Getting promoted

Recently in my managerial practice I came across with the situation: one junior employee wanted to be promoted but on a regular half year performance review was given a quite low score even for his junior level. Naturally, he was frustrated. Me, not being his direct manager, spoke to him and asked what was he doing to get promoted and if he had a clear plan how to get to his goal.

Unfortunately, the answer was that his goal wasn’t communicated clearly to all the decision makers and that he himself didn’t have a clear measurable (a.k.a. S.M.A.R.T.) goal.

It’s quite sad that if a company or a particular department doesn’t have good enough support and employee growth & development system – the employees might not see the chance to be promoted. However, I’m also a strong believer, that an employee should become more active in organizing and overseeing his own promotion, not just expect a manager to do it for him/her.

I’ve recently came across some common myths and misconceptions* about the promotion:

1. Work hard and you will be promoted. It is commonly thought, that if you work hard and show to your manager that you can do well your current job – you are good enough to get promoted. However, actually, often promotion means that the skill set one will need in the new job is different, therefore promotion is more a bet on your potential, rather than increase of your current responsibilities. Adapting your strategy to get a promotion might be a good option for you.
2. The best people always get promoted. Organizations are often about politics, whom you know rather than how do you perform and about your personal visibility in the company. So be active, make sure you are known and visible to the people, who make the decision about promotions.
3. The promotion process is always transparent. This is definitely not the case in the big corporations and even in small ones. There’s always minor and major affecting factors, there might be several decision makers or even unknown reasons and long-term strategies involved. The process is not always transparent, so there’s always a wild card involved.

So, what to do if you still want a promotion, you’ve learned that the above myths are mostly on what you have based your understanding how promotions in companies work and now you’re ready to act?
You can find a person within your organization who has been recently promoted and ask him to mentor you. That would be a good first hand info about how it goes in your company.
If you’ve realized that you have some internal beliefs, such as those, which are listed above and more, maybe you should consider getting yourself a coach. In partnership with a coach one can change stretch the way of thinking and perceiving the situation, accept that there are different points of views and there is more than just one way to the goal you set to yourself.

To learn more about how coaching can be of help, read through my blog and don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you want to choose me as your coach, to support you on your path to achieving your high performance goals.

DISCLAIMER: *I have used a book by Niamh O’Keeffe “Get Promoted” for this blog post