Promotion Denied! Reason - Exceptional Performance

Everyone dreads employee performance measurement. Managers despise the pressure and the delivery of feedback.

 Employees love positive evaluations that lead to financial gain or potential promotions and rebuff negative assessments. Performance-reviews measures often operate within organizational guidelines, such as performance, contributions to the team and company, and other vital yard-stick measures. Conversely, it also captures the essence of how your manager feels about you in term level of affinity, the degree of dependency, marketability, level of education and risk of attrition.

Wait, Wait, Wait

Outstanding job performance does not guarantee you a job promotion nor a pay-raise or bonus. Wait! What do you mean?

Consider the case of Tom. A talented young Sales Manager with a large bank institution. Tom has the uncanny ability to take perennial underperforming teams and turn them into powerhouses within a short period. Additionally, he was a great communicator that bond with people in a manner that made him exceptionally popular. 

Tom was ambitious; he wanted to grow with the company and was open to additional responsibilities. His boss dependency on Tom’s performance and capability was noticeable. He often deflects Tom’s demands, stalls or refuses to promote his agenda while profiting greatly from his production. Tom’s desire to join a different department to learn new skills and expand his knowledge become an issue for his boss who tries to keep away from different department leaders who needed talented managers like Tom. 

Occasional financial compensation increases were not enough to keep Tom onboard. He abruptly left for a competitor when he realized that his boss was hindering his ability to be promoted vertically as well as horizontally to join a department of interest to learn new skills that can add value to his career.

Prisoner of Own Success

In another case, Melissa has been working for this technology company for years. She has been the go-to managers when everyone give-up. Melissa had an uncanny turnaround ability and succeeded where everyone fails. She was the ultimate specialist that resolves most mission impossible situations. Her name was synonymous with efficiency and effectiveness. 

Melissa received tons of awards, many performance bonuses. However, she was not considered for a senior manager career. The reason was simple. She was so effective at what she was doing, rendering her almost irreplaceable. Senior management knew that promoting her will yield to an extended period with no potential replacement. Hence, financial rewards and praise was the way to keep her satisfied. 

Her attempts to share her desire to move up went often ignored. While she enjoyed job security and recognition, she was mentally ready to jump-ship with any competitor who would not hold her hostage of personal success. Melissa felt like a caged bird, who want to fly away, not because it was underfed, but because it wants to stretch its wings and experience real freedom.

Safety Net

?Stellar performances do not guarantee promotions, raises or job security. Most new CEO’s surround themselves with loyalist in senior positions. They often terminate senior executives from the previous management team regardless of competency or tenure. Conversely, senior executives reporting directly to the CEO usually keep their position despite poor performance.

Hard work and high performance can only take you so far and often fail short of providing job security and advancement. In 2012 Ross Levinsohn was the interim CEO at Yahoo and expected to keep the position, only to be passed over when the company hired Google vice president Marissa Mayer, who was supposed to pump some energy into the company. In this case, the board was interested in bringing onboard an outsider who represents a new aura of change and innovation.

Levinsohn landed shortly after the role of CEO at Guggenheim Digital Media. 

Keeping high-performing executives is vital to any organization. However, many companies overlook it, hoping that the trade-off will pay higher returns. One should realize that keeping on board high-level performing individuals takes a great deal of creativity and incentive. However, it worth the effort as these sought-after individual’s background and experiences are priceless. 

Considering that some acquired organizational skills are easily transferable, many other take considerable time to learn, thus accelerating failure rate.

Performance is Subjective

Performance is multi-dimensional and subject to vague-interpretations. Maintaining cohesive teams and high morale is a vital competency for a middle manager success. While, a senior manager will view team-work as helpful to have but will value more team functionality, competitiveness and rivalry. Acquiring and developing talent that can think strategically is usually an executives’ top priority. Great executives depend on talented individuals to carry on their agenda. Here are some fundamentals you should know to accelerate your promotion.

Minimum Requirement for Promotion

•          Consistent strong performance
•          Strong work ethics and integrity
•          Desire and drive to lead others and assume higher responsibility

Promotion Disqualifiers

•          Lack of empathy, arrogance, and roughness
•          Promoting self-interest before company’s interest.
•          Weak interpersonal/communication skills
•          Lacking vision and leadership skills

Promotion Accelerators

•          Setting strategic vision and coalescing people behind its execution.
•          Attracting great talent and upgrading team think and cohesiveness
•          Driving forward innovation and change and taking a strategic risk to achieve desired performance.
•          Managing conflict and building strong bridges with internal groups and external partners
•          Managing operation and implementation details without losing vision of goals
•          Solicit feedback, reflect and adjust often and according to market direction

Promotion Leap factors

•      Mastery of the power of flattery
•      Emotional Intelligence mastery
•      Ability to be provocative and contrarian
•      Transforming chaos into opportunity
•      Visibility, credibility, and repute

    

No Abrasiveness Allowed

Ted joined a sizeable multi-national company whose global sales unit was struggling. He was hired by the chairman to turn things around fast. Ted, combined knowledge, work efficiency with arrogance and hastiness.

His abrasive approach managed to alienate people he needed to turn things around from day one.  He was a know-it-all “A” type. He sold the CEO and chairman on his turn-around initiative. 

He never took the time to understand how the organization worked nor did he take the time to learn from his reports. He was above it all. People dread his meetings, a torrent of senior and middle – management level resignations followed.

He ended up leaving his job after only nine months. It took the company five years to recover the talent it lost because of his abrasive style.  

Success in one area, or with one organization doesn’t always translate to success in another. Ted advanced strategic thinking and analytical problem-solving skills allowed him to excel in a technological organization were communication minimal.

However, in an environment like sales where communication is paramount, his poor people skills, arrogance and abrasive interaction skills doomed his career.

Politicking Works

We established that your performance is not necessarily a guarantee to a promotion. In this case, would playing politics and enhancing your boss’s ego help? It’s possible!

Senior managers are often extremely busy; and unless you strategically position yourself for visibility, you will vanish into corporate obscurity. 

You direct managers may know your contributions.  However, his boss will view your contributions as part of an aggregated data excel sheet, where your performance gets blended without any distinctions from your peers.

C-suite executives often do not know people two or three level below them; these people are extremely busy. Occasional recognitions are just formalities handled to them as part of a list "to recognize" to keep people spirits and engagement high.

In a large organization, you should work smart to ensure that your C-suite team knows what unique value you bring to the table. Soft skills like conflict resolution, high-level diplomatic negotiation capability or honed communication skills may be in short supply making you a candidate for promotion. You president club performance attainment will not guarantee your upward mobility or development. Get creative! 

Stand Up or Vanish

Share with your higher ups your exceptional accomplishments. Once you get their attention, keep them curious and intrigue about you. Outstanding performances require thinking out of the box and standing out for something.

Do not blend with the rest, the moment you do, you lose your enigma and vanish in the pool of forgotten sameness. Leaders promote exceptional people, and they may occasionally resort to hiring someone to fill a gap only long enough until they find a better alternative.

Hard Work is Not Enough

The hardest working employee is often passed over for promotion. You may be the pillar that holds things together. However, your strength may become a liability. If you are in this category, hardworking, reliable, quiet, introvert and performing at high-level, you will be recognized for a job well done but will go unnoticed during promotion periods.

Unfortunately, this type of employee gets often recognized when he presents a resignation letter to the management team. The value increases exponentially when faced with a loss of a valuable, consistent employee that no one ever thought was at risk.

"We were contemplating your promotion, gave us few months to sort things out, at the meantime, we decided to increase your salary by "$00"." False promises? Maybe not, but why the value of some people only gets heightened during departure. Beats me!

Be Provocative to be Remembered

?Be outspoken and provocative as often as possible. Be analytically factual but, you must be contrarian and provocative. Senior managers love corporate courage and balanced audacity. The key is to be remembered to avoid being dragged into the blending pit of oblivion. 

Senior managers should never forget you. Forgotten managers do not get considered for promotion. Being intelligently provocative will allow you to get noticed by your senior managers. 

1.      Be provocative. Be contrarian to enable people to think beyond the familiar. Your ideas must be valid, accurate and unique. Senior managers are always looking for people with new balance, well-thought-out perspectives. 
2.      Develop an intelligent future approach to everything you do. Look at your industry and beyond. Share information, ideas, and insight beyond what everyone already knows.
3.      Do your homework. Learn unique details beyond your industry that can be molded to yours. Then, introduce your innovative non-industry perspective to your senior manager. Keep improving your intelligence dossier to create unique value and to be remembered as a thought leader. 

Senior managers are often curious and recall people that stood up when everyone sank more in-depth into seats. Do not join the pool of the forgotten employees. Join the basin of the ambitious employees that are going up and looking forward to acquiring new skills and capabilities. Dramatic job shifts can expose you to a steep learning curve, but they are better than inertia and job stagnation.

Performance Matters Somewhat!

Performance is not always number related; senior managers need talented employees that cover areas beyond production. Your focus on critical areas in need of improvement may secure your spot faster than hard work. 

Performance is multi-dimensional. Moreover, what you believe is essential may not be your boss priority. You may outdo, outthink and outwork everyone else by leaps and bounds. However, it won’t matter unless you are aligned with your boss main priorities. Your excellent performance holds no value if you fail to maintain harmonious relationships with your boss or you fail to exude specific aspect of leadership that your boss deems necessary for promotion. 

Your Likability Factor Is Paramount.

?Your attitude matters. A positive attitude is a good start, but helping your boss to improve how he feels about himself, could be a ticket to your recommendation for promotion. Senior managers care about your likeability factor. You may be great, but if your bosses don’t feel right around you, you will not get promoted. 

     Cultural fit is indeed a private matter, and it is often about how few influential people feel about you. Fail the cultural test and your days will become numbered.

     Praise does not harm. Leverage it to help people overcome shortcomings.

     Bosses are human beings with insecurities like you. Infusing occasional honest reinforcements about their likability can help build solid trust foundation. Your boss needs positive reinforcement to handle the barrage of external and internal critics that weigh him down, and you can alleviate some of that with your honest feedback and support. 

Human by nature know their shortcoming but never admit it. Instead, we tend to overestimate our competencies in almost anything and everything we do. We often recognize, what we stand for, we are self-aware about our weaknesses and inadequacies. Having someone to lift our morale up when everyone and everything is pulling us down becomes a destination of mental rejuvenation to validate our firm belief.

 Resignation Value

Brent was single-handedly selling more than half of his team year-over-year. He was meticulous in everything he does, and know better than anyone how to generate high-value net new clients while maintaining and growing his book of business.

Brent was acting as an interim-manager for almost a whole year before a new external manager was brought onboard as a replacement. As a good team player, he accepted his faith, even though, everyone believed that he would the get the position. He was an ideal manager, liked by everyone.

Within three months on the job, the new manager handed Brent a poor performance evaluation, for having a contentious relationship with him. The new manager insisted on establishing a direct link with all Brent’s existing clients to cross-sell additional products. Brent’s manager never understood the depth of relationship that Brent crafted over the years with his clients.

Brent left shortly to join a more substantial advertising company that allowed him full autonomy and control of his book of business. His prior managers failed to build a report with these high-value clients, leading to his departure within his first year.

Brent’s was promoted twice during the same period, becoming the youngest VP of Sales in the company. Brent capability was always there, not being supported was a signal that he was working in an environment that didn’t value his contribution, and put a limitation on his advancement.

The Power of Flattery

Flattering your superiors works, if it appears sincere and it’s not excessive, where it starts to seem as you are attempting to butter your boss up. Most people underestimate the positive power of flattery.

Done well, it will make you look like a good judge of people, done poorly it will make you sound like a suck-up. Your hard work and performance can only take you so far. At one point in your career, your ability to manage well people emotions can propel your career. Caring is the essence of empathy. 

Emotional Intelligence Not Pedigrees

Emotional Intelligence skills is an area that can propel your career forward, being sensitive to others emotion and feeling will increase your likability, approachability, and promotability. 

 People promote people. Executives support and promote people they like and admire, and then they justify their decisions with credential, pedigrees and past performances.

Try to make your boss look good, If you cannot at least never make the situation worse. Treat your boss as a relationship that is as important as your performance. You will need both to advance faster.

Promotion Denied

Did you ever feel that promotion decisions seem illogical or politically driven? You may not be the only one feeling that way.

In most organizations, promotional decisions are often governed by unspoken, unwritten rules. Senior managers often relay, on their subordinate feedback, reputation, emotions, intuition, and likability factor to justify the promotion of an executive to a C-level position.

The applicants with a similar qualification that were passed over for promotion are left scrambling to interpret fuzzy feedback and findings. Leaving them angry, frustrated and lost on how to forge ahead. Keeping these applicants takes hard work and resourcefulness, but it pays to preserve this qualified talent from leaving to a competitor.

Fairness is a Myth

That’s what happened to John, the senior vice president of an F500. John was managing three large divisions for over a decade and brought them to an unprecedented level of performance. He had excellent performance reviews. People loved him, because of his people's skills. He enjoyed a stellar reputation within the industry. 

John climbed up the corporate ladder organically. He represented a beacon of hope to many aspiring managers. He was a company man, he was a role model in term of good work ethics and integrity, delivering results, collaborating with others, and developing talent that value customer centricity and innovation.

Managers want to join his group. In term of execution, he and his team have surpassed performance requirement for seven consecutive years. Many thought of him as a potential future CEO. However, although he was ready and able, he was never promoted. 

The company often brought external candidates that sound great on paper, and who fail measurably on the job or left abruptly to other organizations, when they realize the impossible-like responsibility of the role. 

Realizing there was no hope for promotion, John updated his resume and shortly after assumed the role of CEO with a fast-growing mid-size company. 

A conversation with his prior CEO reveals that the company board wants to bring an outsider with a strong reputation to put the company brand on the map. After multiple failures, the company hired three SVPs where each one division. The company was forced to pay each SVP double of what John’s was remunerated while managing all three divisions.

 Sometimes, your boss assumptions may be impossible to overcome. If that’s the case be prepared to move on. 

Conclusion

Sometimes an external hire could be the right solutions. However, due to integration issues, most of these hires turn out somewhat dicey. 

Promoting within maybe the right solution. An employee that you ignore today may turn out to be the CEOs that everyone hopes for tomorrow. Sandy Weill fired Jamie Dimon because he wanted to be a CEO. He was deemed too ambitious at the time. Others said he was fired because he was reluctant to promote Weil’s daughter. What matters is things will happen whether you agree or not. 

The key is always to be prepared and understand that today's exceptional performance does not guarantee your promotion. Work hard on you to become a vital resource, that no organization can afford to lose.

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