On Getting Promoted
I have been on both ends of the promotion process quite a few times. What I’m about to describe is a process I follow myself as well as coach others through when planning for a promotion. If you read my article On Productivity and Professional Development then this is what I do as soon as I think I’ve become efficient at my role, but you can start sooner if you’d like.
Where I’ve been somewhere that already had a promotion process, it looked like this. Regardless, this can generally be user to get alignment, demonstrate you are ready for promotion, and act as a forcing function for everyone involved.
Here’s the stages that I go through:
- Do a gap analysis
- Make a plan to fill the gaps
- Get alignment on the plan
- Do the work / Record achievements
- Communicate achievements
- Get promoted
Gap Analysis
If you’re fortunate you will have a description of the responsibilities for each role/level within your company. Most medium+ sized companies have this at the ready. If not, then you’ll have to speak to a manager — ideally someone who would have that role reporting to them — and gather that information. If the company has ever hired for the role then some amount of expectations should exist for it — even if it’s just in someone’s head. You can ask question like:
- What are the must-have skills in someone doing that role?
- What activities do people in the role do that demonstrate proficiency?
- What are the expected deliverables for the role?
- What does success look like in the role?
Once you have a list of activities, requirements, outcomes, etc. for the target role then cross off the ones that you have demonstrated some level of proficiency for, even if it was at a previous company. This isn’t a case of “I haven’t done that, but I totally could” or “I did it once, therefore cross it off.” You don’t have to have it mastered, by any stretch, but be honest with yourself. You should be prepared to defend yourself on these judgements.
For each requirement or activity that you’ve not demonstrated a capability for, you now have a gap.
Make a Plan
Take the gaps and create goals for them. I wrote On Goal Setting and the practice described there works very well for this stage.
Each gap is an objective, and you will create goals that you can execute on to close the gap to that objective over the next 3/6/12 months. How long depends on how many gaps there are and how large the gaps are.
You should align your timeline with the cadence of the business as most companies are only able to promote people at one or two times throughout the year (typically due to financial planning). Consider that promotions are often decided well in advance of when they actually happen. Find out when those decisions are made.
Get Alignment
Now you have identified gaps and have a plan to close them. You want to get alignment on this.
Book a meeting with your manager (and possibly 1–2 more levels up, use your judgement). If you had to talk to someone to get details for the expectations of the role, then invite them too.
In the meeting, do the following:
- Walk them through your gap analysis and ask if they agree with the gaps. Let them suggest additional gaps they’ve seen.
- Walk them through your goals and ask them if they agree with them. Let them suggest goals to fill any gaps here too.
Don’t fight their suggestions for gaps or goals. You should convert their goal suggestions into SMART goals, though, lest you get saddled with trying to achieve the impossible.
You should feel comfortable being direct about your intentions here. You’re not trying to get commitment that they will guarantee a promotion, but you are trying to get promoted and validating a concrete path towards that promotion. You also want to make it clear that you are not expecting to get 100% coverage of these objectives. There’s some level of 80/20 rule to be applied. While there are certainly going to be some hard requirements, it’s still a path, and not a checklist.
Be warned: if you leave this meeting with an enormous list of new gaps and goals, that seems intractable, you should think about whether you’re too ambitious, or you’re being strung along. In all honesty, I’ve been in both situations. Validate your thinking with a reliable 3rd party.
Do the Work
This is where you do the work. Every time you make progress against one of your goals, you log the experience somewhere, in writing.
Create a recurring appointment with yourself to check in on your progress, weekly. It’s easy to get mired in everyday activities and forget to focus on the other things you need to do in order to grow.
Communicate Achievements
On some cadence, either during your 1–1s with your manager or in a weekly e-mail you send out, you should report your progress against your goals. Remember that SMART goals are measurable, so this part should be easy. If you’re progressing slower than expected, that’s a great time to get your manager to coach you or get you resources/coaching from elsewhere.
Get Promoted
You’ve reached the point where you believe you’ve sufficiently demonstrated competence in the activities forming the role you’re looking for. You understand the role and like doing the work required for it. It’s at this point where you make your case for promotion. Again, this should happen before (but not just before) promotion decisions are being made.
Schedule another meeting with the relevant management. Briefly summarize the gap analysis and the plan. Highlight the hard requirements and the more impressive goals that you’ve achieved. Talk about…
- What did you learn?
- What surprised you?
- What was harder than you thought it would be?
- Who helped you and how they helped?
(expect that your audience will reach out to those people)
You can definitely ask if they would feel comfortable advocating on your behalf, given what they’ve seen. You shouldn’t expect an answer, but you just might get one.
If you’re asked to close any additional gaps, you should avoid arguing this altogether. Instead, find out if this is a hard requirement for a promotion or if you could demonstrate it while in the role. If it’s a hard requirement for them, then this is another time where you need to consider whether you’re being strung along as it’s pretty late in the game for gate-keeping.
Either way, you should have a very short window of time to found out their decision. It’s rare to get this far in the process and receive a no.
Know this: if it doesn’t go your way, all of the data you have gathered looks amazing on a resume and you got alignment on both the gaps and the plan to close them. You can honestly tell any potential employer that…
We agreed that I did what was necessary to be promotion-ready; they just don’t have that position available for me right now.
Hope it helps.
