Janine Giovanni
Janine Giovanni is Marketing Director of Transworld Publishers, a division of Penguin Random House. She has worked within PRH, at Random House Children’s Books and Transworld, for thirty years having started as a Marketing Assistant after a year in bookselling straight from school.
She never had a set career plan, but starting at the bottom enabled her to get to know people all over the business and learn how it worked. She has always liked the culture, the people and the books at Transworld and didn’t want to work anywhere else enough to leave that. This stability was particularly important when her home life was challenging.
Something that has kept Janine excited about working at Transworld is her love of learning, which she says is just as well as the job changes all the time! In addition to learning that is directly related to her work, she has also trained as a coach, which she is really passionate about. She coaches people both in PRH and externally in order to help them work through their career or life issues. Both her coaching and the Open University Psychology degree she is doing have enabled her to bring new insight and skills into the business, so that her team keeps adapting and developing too.
'We all view the world through our own prism and coaching is a process that can shift the prism so that you can think about things differently.'
You are such a huge advocate of coaching. Could you explain the difference between coaching and mentoring?
I am evangelical about coaching! Coaching is about helping somebody get to the place they want to be through their own efforts – you don’t offer advice, you ask powerful questions to help the person come to a conclusion themselves. This realization, or light bulb moment, is far more likely to stick as a long term benefit or behaviour change if you have reached that point through your own thinking rather than someone just telling you. Coaching is also completely confidential and follows a very strict code of conduct. Mentoring is having a conversation with someone who tends to be more experienced in a similar role, where they offer advice based on what has worked for them in their own career. Having experienced both I personally think coaching is more powerful. We all view the world through our own prism and coaching is a process that can shift the prism so that you can think about things differently. Having said that, mentoring would be hugely helpful in a time poor situation that just needs sorting!
'It’s normal to struggle sometimes and it’s very definitely OK to need help.'
How would someone recognize that they would benefit from coaching?
When I had coaching the first time it was about my work-life balance. I was working full time and commuting three hours a day, I had two small children and was a single mum – I was absolutely at the end of my tether and thought the only solution was to leave the job I loved because I couldn’t keep all the plates spinning. I had never heard of coaching but was offered it by our HR Manager. I will forever be grateful to her because it was literally a life-changing experience for me. I hate to think of others getting to that stage before they think to ask for help. Study after study show that when you’re overwhelmed, or in a difficult situation, it can be hard to properly process any information. When you are that overloaded you might need somebody to tell you to get help, and you need to listen to them. If you are a proud, independent woman then asking for help is really hard. At that point in my life I found it incredibly difficult to admit I was struggling. But asking for help is something more people need to learn to do. It’s normal to struggle sometimes and it’s very definitely OK to need help. In my experience people are usually really flattered if you can find it in yourself to be brave and trust them.
'It never ceases to amaze me that, when you start to peel back the layers, most people have similar anxieties.'
Another reason you might want to explore coaching is if you are stuck in a situation where the same things are happening repeatedly. You want to move on, but you can’t. Recognising that pattern and wanting to change it are the first steps, then talk to your HR department if you have one, or someone else you trust. We are fortunate that coaching and mentoring are embedded in the culture at PRH. Our HR are really good at hearing what you’re saying and working with you to decide whether you need mentoring or coaching.
Generally, regardless of the level people are at, internally or externally, men or women, the two areas that come up time and time again are self-esteem and confidence. It never ceases to amaze me that, when you start to peel back the layers, most people have similar anxieties. I feel very honoured when people open up to me about things, and I nearly always learn something about myself when I’m coaching somebody, so it benefits both of us.
'If you struggle with networking or finding your voice in meetings, one trick is to channel someone who you think does it really well.'
You are open about not loving the ‘networking’ side of leading a team. How has that affected your career?
It has probably affected my career options, but I’m aware that that is my choice. I think if you’re really brilliant at networking you meet lots of people and they know who you are when opportunities come up. I really admire people who are comfortable doing that, I’m just not one of them. I love meeting new people one on one, but I have always found it really hard to approach a group of people I don’t know, it makes me feel nervous even thinking about it. I have to do it because of my job but I don’t seek out those situations. In meetings if there are a lot of strong voices I’m more likely to back off and go quiet, which is sometimes a good place to be as it means you can observe what other people are saying or spot when other quieter people are trying to join the conversation and help to bring them in. Sometimes I’m the loud person, but hopefully only when I need to be.
If you struggle with networking or finding your voice in meetings one trick is to channel someone who you think does it really well. Think about what they’re doing and try to emulate it in small ways. Look for little opportunities to practise, things that are slightly outside of your comfort zone, rather than going straight in for the big event – and prove to yourself you can do it. Baby steps!
'When you move to managing people it’s so important to be authentic, and to think about who you want to be as a manager.'
What does good leadership look like to you?
When you move to managing people it’s so important to be authentic, and to think about who you want to be as a manager. I grew up believing you had to lead from the front, that you had to know all the answers and that you had to get everything right all the time. It’s so not me! I couldn’t do it that way and it made me really unhappy. I struggled to get the balance right between being nice and telling people what to do. It didn’t work for me or my team in the beginning – I had to learn to lead in my own way. I haven’t always managed to do it right, but the thing that I definitely advise is to be authentic, to be who you are. Also with experience you learn to change your leadership behaviour depending on what a team needs – sometimes it is leading from the front and sometimes it is a more supportive role.
'I truly believe that whilst you have to be put in an authority position to manage people, you can lead people from any position in the company.'
Being kind to people is also really important to me. You never, ever know what someone else has going on in their life – even the people who appear to share everything! Something I’ve learned through coaching – both as coach and coachee – is to put myself in other people’s shoes and to stop and really think about what is driving someone’s behaviour. That can underpin your own behaviour and make a huge positive difference to your relationships.
I truly believe that whilst you have to be put in an authority position to manage people, you can lead people from any position in the company. Leadership is about how you conduct yourself, about involving yourself in things and thinking more broadly about the business. It is important to say is that these are all things I’ve learned through my career, I definitely haven’t behaved like this the whole time! You learn as you go. I feel very comfortable now with who I am and where I am and that makes everything a little easier.
'It’s brilliant to actively bring difference into the business, but we have to be careful that we don’t unintentionally homogenize it when it’s here.'
How has publishing changed in the time you’ve worked in the industry?
It’s changed so much in thirty years and, believe it or not, it is more diverse than it was. When I started I can remember sitting in meetings with really posh people and thinking ‘I’m so not like these people’. And I’m saying this as a white, middle class, privately educated woman. I didn’t have a degree, so that was part of it, but I still felt ‘other’ to lots of the people that were here already, because they appeared better educated, posher, more London, more plugged in, whatever it was. I mentored someone a while ago who came into the business for the first time and they told me that before they’d started they went clothes shopping to buy skinny jeans and stripey T-shirts because they wanted to fit in and that’s what they had noticed when they came for their interviews. We all looked the same. It’s brilliant to actively bring difference into the industry, but we have to be careful that we don’t unintentionally homogenize it when it’s here.
'Social media has given a voice to people in the industry, and allowed them to see they are not alone.'
Publishing is so female focused, whether it’s the staff in-house or the people we work with in the trade and that, for me, is one of the great things about the industry. But still we have issues with sexism – it may be better than when I started and may not be as bad as in other industries, but it’s still here. Social media has made it much easier to have conversations about this and all the other -isms people have to deal with. When I started out we would talk to each other about issues but would rarely do anything about them. We thought we were a few lone voices. Social media has given a voice to people in the industry, allowed them to see they are not alone and consequently they are much more vocal than we ever were. It’s great!
Finally, can you tell us about another woman working in publishing who inspires you?
Lots! Which now I’m thinking about it is generally because they are really brilliant at their job and remain a very nice person. I started a list here but then worried about upsetting people who weren’t on it! I’m also constantly inspired by the energy of women coming up in the business. I did say in my interview that that included Sophie, Ella and Helena for starting The FLIP. They took that out when they wrote it up – so I’m putting it back in again!
For those who don’t have access to coaching through HR, there are coaching organisations online, e.g. www.coachingfederation.org.uk, one of the internationally recognized coaching bodies. In order for coaches to qualify through ICF they must have done over a hundred hours of coaching, a percentage of which can be pro bono, so a lack of funds is not necessarily a barrier if you can find a coach who is building their hours.
