In 1995 I was hired to work at a cable news channel called NorthWest Cable News (NWCN). It was part of KING TV in Seattle and ran regional news 24 hours a day. It was modeled after the successful NYOne, a 24-hour cable news channel in New York City.
A woman I had worked for previously hired me when she started at NWCN. During the interview process, I went out to dinner with this boss as well as other managers at the nascent station. They kept referring to the NSM position. I didn’t know what an NSM was, but I nodded sagely. It wasn’t until after the dinner that I realized NSM was the acronym for the National Sales Manager job I was being hired to do.
I was early in my career and very ambitious. I moved to Seattle from Olympia to take the job, and it was a huge leap up from my previous positions selling cable tv airtime to car dealers. I knew I had to get smart fast.
The problem was the business of running a regional cable news channel is very different from running a broadcast station. Selling the airtime was different as well. KING TV reps could go in and give Nielsen ratings numbers to buyers to justify their cost. We didn’t have any numbers, since we were brand new.
At the time, there were six or seven cable news channels in the country. None of us were competing – we were in a variety of DMAs (designated market area). I called NYOne and got through to the sales manager. Larry was gruff and scary when I first met him in person. He was straight out of central casting for a television sales executive; tall, good looking, smart, aggressive, he suffered no fools and was hard driving. He was in a really good suit and working a booth at a conference when I met him, and I just remember that he barked something at me and scared me so badly that I was shaking.
And yet, stubbornly, I kept calling him because NYOne was making tons of money and I wanted to know how he was doing it without numbers. What was he doing?
I managed to convince Larry and the other sales managers and NSMs at the existing cable news networks to get together. We should form a group, I said, and help each other, exchange best practices. To my surprise, Larry said yes, so then everyone else said yes.
That was my first cohort. We would get together in person when we could, have drinks and dinner. I don’t know that we came up with any groundbreaking new ways of doing business. But I remember how good it felt to meet with people who knew exactly what my job was. I was traveling around the country trying to convince media buyers in their 20s that they should spend their clients’ advertising budgets on this brand-new station in Seattle. Seattle wasn’t even in the top 10 in terms of DMAs. It was hard. So, the occasions when I got to sit with people who did the same job was a relief, and shored me up until the next time.
We weren’t selling each other anything. No one was the boss or leader, although Larry was the boss of everything just by his nature. No one was networking or skills building. We were just supporting each other.
And it was wonderful.
I thought about this recently because I have a new cohort. A group of us in the same executive coaching certification course connected in a cohort of executive coaches. It was Josh, not me, who brought us together. We’re all executive coaches, but we work in different ways, in different places. We meet twice a month and different people show up at each meeting, since we all have work and family to manage. We haven’t added anyone since early on because I think we all kind of get that we lucked into a really good group; there are more women than men, but we’re diverse in terms of race, age, and what kind of work we do.
We talk about work. We’ll exchange templates and best practices. But we mostly just talk. Sometimes it’s about business, sometimes it gets more personal. Since we all work with clients, and spend so much time with that executive coach hat on, it’s nice to take the hat off and talk and laugh. Some of us – ok, mostly me – cuss more because we don’t cuss in our client sessions. It’s a kind of let your hair down vibe.
We should all have work cohorts. Gatherings of people who do a similar job or who are in the same season of life. Not to network, not to sell each other anything. Just to be in community. To rest in a place where we don’t have to sell or seem smart or be anything other than just another person in the group.
I’ve suggested this to clients. Build your own cohort. Anyone can do it. Find some other people who do what you do. Call them up and get together. Come up with some ground rules, like confidentiality or whatever. Decide how often you want to meet. Someone should probably own the scheduling. I think cohorts with a wide variety of people are the most interesting.
It's not Chief or another group you pay to enter. It’s not a class or workshop. There is not a boss. It’s more like a group of people who all work at a manufacturing plant getting off shift and going to a bar together to have a beer and decompress. Maybe they play darts, or talk about the Seahawks or their kids. Some meetings will be interesting, others not so much. Some will be just a couple of people and others will be a full house. It’s good for all of us to be in places where we don’t have to perform, advise or produce.
I got to be friends with Larry, and we’d try to connect when I was in NY. He sailed up the corporate ladder. I remember one time I went to visit him and stepped into his office. He was on a team call on a speaker phone, and he waved at me when I came into the office, the kind of wave that said come on in, he’d be done in a minute. It was a corner office, about the size of the entire first floor of my house, with an amazing view of Central Park. Larry’s suit was even more perfectly tailored. He was standing by his desk, leaning over the speaker phone, and excoriating his team. Cuss words, imprecations, all delivered in a full-on New York yelling harangue. When he was done, the people on the other end of the line tumbled over themselves making excuses. Larry hit mute and came over and gave me a big hug, a smile on his face, and told me he’d be done in a just a minute. Then he went back and started yelling again.
We might not all have shifts in affect as dramatic as Larry’s was that day in his office. But sometimes it’s a relief to take off the boss hat and relax with a peer, who might become a friend someday.