From a Stanford MBA to other young professionals. — Hate getting interrupted? Or seeing your colleagues get interrupted? While interruptions can be benign, they can also claim power and influence who’s heard and who’s not. In the Stanford MBA program, I’ve studied and role-played different ways to deal with interrupters. Here’s what you should know: 1. Check Your Status Relative to That of the Interrupter

How will someone headhunt you, if they don’t even know about you? — Who you know might matter more than what you know. Uncomfortable statement, ey? Or encouraging? As a former chess olympian and computer science dork from MIT, networking doesn’t come naturally to me. In my last job, I naively told myself, “if I put my head down and focus on this…

Lessons from an ex-McKinsey management consultant — Have you ever struggled to get your slides to be “just right”? While others appear to create beautiful slides with minimal effort? Pretty slides do justice to your message. They help emphasize what’s important. But it can be such a time drag. I used to spend hours and hours before…

A checklist for your next important email — Let me see your email draft before you send it,” commanded a project manager when I was a junior consultant at McKinsey & Company. “Seriously?” I thought to myself. ”I’ve emailed for years.” But I hadn’t nailed how to write influential emails. After working at McKinsey, leading a team of…

Your body language accounts for 55% of what others take away from you — A tiny improvement in body language could mean a massive improvement in how influential you are. Your body language accounts for 55% of what others take away from you, while your words only account for 7%. Yet most of us only learn body language informally. How much more influential could…

Including common pitfalls that I wish I knew five years ago — Are you getting the maximum out of each user interview you’re running? I ran countless interviews as a product manager and entrepreneur. Here are the 5 steps I wish knew earlier for how to get novel insights from user interviews: 1. Discuss as a team: What do you need to learn? Be honest with yourself about where you are. All too…

I Saved $700 When Buying a Used Car — Last September, I bought a car and negotiated the price from $8200 to $7500. It was my first time negotiating outside of school. I had recently completed a Stanford MBA class on negotiations, where we role-played difficult situations and learned the theory behind effective negotiations. Until then I had always…

Become more influential by learning the language of these subtle cues — Hate it when you are not taken seriously? When I started working as a 24-year-old woman, I struggled. How to command attention? How not to be dismissed for my size, gender, and lack of wrinkles or gray hair? I’ve learned hacks to be more assertive. To be more influential…