Corporate Adulting
Promotion and the Art of Humblebragging
I would love to say that if you work hard, do a great job and play by all the company policies and rules that you will get noticed and quickly get promoted. WRONG.
I would love to say that if you work hard, do a great job and play by all the company policies and rules that you will get noticed and quickly get promoted.
WRONG.
All those things are important. But they are simply table stakes.
Your manager may know that you are a good employee. They may know that you do a good job. However, the larger the scope of your manager’s team (and more importantly your manager’s manager), the less likely your good work is going to get noticed. In fact, if you are quietly kicking butt and taking names (and not causing problems), the more likely you are to be passed over for promotion.
I had this happen before I figured out that quietly and effectively doing my job was not enough. Several times. I eventually learned my lesson, but not before I was frustrated and angry about being what I felt was ‘passed over” for promotion. Here is a story to illustrate the point…
As a hypothetical example, let’s say I was a professional dragon-slayer, working in a department with a group of other dragon-slayers. A dragon-slaying cooperative, if you will. I was assigned dragons to go slay, and my manager stayed back at the castle, taking orders for additional dragon-slayings. Since I was a seasoned dragon-slayer, not to mention pretty resourceful, I managed to slay my own dragons, complete my required quests, dispose of the dragon remains tidily and return triumphant. Quietly and effectively.
However, the guy who sat in my manager’s office, armor singed, villagers revolting, dragons breathing fire into the manager’s office….that guy? He got promoted. Because he saved the day, in our manager’s eyes. He kicked the dragon, then raced home to get help slaying it. He was a HERO. He worked so hard (just ask him and our manager). The dragon was the fiercest in the land, ever slayed…according to him.
Of course, I was livid (in this hypothetical example). My dragon was larger, had tougher scales and breathed not just fire, but out of two heads. It even spit acid occasionally! But I was not promoted. My manager didn’t think my dragon was as hard to slay. In fact, he might have wondered where I was that whole time and why I didn’t get the dragon slain faster.
What I had failed to do was send regular reports about the challenges of dragon slaying, what we were doing about it and the small victories along the way. I realized later that I had failed to keep my manager up to date about what was going on.
I had not yet embraced the art of the humblebrag. Humblebragging is the “great balancing act of making ourselves look awesome without coming across as completely egotistic”. When you are kicking butt and taking names…you need to tell your manager a little about the challenges you are overcoming. You need to share enough that they can understand the complexities you are facing. You need to give them enough detail that they can brag on you (and by association their overall team’s prowess and their own general leadership excellence to their manager, peers and others). Believe it or not, your amazing dragon-slaying skills are something that can help your manager look good to his or her manager too.
In this specific (still hypothetical, of course) example, the lack of promotion after slaying the ferocious dragon did result in changing jobs. I was unhappy that my manager didn’t appreciate all the dragon-slaying effort I was putting out, so I moved to another team who was delighted with my dragon-slaying abilities and “knighted” me to the level I had desired to attain. And the rest is history in my career.
However, I learned an important lesson from that experience. Now that I have managed teams for many years, there are some additional cold, hard facts I can share about getting promoted.
First, your leadership normally only has a small pool of money to divvy out between all their employees. There will never be enough to go around to everyone. Also, promotion budgets are very rarely at the direct supervisor level. Most of the time, promotional budgets may be managed one or more levels above your direct supervisor.
As a leader, one of the challenges I always faced was identifying who was MOST deserving at this point and time. I would ask my direct reports, and they would make recommendations. I might ask questions about specific employees, but the larger your team gets, the less you will know what is going on in their daily dragon-slaying.
We tried to take into consideration the following:
· Whether someone really was killin’ it and should be rewarded
· Where they were in their salary range
· Whether there were any flight risks we really did not want to lose
· What we had done for them lately (in the last year or so)
Based on all those factors, we would stretch our promotion and spot bonus pool as far as possible, knowing that there would always be someone who could feel like they were not rewarded adequately. If that person was not one of our top performers, oh well. We had to be satisfied with knowing we did the best we could.
As an employee, you can increase your chances of being promoted by doing the following:
· Have Standing Meetings to Provide Updates: Along the way, provide regular updates on your work and progress. How is it going? Regular 1:1 meetings are great for this, but don’t be shy about dropping a quick note or stopping by to share breaking news every so often. Let them know some of the small victories along the way. Ask for any feedback they may have about your progress or your work.
· Communicate Issues and Plans Regularly: When problems come up, succinctly let your manager know about the challenges you are facing and what you plan to do to resolve them. I can tell you from experience, most managers don’t love to read 57 pages of forwarded emails, dislike being surprised with a sneak attack on an issue or gain ownership for an issue you should have solved.
· Do Not Let Your Manager Get Blindsided: If possible, try to address issues before they are raised to your manager or worse, your manager’s manager. Along the way, make them aware you are working the issue so they are not blindsided by a customer or another department. If it makes sense, ask them for their opinion and feedback, but retain ownership of the issue if it is something you can possibly manage.
Getting the issue off your back and onto your manager’s back is not your goal. That said, sometimes it is necessary for your manager to help you with a problem or even take it over — but that should be the exception, not the rule. I always told my team “I can’t help you if I don’t know” because sometimes they would struggle with something that I could easily help solve.
· Show Results: When finished with a big project or task, or even just at various points in time, quantify the value of the efforts performed and provide it to your manager. How much, how many, did it save money? Take the step back every so often and provide the bigger picture of your work over the month/quarter/year. It is great for you to reflect on your accomplishments and gives you information to share with your manager.
There are many factors that drive an employee getting promoted, but learning the art of the humblebrag is a key, along with keeping the lines of communication open with your manager.
Or, in keeping with our hypothetical example, continue awesomely slaying your dragons, but make sure to send regular reports to your manager about your incredible dragon-slaying abilities! Before you know it, you will get knighted to the next level.
Thanks for reading! Read more of my Corporate Adulting Blog series at https://monicaojendyk.medium.com/.
