From getting written up to getting a dozen roses: my promotion journey
Once, early in my career, I was promoted and written up at the same time.
Yes…I didn't know it was a thing either.
"How did this happen?" you ask.
Tale as old as time, my friends.
Boss meets girl.
Boss promises girl a promotion for many, many months without delivering.
Boss promotes other man in department with great ceremony and fanfare.
Girl snaps, loses it, and goes off on boss.
So, yeah. It was one of my more frightening early career experiences.
My boss wrote me up and screamed "I am your supervisor! You do not dictate my schedule! I dictate your schedule!" and then I went back to my desk and my promotion email came out right after, which I guess he wrote in a grudging rage and sent?! (Sidenote: if you haven’t watched my video “Why Being Men to You at Work is Good"" now would be a great time to check it out.)
Fast forward years later, I got another promotion. It was an internal promotion from a marketing role to an HR role. My marketing boss was overjoyed for me. My new boss gave me two dozen roses, one white and one pink, Kate Spade champagne glasses, a gift certificate to my favorite restaurant, and a bracelet that said FEARLESS. I was once again shocked, but this time in an overjoyed way.
What was the difference between those two promotions? I got older and wiser, and learned how to get promoted without being pushy or straining the relationship with my boss.
Here are my 3 tips for getting promoted without being pushy or annoying…or getting written up
Don’t wait too long! In the first instance when I got written up, I waited too long to bring up the promotion topic. Like many of you, I was terrified to bring up this sensitive topic to my scary boss, and so I kept putting it off. I was like a fed up girlfriend demanding an engagement ring. But as a result, by the time I finally did bring it up, I was way past being over it, and the topic had so much charge for me that if he didn’t promote me right on the spot, I was going to lose it! Tip: Promotions take a while! Ask early and often!
Take on a strategically aligned, high visibility project. When I got written up, I was very much under the thumb of that one manager. He encouraged me to rely on him and come exclusively to him for everything-yes that’s a red flag. In the second instance, I engineered my promotion by taking on a high visibility project-the new Careers website. A high visibility project includes at least 3-5 stakeholders outside your department. For the Careers website, I worked with IT, HR and Data Science to get statistics around our company. The HR VP is the one who became my boss, but I did such a good job on that project I could easily gotten a job in IT or Data Science. The project was high visibility and I did such a good job, increasing traffic to the Careers section by 91% that it raised by personal brand overall because people outside of marketing knew about it
Think about the leader in your next job, not just the role. From that first experience, I knew to consider whether my new manager was an energetic match for me. My first manager liked very subservient people who would do all his busy work for him. My new manager loved my feistiness, my toughness and my spirit, all qualities I would need in that new leveled up role by the way
Your feminine success challenge is: start looking for a high visibility project to lead or join! If there isn’t one, make one!