Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rebecca Leder. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Rebecca, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Something I do differently than the industry standard is help individuals and employers break down silos and reach across discipline, team, role, and industry boundaries to unlock success.

How do I do this? I expose myself to new experiences and reach outside of my own comfort zone and silo (perspective). Then, share what I learn through coaching, training, curriculum design and facilitation to help others learn the skills to do the same.

For example, last year, I attended a higher education conference. I don’t work in higher education, but I do provide career development workshops, training, and coaching to students, graduates, and alumni in the higher education space. Several times in different conversations and sessions over the course of the event, I heard language about employers being the “consumers” of the learning that takes place in educational institutions. Based on my experience working in marketing and tech organizations, I didn’t see it that way.

One of the strategies that leading companies and employers were doing to attract and retain top talent, was providing training and building skills to develop their own talent pipeline. In other words, companies who are succeeding today are investing in their employees BEFORE they even become employees. They weren’t just waiting to “consume” or bring in students and their skills from higher education institutions as my conference conversations had suggested.

From my perspective, employers could be partners in helping to develop skills for individuals to build their careers, and in fact, they’re already doing this. Universities don’t just educate the employee, then send them on their way, they could support their students along their career journeys now and in the future – through executive or continuing education, for example.

By attending this conference, I was stepping outside of my own industry focus as most of my career experiences have taken place in the private sector professional world. I had never worked for a university, although I had taken and taught classes at universities. I had a unique vantage point. In my own career, I had witnessed and paid attention to what employers outside of higher ed were doing to compete in today’s competitive talent marketplace and economy. And, I contributed this perspective to the conference, so that attendees could see beyond their own environment.

I added a new perspective: How might we look beyond our own environment to bridge the gap between higher education institutions and future employers for their students? What if we all work together to help individuals learn the skills they need to be successful in their careers, whether or not they have graduated or are already employed? What if they come back to the university years later to get an advanced degree? Their employers wouldn’t be just the “consumers” of their learning, they’d be an important part of their career puzzle, just as their higher educational institution is.

And, while employers are investing in providing training for future employees (whether through internships, workforce development programs, mentorship programs, or rotational training-to-hire programs), how are higher education institutions helping students build skills they’ll use for their entire careers, helping them grow as a person, before, and beyond graduation?

This is one example of how we might immerse ourselves in environments that interact with, yet are outside of our own scope of work, to create holistic solutions – in this case, helping individuals build their careers no matter where they are on their journey?

The trainings I design and deliver, and the workshops I teach help internal teams bridge gaps across silos for next-level collaboration, uncover commonality so teams can play to their strengths and divide and conquer for efficiency, rather than costly redundancy, and individuals learn skills to build meaningful career relationships, whether for a job search, pursuing a career growth or leadership opportunity, or looking to achieve a professional goal. Oftentimes, the secret to innovation lies beyond our own purview and building high quality career relationships helps us unlock this potential success and collective impact.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Rebecca Otis Leder unlocks the power of human connection wherever she goes. Rebecca builds relationships, community, and learning opportunities for companies, organizations, and people with a unique offering or mission. Rebecca was a senior manager at Salesforce, where she brought more than one hundred employees together from two distinct internal teams by uncovering and combining their unique strengths to create a training app that has helped thousands of customers learn the skills to work effectively in the product and succeed at work. She has brought out-of-the-box marketing and community-building strategy rooted in connection to more than fifty brands over her thirteen-year career, across industries such as financial services, media, hospitality, nonprofit, and tech. Rebecca has shared her career development, personal branding, and marketing insights for companies, classrooms, and conferences, large and small, including Amazon, Aon, Salesforce, DePaul, Loyola, Brandeis, UT Austin, MIT Sloan, and Suffolk universities, Startup Institute Chicago, BlogHer, JewishColorado, and Year Up.

Rebecca established the first social media policies for the state of Texas at Texas.gov in 2010 (she Tweeted for Texas!), and she authored an award-winning entertainment blog, TheRebeccammendations. At the age of twenty-six, she was named a Rising Star Finalist in the 2012 Austin Business Journal Women of Influence awards after founding a successful small-business marketing consultancy, helping more than twenty-five local businesses, startups, and nonprofits reach new audiences. When Rebecca was a blogger, PR firms reached out to her to promote their customers’ products and services, when she realized their outreach efforts were generic, not personalized, and fell short of creating lasting, impactful partnerships. She was determined to create a framework for students, entrepreneurs, growing professionals, and leaders to communicate for mutual, long-term benefit, and to build a meaningful career.

Rebecca has distilled the culmination of her dynamic career into five actionable steps, known as The Knock Method®, to fill a confidence and education gap so that career growers, career builders, and career changers not only have the tools but feel empowered to build high-quality, mutually beneficial career relationships that don’t just lead to jobs, but strengthen our collective power to drive change. Her original research-backed framework is featured in her bestselling career development book, KNOCK: How to Open Doors and Build Career Relationships that Matter, and it has been recognized by FastCompany, Inc. Magazine, NPR, and PBS.

The trainings she designs and delivers, and the workshops she teaches help internal teams bridge gaps across silos for next-level collaboration, uncover commonality so teams can play to their strengths and divide and conquer for efficiency, rather than costly redundancy, and individuals learn skills to build meaningful career relationships, whether for a job search, pursuing a career growth or leadership opportunity, or looking to achieve a professional goal. She helps unlock doors and the secret to innovation, which lies beyond our own purview. Building high quality career relationships helps us unlock this potential success and collective impact.

Reach out for your professional, career, talent, and leadership development programs for a partner in generating employee retention and loyalty, cultivating a culture of connection and inclusion in this virtual and hybrid working world, fostering deeper collaboration internally and with clients and partners, and helping individuals build practical skills they can apply at any stage to build their meaningful careers. Some of her cornerstone workshops include ‘5 Steps to Building Meaningful Career Relationships’ and ‘Build Career Relationships and Resilience’. Learn more at www.buildmeaningfulcareers.com.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn was: You can achieve anything if you work hard enough. Instead, I learned that when we do our research, seek feedback, truly listen and get creative with what our vision looks like, we’ll uncover new opportunities and we will achieve it.

When I worked at a global tech company, I had aspirations to move into a role where I could deliver career, talent, and leadership development training from a marketing role. I developed my skillset to be successful on the desired team. I met with as many people as possible to build relationships on the new team and learn about the culture, open role descriptions, expectations, and skill gaps to prepare myself. I even created my own job description and pitched it to a leader on one of the team’s I sought to work on. I volunteered above and beyond my role to prove my skillset and contribute to the teams I felt I could succeed on to the point where I was essentially working two jobs, and getting paid for one (the one I was ready to expand beyond).

Along my networking journey to build relationships with leaders on the teams I thought could help me achieve my career goals, I received similar feedback several times. Later, I realized I wasn’t listening to the feedback. I wasn’t truly listening. I thought, I’m on this path to land a dream role on a different team more aligned with my career aspirations, and between applying for and interviewing for these kinds of roles, and pitching a new role, it will happen. I worked so hard, I burnt myself out. I was exhausted. I didn’t feel healthy, and more importantly, I wasn’t happy or fulfilled in my career.

Once I took a step back, and received caring advice from several people close to me, I began to listen to the feedback I had received along this driven mission. What I thought was people dissuading me from achieving this goal, was actually them providing me with a new way to make the impact I was trying to make. They helped me see my challenge through a new lens, and gave me some unexpected solutions.

As a result, instead of working myself so hard pursuing one path to achieving my goal, I saw even bigger opportunities to achieve these goals in a new way, one that was more balanced, attracted more success, and made an even bigger impact than the path I was on. I realized there are many ways to achieve a goal if we reframe it. And, I learned not to tie achieving a goal so closely with one path to achieving it, and not to tie one possible solution so closely with a desired outcome. There are many ways to achieve a goal, and we owe it to ourselves to try different avenues to see which one works best.

Now, I provide career, talent, and leadership development training programs for many individuals and organizations, rather than being bound to working for just one. And, that one has been a recurring client since I started my company, Opportunities Knock, less than two years ago. I am so grateful to those who mentored and advised me, and opened my eyes and mind to new possibilities that have lead to my meaningful career. Now, I pass on this knowledge to help those building their own meaningful careers.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing my clientele has been building trust by connecting on a human level, nurturing relationships one at a time, and putting significant energy into each one (spoiler, these are all part of my framework!). I use the steps in The Knock Method®, my original framework, when building high quality career relationships, including uncovering commonality, preparing to connect by researching my topic and my contact early on, bringing partnership ideas to the table but leaving the door open to new possibilities that create mutual value, and practicing gratitude and generosity.

I have built impactful, mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with business owners, executives, non-profit founders, and even NY Times bestselling authors and celebrities by investing in relationships up front, spending 70% of my time preparing to connect, 20% of my time personalizing communications and ensuring our interactions create impact beyond ourselves and are worth their time, and 10% connecting live or in real-time while leaning on that foundation of up front preparation and human connection.

Growing clientele also includes building on existing relationships–building new partnership opportunities, finding new ways to combine interests and complementary skillsets, and reconnecting to identify what’s newly important to the individuals, teams, and organizations in the relationship.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.buildmeaningfulcareers.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theknockmethod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theknockmethod
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaotisleder
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheRebeccaLeder
• Other: Blog: https://buildmeaningfulcareers.com/blog/
• Other: Bestselling Book: https://www.buildmeaningfulcareers.com/knock-book

Image Credits
Soona.co
thelipstickandink.com