3 Common Misconceptions That Are Holding You Back From Your Next Promotion

The following is adapted from Promotions Made Easy by Stacy Mayer.

What is that one missing piece in your career development?

There is a chasm between where you are right now and the leader you want to become — a chasm that you need to cross first, but might not even know is there. You sense it because sometimes it’s right in front of your face. It’s when you get a glowing performance review but not a promotion. It’s when your colleague’s title changes but yours doesn’t. It’s when you receive a special project but no additional compensation.

This article gives you a step to the missing piece. I’m going to show it to you, and you’ll be able to cross that chasm. In the blink of an eye, you’ll be on the other side.

And it is glorious.

I was a cookie-cutter corporate coach for many years. I taught leadership skills, time management, and things like that — things that made my clients better managers. And they did become better, more effective managers. But what they also got was more work and more responsibility — and they didn’t get the recognition or the larger voice at their organization. They didn’t get the “seat at the table” that their better management skills were supposed to bring. I felt disappointed, like my clients did, that more leadership skills didn’t result in leadership positions.

As a coach, I didn’t just want corporate women to become better managers. I wanted them to get recognized for their talents and hard work. Get promotions! A seat at the table! I wanted them to feel fulfilled.

So I started to coach on more than typical “leadership skills.” I realized that being the hardest worker doesn’t lead to a promotion, but…

deliberately managing your career, and your life, does.

I taught women to take charge of their promotion, instead of being led by their boss. And as I helped more and more clients reach their dream positions, some of them reaching the C-suite and beyond, patterns started to emerge.

Through this work I uncovered a step-by-step process that takes corporate women to the executive level. These are women who have gone from underappreciated, under-recognized, and underpaid to becoming a valued member of the leadership team.

I want to share with you a few misconceptions my clients held when we first met that were holding them back from reaching that next level of success.

#1: My company already has a professional development plan in place for me.

This is a super common misconception. Many people tell me that their company already has a professional development plan and they’re working through it with human resources as we speak. But things aren’t quite moving as fast as they would like them to.

Many organizations have a mission to develop talent. They truly want to support their employees and give them opportunities. Perhaps you have been tagged as a high potential leader, which is great. Maybe they have even sent you to a few leadership courses. This is also great. But at the end of the day, you still aren’t getting promoted. And that is because of one thing:

Organizations care about their own bottom line.

Your organization cares more about you hitting your targets in your current position than giving you a promotion. They care about you doing a great job in your role. And getting you into a higher-level executive position is simply not their top priority. You are the only person who cares about you.

Start to think about that. I really want you to understand, especially if you’re relying on your company’s professional development plan to get ahead. If you’re relying on your performance reviews to get you to that next level, you’re still going to be sitting exactly where you are wondering what the heck happened.

#2: I am working with my boss to get promoted.

Remember, you’re the only person who cares about you getting promoted — not your boss, and not anyone else at your organization. And that’s a good thing. It’s okay. So just know that it’s your job. It’s your job to put yourself out there. If you want to be in a higher-level leadership position, if you feel like you want to get the recognition that you deserve, if you want to get paid for your ideas instead of the hours that you put in at work, if you want to build out a stronger team, if you want to create boundaries, if you want to have success once you make it into that position, it is up to you.

My client Sharon is a finance manager at a medium-size company in Canada. Her boss, the CEO, genuinely wants her to become the CFO someday. But it’s up to her to own what that position is going to look like. And she is so lucky that she has a boss who is willing to create that for her. But if she doesn’t ask for it, if she doesn’t lay out the plan, if she doesn’t create the org chart, he isn’t going to create it for her.

So that is your job. You need to care about your professional development and set yourself up for success.

#3: I have been actively seeking a promotion for a while now.

Have you been working to get better at your job by putting in more hours and more of your energy? Then you haven’t actually been going for a promotion. This one might not be fun to hear. You might be saying, “Yes, I am. I have done everything I can do.”

Yet your actions don’t match I really want you to start asking yourself, Am I really going for a promotion, or am I just spending time and focusing on my job and making sure that I’m good at my job and putting in the hours for my job?

Both are valid career choices, but only one gets you promoted into the executive suite.

My mission is to bring more diversity to the leadership table by getting 1,000 powerhouse corporate women promoted into senior executive leadership positions each and every year worldwide.

I created the Executive Ahead of Time group coaching intensive in 2020 as a way to move closer to that mission.

Executive Ahead of Time is a step-by-step promotion strategy and executive coaching program that helps established corporate leaders move toward their next promotion with ease and have success once they get there.

Now with every woman that I coach to become a corporate badass, they not only land that executive level promotion, but they have the skills to thrive in the executive suite.

For more advice on how to make your way to the C-suite, you can find on Promotions Made Easy Amazon.

Stacy Mayer is a Certified Executive Coach, a Promotion Strategist, a mother, a wife, and the creator of Executive Ahead of Time™, a program she founded to help women get promoted into the executive suite on their terms.

Her vision is to bring more diversity to leadership by empowering women to take ownership of their careers and claim a real voice at the table.