I Shouldn't Be Telling You This Part 8

3. When you're talking to someone, hold the other person's gaze. Gla.s.s points out that most powerful people make you feel as though you are the only person in the room.

4. Go deep with your voice. "Deeper voices just seem more powerful," says Dr. Gla.s.s. "Squeeze down on your abs when you speak to a.s.sure your pitch is low." Thatcher's voice was considered too shrill, and it got worse when her vocal cords were overused. She took voice and elocution lessons to lower her pitch and even drank hot water with lemon and honey to help.

Gla.s.s recommends that you modulate your voice so that it's not too soft (you'll seem weak) or too loud (you'll seem desperate for attention). You don't want to speak in a monotone, though. Also stress adjectives or descriptive words so that there's plenty of life and enthusiasm when you're speaking.

5. Lose the uptalk. That's where your pitch goes up at the end of sentences. The inflection pattern of powerful people goes down at the end so it sounds like they are making an emphatic statement. If it goes up, you sound uncertain of what you're saying. Also avoid fillers such as "um" and "you know." Tape yourself in conversation and note how many fillers you use.

6. Smile less, nod less. These are ways we connect with others and display attentiveness to a speaker. Both s.e.xes smile and nod to people more powerful than them, but studies show that women tend to smile and nod more to peers. It's nice that we connect so well to others, but smiling or nodding too much can make you seem needy to please.

7. Don't touch your hair or your face. Watch powerful women on YouTube. They rarely play with their hair or touch their face out of nervousness.

8. Never let them see you sweat. No matter how rattled you feel in a particular situation, do your best to keep your cool around your subordinates. Let's say one of your big projects has gone bust. Or you've just been chewed out by your boss. Instead of venting to a subordinate, take a walk around the block or meditate for fifteen minutes with your door closed. Sympathy from a subordinate may feel good at the moment, but what he's probably thinking is "What does this mean for me?" or "How soon can I tell someone about this?" Sharing only encourages worry and gossip. Also, be careful of what you share with peers.

9. Go against the grain. Have you ever noticed how people who are very powerful sometimes operate differently from the rest of us in social situations? According to the "approach/inhibition theory of power," the powerful experience fewer social constraints than others, and it shows in their behavior. Individuals who feel powerful are more likely to act in "goal-congruent" ways-by switching off an annoying fan in a meeting, for instance. In a 2011 study called "Breaking the Rules to Rise to Power," the authors say that "given that power is a.s.sociated with lack of constraint, individuals whose behavior appears unconstrained by normative pressures may be perceived as powerful."

I saw a fabulous example of this once. A company I worked for had invited representatives of a major food company to chat with editors about their business. The organizers of the meeting laid out food from the company for people to snack on. At one point when the person in charge was speaking, she got up, walked over to the table, picked up a cookie, returned to her seat, and then ate the cookie as she spoke. Trust me, no one else in the room would have dared to do that.

Another example, one of my favorites: When I had lunch with Helen Gurley Brown after I received the Cosmo job, I noticed she ate her salad with her hands. She told me she always did that because she thought it just looked s.e.xier!

{ Drain the Swamp as You Slay the Alligators, or Possibly the Best Work Advice I Have Ever Been Given }.

Take a sec to think about what that phrase means. The first time I heard it-from a management guru whom we interviewed when I was running Working Woman magazine-I was momentarily confused, but after a minute I got it. The advice was simple and brilliant; yet I also could see how tough it might be to adhere to it.

The phrase is a derivation from what's supposedly an old southern expression: "When you're up to your a.s.s in gnats and alligators, it's easy to forget that the initial objective was to drain the swamp." It means that when you're working toward a long-term goal (draining the swamp), your time and energy can be eaten up by urgent, daily tasks (slaying alligators) that don't necessarily aid you in achieving more important future objectives.

If you're in sales, for instance, your daily, slaying-the-alligator tasks would include meeting with prospective clients and drumming up business. Draining the swamp, however, might include doing major research on emerging opportunities or creating a totally new presentation to use while pitching.

Unfortunately, draining-the-swamp stuff often gets sidelined when you're forced to slay a whole lot of alligators. The guru's point was that somehow, no matter how insane things are, you have to learn to do both.

I started trying to follow this advice as soon as I heard it. But I didn't go to town with the strategy until I started running Cosmopolitan. From the moment I arrived, I saw that Cosmo was a wonderful but crazy place to work at. It ran far more editorial pages than most other magazines, had a bigger staff, supported lots of international editions, had just launched a website, and was actively creating brand extensions. My books editor at the time, John Searles, told me a story that seemed to sum it all up. After he'd edited one of the s.e.xy thrillers Cosmo often excerpts, his a.s.sistant brought the copy back in and pointed out a mistake. He'd written, "With one hand Jack sipped his wine. And with the other hand, he stroked her thigh. And with the other hand he dimmed the lights." That seemed to sum up Cosmo: three hands required at all times.

I quickly realized how easy it would be to become mired in all the day-to-day duties and drama of running the magazine and never get around to focusing on what was necessary to evolve it. So I systematically set up an hour or so every single week to drain the swamp. At that time, no matter how much I needed to be looking at photos, editing articles, or trying to convince Hollywood publicists to let their clients be on the cover in a particular month, I stepped away and brainstormed about the future.

Sometimes I'd spend the time digesting e-mails from readers about what they were looking for in the magazine; sometimes I'd have editors present an a.n.a.lysis of ratings to acquire a sense of which features were working and which weren't. And sometimes-oh, and this is the part I loved the most-I'd sit at a restaurant counter with a gla.s.s of wine and a notepad and dream up ideas.

No matter how nutty your job gets, you have to drain the swamp. Book the time. Because if you don't, the big-picture stuff will slip away from you. And in the end you will be swallowed up by alligators.

{ 11 Things I've Learned About Choices, Decisions, and Risk }.

As your career takes off, you'll have to make lots of decisions-some easy, others, perhaps, enough to make your stomach churn and bring on sleepless nights. No matter how talented and skilled you are, not all of your decisions are going to be correct, and let me forgive you for that right now. You can't always make the perfect call. But you need to figure out how to increase the number of smart decisions you make and reduce the number of duds. Should you hire that person? Should you go with that deal? Should you send that e-mail? Should you take that job? Here are a few pointers I've picked up.

1. Having too many things to choose from is not a good thing. I learned this from Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory and social action at Swarthmore College and the author of the fascinating book The Paradox of Choice. Schwartz believes that because of the excessive number of choices available today, you can end up with "choice overload." This can make you agonize over decisions and even lead to decision-making paralysis. So do your best to limit your choices. Dr. Schwartz's strategy: "Identify one or two aspects of the decision that are most important to you and use them to filter out all the options that are not good enough with respect to those aspects. You can then use less significant aspects of the decision to choose among the much smaller set of options remaining that survive your first screening."

2. Good enough is almost always good enough. That's what Dr. Schwartz told me when I asked him for the single most important advice he could give people on making decisions. "If people can accept this," he said, "then having to choose from large sets of possibilities becomes much easier."

3. If you are making a choice based on the success or failure of a previous decision, be as sure as you can be why the other choice worked. In August 2002, I ran Keira Knightley on the cover of Cosmo. She was wearing a pink-and-black top, posed against a pink background, and her hair was long, shiny, and gorgeous. The issue ended up selling more than 2 million copies on the newsstand. So of course I wanted another Keira Knightley cover.

But when I did focus groups on covers a few months later, a fascinating fact emerged: It appeared that only a small percentage of women who'd bought the issue had realized who the cover girl was that month (it was still early in Keira's career). They had just loved the luscious look of the cover. I'd made a decision to try to do Keira again based on the wrong info. What I really needed was another pink cover!

4. Review your decision-making guidelines. I believe it's beneficial to develop certain principles that direct your decision making. Some of mine: never hire an a.s.sistant candidate who shows up late for the interview; never share a confidence with someone who blabs about other people; never use green as a background color on a cover. But periodically you have to examine these principles and ask if they still (or really) make sense. When I recently met Nicole Lapin, the feisty personal finance expert who created the website Recessionista.com, we talked about bad money decisions. I mentioned the fact that many young women spend at least three bucks every day on a morning latte and that financial experts often point out what a stupid choice this is. A smarter one would be to make coffee at home. "Maybe not," Lapin said, shaking her head. "What if buying the latte gets you revved up about your work and going in every morning, and because of that energy you get promoted and then you're making far more than the thousand dollars you spent on the lattes? Sometimes you need to challenge the cliche."

5. Use the phrase "I'll get back to you" as seldom as possible. Employees hate these five words. To them it's often code for "It may be days or weeks-or even never-before I get around to telling you what you want to know." When someone uses this expression, he isn't generally buying time to mull something over; rather, he's putting off having to make the decision-because he's unsure of what to do. Even if your intentions are good when you make this "promise," it ends up translating as indecisiveness. So learn to make instant decisions on things that aren't major issues. Let your gut guide you to an answer, and then spit it out. "I'll go with the red one" or "How about the fifteenth, then?" or "Unfortunately, I have to say no."

6. When you can't decide, it may simply be because you don't have enough information. So get more information. Trendera founder Jane Buckingham reinforced this concept for me. When I was once torn between two job candidates from the outside, I heeded Jane's advice and gave them each an additional project to do. The results told me what I needed to know.

7. Unfortunately, it's easy to talk yourself into a bad decision. Let's say you're right out of school and a friend of your parents has offered you an entry-level job in her special events company. What you're really interested in is being a journalist, so you graciously turn down the offer-though the friend tells you the door will be kept open. A month pa.s.ses. Then several more weeks. You don't receive any other offers. You begin to wonder if you should take the job after all. The job even starts to sound better to you. There's even some writing involved.

Try to always strip away what might be coloring a decision-like a desperate feeling or a need to do something quickly. When deciding to go with a choice you initially didn't like, ask yourself: has anything really changed?

Over the years, I did covers on more than a couple of actresses whom I'd originally decided weren't the right fit. The only times it paid off were when something suddenly changed about the actress's profile-she'd done a new movie that people were buzzing about. It never worked when I simply "came around" to the idea.

8. Practice decision making. When I won a Woman of Excellence Award from the radio station Magic 106.7, WMJX, in Boston several years ago, I discovered that one of the other awardees, the Los Angeles cardiac surgeon Kathy Magliato, had graduated from my college. It was fascinating to learn about her awesome career-which has included doing heart transplants-and I asked her to write an essay about determining the right decisions when the heat is on. Dr. Magliato said that in order to learn to be better at trusting her gut and making smart, split-second decisions, she repeatedly threw herself into tough situations so that thinking under pressure would become second nature. "As a resident, I'd run to get there first when the hospital called a code blue," she said. "I deliberately put myself in those crazy moments to learn how to think on my feet and be sure I knew what I was doing."

Making instant decisions on routine matters is great practice for not being intimidated by bigger decisions. If your job doesn't require much decision making, do committee or volunteer work that gives you more opportunity.

9. If you are making a risky decision, you need to calculate the worst-case scenario. I'm often amazed when I hear people talk about risks they've taken without ever considering the downside. Do the math. How bad could the ramifications be? My brother Jim, a hedge fund professional, says that in finance they call this evaluating "the risk of ruin." Let's say you want to ask your boss for more money or for the chance to take on a new project. He's been testy lately, and you worry he'll get ticked off. Is it worth the risk? When you do the math you realize that nothing bad is really going to happen. There's surely about a zero chance your boss is going to want to fire you. And though there may be a 60 percent chance he'll be irritated, that's bound to blow over. Jim told me that in his business you put guardrails or hedges around any risk to protect yourself. In the above instance, the guardrail might be not letting yourself become all bent out of shape visibly if your boss adamantly says no-which could work his last nerve.

10. Read 10-10-10 by Suzy Welch. This concise book outlines a really cool concept for making decisions.

11. Then let it go. Don't allow yourself to agonize or second-guess. Many decisions can be course-corrected if they turn out not to be perfect. Try literally washing your hands. A University of Michigan study found that when people did so after making a decision, they were less likely to second-guess.

{ It Pays to Be a Little Paranoid }.

Over my many years in the magazine business, I've had to fire dozens and dozens of people-some for cause, others as part of downsizing during rough economic times. And regardless of the reason for the termination, I always feel lousy. I know that the dismissal will turn the person's entire world topsy-turvy for at least a while.

But I've often walked away from these situations with something more than an awful feeling. I've been struck by how utterly clueless many of the people were about what was going to transpire. Their eyes widened, their jaws dropped, and frequently the first words out of their mouths were "OmiG.o.d, I never saw this coming."

Yet in so many of the situations, they should have seen it coming. The people I've let go for cause had always had several warning conversations and follow-up memos. And in cases of downsizing, employees might not have been provided with direct clues internally, but they should certainly have picked up-via company and/or industry buzz and possibly even from news headlines-that times were tough and that if layoffs were required, their names might very well be on the list.

No one enjoys living in a state of constant worry, but I think it's smart to be a little bit paranoid-and I feel my own career paranoia has served me well. I have never thought my phones were tapped or someone had put a transmitter under my skin. But (maybe because I'm always at work on a murder mystery) I tend to be on the alert for danger, spot it early, and, when possible, act on it before things turn ugly. I recommend that you do the same.

I'm not saying you should make mountains out of molehills. Sometimes random things happen that appear worrisome but aren't. I once accepted a terrific job that unfortunately involved reporting to a hyper, mercurial editor in chief. When I asked a friend who'd worked in the company for advice, she offered this guidance: "If she looks at you weirdly one day, give it twenty-four hours. She might just be having a bad-hair day." In other words, sometimes a weird look is just that and nothing to get agitated about.

What's key is to do what I suggested in "Develop a Golden Gut": play connect the dots. One situation may not matter, but when something similar or related occurs, allow it to pique your curiosity. Let me give you an example from my own career. After connecting the dots, I learned what I needed to know about handling a hairy situation, and then took a few steps that saved my b.u.t.t.

I was in the final year of my contract as the editor of a magazine (December would be my last month), and though I felt there was a decent chance my contract would be renewed, I was also conscious that the magazine was in a tough field and there was a fair amount of turmoil going on.

In June, my boss-let's call this person B for boss-called to invite me to lunch. Though I'd heard through the grapevine that B was renewing contracts only late in the year, I wondered if an exception was going to be made in my case. But all B wanted to do at lunch was chat. Hmmmm. It was a dot that I made note of, but since there were no other dots to connect it to, I chilled for a while.

Two months later B asked me to lunch again, in a super nice restaurant this time, and I figured, okay, today the talk would turn to the future. But not a word was said that day either. Two lunches within six months of my contract ending, and no mention of my staying. Two dots to connect. And that aroused a little paranoia. The next day I began reviewing my financial situation, just to be sure I knew where I stood-and rea.s.sured myself that fortunately I would be fine if things unraveled. I also met with a couple of headhunters to discuss what was happening out in the world. And I set up some tentative freelance gigs.

In late October, still not having heard anything, I e-mailed B and suggested we get together to discuss the situation since my contract was up in less than two months. "I've been meaning to talk to you" was the response. B arranged for us to meet in a week and a half for breakfast. No fancy restaurant this time. Another dot to connect.

I'll spare you the gory details of what happened over tasteless quiche and coffee that morning. The bottom line was that B wanted to renew my contract but under really shabby terms. Because it was now so terribly late in the game, B must have thought I was stuck, that I'd have no choice but to accept the deal, and even told me, "Of course, you can take your severance package instead, but I suspect you'll want to renew." I smiled and said I'd like a few days to think everything over.

What B didn't know was that my paranoia had helped me prepare for that moment. All my ducks were in a row. I wrote a letter to B a few days later saying thank you for the great time together but I was resigning and taking the severance package. Immediately after receiving the resignation letter, B asked to meet with me, begged me to ignore the previous conversation, asked me what I wanted, and then gave it to me.

Okay, I was particularly lucky in that situation-I'd had months to ready things. Sometimes you spot a sign of trouble but you don't have the time to deal with it as adequately as you'd like, or there's no easy Plan B. But still, in most cases, paranoia allows you to jump-start your thinking and begin to put a plan into play. Don't ignore odd little moments that make your tummy queasy. And don't tell yourself, "Oh, it's just a rumor." When I was a young writer, I interviewed a PhD candidate who was studying rumors, and he told me something I've never forgotten: rumors are both sloppy and precise. They may not be a hundred percent accurate, but there's often a grain of truth in them. You need to investigate further to get to the bottom of them.

14 Things to Be Paranoid About * Being called in by your boss and reprimanded more than once about the same issue * Being called in by your boss and reprimanded with someone else from the department in the same room (this person is known as a witness) * Being called in by your boss and reprimanded with someone from HR (eek!) in the room * A written follow-up from your boss after a reprimand * Suddenly being excluded from important meetings * Being given the cold shoulder by your boss * A large decrease in praise from your boss * Coworkers avoiding eye contact or conversation with you (or whispering after you've walked by) * One of your subordinates suddenly being included by your boss in meetings you should be attending on your own * A recession * An economic downturn * Any news or rumors that your field is in trouble * Any news that your company or organization is in trouble * Consultants in suits suddenly appearing in your workplace (they have more than likely been hired to find ways to cut costs and encourage your company to work with a trimmed-down staff)

{ Go Big or Go Home, 2: You're Going to Have to Break the Rules }.

During the summer when I was seventeen and working as a counter waitress at a Howard Johnson's restaurant in upstate New York, I learned one of the best work lessons of my life.

Waitressing at HoJo's wasn't what you'd call a fun job, except for the drop-dead gorgeous short-order cook, a college senior, and the fact that employees were ent.i.tled to all the ice cream they wanted during their meals there. There was a hitch, however, attached to the ice cream bonus: You weren't allowed to indulge in any of the sundae toppings-no hot fudge, for instance, or b.u.t.terscotch or whipped cream. Not even a few nuts and cherries! I was complaining about this one day to another counter waitress, a cute, devilish girl named Tracy who loved to regale me with tales of driving her parents' car really fast down backcountry roads and dating brazen bad boys. Tracy and I happened to have our lunch break at the same time that day, and as we carried our trays down to the employee dining room, I noticed that, like me, she'd helped herself to a few scoops of vanilla ice cream.

"Isn't it mean of them not to let us have any toppings?" I said.

Tracy smiled mischievously. "Oh, I can fix that," she whispered.

A few minutes later, after we'd gobbled down our grilled cheese sandwiches, Tracy slid a spoon through her scoops of ice cream, all the way to the bottom of the dish. An interesting cross section appeared: at the bottom of the bowl was a layer of nuts and cherries, topped by whipped cream, then hot fudge, and then finally the ice cream.

"It's an upside-down sundae," she said, smirking.

Brilliant, I remember thinking. I had an upside-down sundae nearly every day for the rest of the summer.

It took a little while, though, for me to see that the upside-down sundae lesson I learned that day could be applied to many other areas of life. If you want the cherry in life, to say nothing of the hot fudge and whipped cream, you have to be brave enough to break the rules sometimes. You have to take what you've been told to do and twist it, toss it, or turn it upside down so that you end up with something brilliant and delicious.

Maybe you're a natural rule breaker and it's served you well so far. Congratulations. But there's also a decent chance that you've managed to get pretty far in your career by being sort of a Goody Two-shoes. You've listened to your boss, worked hard, and been promoted for it. The problem is that being a good girl, as I wrote in my first career book, Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead . . . but Gutsy Girls Do, gets you only so far. If you want to supersize your career, you need to bend and break some rules and even make a few new ones of your own.

By breaking the rules, I don't mean calling in fake sick on Friday or dancing drunk on the bar at the office Christmas party. I mean implementing things in a fresh and daring way. Here's how to think about it.

Breaking the rules means ignoring the phrase "That's the way we've always done it here" and instead trying a brand-new, possibly mind-blowing approach. There are plenty of rules that are out of date or never made sense to begin with and deserve to be challenged. Kate Spade once told me that the night before she was going to take her first handbags to a trade show, she sat with them in her living room and realized that there was a problem. The bags were black nylon, simple, clean, and fresh-looking (her goal had been to create a product in which fashion met function), but she suddenly felt there was no place for the eye to go to when you looked at them. So she grabbed a pair of nail scissors, clipped out the label from inside the bag (the one that said KATE SPADE NEW YORK), and sewed it onto the front of the bag. Then she did the same thing to the rest of the bags. By ignoring the rule at the time that said that labels are supposed to go on the inside of handbags, Kate Spade created her phenomenally successful signature look.

Breaking the rules means doing what has been deemed impossible by simply tackling it in a whole different manner. Shortly after I became the editor in chief of Child magazine, I decided to conduct a series of focus groups of mothers with young kids. If I was going to be successful at my job, I needed to understand the main concerns of my audience. But the general manager informed me that there was no money in the budget for focus groups. How frustrating, I thought, because the company that owned Child seemed to be doing well. There were even two executive dining rooms in the building that top management, including the editors in chief, were allowed to use and simply charge the cost back to the company. With no ding to my magazine budget, I could entertain writers, experts, whomever. And then it hit me: why not bring in mothers for lunches and let them talk to my executive editor and me directly about their issues? So I started doing that on a regular basis-without, of course, telling anyone that the "guests" were readers. These were probably the only focus groups in the world whose partic.i.p.ants were served gourmet food and gla.s.ses of Pinot Grigio.

Breaking the rules means knowing it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. During my first year at Cosmo we scheduled a fashion story that would feature clothes with Native American touches, and we decided that the perfect place to shoot it would be South Dakota. One day I stopped by the photo director's desk to see how the plans were going. He told me we had a fabulous location, with lots of big sky and impressive b.u.t.tes. "Maybe if we're lucky," I said, "some buffalo will stroll by when the photographer's shooting." The photo director looked at me almost indignantly. "Well, I've rented a herd," he said. Wow, I remember thinking, he rented a freaking herd of buffalo. Impressive. Before I could say anything, he added, "They're the same buffalo Kevin Costner used in Dances with Wolves." Okay, even more amazing. Those buffalo were members of the Screen Actors Guild. I realized later that if the photo director had asked me if he could rent a herd of buffalo, I probably would have said no-an unnecessary extravagance. But since he'd just done it and the result would be fantastic, I was delighted.

When you ask permission to do something bold and different, you may very well get a knee-jerk "no" from the person you're asking. But if you just go ahead and do it, she may love it.

If you haven't been a rule breaker up until now, you're going to have to take a deep breath and do it. Start small. Initially you may want to give yourself a little safety net. Let's say your boss asks you to come up with ideas for an off-site retreat guaranteed to improve everyone's energy and motivation. She mentions places where these retreats have been held in the past, implying that you should find something similar. But you come up with an idea that's incredibly unusual (holding it at a clown-arts college!), one that you're convinced will get people totally psyched. Present a few standard ideas to your boss, but then say you have a wildcard idea you'd love her to consider, as well. That way she sees you as someone who can think both inside and outside of the box-and it will make it easier for her to entertain the wildcard concept.

Here's a bit of good news about rule breaking: it becomes easier the more you do it. I won't lie; sometimes you may find yourself in hot water for having done something daring, but mostly you will discover that the right kind of rule breaking reaps big rewards, which will encourage you to do it again and again.

Two final pointers. First, you need to consider whether your gutsy move is the best way to accomplish what you want or just you being gutsy for gutsy's sake. When I give speeches in different parts of the country, women sometimes come up to me at the c.o.c.ktail party beforehand or at the book signing afterward and hand me something they want me to take a look at; it might be an article they've written or a product they've created. And invariably they say something such as "I know you think it's important to break the rules, so that's what I'm doing. I'm handing this to you directly rather than mailing it to you."

Here's the problem with that approach: when I'm giving a speech, I always travel with just a carry-on suitcase (which most people would realize if they thought about it), so why would I want to have something else to lug home with me?

So think it through. Does your rule breaking make sense for what your goal is? Or are you just being a show-off?

Second, you need to make rule breaking part of your regular repertoire, not something you do on a sporadic basis when the mood strikes. When I arrived at Cosmo, I quickly saw that as the editor of an edgy magazine, I'd better be a rule breaker 24/7. I developed the habit of starting every day with the question "What am I going to do to break the law today?"

{ Advanced Networking (Never Say You're Too Busy to Do It) }.

I don't have to tell you that's it's important to network. Every career book and article recommends it, and you probably did your fair share of it when you were first breaking into your field. Networking also happens regularly among supersuccessful people-to some degree because it's an almost organic part of their work lives. They're invited to lots of occasions because of their jobs, plus they've got expense accounts, which allow them to take people out to meals and go to events and conferences. Their companies may even cover membership in social clubs.

What I've noticed, however, is that when you're at a midlevel of success, it can be easy to let the networking trail off unless you start looking for a new job. You may become so busy that you hate leaving your desk at lunch or skipping out early for a c.o.c.ktail party. You may also feel you're beyond those gigunda industry meet and greets. As for dining with new contacts, you probably don't have a huge expense account that allows you to do much of it.

But you need to keep your networking going at full throttle. The chance to meet, talk to, and get to know new people not only provides you with a ton of great info but also many of them can become valuable resources-if not today, at some point. When I was selling my second nonfiction book, the editor who bought it said that a big advocate for the book in her company was a woman who'd once sat next to me at an industry luncheon.

First and foremost, be sure to join any important professional a.s.sociations in your field. Your company may even pay for membership if you request it. If you have to pay the dues yourself, they're at least tax-deductible. If you feel that some of the events or c.o.c.ktail parties those organizations hold are for people on a more junior level, volunteer to be on a committee with more senior players. Check your calendar each month, and make sure you always have events like this booked.

Take advantage of invitations you receive to professional events, even if you may not know a soul. Once you're there, spend a few minutes scoping out the scene. Say h.e.l.lo to anyone you know, even vaguely, just to warm up. Don't be afraid to introduce yourself to individuals you recognize and would like to meet or anyone who simply looks interesting. It's a networking event, so no one should be weirded out about your sidling up to them and saying h.e.l.lo.

Of course, breaking into a group can be intimidating and potentially awkward. "One way to ease into a group conversation," says Hilary Gumbel, a consultant for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF (and wife of TV journalist Bryant Gumbel), "is to be interested in what is being discussed without any particular motive. Curiosity is a healthy and natural icebreaker. By indicating interest in the subject of the conversation, you are then interacting with people and can eventually focus your attention toward the particular person you want to meet. The opportunity to be introduced will present itself."

When you shake hands with someone you've just met, hold the person's gaze for as long as you can. Years ago, when I was writing an article on the power of eye contact, one of the experts I interviewed, who'd studied eye contact in baboons, told me that if you look away first, it can be read as a sign of submissiveness. Many people (and this holds particularly true for women) always look away first, sometimes just out of habit. When you hold a person's gaze, it fosters a connection, and outlasting the other person can make you seem intriguing to him or her on a subconscious level. When I sat next to former president Bill Clinton at dinner (I know, president-name-dropper), I discovered that he's as legendary as people say for making you feel as if you're the only one in the room. Holding your gaze is part of how he does it.

Now it's time for you to make chitchat. If you feel at all awkward dealing with strangers, there's only one secret you need to know to make it easier: people love to talk about themselves, especially to a receptive audience. If you ask lots of questions and give people your ear, they will find it intoxicating. After I first spent a little time with Helen Gurley Brown, I discovered that she was a master at asking questions of people and listening intently to the answers. Sometimes she wouldn't respond right away but instead would seem to consider the answer in her mind, as if she really wanted to understand it. That kind of pregnant pause almost guaranteed you would tell her even more.

So ask and listen. It's fine to start with basic questions such as "How long have you worked at such and such?" When the person responds, don't just nod or jump in with a statement about how what she just said relates to you somehow; instead, probe further about what she revealed. "Dig deeper," says Gumbel. "Connect to their interests, pa.s.sions, and experiences. Humor also helps. Find something ironic or funny to build your commonality-a movie, book, or personal experience."

As long as you are taking the time to go to something, show up at the right moment and make it count. A few months ago a former work colleague and I realized that we'd both be attending a conference in Ma.s.sachusetts and decided to drive up together. A couple of days beforehand, the woman announced that she needed to support a friend by attending a talk the friend was giving, meaning that she would miss the afternoon session of the conference. Then, the night before, she called me to say that she had to run a personal errand in the morning and would meet me at the conference. In the end, she attended only the lunch. I realized that she'd paid for the conference and spent hours traveling there and returning, but reaped little from it beyond the rubbery chicken served at the meal.

If an event seems worth your time, don't just do a drive-by. Arrive when a critical ma.s.s of people will be there (a friend of mine calls this "the swell") and in time to hear any remarks. An event planner I know says that for a two-hour business c.o.c.ktail party, the best time to catch the swell is about twenty minutes after the start. And if you leave thirty minutes before the end time, she says, you won't miss anything.

It's nice to exit with a few good business cards in hand. If you meet someone you like or who seems key to know, follow up with an e-mail saying you enjoyed meeting the person. If it seems appropriate, suggest getting together for lunch, or breakfast (cheaper!). And it's essential to have a few restaurants that you return to again and again. The maitre d' will look out for you when you're with an important guest (don't forget to sometimes tip him as well as the waiter).