Promotion
Your path to promotion: Take these 5 important steps
Do you feel stuck in your working life? You're not alone. Career stagnation and lack of opportunities for advancement are among the biggest challenges in working life for IDA members. According to the latest survey of members' working lives, 17 per cent say that they feel their career has stalled in one way or another - and the figure is even higher among IDA's international members.
Promotion can be one of the changes that creates movement in your career. Here are 5 tips to help you on your path to promotion.
1. Figure out what type of promotion you're looking for and what your motivation is
Firstly, you need to consider what type of promotion you want to pursue. Do you want to
- move from employee to manager?
This is the classic promotion that most people think of when they think of promotion. It can happen either by becoming a manager for former colleagues, moving to a new department in the company or taking a management position in another company.
- Become a project manager?
Another type of promotion is becoming a project manager. This could be a good option for you if you want to try out leadership without having staff responsibilities. Project managers are responsible for coordinating and communicating with various stakeholders and managing budgets. Tasks that often also belong in a management position.
- Go from specialist to senior specialist?
Promotion can also happen by moving from specialist to senior specialist. This means that you become even more specialised in your field. You need to be the most knowledgeable or among the most knowledgeable about the specialised area, and thus the employee in the company that both colleagues and managers can draw on.
- Become a professional leader?
A professional leadership role involves having responsibility for a specialised area by, for example, coordinating tasks, having an overview of development and knowledge in the area. You don't have personnel management responsibilities as a professional manager, but you are a coordinator, sparring partner and mentor for less experienced colleagues.
Next, ask yourself why you want this kind of promotion. What is it that drives you? You need to know your own motivation before you can make a plan to get there.
For example, if you want to be a manager, you need to be motivated by working with people for better or worse. If you want to be a senior specialist, you need to be motivated by professional immersion.
You can't base your motivation on the fact that others around you are doing poorly in a role that you want to be promoted to. That's not a sustainable motivation.
2. Take responsibility for your development and talk to your manager
Take responsibility for your own development and talk openly with your manager about your ambitions. Tell them what you dream of and ask what you need to do to put yourself in line for a promotion. Make sure you get it written into your development plan.
A good manager will be interested in supporting and guiding you in your career development. This can also help ensure that your manager is aware of your ambitions and can be aware of opportunities within the company.
Of course, there are times when one is tapped on the shoulder and offered a promotion. But it's rare that there hasn't been a dialogue about it beforehand.
Another option is to talk to a colleague who is in a similar position to the one you want to be promoted to. You can curiously ask how they became a senior specialist, for example. Ask what's difficult about the role, what has surprised them, and what tasks they are doing.
A promotion doesn't just happen after one or two conversations. It's often a longer development process, which you'll be in charge of.
3. Contribute to the bigger picture and be proactive
It's important to take an interest in the bigger picture and understand how your work contributes to the company's overall goals. This can help position you as a valuable employee who is ready to take on more responsibility.
You demonstrate responsibility by taking the lead and offering your help when the team is under pressure. You should also be ready to take on new challenges in your daily work.
For example, if you're aiming for project management, it's good to take on the overview tasks, while if you're aiming to be a senior specialist, you need to be able to demonstrate the value of going in-depth and narrowing down your expertise.
It's also good if you proactively seek out professional development opportunities that give you new skills that you can utilise in the role you're working towards. For example, knowledge sharing and communication are important for all types of promotion. Workshop facilitation can be another skill worth practising.
4. Also consider the downsides of a promotion
Even when your motivation is clear, you've taken responsibility for your development plan and you're putting yourself out there, it's wise to consider whether there are any downsides to your desired promotion.
For example, there may be changes in collegial relationships if you go from being an employee to a manager - and possibly also as a project manager. This can affect the dynamics and interaction with former colleagues. You won't be part of their team in the same way, but will instead be part of a new collegial community with other managers in the company.
Another disadvantage can be that you will lose your specialised role and perhaps lose experience and expertise in solving tasks pertaining to your field. As a manager or project manager, you will gain a new professional identity.
It's best to be aware of these losses in advance of a promotion so that they don't affect you once you're in your new role.
5. Avoid a quiet or dry promotion
Being given new tasks and more responsibility can feel like recognition in itself. And of course you should say yes to this, but only to a certain extent. You need to make sure that you don't get a so-called quiet promotion over time. A quiet promotion is a promotion only in tasks and responsibilities - not in terms of title and compensation.
This can happen if you are continuously given more and more responsibility, more complex tasks and perhaps even a coordinating role without formal recognition in the form of a changed title or salary. In this way, you have been rewarded for your good work with... well, just more work.
At IDA, we recommend that you avoid such a quiet or invisible promotion.
You can do this by articulating your changed tasks and increased responsibilities to your manager. This way, you can ensure that your work and responsibilities are formally recognised and rewarded. You may not care about titles yourself, but it can be important, for example when changing jobs, that your title reflects the responsibilities you've had.
Your statement that you deserve a formal promotion may not always be honoured. For example, the manager may not be able to do so due to the number of careers and/or pay grades in the department. However, as an employee, you can still speak up when you actually have more responsibility than your title and salary dictate.