opportunity to really explore it or write about it. And the opportunity came up, I was like, you know what? I'll do it. I'll write the article. Because I almost didn't because it wasn't part of the game plan. And look what happened. Lo and behold, I wrote the article. I was really fortunate that it got a lot of attention and I openly was able to write a book, really going even deeper into the idea. And it's so awesome and such a great experience. The point being, none of this would have happened had I been too focused, you know, to myopic, if you will, on focused on my, like, marketing game plan for myself. I was willing to kind of veer away from. From the branding that I was trying to do for myself. I was willing to veer away from that and, and write something that I was like, you know what? I just want to write this because this is. This interests me and this is rewarding to me in and of itself. And it turned out that the, you know, when I veered away, that's what actually led to some really great success from that.

Absolutely. This is one of the keys to the pivot method, which is pivoting from a foundation of your strengths and what's working. So for you, some of your core is your writer and a fact checker and a journalist and a curious guy. And so almost you could layer on this pivot, this shift in topic and it was okay, it wasn't a deal breaker. It was you following the energy of that and that change kind of chose you. But yet that core in you, that writer, journalist, seeker, fact checker, that's going to help you in any book you write. So it's, it's awesome that you found something that has that much range for exploration.

Yeah.

And it's not just me. I think it's the, you know, a lot of the people who were in my book who became very successful, that they didn't all start out in their field and then just work their way up the ranks, so to speak. A lot of people have circuitous paths they follow. But again, it's this notion of concentrating more on the R and D and less on the marketing. It does seem to pay dividends in a way that I think.

Is not really acknowledged or celebrated or valued as much as it should be today, where there's just far too much attention being placed on how to position and market ourselves and not have on kind of the core stuff.

And I love that analogy of the company. It's such a helpful one. And even Google has Google Ventures or Google X like working on crazy 10x thinking and projects and I think we could all benefit from that as well. So have one department that's exploring random things or taking, taking risks, but you don't bet the whole company on it. You just have these different departments and similar to you, the people, and I'm sure everyone listening to this, but the people who are the most successful are deeply committed to learning and growth and growing their skills and often in seemingly disconnected fields that then they combine and become this really unique powerhouse where there aren't many people like them. So it's fun to hear you kind of talk about that through the lens.

Of these invisibles that you interviewed. Yeah, it's a great example about Google doing that. And I talk about that a little bit as well. I think 3M were one of the first companies you'd know better than I, Jenny, that I think did that the sort of. I forget what it's called. The personal time or whatever. Exactly, yeah. 3m time. Google famously does it that. Yeah. In some ways, you can think of yourself in doing the same thing. You know, try to allocate some time, and if your professional environment doesn't allow for it, then in some other way, you know, where you're giving yourself the freedom to explore stuff that's of interest to you and shit, if nothing else, even if that doesn't lead to a professional.

Advancement, you're doing something that's fulfilling. You know, I don't know. Ultimately, you know, that the purpose of, you know, people following through with the pivot method. But, like, one of the things I talk about in Invisibles is, first you have to just step back and think about how you define success, you know, and again, I, you know, there's. I make no.

Bones about the fact that we all have bills to pay. You know, this is not a society where everyone's coddled and taken care of. So it's not that, you know, that isn't a consideration, but, like, at the end of the day, I mean, this is your life. You have to do what makes you feel good. And if you don't have the opportunity to do enough of that at your job, then try to incorporate that into your life. Maybe this is the wrong thing to say, but maybe part of learning something about pivoting from one career to another is maybe you stay where you are. Maybe that's the. Sometimes staying what you're doing is the best decision, but figure out a way of incorporating other things that are fulfilling to you in your life, whether professionally or otherwise. You know, talk to your boss about, hey, I really love doing blank. I only get to do that, like, 10% of my time. Can we ramp that up a little bit or something? And if you can't do that at work, then maybe you're doing something else outside of work that's engaging. So I don't know if this is absolutely.

Yeah, it resonates completely. I am working on this hypothesis that what's the pivot method for? Because ultimately, it's a means to an end. It's a tool. And I think that for many of us, what we're really going for is a sense of momentum and purpose. Just a feeling that, okay, I'm clicked into my skis, I'm going downhill. Like, yes, there will be bumps or moguls, but I have a feeling of wind in my hair. You know, I like what I'm doing, and I feel challenged and Similar to the concept of flow. It's just a feeling of kind of forward movement even if we can't see exactly where that path will take us.

Right.

Heather, last question before we wrap up. Has there been anything surprising that you've learned about Invisibles since your book came out?

Hmm.

I guess what has been surprising everyone since the book has come out. I don't know if I would say surprising, but I say what's been rewarding and exciting is just the amount of people who reached out to me to say that the book resonated with them. And even.

I give this anecdote.

Afterward in the paperback where I talk about. I went around and I was doing a bunch of radio and TV interviews, and one of the things that was really interesting was almost without exception, every place I would go to, someone would pull me aside and kind of like whisper in my ear, hey, I'm an Invisible.

Thanks.

Thanks for writing this book. You know, whether I'm getting. I mean, like, it's the hair and makeup people for the TV shows, almost always it was the engineers when I was at radio stations, like the engineer on the other side of the glass, if I would talk to them, you know, at the break or before the segment started.

And by the way, all the way up the line to the head producer at the TV shows at CBS this Morning and shows like that. So it's not just like some low rung person. Even the people who are at these really kind of executive levels, they too see themselves as Invisibles. So I just found that to be really rewarding in the sense that I think so many of us are really identify with this notion that a lot of what we do isn't seen or noticed. And rather than viewing that as something to be upset about or anxious about, that it really can be something that's embraced. And I think the people who I found who are really successful, that's exactly what they do. That for them, anonymity is really something. It's not to be embraced. You know what? Let me walk back. It is embraced by them. They are quite happy and in fact, they prefer to just do the work. And that's just something that's surprising and inspiring to see, something that we're sort of being told and taught to view as something to be worried about and is actually something that the people who are successful view it quite opposite.

That's amazing. I feel like you need an invisible superhero T shirt line.

You know, it's funny.

Yeah.

Several of the people I met with suggested that. So I envisioned you know, sort of like the Superman thing logo, but with a big letter I. That would be really fun.

Yeah, I love it. Well, Dave, thank you so much. This has been really fascinating. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch and follow your work?

Yeah, I'm easy to find. David Zweig.com is always there. And there's also Invisible's book.

Awesome, Dave. Thank you so much again. And thank you to everyone for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. To learn more and get new touch, visit JennyBlake me where I blog about systems at the intersection of mind, body and business. Or find me on Twitter @jennyblake. And remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.