You Miss 100% Of The Promotions You Don’t Ask For

You’ve put in the hard work, you’ve gone above and beyond for the team, you’ve exceeded every one of your targets, so surely that promotion is about to drop in your lap, right? Well, most likely not.

In my many years of working in the tech industry, I had only one manager who would check in with me regularly on my career progression and readiness for promotion to the next level. One.

This is very rare and in virtually every other team I’ve worked on, or heard about from clients and colleagues, the situation is a lot more like the next story I’m going to share.

I had a rather distressed young engineer reach out for career advice (let’s call her Ella). Ella was beyond fed-up with her team and was ready to leave the company. She was a very high performer, but after three years of great work, she had seen countless other less-qualified friends get promoted, while she remained at the same level. Why wasn’t she appreciated? It was time to leave, and she had come to me to advise on applying to a new company.

Hold on, not so fast, I said. My first question was what she and her manager talked about during their weekly one-on-one meetings. Ella explained it was always the same: she would step into her manager’s office and the manager would have a checklist of active tasks and bugs Ella was working on open on her screen. She would go through the list one by one and ask Ella for the status, and… that’s it. That was the extent of their communication, for three years.

My next question was what was her manager’s response when she asked about her readiness for a promotion. Ella looked confused and explained that because her manager never brought it up, she understood that meant she didn’t think Ella was performing well enough for a promotion. I shook my head very doubtful of this – it was plain as day to me that this was not an issue of underperforming but simply miscommunication.

Like Ella, her manager was an engineer at heart: very comfortable with coding complex concepts, but very uncomfortable with asking “simple” questions. If Ella kept waiting, likely nothing would change. And if she brought this attitude of waiting for promotions to drop in her lap to a new company, this would likely happen all over again.

Of course it’s not easy for most people to ask this so-called “simple” question, and so we spent our next two career coaching sessions researching, brainstorming, and role-playing until we had the question of promotion ready to go in Ella’s own words in a way she felt comfortable raising it with her manager.

Four months later, an elated Ella let me know that she was celebrating her promotion! Not only that, her manager had been relieved when Ella gently raised the question, because she herself didn’t quite know how to go about it.

I keep thinking how close the team came to losing an awesome asset, and how close Ella came to missing out on this opportunity for growth in a team that truly appreciates her, just because of a lack of communication.

Again, it’s much easier to see it from the outside – when you’re in the situation, things can feel so different.

Key Takeaway:

Don’t assume that silence means something is wrong, if you don’t ask you won’t get it.

Action Steps:

Do you know when you are due for your next promotion? If not:

1. Research your company policy (look at the employee handbook, or HR career development resources): are there some specific criteria that you need to achieve?

2. Ask your colleagues (ideally your own teammates) how they got their last promotion.

3. When you’re ready, raise the question tactfully with your manager. If you are unsure, perhaps a mentor or a career advisor can help you find the right wording that makes you feel comfortable.