Winning the promotion game

You are frustrated. You feel like you know everything you need to know, and your work is good, but somehow you don’t get promoted. I’ll tell you why. Getting promoted is a game, and no one has told you the rules.

Those people getting promoted? They were born knowing the rules. They know instinctively how to act so that other people who were born knowing the rules say, “that ones ready for promotion…”

And you, you don’t know the rules, and no one promotes you, and no one really tells you why, often because they can’t put their finger on why, and they say things like, “They’re not ready”.

I’m going to help you look ready. Yes, ‘look’. Because getting promoted is a confidence game, and you need to project confidence. Until the game changes, learn to play it as well as anyone.

Of course you can decide you don’t want to play at all — and that’s fine. My decision is to play the game as well as I can in order to get promoted (that’s in addition to being good at my job of course) as then I can help people coming after me succeed on merit as much as possible.

I decided to write this blog post after knowing three people who’s careers had stalled a bit. The issue with getting promoted is often that it is a consensus decision — your boss will get input from his or her peers and people that work with you. This makes the issue of getting promoted not just about ability but also about behaviours. There are often ways of behaving and acting that mark you as ‘ready’ for promotion, but so often people are blithely unaware of this. Its all about being able to do your job well, but also exuding an air of competence, confidence and maturity. In other words, act like you have already been promoted. And if you think this sounds like the appearance of being competent is more important than actually being competent, then according to this study, you’d be right.

So, in no particular order, here are my tips to help you look ready…

The main lesson to learn — it doesn’t matter if people don’t like you. It took me years to learn this. I really wanted to be liked, until it dawned on me I didn’t ‘like’ a lot of colleagues. I admired them, I respected them, but I didn’t ‘like’ them. I realised that if I didn’t like them, why did I care if they liked me? I had loads of friends, I didn’t need more — but I did want to do good work, and now I could defend it without worrying if I was being nice or if people liked me. It was liberating. I stopped smiling too much, I held my ground in meetings, and I stopped being afraid to hold strong opinions and argue my point. However, something interesting happened. When I let go of that need to be liked, it didn’t stop me being likeable, because I still acted respectfully and made sure people understood why I was dong things.

This was the start of me gaining a lot of confidence. I then started to think about how I dressed. I know this sounds horribly superficial, but its often true. Clothes really do changes people’s minds — there is even a scientific term for this — enclothed cognition.

Look at how the people more senior to you dress and consider how it differs from how you dress. One of the most successful product managers I know told me that one day he suddenly realised he was still wearing comedy slogan t shirts and jeans, and his peers who’d got promoted were just that little bit smarter — so he changed his style.

Be careful with this. The product manager I’m talking about still dresses in a quirky, stylish way that reflects who he is. You may find that you are dressing one way at work and a completely different way the rest of the time. I used to do this, and then I realised the gulf in how I was dressing was a mirror of the gulf between who I was and who I was pretending to be at work. There were a lot of reasons I didn’t like that job in the end, but they all stemmed from my inability to be authentic.

Think about meetings less about a place where you go to share information and agree stuff, and more as a battleground where you have to prove yourself. Prepare as you would for battle. Who will be in the meeting? What objections or comments to your designs might they have? Prepare information that will help you bat away these objections. Remind yourself why the original decisions were made and what the background was so you can crisply defend yourself if the need arises.

Arm yourself with figures — ‘4 out 5 people in user research missed the button’, ‘we saw a 20% uptick in pages viewed’. That sort of thing. If you haven’t got the figures, go and get them. Do research and experiments and base your decisions on evidence instead of opinion. Its harder (although unfortunately not impossible) to argue with.

Project confidence. Don’t sit in silence at the start of the meeting. Make small talk, ask people if they had a good weekend, give interesting answers that can lead to more conversation if people ask you. “It was chilled and busy! but good! ahahaha” = bad answer.

Own the space. Consider how you are sitting or standing and open yourself out, don’t hunch or look small. Have a look at this TED talk about power poses. They work surprisingly well.

Hold eye contact. Don’t smile too much. That doesn’t mean not smile at all, but use it judiciously — know when to be warm and when to be serious.

Try not to say umm or aah to much, and watch out for your inflection. Don’t do that thing where statements become questions because you are raising your voice at the end of a sentence. Don’t apologise for what you are about to say or sound unsure. Speak slowly and clearly, and with conviction.

Now I’m going to give you my ninja superpower. Say what you’ve got to say and then stop talking. Simple as that. Don’t qualify, don’t apologise, don’t keep saying the same thing in different ways until you get a response. You probably don’t even need to smile. Let someone else fill the silence.

If you find yourself talking in circles, back tracking or feeling like you need to say something — beware. Someone is probably using that ninja superpower on you.

Try not to let someone repeat what you say and take credit for it. (Has someone come up with a catchy name for this phenomenon yet?). This is bloody difficult to stop, and has happened to so many people I know, even my most high powered, super smart, confident friend-in-New-York, Rachel. And if it happens to her it can happen to anyone. I’ve tried repeating what I’ve said and pointing out I’ve said it, but you can unfortunately look a bit petty. Another option is to brief a colleague to back you up, and if Bob repeats what you say and gets all the acclaim, they say, ‘yes, Jane’s idea was great, wasn’t it Bob?’.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for promotion. Unfortunately, sitting waiting to be recognised for all your hard work often doesn’t work very well. Make a case based on your work, the improvements they have made and ideally the additional revenue that has resulted. Look your boss in the eye, ask for that promotion. And then stop talking.

Update

If you’d like some help with influencing, persuading and inspiring, I can really recommend this course https://www.eventbrite.com/e/upfront-confidence-workshop-tickets-27513880758 from the amazing Lauren Currie