Do you think that you’re outstanding work performance and dedication should get you recognition and promotion?

Producing Excellence as worked in the past to get you the recognition and things you deserve so it should work now, right?

It’s like an excellent Busy ‘Worker Bee’ thinking that with enough hard work they will become the Queen of the hive.

My naivety For years I naively approached my work life as I did in school and I since I had awards and bonuses and incremental raises I was convinced my plan was working until I saw my less productive, and less accomplished peers getting promoted. The answers I was getting during my reviews was vague, things like ‘management feels there was some more work they wanted to see me do before my promotion, they were not at liberty to discuss why someone else got a raise.’ Then to quickly try to cover it up they would tell me how well I was doing, the metrics I was meeting, and how happy everyone was with how well I was doing my job. I bought into it, and kept working hard, taking on any project asked of me, training new hires while meeting growing requirements.

Then I saw those I had trained a couple of years earlier getting promoted. Bringing this up at my next review and I got the same answers. Hurt, and angry I poured my heart out to my husband, he knew what I’d been through, and was angry as well. He had insight and shared some truth with me that changed my life. I really didn’t want to hear it, accepting it took some time but it was true. I’ll share that life-changing truth in just a minute, but first.

I knew there was something missing, I craved the secret, what was it that everyone had that I didn’t.

I worked hard, putting in more and more hours, sacrificing my social and even family life. I had awards, incremental bonuses, extra titles, complimentary reviews and growing responsibility.

What I was missing is something that I’ve noticed guys seem to know is needed. They had coaching and training has helped them to advance. Now I’m not saying that women don’t know, or the secret. We do we just don’t incorporate it into our work life. I bet when you see what it is you’ll have the same ‘Ah ha moment’ that many of us have, a deep sigh of, ‘Oh yeah’ that make sense. The difference is that more often than not we don’t bring our best social game to play in business. With all of our social savvy, and interpersonal connectivity we have a bit of a blank spot with our professional lives. We forget to or are not sure how to bring it to work.

So what is missing already?

Here it is, what I didn’t value was a big ‘F’ word that you won’t forget after this. No, not that ‘F’ word, this one is nice. Ladies our excellent track record, and achievement doesn’t produce Favor.

I didn’t realize that I was missing favor. I believed that Achievement equals favor. This was one of my big mistakes, I miscalculated. With this key ingredient missing. My plan of working and thinking like a good student only took me so far in life. The training and coaching needed to make this paradigm shift was missing at this point in my career, the worse part was I didn’t realize it until years later.

I didn’t value the weight of emotional favor, and it cost me.

Favor is emotional, not based on results

The favor you need is not just applause for doing a good job, an award or even a bonus for exceeding your job description. No, it’s purely emotional, not factual. Promotions are made as a result of an emotional connection. Does your boss and management like you personally? Promotions come to those they connect with emotionally.

I am on a mission to help every woman who wants to advance her career avoid the painful mistakes I made, and get their career breakthrough.

Here are some easy to implement secrets to help you:

Identify what motivates them: What they truly want…

What is their reputation — What is their Brand? How do they talk about the company, management? How does management talk about them?

• What are they doing well?
• What are they doing poorly?
• What do they talk about most passionately, what topics make them excited and energized?

Easy way to identify their motives

Use your favorite form of documentation, writing, diction etc. and note your answers to these, they will be invaluable. As intuitive as you are, you can identify these. The time you’ve spent working under them will give you the insight to what these are. Take some time to capture these and your answers, Even if you’re not 100 percent sure, be able to get an idea based on their reactions to a meeting with their boss or upper management.

• Are they excited about new possibilities or changes? Or do they seem tense when they anticipate a meeting?
• What are their goals both immediately and 3–5 years out?
• Are they on track to achieve these?
• Are they working towards a promotion?
• Do they want to take on a particular project?
• What needs to happen before they (your boss) can be promoted or considered for the project they want to do? I.e. do they need funding, accomplished milestones for the company?

Hidden motives or ulterior motives

This one can seem a little tricky, but as women, we are actually good at seeing someone’s ulterior motives. Our challenge can be seeing it in a situation or relationship we’re close to. Here’s what helps us. Think of a situation where you were the third party, a girlfriend’s new bestie, that you knew was not what they seemed. A friend’s significant other who’s ulterior motive was crystal clear to you, OR how about your kid who’s attempting to hide what they’re actually up to.

Have that scenario in mind? Good, from this perspective answer the following questions to the best of your ability.

• Identify if they care about the quality of work or do they care more that it looks good to others i.e. their boss?
• This can be seen typically in the type of feedback you’ve received, is it about quality, quantity, or appearance?
• Why do they approve some people or projects? What is similar in those that they approve?
• Do they take significant time during work to set up social engagements?
• Or are they all business and rarely engage socially?
• Are they driven by achievement, money, or seeing the organization reach its goals? It could be a combination but typically there is one dominant drive.
• Notice their body language how do they speak, directly making eye contact? If so does it seem odd, perhaps a bit odd like they’re staring?
• Do they seem antsy, shift or move around or uncomfortable in direct conversations?
• Do they take any conversation and bring it back to a particular topic?
• Or do you feel a little negative or that there is something off putting in their energy?

Now how do you win favor?

This will take some time, but not too long, and it’s not hard. Make a note once you start putting even a few of these in place you’ll notice a shift in how they connect with you. It may be subtle but you should start noticing something within a few days or weeks.

5 Easy Things You can do to win favor, build rapport

The goal is to build a feeling of commonality so that you are thought of with emotional fondness when opportunities arise.

1. Smile when you interact with them, no matter how you feel, smile, it will do two things help you feel better and help others to feel connected to you. When you smile others see you as popular. If you don’t feel like smiling then practice in a mirror. This is one of the most important things for others to feel connected to you. It will help them feel a sense of connection unconsciously. There may be habits and things to work on internally so that this feels more natural and like it comes genuinely from inside. I address that very thing in future articles, training and coaching. I’ll let you in on a little secret, getting your joy back is not only easy and effective, but it’s fun too.

2. Body Language — using open body language is key, not crossing your arms when you gesture use an open hand especially when indicating a direction. This helps others to sense that you’re an inviting and inclusive person. A key aspect of connecting with someone is to be able to reflect them, mirror them.

“People like people who are like themselves or how they’d like to be” — Tony Robbins

We connect visually and style is an important part of nonverbal communication Tony has helped a lot of people achieve exactly what they want in life. Connecting with others is key, one of his seminars he addresses rapport, building favor with people he states, “Style is more important than substance initially”

Three easy ways to effectively Mirror someone

Effective easy to implement tools to compel someone with Mirroring:

Voice Inflections — Think of someone who’s voice or speaking pattern really didn’t match yours. How did you feel? By the same token your audience cannot connect well someone who’s vocal speed, intonation, volume and pitch are off-putting. When you want to win someone’s favor listen to their speech pattern and match it. One other tip: mirror the words they use when they express something they’re excited about.

Word of Caution — the exception to this is if they have an accent. Unless it’s natural to you don’t imitate their accent. This will automatically do the opposite of what you want.

Persona — Match your audience’s energy, posture, gestures, nodding, and facial expressions. And one more huge way to mirror someone and connect with them. Don’t be obvious about it but

Breathing — is key to connecting with someone, match their pace and where their breath is coming from. This is subtle and effective. They will feel connected to you quickly.

3. Touch- It may seem like there are some dangers with this one and you’re right there can be some dangers here. So the easiest way to connect with a light touch is to watch how they interact with others. Do they connect with a touch? What do they do, touch an elbow, shoulder, forearm? Note how they shake hands. These are good to know for connection and building favor.

Two more things that are valuable to build favor.

4. Gifts — if your boss is someone who responds to gifts, most do, get them something. The easiest thing to start with is a card, thank them for something others typically don’t. That they gave you a job, this is great to do on boss’s day. Include a gift card to Starbucks if they like coffee or to their favorite lunch spot or the movies. Keep it simple, and do it just because. It will have an impact.

5. Gratitude — This one is very close to gifts, but it’s a mindset and way of approaching daily tasks and meetings. When appropriate give credit to your boss for their contribution, this can easily be done in conversations with other employees. This will get back to your boss, the appreciation will help them feel connected to you.

These tools will make a huge difference in how you’re perceived. Implement them and you’ll see a drastic improvement quickly. Once I put these in place and started to bring them to work on a daily basis I started having favor, and seeing things change. This is one of a few things I changed which had a drastic impact on my work life and the opportunities available to me. I did get promoted into a management role and loved taking on a leadership position.

Now to finish the story of the life-altering thing that my husband told me. He said, for where I was at the division and that company they were not going to promote me no matter how much I accomplished, because they saw me as the Goose that was laying the golden eggs, they saw no advantage in promoting me. I was making the company more money in this position, I was doing the work of a manager basically and they weren’t paying me a matching salary so they were also saving money. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true. I had confirmation that I saw with my own eyes.