3 Common Reasons Your Manager Will Fail You During Promotions And How To Have A Back Up Plan
Promotions at the senior levels are as much about relationships and perception as it is about performance. Invest the time to advocacy outside your management chain.
In school, we are taught that if we do the work, we get good grades and are “promoted” to the next grade. When we enter the workforce, we deliver what our managers ask us to do and after 18-24 months, we get a promotion. And so on. But one day, five to eight years into your career, you find yourself doing an increasing amount of work, delivering value and impact more than ever, yet struggling for that next promotion. What went wrong and how do you get back on track?
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3 common failure scenarios for promotions
As an executive and career coach, here are three frustrating scenarios my clients find themselves in when they approach me for support:
Scenario 1: Their manager leaves the company
You and your manager worked closely on your promotion case for the last year. A few months before the next promotion cycle, your manager leaves the company. Now, only a few people know your work, and you no longer have a strong advocate for promotion.
Reorgs and departures are a frequent reality of any workplace. At the more senior levels, promotion cycles take longer, and the chance that you have at least one immediate manager change between promotions is very high.
Scenario 2: Your “I’m sure you’ll get the promotion” didn’t go through
You and your manager have been working on your promotion case for months. You have delivered everything your manager asked for and maybe even went above and beyond to take on some extra work. Yet when the performance cycle concluded, your manager gave you the bad news that you were not given the promotion. The reason? Perhaps you need to be more strategic, improve your collaboration, or be more technical. Or, perhaps your feedback is simply that you haven’t been at your level “long enough”. To add to the frustration, you see that a peer of yours who is less technical or less collaborative or has been at the company for less time gets the promotion in the same cycle.
Scenario 3: Your manager doesn’t know what’s the next promotion
You have been working hard for the past 2 years. Yet each time you raise the promotion conversation with your manager, he side-steps it. He is vague on details of how to get that promotion and what needs to happen, telling you to “just keep doing a good job”. When you look around the company, there is not a clear example of someone making that next promotion. On the career ladder documents, there isn’t a clear requirement set for the next role — it’s like the career ladder simply disappears. To add to the confusion, the company isn’t mature enough yet to have an official promotion process. They tend to happen somewhat randomly, seemingly on the whim of those in executive leadership.
Most of us will find ourselves in some version of one of these scenarios at some point in our career. I have personally been through versions of all three of them. What you learn from these experiences is the importance of backup plans.
Connect With Your Skip Level
In addition to a strong relationship with your manager, it is worthwhile to be on good terms with your skip-level manager, or skip-skip level if your organization has a lot of management layers. Bring these leaders into your bid for promotion — make sure they are aware of the value you are bringing to the organization, what stretch projects you’re driving, and your strengths as a leader. Making them a part of your story and journey is a powerful way to build personal connection and investment from them in the outcome.
Second, these interactions should focus more on strategy or culture discussions rather than execution updates. You want to surface to your skip-level your leadership potential, rather than reinforcing your execution prowess. Spend time with them discussing new ideas you have for strategic initiatives or where you think the team should invest more resources. Pitch your ideas to improve team morale, efficiency, or collaboration.
Build Strong Advocacy Outside Your Management Chain
At the more senior levels, promotions are about relationships as much as they are about performance. Rather than “what did you accomplish”, it becomes also about “what do others say about you”.
Counterintuitively, it is better if the person pounding the table for your promotion is not your manager. It will greatly increase your chances of promotion if there is someone other than your manager at the table who is vocal about your advancement. This could be a skip level or a senior cross-functional peer. Often, managers are perceived as inherently biased in promotions — because if their team members are promoted, they also personally benefit.
To get advocacy from outside your management chain requires you to frequently share your work with other teams and leaders. This is why people leading higher visibility work or more cross-team work tend to advance faster in their careers. Say yes to those key company initiatives with high visibility if you want to grow. If you’re not in a role of high visibility, consider what projects or tasks you can take on to increase your visibility and frequency of interaction with senior executives.
Second, outside of directly working with other leaders, you can further strengthen your relationships by supporting their work and the work of their teams. Make it a point to understand what their goals are and keep an eye out for information that may be useful to them. Connect with those on their teams and offer to support their work. Remember, building influence means figuring out how to get others to come to you for help.
Manage the room in advance
Promotions are usually group decisions, particularly in larger organizations. So, regardless of how much your manager thinks you deserve the promotion, they often do not have sole authority to push through the promotion. It’s important to figure out who may be in the decision-making room in advance and where you stand with each of them. Then, with your manager, make a plan to further pitch those who will likely be in favor, and counter the arguments of potential detractors. Not unlike real politics, you need to campaign for your new role.
In short, having strong advocates and supporters outside of your manager is critical for a successful promotion. While having strong performance is the foundation for promotion, it is the relationships you have and the perception of your work that will make the case. And these relationships you build will be critical foundations for success in a senior leadership role as well.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
More Articles on Promotions:
What Can I Do To Boost My Performance Rating In The Next Few Weeks?
Passed Over for Promotion. Will it happen in the next 6 months?
Reason 4: no budget for promotions this year.
That's a rather common one, whether you're in a startup or in a corporate environnement.
A consideration on budget can also be “can we accord to lose this person”
There is an angle of respectfully communicating your career goals with your manager etc, often people most likely to leave are at the top of their band and will leave if their current company cannot facilitate this.