Many clients come to me when they feel stuck in their current role and are not able to break through the promotion barrier to get the next higher title. The most common refrain in these discussions is how others around them holding higher titles are barely able to do their jobs and how the company rewards politics over performance.
When clients complain about these unfair treatments and arbitrary practices in their organization they are ignoring that many of these successes may be doing something right. Not able to understand what that is many often resort to working even harder with the hope that this redoubled effort will tip the scales and get them the promotion they so richly deserve, even before their Herculean efforts. There IS another way!
So, what is an effective way to set yourself up for your next promotion and what are some of the strategies that work in most cases? Here is what works for my clients, with a recent object lesson:
1.Show what you can do in your higher role: Even in your current role take on something that is clearly scoped at the pay grade above your current level and make a business case to your bossand their bosson why such an initiative will benefit the organization. Develop a case based on easy, measurable, and timely objectives. For example, if your Customer Satisfaction Scores (C-Sats) and plummeting Net Promoter ScoresNPSare taking a hit turning them around would be a highly visible and noteworthy accomplishment. No one could argue with that.
2.Ask for a conditional promotion: Once your idea gets traction make a deal with your boss and their boss that if you are able to show success in this undertaking that youd consider the next promotion as an appropriate reward for making this happen. Extract this promise BEFORE you move forward; do not wait until you show your success and then ask for that promotion. Often, promises are forgotten and when others hijack away your credit by playing games its game over for YOU!
3.Assume the higher role and execute: The next step in this process is to provide a detailed plan and show how different affected functional areas and stakeholders must play a key part in contributing to this recovery. Get this role sanctioned by someone at a high-enough level so that they can empower you to lead the charge. Create role assignments across affected organizations and lead the charge to forge ahead.
4.Show initial success: Mobilizing change across an organization and then sustaining this change to show long-term results is often difficult, especially when you are charging ahead on borrowed time (and an ersatz title). What happens when success starts brewing is that those participating start rebelling because some upstart employee is helping the company move in the right direction that they themselves could not. So, what you must do is to show quick results and show that your idea has merit for long-term and sustained improvements.
5.Transition: Once you are able to show the merit of your initiative across different constituencies and demonstrate that your idea has merit ask some major domo to appoint the right guardian to take over the charge of this initiative and provide them the needed support for them to now succeed in what you already demonstrated works.
Once you have come this far and demonstrated your success in making something happen that moves the needle at the company level it is much easier to ask to finalize your already promised promotion.
An object lesson: We did this successfully at a company whose marketshare was steadily eroding and no one was taking charge of turning things around as everyone was pointing fingers outwardly. The CEO had just got fired on this and C-levels were in a state of confusion. My client as a product manager had an idea on how to deal with this problem, so he proposed a bold plan to turn things around with a novel idea under the condition that he be promoted to a director role if he succeeded in turning things around. Following the steps outlined in this blog my client was able to turn things around, often bootstrapping across his allies and network inside, in short order. He has now given the long-term charge to a C-level executive. He just got promoted on the basis of the promise he extracted from his line executives before moving past step#2. So, this does work.
Sometimes, the initiative does not even have to be this audacious. As long as what you propose is recognized as important and relevant to improve a bad situation it qualifies to be taken on as an initiative worthy of a promotion.
Good luck in YOUR promotion!
| About Author | |
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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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