Promotion Opportunities and Promotions

Promotional opportunities and promotions are a natural expectation of a professional career. Advocating for a promotion requires an understanding of the process and possessing the ability to make your case. Simply doing acceptable work, spending a certain time in a role, or believing it is ‘your turn for promotion’ are insufficient in most cases. Proper preparation involves studying your organization’s approach, how best to highlight your capabilities/growth and the ability to show how your promotion benefits the team.

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Understanding the Landscape

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What is the promotion cycle? Annual or ad hoc throughout the year?

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What elements factor into consideration for promotion? Are those elements common understanding within your organization or more specific to a particular area?

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Does your team consider promotions as a ‘grow into’ type of opportunity or are you expecting to be fully prepared to hit the ground day one in the new role?

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Can you be promoted within your current role (assuming more responsibilities), or do you need to win a different role to be promoted? Or even switch organizations?

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Consider the longer-term implications of any promotion. A fast promotion into an area with limited long-term growth prospects may be less attractive compared to a careful approach to promotion within an area having

more durable career prospects.

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Who makes the promotion decision? Supervisor, committee, or senior leadership? Having strong visibility to your supervisor but being invisible to other stakeholders (especially if they make the final decision) limits your chances.

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Preparation is Essential

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Start by assessing your achievements, skills, and contributions. Demonstrate how your strengths have and will continue to benefit the team.

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If past assessments have included areas for improvement or growth, show how you have taken steps to address those gaps.

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Show how your skills and experience align with the qualifications of the desired role. At a minimum, you need to demonstrate how you meet or exceed the key requirements of the job.

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Avoid talking about activity. Focus on impact and outcomes.

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Have documentation of your accomplishments and quantify those results if possible. Example – “My work allowed the team to improve output by 20% in the last year”.

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Show how your promotion benefits the team in addition to yourself. How does giving you more responsibility align with the team’s goals and priorities? How do your skills and accomplishments show that you are ready for this next step?

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Do the Maximum not the Minimum

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This seems obvious, but I have seen situations where individuals were doing a ‘check the boxes’ approach to meeting the minimum requirements for a role. Promotions are competitive. Be ready to shine and show how you are the best candidate.

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Ideally you are already performing at or exceeding the level of the new level when you are asking to be promoted. Leaders place bets as opposed to taking risks. They want confidence that you will excel at that next level.

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Similarly, leaders take your long-term potential into consideration when they are making promotion decisions. When they choose to promote you, they are hoping to see continued growth to even higher levels. The decision to promote you is likely based on factors beyond simply being a good fit for the new role.

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Consistent Communication

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Whether looking at a new opportunity or an in-line promotion, consistency in communication with supervision, mentors and other key stakeholders is essential. Don’t be inconsistent in your approach or allow it to come up only in the context of performance reviews.

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Use those more frequent touch points to discuss your progress towards your goals, including seeking feedback on your gaps and ways to address them. Getting promoted is not just about advocating for yourself but also having a well-grounded understanding of how others see you and your potential.

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Failure to win a promotion should become the basis for feedback and insights into continued areas for improvement. Don’t withdraw into your shell. Disappointment is natural but from setbacks comes opportunity for growth.

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Ask for and Receive Meaningful Feedback

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Regardless of whether you were successful or not in winning that promotion, feedback is the basis for continuous improvement. If you were promoted, seek to understand what attributes were most important in that decision. Similarly, in those cases where you were not moved forward, what held you back?

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Some people just don’t know how to give quality feedback, but you can help yourself by 1) seeking multiple sources of feedback, 2) asking leading questions based on your insights 3) demonstrating openness to feedback and dialog.

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Ask follow-up questions when you are receiving feedback.

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Avoid accepting minimal input such as ‘You aren’t ready.’ Ask why that is the case. Get them to be specific.

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Similarly, statements like ‘You haven’t been in your current role long enough’ are not helpful. Maybe that is the case as perhaps you have not demonstrated sufficient mastery of your current obligations but time in grade in not the only determinant of promotion consideration.

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Finally, the misdirection of ‘I supported you, but others did not’ is a cop-out. There may be some truth to this statement, but it suggests the potential that the person making the statement was never a decision maker or they really did not advocate for you. Understanding once again who made the call and why is helpful.

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Networking and Mentorships

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Mentors play many roles including coaching you on your career journey. They can help you prepare for promotion discussions, give you honest feedback about your gaps and how best to address them and on occasion advocate on your behalf. They may be one of the decision makers relative to promotion opportunities. Care should be taken however to avoid placing them in a potential conflict of interest situation.

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Networking plays multiple roles in your career. Granting you greater organizational visibility, enhancing your understanding of current/future possibilities, and giving you insights into work you could take on to improve yourself, elevate your profile plus help the team. Networking is not simply about being a social butterfly but instead a serious business of building connections, understanding how those connections can help you and how you can help them.

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Getting Around the Dreaded Local Blockade

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Inevitably, we all run into situations where local leadership, perhaps a supervisor or their direct management, are not fully supportive of one’s career ambitions. Perhaps they sincerely believe the person is not ready or wish to shield the individual from potential disappointment. Perhaps they are threatened by the advancement of the person seeking promotion or they don’t want to lose talent from their team.

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In these cases, leveraging mentors and other stakeholders, including broader members of leadership is crucial. Is their caution merited? They may have more experience than you and understand how the promotion process works. If so, heed their advice and improve yourself. But in my experience, at times local leadership can be somewhat myopic about how their talent is viewed by the broader organization. I can think of many examples of where individuals lacking support at the local level achieved promotion through the actions and advocacy of more senior leaders.

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But in those cases where your promotional prospects are being blocked due to less legitimate reasons, my advice is simple – Leave that Supervisor/Team and Take your Talents Elsewhere. You aren’t going to change them, nor should you waste time attempting to do so.

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However, make sure you understand the situation before you jump to this conclusion. I have experienced situations where people found it convenient to claim unfair circumstances when in truth, they were receiving legitimate feedback on their lack of readiness for promotion due to gaps. Failure to accept and act on good advice is always a mistake – feedback is a gift – treat it as such.

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Persistence and Resiliency is the Key

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Like any successful journey, building and implementing your approach to promotion and integrating learning along the way is the key. There will be opportunistic situations that arise that could be interesting choices but be prepared to seize those moments. But otherwise, your approach should be clear and focused.

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Avoid being discouraged by setbacks. While I’m not a fan of the comments like ‘it wasn’t meant to be’ or ‘when one door closes, another opens,’ there is a degree of truth in those statements.

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Both success and failure create opportunities for learning and growth. Things happen for a reason, even if those reasons don’t seem rational or fair in the moment. Avoid being a victim. No one wins.

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Pay It Forward

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Finally, put your insights to effective use in order to help others. You will find that your growth is amplified by your ability to help others grow as well. In the same way that you received the benefit from others on your journey, pay that forward. One of the elements I look for in future leadership candidates is the ability to elevate others around them.