You want to get promoted at work in 2020... how are you going to make that job promotion
happen?
Stay tuned, because in this video I'm going to give you the six steps you need to take
to get promoted at work.
Hello and welcome back to my channel where I help you slay your career and cultivate
the successful life that you want.
One of the most common career goals that I've heard for next year is to get promoted at
work and that is why I'm making this video.
I do have a prior version, but there's a couple of twists and caveats going into the next
decade that I really want to feature.
Because especially if you have been working to get promoted and it hasn't happened for
you yet, there might be a couple of tweaks and strategies that you need to implement
in order to get that promotion next year.
So if you're ready click that like button, and let's jump right into it.
The first thing that you need to do is make sure that you have the right people on your
side and in your corner.
If you've been watching my channel for a while, you know I am a big fan of the slogan: Success
is not solitary.
If the things that you did on your own, like working really hard and getting really good
results, were the only things that you needed to do in order to get the promotion, you already
would have gotten it.
And you wouldn't be watching this video right now.
While it kind of breaks my introvert heart, we've really do need to cultivate relationships
with people, and especially with the right people, if we want to get promoted.
Now this doesn't have to be anything sinister or scheming or anything that just makes us
feel like we're being inauthentic or outside of ourselves.
But what you need to do if you do want to get promoted is you need to identify who is
actually going to make the decision and who are the influencers of the decision.
It might be that your manager makes the decision.
Perhaps you have a review committee.
Perhaps you have a practice community that actually does a regular calibration.
The actual decision maker is really going to be something that is unique to you, so
you need to figure out who was actually making the decision to either promote you or to put
you up for the promotion.
Next, you need to identify who can actually influence that decision to get you the promotion.
Is it your boss's boss?
Is it your team members?
Is it a manager from another department?
Figure out the people that could be saying positive things to get you a little bit closer
to your promotion.
Hopefully, these are all people that you already have an existing relationship with.
Before I move into the next step, I do want to caveat something because many times the
decision maker is actually your direct manager, and I know that especially a lot of the women
that I work with struggle to get the support of their manager to get this next step in
their career.
And in order to be really successful here, you need to transform that.
These steps are really going to help, but if it is a flawed or a problematic relationship,
it is going to require some deeper attention.
And if that's where you're at, let me know because if there is enough interest, I will
make a video that focuses entirely on how to improve your relationship with your boss
to get promoted.
Assuming that your network of advocates, your decision makers, and your influencers are
all people that you know and have a positive relationship, you're going to move into step
two, which is to communicate your intent.
Does a goal even exist if we don't share it with other people?
I've heard so many anecdotal stories about people, especially women, that have been working
their butts off to get promoted and their manager didn't even realize that they were
trying to get a promotion.
And that has literally been the thing that has actually stopped them from getting to
the next level of their career.
For some reason, their manager just saw that they were completely overachieving and working
all of the time for fun.
Don't let this happen to you.
It is a very simple and straightforward fix.
Make it obvious to your decision makers and to your key influencers that you want to promotion.
The first person to know that you want a promotion should be your manager.
If you're a manager doesn't know, they can't do their job and helping you get to that next
level.
Sharing your goal with influencers within your network of advocates is also going to
be very helpful.
Because when they know that you're actually working to get that promotion, they may consciously
or subconsciously go out of their way to actually advocate and evangelize for you.
For example, if you let an influencer know that you are trying to get to the next level,
they may just actually send an email to your boss letting them know how instrumental you
have been in the project success for something that you were collaborating on.
And look, I know it can be really scary to tell people that you want to get a promotion,
especially if you've been working towards a promotion for a while and you haven't gotten
it, but truly no one can help you if you don't actually name the goal.
So take the steps that you need to make sure that the right people could have the right
influence and make the right decisions know that this is a goal that you have in the next
12 months.
The next step is to make sure that you're focused on the right things.
One of the traps I've seen way too many ambitious professionals fall into is they start overachieving
on all of the things when they want to get to the next level, except the things that
they're overachieving on aren't demonstrating their ability and their readiness to get to
the next level.
Now, if you're putting your hand up and volunteering for every task and activity that needs to
be done by your team, maybe you're proving yourself to be a good team player, but is
that a prerequisite for leadership?
Being a good team player?
Really one of the most important things that you're going to be as a leader is being strategic
with your effort, and the effort of your team.
If you are actually trying to get promoted into a managerial position and that starts
now.
And especially for my friends in tech, this is probably going to include identifying a
high impact project for you.
This is going to be a project that drives a business outcome, and is either going to
increase profitability or increase revenue.
Or, ideally, it's going to do a little bit of both.
Take a look around you and what could actually be improved.
What are the gaps and specifically what are the gaps that you can fill?
And even better, what gaps are you uniquely qualified to fill?
Being proactive and taking leadership on an initiative is going to demonstrate your readiness
for the next role.
The more that your high impact project (or HIP as I like to call it) allows you to demonstrate
your readiness for the next level, the better.
The other aspect of this is having a conversation with your manager, or human resources, or
whoever has the information in terms of what criteria is actually being looked at in order
to get the promotion that you're going for.
For example, if you're trying to go up a ladder on the rung, what criteria, what makes that
decision?
If you're trying to step into a leadership role, what are they looking for in a leader?
The more that you know about the assessment criteria for the promotion, the more that
you're going to be able to demonstrate that you have all of the criteria, skills, experience,
and superstar traits of the person that they want in that role.
And please, please, please, for the love of God, stay away from the office housework that
so many people fall to when they're actually trying to make the uplevel now.
Next, you need to commit and you need to own your growth.
One of the things that I hear so much, and this is from ambitious professionals at small
companies, medium sized companies, and absolutely huge, gigantic enterprise organizations: that
they're not getting the support that you need from their manager or from their organization
to get promoted at work.
While it would be really, really nice if every manager just focused on helping their team
achieve the next step, and if every organization had gigantic professional development programs
and budgets to help you get the training, the knowledge and the expertise that you need
to get to that next step in your career, it's just not the way that the world is.
And this is one of the things that I actually think has shifted substantially in the workforce,
especially over the past 10 years.
Where you really could rely on your employer to give you professional growth opportunities.
Now it's something that you actually really need to figure out on your own.
Do scope out your company to see if there is trainings, if there's a professional development
budget, if there is allocations to go to conferences, have the conversation with your manager to
see if there is any mentorship or coaching that they can give you.
But also be very proactive in terms of your career growth.
If you weren't showing up and investing in yourself first, you really can't expect anyone
else to do so.
And that actually leads me into the next step, which is making sure that you have the right
support in place.
When we think about support for our professional success, we often think about our partners,
our friends, or being able to text our mom in the middle of the day when we're having
a professional meltdown.
But support really needs to go deeper than that.
And the great thing is in this virtual world, there are so many different places to get
it.
You can connect with virtual communities on LinkedIn, here on YouTube, on Facebook, and
if you are an ambitious woman in a male dominated industry who really wants to connect with
the community, working to elevate and accelerate their careers, I would love to have you in
the Strive Squad, which is my totally free community over on Facebook where I actually
post regularly.
It's all exclusive content and I even host a weekly live Q and A weekly for free in the
Strive Squad.
If you are interested, I will leave a link to join this Strive Squad in the description
bar below.
Now I actually have one more tip for you and that is to make sure that you are making yourself
stand out.
If you blend in at work- if you don't stand out at work - even if the perfect opportunity
and the perfect promotion came available, no one would think of you to step into it.
And you need to make sure that you are dodging that ditch.
So if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to my channel, because my next video is entirely
focused on tips and strategies to help you stand on at work.
So when that promotion opportunity comes open, you are first to mind and an absolute shoe-in.
I would love to know, what promotion are you working for right now?
Let me know in the comments down below.
And if you haven't already, I would love to take this opportunity to ask you to like this
video if you did enjoy it and you found it helpful.
Not only does it let me know to make more videos like this, it also lets YouTube know
that this is a video of that maybe someone else should see, and that really helps my
channel.
Sending you a big virtual high five for taking this time to invest in yourself, your professional
growth, and for being unapologetically ambitious.
And I would also like to thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video.
I really hope that the six steps that I provided are really helpful in helping you achieve
the next step in your career.
That's it for this video.
I will see you in the next one!
Bye for now.