If You Want a Promotion, Heres How to Get It!

You do not get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate!Anonymous

Many prospects and clients call me when they think that they are facing a challenge in getting themselves to their next level in their group, organization, or company. This entails clients from individual contributors (ICs) to those in senior executive positions. In almost all cases this is their refrain: I have worked so hard during the year and delivered on so many fronts that they should now promote me.

Wrong!

Most people see a promotion as their right to get what they deserve for their hard work and for what they can do for their company in the future (see the quote above). Another famous quote by Emerson is also apt in this context: Most people judge themselves by what they are capable of doing; others judge them by what they have already done!

So, a promotion is not about hard work and for showing your potential by making promises, but it is about delivering value at your next level consistently and visibly. Both these adverbs are important in setting yourself for consideration for your next level of promotion. So, here are some strategies and tips that I pass on to my clients:

1. The time to plan for your promotion discussion is at least one full year ahead of the time you want that promotion to be in place. Generally, at the Annual Performance Review (APR) time you must bring this topic for discussion with specificity in conversation with your boss.
2. During this meeting have the promotion discussion as a separate topic into itself. Do not mix it with other transactional topics you normally discuss with your boss. So, do not say, By the way, my three tasks on project A are on track this week. Can we now talk about my promotion?
3. Instead, send a separate email to your boss and set up a meeting to discuss your career progression, future plans, and development opportunities. Do not include any other items in this email. This will require your boss to change their frame of mind in how this meeting takes place and to move their focus from transactional discussions to something more substantive.
4. In this meeting bring a list of your accomplishment during the past few years and present them in a concise table with tasks, their importance to the company, and the value they created in $$. Do not bring a long list of topics and pages of text describing your work. Bring one tabular page of tasks, their relevance, and impact that can be measured and that can be verified through direct means.
5. During this conversation ask your boss what more they can suggest for you to take on your own to further your career and to help the company in areas that are a struggle for your group, unit, or your company.
6. Get a table of Competency Matrix from your HR representative and look across the page to the right of where your position is described. Say, you are a senior manager and you want to get promoted to the next leveldirector. Look at the competencies listed under the director title and start planning on taking on some of those tasks in your current role. Take this matrix with you to this meeting with your boss and have a discussion on why you are taking on these next-level tasks. If your boss suggests other tasks from that cell discuss further and get clarity on them.
7. Continue to do your job to exceed your boss expectations and keep yourself visible at least two levels above your boss. In this example, as a senior manager, you must keep your line of sight to your director (your skip-level boss) and VP (your uber boss) to make sure that your accomplishments are visible to them and others at those levels and throughout your ecosystem.
8. Participate openly in events and initiatives that bring your visibility to others in the executive ranks. Make sure that you are doing this in a positive and constructive way and not merely as an affectation to get their attention from those who matter.
9. Mentor those junior to you and find yourself a mentor to grow your leadership power.
10. Keep your boss in the loop as you progress towards the next APR and check your progress as they see it and not as you do. Make course correction if something gets off track and get ready for your next APR. Now you have all the ammunition you need to have a much more meaningful discussion about your well-deserved promotion.

Promotion does not merely come from working hard, delivering what is on your plate or what the boss tells you is important. As one moves up an organization there are fewer and fewer positions available for a promotion and those who stand out both from their performance and from their optics (image they cultivate and manage) get the best shot at their next promotion. Without having a specific discussion about your desire to get promoted and without having this planned roadmap before you bring this topic up, someone else, who has followed this recipe may hijack away the promotion that was yours to have!

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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