A Guide To Learning When To Shut Up In Your Career

"I said I needed to work on listening more and talking less, and not interrupting. I worried that questions I asked about the substance of journalism can come off as being critical."

Jill Abramson, Executive Editor of The New York Times, said this during her interview with Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger when she was campaigning for the job. Her admittance of areas where she needed to work on helped land her the job, along with her many other strengths as an editor. Jill isn't the only person who struggles with this. Though women are often told we don't speak up enough, especially when it comes to self-promotion, sometimes the best strategy is to know when to stop speaking. "I said I needed to work on listening more and talking less, and not interrupting. I worried that questions I asked about the substance of journalism can come off as being critical."

In an Interview

"One of the biggest things that I do a lot of coaching on that is people saying they talk too much. It ties in with taking things too personally because when you hvae the tendency to do that or think you have said something wrong you try to make up for it by talking more and more," said Lisa McDonald, a former manager with McDonald Investments and Merrill Lynch, now runs her own career transition and management company, Career Polish, Inc.

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