How to become a valued employee and earn that promotion

A short time ago, I shared some insights into my career path and highlighted instances of rapid promotion up the career ladder. Today, I’m “the boss” and the one who makes decisions about others’ employment and roles, and in my view the most important characteristics for any employee to have in order to be hired or promoted are psychological. They include:

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Personality and communication. It’s very important to be a good person: clear, kind, and transparent. The atmosphere within a team should improve markedly with such a person onboard, and become more alive, productive and healthy… not worse! In such cases, openness, mutual trust and support, motivation and the team’s spirit and ability to work effectively together all stand to benefit. It’s also crucial to be pleasant when communicating. That means being easy-going and able to cope with negative emotions, while also being generous to others and not egocentric or demanding too much attention. Personal qualities such as flexibility, learnability, general intelligence, analytic skills, a capability to deal with mistakes, emotional intellect and a passion for development are also important.???

Interest and motivation. An employee should be fond of his or her role. As a result, the position will have value to them, and they will do their best to grow it and themselves – driven by new perspectives. If such drive is missing, maybe it's not the correct fit, and it’s reasonable to find what other role (or maybe what other company or even sphere of work) makes them happy. Compatibility between an employee and a company not only exists, it is critical, and is based on areas such as atmosphere, people, values, rules, etc.

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Talent and ability. Different tasks can be fulfilled in different ways. For example, a manager can successfully connect with clients using their charisma and sense of humor, or their irreproachable attentiveness, accuracy and punctuality. Or perhaps as a result of their unique talent to solve problems and produce brilliant ideas. I believe that if one is inspired and motivated, one will find a way to achieve great things. What’s important here is the ability to just go for it; an employee should place great value on their job and be able to perform in a responsible and independent manner whilst following the chain of command. It’s quite normal to ask for advice or support, but do not seek comprehensive tutorship from your boss; an ability to learn fast, be autonomous and save their time and resources is valued greatly. It’s also very important to be attentive to corporate rules, loyal, eager to help, and not to be afraid of the job. A widespread delusion is that it’s of great benefit not to do too many things… to not exceed your direct duties and to side-step new initiatives. But if the company and those in charge benefit as a result of one of their employees doing the exact opposite, this employee will be the first to be promoted. If their potential is visible, it’s not reasonable (or profitable!) to hold them back or tie them to their position. So the “I will show my true value after promotion” mindset doesn’t work here. It’s like casting – you should put on your best performance up front, and even if the current role on offer doesn’t turn out to be yours, the next one will be. And, of course, if you want to advance to a higher position, it should be obvious that you cope brilliantly with your current role and have even outgrown it. The higher the position, the more demands will be made of your attention and ability to manage greater workloads and complexity of information; you will need to take on more responsibility, be more flexible, improve your communication skills and ability to work strategically, and show greater accuracy when accomplishing everyday tasks. All the while, your ability to handle this increased responsibility should be obvious to your boss.

Education and knowledge. Formal education is often overrated. We all know plenty of examples where someone without a ‘traditional’ education has made a brilliant career for themselves, started a successful business, created highly-valued art or made significant scientific contributions. For this reason, I think that experience and what one represents in a moment is more important than any diploma. But of course, they may help and be an added bonus!

Finally, it’s important to talk about your wish to be hired or promoted. Modesty is not useful here, nor any nervousness or worry about rejection or refusal. Because even if this does happen, you can then discuss what qualities and competencies you need to develop to fulfill the demands of the role you want. What’s more, your prospective employer or current manager will now know that you are the one who is ambitious, and will look at you with a fresh perspective.

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Good luck!