How to Demystify the Promotion Process
You know you’re ready for a promotion. You’ve put in the hours, you’re outshining your peers, and when you look at the people above you, it appears that you’re doing their jobs already. But, somehow you don’t have the title. This should be a no brainer. What are you doing wrong?
When evaluating your promotion readiness, keep in mind that promotions often do not result from simply doing your “day job.” Promotions require you to demonstrate outsized impact. If you’re a knowledge worker and a salaried employee, this doesn’t simply translate into working longer hours (although this may appear necessary in the short term as you work to master skills that may be out of reach. Remember that working longer hours is a choice, even if it doesn’t seem like one.) Short of being the first one online in the morning and the last one offline at night, how do you demonstrate your value to the business? I’d recommend pursuing a few specific actions to help demystify the promotion process:
Set expectations. Advancing to the next level requires a clear understanding of your employer’s expectations for skills/competencies, job duties, or behaviors that you’re supposed to exhibit at that level. If you work for a larger company, these behaviors are usually established in the form of a clear hierarchy of levels, roles, and/or career tracks. If you work at a smaller or mid-sized company, these behaviors may not be spelled out. Work with your boss to get these expectations—whether official or unofficial—codified and documented. If you don’t understand how your new job is different from the one you have now, it will be difficult to prove your readiness for the new role.
Assess your performance against those expectations. Once you have the career ladders defined, then assess how you stack up against each of the specified criteria. This is not the time for false modesty. Conversely, it’s also unlikely that you’re knocking every last item out of the park either…otherwise, why aren’t you the CEO? Be honest with yourself about how you may be checking off the minimum set of criteria required for the next level, and therefore deserve the promotion, but also acknowledge that you have room for growth in some of the areas. For example, if one of the criteria is managing people, and you’re doing that, then great. But odds are you’re not a perfect manager, because at least I have yet to meet a perfect human. In that case, identify some specific improvements you’d like to make to your leadership skills.
Collect feedback. Once you’ve completed your self-assessment, schedule some time to review and discuss with your manager. Send the document to your manager ahead of time so they can conduct their own evaluation in advance of the meeting. The goal of the discussion is to determine whether your manager’s perception of your performance aligns with your own. Use your manager’s input to formulate a gap analysis about areas of improvement that are required for you to advance.
Work with your manager to craft a tactical action plan for addressing gaps. The gap analysis is all well and good, but it’s not worth much without a tactical plan to get there. The action plan you develop should clearly document the next steps to address each gap and the responsible party for effecting change. Your manager is likely to be one of those responsible parties. For example, if your gap analysis shows that you are missing project management experience, you may need support from your manager to identify a project lead opportunity within the next six months. The action plan should also include a definition of done. To continue with the project management example, it goes without saying that you need to not only land the PM opportunity, but you also need to lead the project successfully. Where it gets messy is how you define success. Use the action plan to eliminate confusion and clean up that potential mess before it happens.
Gain buy-in from key stakeholders. Now that you’ve identified what you need to do, you may think that it’s just a matter of doing it well. This overlooks a key step. Promotions may appear to boil down to an evaluation of performance against a defined set of criteria, but recall that humans are still the decision makers, and humans are biased—whether they like it or not. This means that you need to do a little marketing to make sure people know you and your work and know also that you are working towards a promotion. Be zealous about asking for feedback not only from your manager but from others that you interact with—clients, peers, people that report to you, your boss’s boss—all are fair game. Doing so will prepare you and them to assess your fitness for promotion, if they are asked. These stakeholders may also be able to furnish gaps for your analysis that neither you nor your manager had previously identified.
Share the love. It’s not enough to collect feedback to support your own development. You also need to make sure that this feedback makes its way to your manager. Facilitate conversations between your stakeholders and your boss so that your manager has the appropriate level of detail they need to make your case. This is especially critical in a virtual environment, where you don’t have the luxury of making small talk in the kitchen to get people to learn who you are.
I can’t promise that following the above steps will help you earn that promotion. But, by doing so, you can at least rest assured that you did everything in your power to get there.
