“It takes more than just fancy flying”

Top Gun

After coaching many of my own team for promotion and evaluating many others on promotion committees, it takes more than just hard work and time in your role to get you promoted. Here are seven strategies that will improve your chances.

1. Visibility

Can your boss’s peers, their boss and other members of the promotion committee talk about what you do in detail and recognise you are ready for a promotion?

If not,

• What stretch tasks can you ask your boss for that will give you visibility?
• Is there something you have done in your department that would be valuable to other departments?
• What internal events can you attend to build a relationship with your boss’s peers?
• What else?

2. Performance

Have you a track record of high performance over the last few years? If not, what do you need to do to make this happen?

3. Sponsors

What senior clients and partners in technology can talk positively about what you have done for them?

4. Impact

Are you having the impact that the next level requires? – Take leaders at the next level that you admire and look at the impact they are having on the company, their clients and their team. Now how can you have the same impact?

5. Professional Skills

Do you have the professional skills to survive at the next level? I have seen people who have been promoted and struggled to compete at the next level. Their performance, reputation, compensation and career all suffer.

It is great to get promoted, but you need to feel you can compete at the next level. Take the same leaders you admire and work out, what is the gap in your professional skills. Now find help to bridge that gap and continue to develop those skills until you feel comfortable.

6. Saboteur

Who could talk badly of you? – Repair and build a strong relationship with these individuals.

7. External Recognition

I have only seen one promotion candidate that I searched for on Google and found he was having an impact on the industry as a whole. Out of a high number of senior promotion candidates, this was the one that really stood out from the crowd.

You can read about Joe at – Create Exciting Opportunities by Building Your External Brand

Now, what external impact can you have?