How to get promoted (Part 2): Taking ownership

Maximize your odds of getting promoted by being proactive and standing out

This is Part 2 of my series on how to get promoted.

• Part 1: Getting ready focused on understanding the promotion process and what you need to do to prepare

• 👉 Part 2 (this part) is all about taking ownership of the process and maximizing your odds

• Part 3: Seizing opportunities will cover how you can get promoted even if your manager is not making it happen

If you haven’t, I recommend reading Part 1 of the series so you have a foundation with regards to how promotion processes work and what to watch out for.

Now, the key reason why I’m writing this post is that many high performers wrongly believe that as long as they do good work, they’ll get promoted. Or that they’ll get promoted once they hit a certain tenure (“I’m the most senior person on the team, I should be up next!”).

Neither is true.

Getting promoted requires four things:

1. Taking ownership and letting your manager know about your goals

2. Demonstrating performance at the next level

3. Making your manager want to promote you

4. Getting your promo case approved

None of this will happen automatically. The ugly truth is that most managers think about their team’s performance ratings when the formal performance review cycles kick off. They don’t think about your career development on a daily basis.

So to maximize your odds, you need to be proactive.

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Owning your promotion: Don’t rely on your manager to act

🌈🦄 In an ideal world, your manager would give you actionable feedback on a regular basis, have a career development check-in with you every few weeks, and together you’d develop a plan for how you get to the next level.

🌎 In reality, most managers are struggling to hit their goals and regularly drop the ball on feedback, career development and even promotions.

Let’s get some common misconceptions out of the way:

Misconception #1: Your manager has a plan to develop you to the next level

When I started working, I was hoping 1) my managers would schedule regular career conversations and 2) provide a structured framework to help me grow.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that wasn’t going to happen. Even if a manager is invested in their team’s growth (which many are not, unfortunately), it’s still up to the individual team member to shape these conversations.

If your manager doesn’t know where you want to go, they can’t help you get there.

Misconception #2: If you crush the work your manager gives you, you will get promoted

First and foremost, managers are trying to hit their goals. So when staffing projects, they assign the person they think is best positioned to get the job done. E.g. you might be fixing dashboards all day just because you’ve done it before and you’re good at it.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t guarantee that everyone on the team has the chance to showcase “promotion-worthy” work and impact if they just execute what their manager throws their way.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

You need to be proactive to break this pattern and get staffed on high-impact, high-visibility work to help with your promotion.

Misconception #3: Your manager will promote you when you are ready

Sometimes, managers do notice you’re performing at the next level and they proactively put you up for promotion. But in many cases, patiently waiting will delay your promotion unnecessarily.

If you proactively push for your promotion, it’s now up to your manager to argue why you’re not ready. Worst case, you get some actionable feedback. Best case, you get promoted.

Misconception #4: Your manager knows exactly how the promotion process works

Managers receive little to no formal training in most companies. So unless they’ve recently promoted a bunch of people, chances are they are not particularly familiar with how it works.

If you want to maximize your odds, it’s up to you to understand the process and what you and your manager each need to do.

Managers when they have to prepare a promotion

As a result of all of this, you need to take charge.

BUT: You still need your manager’s support. In most companies, your manager will be the person submitting and defending the promotion nomination, so while you can initiate the process and should expect to do the heavy lifting, you’ll need your manager on board.

So as soon as you’re thinking about aiming for a promotion, tell them. Preparing a promotion will take several months, especially if there is not sufficient evidence to support a promotion yet.

It’s unlikely that you’ll be promoted in the upcoming performance cycle if you’ve never talked to your manager about it before.

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Demonstrating impact and next-level performance

Promotions are lagging, i.e. to have a basis for a promotion case, you need to have demonstrated that you can perform at the next level for some time.

The first step is to understand what that looks like for your role in your company. Check out the first part of this series for that.

Next, you need to make sure you get staffed on the right projects. I can’t stress this enough: The work your manager assigns you does not always give you the opportunity to showcase next-level performance.

There are two dimensions to consider when you’re evaluating projects to boost your promo chances:

1. Will this project allow me to showcase a core competency required for the next level?

2. Does this project have attention from leadership and potential for significant business impact?

Let’s briefly double-click on each of these.

1. Demonstrating core competencies

Having an ability to showcase core competencies required at the next level is critical.

The decision on your promotion is a “No” by default; it’s your job to provide the necessary evidence to turn it into a “Yes”.

For example, if you’re in BizOps and a requirement for the next level is that you work directly with functional leaders (VP+) on strategic priorities, then you need to make sure you get exposure to these leaders.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re bad at working with execs or simply didn’t have the opportunity: In the absence of evidence that you’re able to do this, you can’t be promoted to the next level.

2. Visibility & business impact

As an Individual Contributor (IC), the success of an initiative is rarely fully under your control.

Yet, whether we like it or not, people who work on high-visibility projects that are a priority for the business and turn out successful are more likely to get promoted, regardless of the individual performance.

Between

1. one person crushing it in an experimental division that leadership lost interest in and

2. another person doing solid work on the latest attention-grabbing flagship launch

the latter will end up getting promoted.

So, run towards the spotlight.

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“That’s cool and all, but my manager usually assigns me my work. How do I actually get staffed on other projects?”

In my experience as both an IC as well as a manager, the key is to ask for what you want while making sure it doesn’t make your manager’s life unnecessarily difficult.

While your manager wants to support your career growth, they have a team to run and goals to hit. I recommend following this process:

Step 1: Do a good job on your current tasks

This is the basic prerequisite; if you don’t deliver on your core responsibilities, asking for stretch projects is not going to be helpful.

Step 2: Identify suitable projects

Projects can come from two sources: Inside or outside your team.

Inside

• New projects come up either during planning cycles or ad-hoc. Pay attention during planning meetings and take note of any interesting initiatives. If you’re not part of the planning meetings, ask your manager during your 1:1 to walk you through the priorities for the upcoming quarter

• Pay attention to ad-hoc requests that come in and see if any align with your aspirations

• Tell your manager which projects you’re interested in, and why (i.e. how it fits into your development plan)

Outside

• Take a look around the org and identify high-visibility, high-impact projects that will help you demonstrate a competency you don’t have evidence for yet.

• Network with the people running (or the execs sponsoring) these projects. Just ask to grab a coffee and show an interest in the project. If possible, draw parallels to your current work to plant the idea that you might be able to add value.

• This won’t yield results immediately, but your networking efforts will compound over time. Many large projects have multiple phases, and once they staff for the next phase, your name will be top of mind.

Step 3: Get staffed

If you’re lucky, your manager will staff you on projects you showed an interest in, or another team will reach out and specifically ask for you.

If not, you’ll have to speak up to get staffed. It’s not a good idea to go directly to another team lead and ask to help out on a project without going through your manager first. They are counting on your bandwidth and need to be in the loop.

You should highlight why a certain project is important to you, but keep in mind that your manager is balancing many different priorities.

❌ “I want to work on the upcoming international launches. I need to show work on a zero-to-one effort to be eligible for promotion and you staffed Sarah on the last batch of launches, so now it’s my turn.”

✅ “I’ve done a lot of optimization work of our existing pipelines this half. I feel like my learning curve flattened and I’d like to work on a zero-to-one effort next; this will also help with my promotion. The upcoming international launch you mentioned sounds like a good fit. But if that doesn’t work, I heard Pete’s team is doing another product launch later this quarter and it sounds like they need more support.”

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Going above and beyond: Make your manager want to promote you

Like it or not, you’ll need your manager’s support to get promoted.

Given how many factors are a play, it’s next to impossible to make a case that your manager has to promote you, so you need to make sure they want to do it.

Often, there are multiple candidates for promotion. Who will your manager choose? The one that makes their life easier, not harder (duh!).

• 💪 Show autonomy and ownership. Managers have a lot on their place, so your manager will definitely notice (and appreciate) if you’re someone that they don’t have to constantly worry about.

• 🙋 Volunteer for unpopular tasks. Everyone loves a volunteer, but make sure you don’t end up with too many recurring commitments; delivering high-impact projects is what gets you promoted in most cases (see above). 

• 🧠 Show a strategic mindset. Identify opportunities and pitch those to your manager. Don’t just do what your told to do, but show that you want to make an impact and move the team and the company forward.

• 🧑‍🏫 Mentor and coach others, especially if you are interested in moving into management. I have seen many ICs that were unwilling to mentor others on an informal basis because they felt they were doing more work without a clear reward. However, since promotions are lagging, you have to show people management potential before you get promoted and have official direct reports.

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Maximizing your odds of getting your promo approved

Your promotion will likely be reviewed and approved or denied by a committee, either during normal calibration meetings or during a separate promotion review.

Promotion committees realize that the people preparing the promotion case (the manager and promo candidate) are biased, so they are looking for additional evidence.

Two things will help you here:

1. Having executives outside your own reporting line vouch for you

2. Having strong feedback from senior peers (1+ level up from you)

Ideally, the executive supporting your case is in the room so they can influence the discussion, but even having feedback / endorsements from them in your promo packet will be helpful.

Finding executive champions

If you vouch for someone, you put your own reputation on the line. As a result, executives are most likely to put in a good word for someone they have worked with directly.

If you work in “service” or “supporting” roles like BizOps, Data Science etc., make sure you work on projects sponsored by different functional leaders (Marketing, Sales, Customer Support) or projects that benefit multiple teams.

For example, in my last job, I was working with the Customer Success leadership to improve Cross-Sell processes, but since the work directly affected the Marketing org, it was noticed by Marketing execs as well.

If you don’t have the opportunity to work directly with leaders across the organization, you need to build a reputation so that even people who didn’t work with you have heard of you.

A few tactics that I have seen work well:

• Establish yourself as a thought leader on a topic. Pick a topic you’re very familiar with, even if it’s niche, and become the go-to person for that. E.g. if you are the expert in the company for anything Salesforce-related, people will hear about that over time.

• Do what others are not good at. For example, if you’re the business-minded Data Scientist that finds pragmatic solutions, or the Engineer who communicates well to non-technical audiences, or the BizOps person that’s highly analytical and writes SQL, people will notice. At a certain level, everyone will be good at the core skills of their role, so the way to stand out is to have unique complementary skills.

• Jump at every opportunity to present. Presenting your work to large audiences (e.g. in All Hands meetings) will get you noticed. The more you present and the broader the audience, the higher the chance that someone who will be in the room when your promo gets decided has heard of you already.

You know how in an anime you instantly know who the main character is? That’s what you’re going for

Getting feedback from senior peers

The executives evaluating a promo case are further away from the work than the ICs doing it.

They can judge things like impact, problem solving abilities, code quality or written communication skills from the data and materials linked in the promo packet; however, when it comes to collaboration skills, judgment etc., it’s helpful to have a highly-regarded senior IC endorse you.

Why senior ICs? Well, a Staff Data Scientist knows what it takes to perform at that level and can judge whether you meet the bar; a junior DS who hasn’t done the job cannot (or at least the promo committee might doubt it).

Nobody can give you this type of endorsement if you always work on projects alone, or with peers at the same or lower levels. Therefore, try to get on projects with senior peers you respect and leave a good impression with them.

This peer feedback is most impactful if it’s submitted as part of formal peer reviews and then quoted in your promo packet, so make sure you plan ahead.

Preparing a killer promo packet

The exact format of the promo packet varies by company, but there are a few general principles you can follow to make yours more impactful.

Reference the career ladder.

You’re trying to make the case that you meet the bar for the next level; the most straightforward way to do that is to “check off” the criteria from the career ladder one-by-one.

For example: If one category is “Leadership”, list out the concrete requirements (eg. “Leads large project teams”, “Mentors others” etc.) and then briefly describe the projects you led, new hires you onboarded and mentored etc.

You can prepare this part in advance and fill in the evidence as you’re gathering it; this will allow you to spot any gaps early.

Highlight quantitative impact.

The general rule is: Business impact over inputs.

I.e. if your company’s North Star metric is Monthly Active Users, try to highlight how your work affected that metric. If that’s not possible, go “backwards” in the driver tree; maybe you can confidently say you helped grow new user signups by X% instead.

Input or productivity metrics like “# of experiments launched” are still important to list, but less convincing as they don’t speak to the impact of your work.

Provide evidence.

Wherever possible, link out to documents supporting your claims. E.g. if you say that your work drove a 5% increase in signup conversion, link to the experiment read-out that shows this.

Additionally, many criteria in the career ladder are hard to measure. E.g. how do you quantify leadership or communication?

That’s where the peer feedback from above comes in. If a (well-respected) peer confirms that you did a good job leading the project team or communicating a complex technical issue to business stakeholders, the promo committee is much more inclined to believe you.

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Closing Thoughts

While there are no guarantees, taking ownership of your promotion process can greatly increase your chances.

But what do you do if there is no room for you to be promoted, your manager refuses to promote you, or your manager leaves after you put in all this effort preparing your case?

I’ll cover that in the next and final part of this series. Stay tuned!