New Year New Promotion
Getting Promoted in 2022
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Happy New Year! I hope you all had a nice and relaxing holiday, and truly got the chance to either unwind, reflect and reset, and spend time with loved ones. It’s the start of a new year, which means many of us are putting together personal and professional goals for the year in hopes of setting ourselves up for wins and successes.
To kick off the year, I’ve been doing some check in calls with former clients, friends and colleagues to better understand where they are in their career and what’s on their mind for their professional development for the year and the number one topic that came up was, “how do I get promoted?”
In some respects, this isn’t surprising. We all want to be compensated and accurately represented for the work that we do and the impact that we make. We also all have aspirations for growth and development. Furthermore, in each case, every single individual I spoke with who voiced this concern in my mind is someone who is on average, significantly more career-driven than the most employees. It’s not a shocker that any of these individuals would want to know about what it takes to expand their scope, make more money, or accelerate their career growth.
But digging into this and trying to find the nuance, it also brings to light something else. In each scenario, each individual in my mind, was someone that was diligent, hard-working, proactive, and a self-starter. If they were struggling to understand the promotion and performance evaluation process, or were unsure about what it took to get to the next level, what does that say about the actual process, or for the rest of us who don’t fit into that bucket?
Why Are Promotion Criteria So Hard to Understand?
This is not a surprise to me. Having worked at large companies, gotten and missed on promotions numerous times, and worked with companies on revamping their performance management processes, I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had over the years with employees of all tenures and levels who struggle with understanding the performance evaluation process and how to actually get promoted.
It sounds like many other employees struggle with this too. Take this finding From The Great Place to Work Study:
“Among the 100 Best Companies, 75% of employees believe promotions go to those who best deserve them. That may sound high, but it ranks as the third-lowest of all 58 items we assess.”
Generally speaking, frustrations and concerns of employees with the promotion process fall into a number of buckets:
The process is not communicated clearly or articulated - This happens in companies large and small but tends to be more prevalent in smaller companies who are in high growth and haven’t had the time or focus to document processes. Larger companies by their very nature do have a formal process or approach (you can read about some here and here)
The process and criteria are communicated but its still unclear - This happens a lot in larger or more established companies who by their very nature of being larger and more established, clearly have a process and guidelines, but for a number of reasons, many employees feel left in the dark or unsure about how it actually works.
Your Manager isn’t taking responsibility for people development - There are a number of important people who play a critical role in the promotion and performance evaluation process. But the one you probably have the most direct contact with is your direct manager or supervisor. If they are not talking about the process, having conversations with you about your career development, or going out of their way to provide coaching and context-driven feedback, chances are you aren’t getting told about how performance evaluations and promotions work.
It seems really arbitrary and driven by relationships - This one is one of the most common frustrations that employees have with the evaluation and promotion process. There’s kernels of truth in it (you can’t get promoted if people don’t know you or believe you’re capable of being promoted) but I think this stems from when employees look at the criteria and don’t see how knowing people or being well-liked fits in what what the criteria says.
I’m not getting any feedback - This comes up alot where an employee will get told that they’re doing “great” or their “on track’ but there’s never any clarification of what that means or what happens next.
Here’s the rub: The requirements and process for getting promoted in large organizations is much more subjective and more art less science than most leaders and would ever openly want to admit to their employees. This is not meant to be a criticism or a knock on leaders or HR managers, but rather, speaks to the difficulty of finding truly objective and bias free ways to reward and compensate employees by aligning a combination of metrics that measure business outcomes, align with company values, and are consistent with the future needs of the business and market.
Furthermore, even when companies do come up with some kind of process and evaluation criteria, the reality that most people pragmatically understand but don’t love to hear is that not every person who deserves to be promoted is going to get promoted. Business constraints (budget, headcount, market needs) play a role in these decisions, and in many cases, limit the amount of people who can actually get promoted even when they have made a great case, have the support of their manager and leaders and are beloved by their peers. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that sometimes other really crappy things, mostly out of the control of the individual employee also get in the way of a truly objective and straight forward promotion path, such as politics, subjective opinions, org changes, etc.
As a result, it’s a lot easier for people to tip toe around it, speak in platitudes “we look for people who demonstrate ownership” or update the company powerpoint deck which outlines the process and the “leveling guide” and share it out in an email and say “See? we’re communicating the process!” as opposed to fundamentally addressing the elephant in the room which is that most promotion processes aren’t perfect, are flawed, and have inherent bias especially towards women and underrepresented minorities.
What You Can Start Doing Today To Get Promoted This Year
I’ve spent a lot of words in this post about the doom and gloom around promotions, but I know that it’s probably not helpful to those of you who actually want to get promoted this year so I promise to leave you with some advice. If you’re looking for some actionable steps to take, here’s where you can start:
1)Find and CommunicateYour Why - This should seem rather obvious, but if you want to get promoted make sure you actually understand why you want to get promoted. This is for two reasons. First, intrinsically , if you have a why for getting promoted it helps take ownership of the process, versus tying yourself to an extrinsic measure of success (which it still may be.) Make sure it’s what you truly want and that you’re willing to put in the effort for it, or else its just going to feel empty. Second, you’ll eventually need to make the case to a lot of other people, outside of your manager and if you can’t come up with a great reason for yourself, its going to be a lot harder to convince others (which you will have to do)
2)Talk to your peers who recently got promoted - Again, this is probably obvious but we’re starting with low hanging fruit because it’s the easiest and lowest lift. While promotions may be ambiguous, it’s probably not like it’s never happened in your team, organization or company. Talk to peers who are close to you who recently got promoted and learn about their process, the steps they took, how it happened, what they learned etc. This won’t be perfect, but I bet you’ll get a better sense just from talking to a handful of peers who have gone through the process.
3)Get the Information and Review it With Your Manager - Your company, somewhere has the performance evaluation process documented. It may even have formal criteria, or in very large companies it may break that out by business unit, function or organization. Regardless, find the material, read it, and then schedule time with your manager to talk through it and to clarify the roles and responsibilities. One of the biggest mistakes employees make is that they don’t take ownership of the process and drive it forward.
4)Tell Your Manager and Update your Career Plan - While you’re talking to your manager, if you want to get promoted this year, start the conversation now if you haven’t already. Assuming the conversation goes well, make sure to update your career development plan to highlight that this is a goal. Having things written down and on paper makes it more clear, and also may come in handy when it comes time for the actual evaluation process.
5)Track metrics and outcomes and share them - Having a plan is great, but making sure you keep it updated with supporting documentation is even more important. This is another place where most employees trip up, or struggle. Working in corporate means practicing internal marketing and self-advocacy, this can be incredibly difficult for people to do but is critical to making sure your work is represented fairly and accurately. Start documenting your work and the outcomes you’re hitting, and constantly share them with your manager throughout the year so they are aware of it. Eventually, they’re going to have to use this to make the case for you to be promoted, and if you’re keeping them aware all along the better chance you have at making this happen. One way to do this that I’ve done successfully and have advised countless others to do is to build a promotion walking deck. This deck has a brief bio, your background, the key projects you are working on, the impact you are delivering and maybe a few quotes from some peers. Having this prepared and vetted with your manager is going to make their life significantly easier. I
6)Build your Hype Team - Many opportunities in your career will come from rooms you are never in and in conversations you aren’t a part of. Unless you have the support and sponsorships of people in those room, it’s going to be very hard to get positive outcomes from those conversations. If you’re hoping to get promoted, you need to start building support with other influential leaders and at a minimum, your cross-functional stakeholders who you work with most often. Take the time to build your coalition of supporters. There needs to be other people who are coming to your manager or leaders telling them that you do exceptional work, and that not promoting you would be a huge mistake. These individuals can be a mix of other leaders, influencers and power players in your organization, as well as any cross functional partners who work with you closely or who are well respected by your leadership.
Conclusion
If this seems like a lot, it is, and that’s because self-advocacy starts with yourself and the work that you put in to build awareness for your work. In the coming weeks, I’m going to write a much longer and more detailed guide on how to get promoted, but in the meantime, this (along with the resources below) should serve as a great starting point. And with that, Happy 2022!
What I Read
Here are some resources and a deeper dive on the promotion process
How You Promote People Can Make or Break Your Culture (HBR) - “Promotions are highly personal. At their core, they are both relationship-driven and among the most important indicators of how well leaders’ actions align to the company’s stated values. A solid promotions process allows leaders to elevate each employee to their full potential — while showing the company what type of results and behaviors are valued.”
Google’s Performance Management Practices (Qulture) - “We need people to know how they’re doing, and we’ve evolved what might at first seem like a zanily comples system that shows them where they stand. Along the way, we learned some startling stuff. We’re still working on it, as you’ll see, but I feel pretty confident we’re headed in the right direction. And with any luck I can save you some of the headaches and missteps we had along the way.”
Promote With Pragmitism (Nick Ciubotariu) - “Is the candidate ready for promotion, or not? The litmus test is pretty simple: are they consistently performing at the next level or higher in their particular discipline, and in line with the company's values and leadership principles? If the answer is yes, the candidate is promo-ready.”
Your Company’s Promotion Process is Broken (Medium) - “Without inclusion, women and people of color who have made it through the front door of a company will never make it upstairs, where the power lives. Access is only the first step in a long road of ensuring that equality isn’t at the expense of the equity that sets all employees up for success.”
7 Reasons Why Good Workers Don’t Get Promoted - “So what’s the point of detailing all these dreary circumstances? It’s to let you know that sometimes you’re just in the wrong place. This list can help you identify that fact. And if that’s where you are, you may need to move to a different department or employer in order to move forward in your career.”
Why You Didn’t Get That Promotion (HBR) - “Getting passed over for a promotion can be disheartening and even humiliating. Whether you thought you deserved the job or were promised it, no one likes hearing that they didn’t meet the mark.”