Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep227: Top 5 reasons why you're not getting promoted.

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

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Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hey, welcome, welcome back to your Corporate Survivor Podcast with me, Mei Ping, as Corporate Leader turned Career Coach and founder of the Corporate Survivor Career Course. Now, today I want to talk about a very exciting topic and it's all about job promotions.

Now, I have seen so many people, and this might be you as well, who has been extremely hardworking. You're delivering all your performance goals, you're hitting all your KPIs, you're meeting all the expectations, but for some reason, you are not getting promoted. And it's been a while, you feel like you have waited for some time, but the job promotion is still not happening. The salary increment is still not happening. Now, I understand it's very frustrating. And what I want to do in this episode is to maybe give you a list of like mistakes that you might be doing, but you're not aware that you're doing, that is actually not giving you or maybe not allowing you

to be put on the job promotions list. And I think that's really, really important to understand. There may be things that you are maybe not doing that could be self-sabotaging your opportunities and your chances of getting that promotion. So let's go through a list and I want you to be able to, you know, quickly identify how many you feel like you can relate with. Now, the first mistake is assuming that your boss knows you want a job promotion. You can't believe how

many people tell me that, maybe, you know, I'm the most senior person in the team. I've delivered all the performance goals. My boss should know I'm the person who deserves the promotion next. No, no, no, no, no. The most important question is, have you told your boss that you're looking for a job promotion? Or are you assuming that your boss is supposed to know that you are the one who is going to get promoted? Let me tell you, as a former ex-hiring manager and someone who's a senior director and managing departmental budgets, let me tell you, it does not work like that, right? If you want a job promotion, you cannot assume that your boss knows that you want a job promotion.

Never ever assume that. You need to make it very clear. You need to actually ask for the promotion so that you can be included in the list of considerations. So first mistake, as I said, assuming that your boss knows that you are like the next person, right? It doesn't look like that. Now, the second mistake is that you are not updating your boss on the progress of your hard work. Now, many of us, and this might be you as well, you're very hardworking.

You are giving like 100% or maybe even 200% focus on delivering your tasks, delivering your project, or delivering the specific report. Everything around your KPI, you are fully focused and you want to be effective, you want to be efficient. Great. Now, my question for you is, are you updating your boss on the progress of all the work that you're doing? Or are you again assuming that, oh, my boss should know that I'm really working hard and eventually the project gets delivered as well? Now, it may sound like a very subtle difference, but there is a very big difference in the perspective of your manager

or a head of department who's actually in charge of giving performance reviews as well as departmental budgets on determining who's going to get promoted next. Now, the reason is because if you don't regularly update your boss on the good work that you have done, then your boss will not have a clear idea that you have been contributing throughout the year. Now, this again ties into the third mistake of assuming that the decision for a job promotion is being made in the final performance review, the year-end performance review. No, no, no, no, no. The decision to promote someone,

and I'm telling you this as someone who has previously managed departmental budgets and headcount, the actual decision to promote someone is usually made between month 6 and month 12, between the mid-year to the year-end. That's when the decision is usually made because the assessment of the quality of your work, your progress, the feedback on your work your progress right the

feedback on your work it's usually over a period of like 10 if not 11 months right so it's not just waiting for that final conversation to say okay you know this this is like all the good work i've done no no you need to continuously demonstrate that you are contributing you're putting in the effort you're seeking feedback and you are collaborating so it's kind of like an ecosystem which is why i'm saying i I always say that you really need to understand how the corporate world works because the mindset, skill set, and visibility strategy is all tied together, right? So as I said, third mistake is actually assuming that the job promotion kind of happens at the year-end. It doesn't. Now, there's a fourth mistake as well. I think this is a little

bit more personal, and this is a mistake around assuming that you do not deserve the promotion now this is a question around is it like a lack of confidence because you cannot meet your kpis now if you really really cannot meet your kpis you know you you lack clarity confidence and competence then to be honest maybe it's not the right time to ask for a promotion so you may maybe want to go back to making sure that you have job clarity right work confidence and competence then maybe the next year right the next cycle you can ask for a job promotion i think that's kind of like the fairest advice that i can share with you and this is something that i tell all my corporate survivor career course members as well i'm like if you're not ready please do not focus on visibility

strategy which is why the phase one and phase two step one step two in my program is get clear get confident then only the third one is get visible, right? So once you have clarity, confidence, and competence, then you can focus on visibility. So again, the fourth mistake around like the mindset issues, like to be honest, if it's really, really a competence issue, then maybe you're not ready for that. But the mistake that I'm actually talking about is kind of like, you know that you can deliver, right? You have very delivered results, but like for some reason, you keep telling yourself that, oh, but I feel I'm not deserving of this promotion. I feel I'm not deserving of this salary increment. Now, the advice I'm going to tell you here is like, who has told you that you're not deserving, right? If it's

kind of a mindset thing, then you may want to really list down all the hard work that you have put in. Maybe you need to be reminded of what you have contributed, right? But if it's another issue around, okay, maybe your boss, you know, agrees or disagrees and stuff like that, I think that's something else, right? But I think the point I want to make here in terms of the mistake is do not automatically assume that you're not doing a good job, right? Your assessment might be wrong. I've actually worked with a client once, and when I spoke to him around like his performance rating and he had to rate himself, he told me that, oh, maybe, you know, I think I'm going to only rate myself three because

I don't feel like I've, you know, fully delivered on all these projects and stuff like that. But when he had that formal performance review with his manager, his boss actually gave him a rating of four and his boss actually felt that he did a really great job so this could be an issue issue around like self-sabotaging a little bit so this is where i think there needs to be like better alignment between you and your manager as to like what are the key performance goals and again if you're a student in my corporate survival program you need to really go through like phase one particularly step one right get clear on the corporate world to make sure that you really really button down your call deliverable so that when it comes to the time of like mid-year

performance review or year-end performance review, you're not like questioning yourself or whether you have delivered it or not. Like it should be very, really clear in your mind, like the key performance goals that you have been working towards for the whole year. And then once you reach just the year-end, then you're able to kind of like articulate and communicate that very clearly. So the fifth mistake I think is, which is I think a little bit more controversial take on that sense, but the fifth mistake I see about, you know, people who are afraid to ask for a promotion is,

it's like being afraid of that next career level, which sounds very ironic because we know that, you know, to grow your career, you want to get a promotion. But I've also seen some people kind of like self-sabotage in a way of like telling themselves that oh I think I'm not ready to be a manager I'm not ready to be a senior manager I don't know what to expect as a director and therefore I'm not gonna go for it now I think of course this ties into like your life and career goals but if the reason is solely because you don't know what to expect then I think that doesn't sound like a

very, very good strategy because if you really want to succeed at the next career level, then it's something that you can learn as well. And a lot of people think that, oh, it's, you know, if I'm in a leadership or management position, I need to learn some fancy skills. Most of the time, it's not that. It's actually building up on the foundations and the fundamentals that you have already learned about the corporate world, like corporate mindset skill set strategy all these are still required at the next level right but maybe you are afraid because you may have worked with like not so good managers or leaders before and therefore you don't know what to expect or maybe you assume that you know you're going to turn out like them and that kind of like creates a not a good image in your mind but i think this

is just a reminder that you can be you know any kind of manager and leader that you want and there's always a chance for you to like shape the new culture in your team like whether your team is a big team small team like but there's always a chance for you to like manage your team in a way that you would feel comfortable with so I think there are again right a couple of reasons based on what I see in terms of people getting the job promotion or not, but I think it's worthwhile to think about there may be some mistakes that you are making. There may be some assumptions that you are taking on, which are not the most helpful thing. And half of the time, it's probably self-sabotaging you.

And if, let's say, there's a mindset block, there's a fear, I think it's worthwhile thinking about, hey, why is this happening? Why do I feel this way yes i want to grow my career but at the same time i'm also stopping myself because i'm afraid right i'm afraid i'm gonna fail so i don't want you to feel like that because at the end of the day like if you want to grow then you must understand that growth is uncomfortable every time you rise up to the next career level there's something else to learn and And as long as you have that kind of mindset of like, okay, you know what, one step at a time, since I'm leveling up, then I'm now going to be more open to learning what will make me successful to navigate at the next career level. I think that's really, really important as well. So

I'm going to leave this episode with some reflection time for you. I want you to really think about what are potentially some of the assumptions and mistakes that you might be making that's actually stopping you from getting the promotion. And I want you to actually devise a very, very clear plan and intention that, okay,

now that I've got all these things out of the way, then what am I willing to do to make sure that the promotion happens this year? And I will leave you with that. And with that, I'll see you in the next episode.

Bye. and I will leave you with that. And with that, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.