How to Get on the Same Page with Your Manager About That Promotion
It’s common for many to be working towards a promotion. But does your manager know what you’re aiming for? Use these steps to get on the same page and make that next step a shared goal and not something to fight for.
Communicate Your Goals
The most important step of any step along your career growth path is to communicate your goals to anyone who may have a stake in that path. This should include your direct manager but it also involves others further up your leadership chain and mentors or advocates that you work with in your network. Your direct manager is going to (ideally) help you make advancements in your direct team or group. But your next career step could come from an adjacent team in your organization, or even an entirely separate company. The unfortunate truth about any career is that you aren’t the one that makes decisions about whether you get that next role or title. You can influence and persuade but almost always you won’t be in the room where it happens. By keeping these key individual informed on your objectives, they can speak up on your behalf at the opportune moments.
Make it a Shared Objective
The trap that most people fall into that they demand a promotion or job change like they’re the bad guy in a hostage situation. You’ve suddenly taken your current job captive and say to your employer “give me the promotion I want or else!” Usually that means your going to be leaving your current job to find a new one somewhere else. You’ve positioned yourself as an enemy across the table from your employer and if the starts haven’t aligned, they won’t be able to provide what you want.
If you instead approach your employer and show them the vision of what you want from you career and simultaneously show them how it aligns with the goals of the organization, you set yourself up as a collaborator and it becomes in everyone’s best interest to work towards the goal together.
Prioritize the Benefit to the Team and the Company
The best way to do this is to prioritize communicating the benefits to your company. If you can show how the growth in your responsibilities and role will similarly grow the business, the teams, and the company, it makes the case easy for those who will have to go bat for you at the right time. Tell a story to your manager or potential new boss about how exactly things will play out with your new responsibilities. The more concrete you make this, the more likely you will paint a picture that will last in the mind of your manager.
Share Your Personal Motivation
It’s important to also share your personal motivation. If this next role is a key step towards the ultimate role or position you are looking to land, that is important information to share with your personal advocates. If you are really looking to boost your salary to help buy your first house or help pay for your kid’s schooling, that is relevant. It shows that you’ve thought about this and you aren’t just after a title change. If you just want to make more money for bragging rights or an inflated ego, that might not be as convincing an argument and you may want to think of a more positive way to spin that particular case.
Create a Plan
Often the biggest challenge in making the next steps for any career is the lack of a clear plan. If you don’t clearly understand where you stand in terms of your capabilities within your function and if you can’t place yourself relative to the requirements for the new role you’re looking for, you’ll never be able to convince anyone that you’re ready for that promotion.
Establish the Goal Posts
In order to create this plan, you first need to know exactly what the milestones are. If you want to be a director in your organization, you need to know exactly what the responsibilities and expectations of a director are. Well established companies will have published versions of these skillsets and capabilities and will make the next steps much easier.
If you are at a startup or less established company, you’ll need to first agree on what these skillsets are. One day, your manager could see a director as someone who manages a certain amount of budget. Then when you find yourself managing that amount of budget, the requirement could be having experience manager other people leaders. If a document outlining these milestones don’t exist, create one by interviewing people across your organization as to what they see as the responsibilities for that role. Show it to your boss and get their input. Until you and your manager have a common framework to work from, you won’t get very far.
With this key step in place, you have effectively identified the destination for the next step of your career journey!
Identify Where You Are
With this framework in pace, place yourself on the map. If you don’t know where you are at the start of your journey, it doesn’t matter where you want to go because you’ll never know which way to go. In a more practical sense, showing where you are involves providing concrete evidence for the skills and capabilities you have exhibited in the past. For each expectation of the role you are shooting for, list out the projects and deliverables you have completed that demonstrate that characteristic. Like an expert attorney you are building the case for your own promotion. The more evidence you can collect and provide, the stronger your case will be.
Agree on the Gaps
The most important step in this process is agreeing on the gaps. In other words, for a given skillset or capability associated with the role you want to land, you need to know what you haven’t yet mastered or cultivated. Sometimes you may already have the skillset but you don’t have enough evidence to convince your manager or whoever in the leadership chain above you that makes the the ultimate decision.
When you think you are ready for the next step, your goal is to show that there are no gaps! Show that you are already functioning consistently at that level. If you haven’t already guessed, it’s unlikely you’ll get promoted if you’re not already exhibiting most if not all of the requirements for a given role. Most companies are hesitant to promote anyone without ample evidence that they are already functioning at that level and have some guarantee of success in the new role. Without that, they risk a premature promotion. It’s almost impossible to demote that employee back to an old role and that could result in the need to fire an otherwise valuable employee.
Wherever you are on the path, it’s critical that you and your manager agree. If you think you’re ready for that promotion and your manager has a laundry list of capabilities you presumably lack, you’re going to be frustrated and disappointed when it comes time to apply for the position or get the results of your annual review. By going through the list of job requirements line by line, you can concretely identify the gaps that your manager sees and use that to plan out the necessary actions.
Map out the Path
Now that you’ve identified where you are, where you want to go, and how far there is to go between the two locations, you can map out the path between them. This looks like creating actionable goals that will develop the needed skillsets and provide evidence to show that you have the abilities to succeed in your desired role. Make sure the goals have clear actions, metrics, deadline, and success criteria. With these outlined, you can point to them after you’ve completed the goal and unambiguously make the case for your success.
Include a Timeline
With the fog of war completely lifted from your career map, the only thing left is to establish a timeline. Let your manager know that you have gone through this process in the hopes of reaching that promotion—and all the benefits it will provide the company—by your next performance review of promotion cycle. Ask if that is a reasonable expectation—assuming you complete the goals you outlined together. If you get an answer that is avoiding the commitment, that opens you up to asking if there is anything else missing from the plan you have created together.
Timing Matters
If you’ve gone through this process a week before your annual review, it might be too late. The decisions about promotions often happen months before they are shared with employees. If you are hoping to get promoted in the next cycle, you need to have this map established at least six month prior to give your manager time to absorb the the plan and make the decision at the right time. But it’s never too early (or late) to start!
Put in the Work
This strategy assumes that you have put in the work and are not just fulfilling the expectations of your current role but exceeding them by demonstrating your readiness for the next level. If you aren’t delivering on your current job description, you’re going to have an uphill battle to try and jump to the next best thing. The good news is that this process will serve just as well to help you succeed in your current role. Establishing the map, your current location, and the destination is critical in achieving your personal and professional goals.
Follow Up
Once you’ve done all the leg work to go through this process. It’s essential to follow up consistently with your manager on your progress against the plan you have established together. Set up regular career or goal review meetings so you can demonstrate how you are deliberately working towards the objectives you agreed on together. If you happen to be straying off course, your manager will be able to correct your heading and get you back on track.
Collaboration, not Combat
In summary, if you’re working towards a potential promotion you want to make sure you’re working with your manager and not fighting them. Take the time to communicate your goals and make it concrete how those will also benefit the organization. From there you can start to map out exactly where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there!
