Why are most managers stuck in the middle (4 ways to get promoted internally)
Tiffany Cheng
Mentoring quiet high performers with cross-cultural careers from middle management to executive roles. | 2x VP @ Volvo, Atlas Copco
In this blog, I shared the 6 reasons career advancement is different at the senior level and how you can position yourself for an internal promotion to the top.
How different is career advancement from the middle to the top?
1. You are competing with the best of the best.
The further up the career ladder you moved, the smaller the fraction of people who made it to that senior leadership group.
If you are working in a division of 1000 employees and you want to become the top 1% in that division, you are competing with the three to five senior leaders who have made as many leaps as you did.
Therefore, you are all the best of the best in your division.
2. Qualities you need at the top become increasingly difficult to measure.
They are no longer about project management, rolling out a strategy, or industrial knowledge.?
To move upward, these are the questions can think about:
? How did you engage your employees?
? What are the people working below you saying about you?
? How did you get your team to understand not only what they should be doing, but what they could be doing?
? How did you foster collaboration and solve the conflict with other functions?
? How did you connect with other senior leaders?
? Besides these internal aspects, what's your leverage externally with your business partners, including customers, suppliers, and more?
3. What gets you here to the middle is not going to get you there at the top.
Many middle managers are hardworking; they deliver great results, and they are good at self-advocacy.
The thing is, the other middle managers who are competing for the same senior-level positions are also hardworking. They are high performers, and they ask for promotions.
What you need is to differentiate yourself.
4. There are fewer people above you who can guide you.
When you move up the career ladder, there are much fewer people who are there to guide you, coach you, and give you feedback.
5. Most managers do not know how to self-advocate authentically.
There are two situations here.
A. You overdo it.?
You are overly self-advocating; it comes across as if you are being desperate.
B. You are too humble, and you think your great work will speak for itself.
Just because you are doing a great job doesn't mean people are seeing it.
Especially for the people who are above you and have the hiring power. They have hundreds of other things on their plate.
The time they spend thinking about you is not as much as you think.
I have created an entire video about how to get authentic visibility in your organization.
You can check it out here.
6. Refuse to play politics.
You might have the attitude "I don't play politics."
It does not mean that you need to go backstabbing other people.
Of course, you want to be authentic to your own values and the competence you've developed over time.
But at the same time, you also need to understand how power dynamics are played out in your organization.
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Here is one example from the two companies I worked for:?
Volvo and Atlas Copco, both are iconic Swedish companies, but very different.
Volvo is centralized.
It's highly important to reach a consensus and consolidate spending, but that comes at the cost of speed.
Atlas Copco is decentralized.
For Atlas Copco, it is entirely fine to gain speed, but at the cost of spending more.
In every company, there is a power structure and hierarchy that exists.
It will be ignorant of me to pretend I don't understand, and I don't want to participate in that.
Here are the things you want to understand.
For example:
? How are decisions made?
? How do you influence others?
? What does stakeholder management look like?
? Who needs to be informed earlier and more personally than the others?
? How does one change impact the other power dynamics and interests of different stakeholders?
Now let me share 4 ways to get yourself promoted from middle management to senior leadership inside your organization.
1. Demonstrate your leadership brand.
Your unique impact and strength:
2. Rotate around your organization.
I've seen many successful examples.
For example, if you are HR, you remain as the HR, but in 2-3 different business units or business areas in your organization.
Rotating around an organization gives you a balanced experience without leaving your company.
By the time you are ready for that senior leadership role, you will be able to provide proof that you have been pressure tested in multiple business environments and cycles and have gained different perspectives.
3. Develop chemistry with whomever you want to or will report to.
Put your objectives out there and let these senior executives be involved in your development plan.
Ask them what competence you need to develop so that when you are appointed, you can complete the top team as a piece of the missing puzzle.
If you can gain the commitment from someone at that level to help you put together a development plan and gain the experience you will need, you are not far away from that level of promotion.
4. Have multiple advocates and sponsors across all levels.
That means not only people you will be reporting to and their peers but also people who will report to you.
You want to think broader than the people who are currently above you, including peers across the organization, and employees' support.
If you are serious about advancing your career to the senior executive level and want to ensure that your next move is fulfilling, submit your application to the 1% Academy program, where I will personally coach and mentor you.
During the call, you will meet either myself or one of my team members. We will discuss your current career status, your goals, and evaluate if you are a good fit for the program.