Want a Promotion? Here’s a 7-Step Plan

Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

In a recent Lunch Club (btw please connect and ask me for an invite), I had a great conversation with an executive coach. One of our topics was around how women can break through to the next level in their careers, as so many of my peers have felt "stuck", or feel like they don’t know how to advance to a more senior level. Candidly, my next career milestone has been to be a VP of Marketing, and my current goal is to do whatever I can to start thinking like an executive to make this happen.

After we connected, he told me about a client of his who shares this goal. She happens to be at a very large, very political, male-dominated organization. So he worked with her on a number of goals, and was kind enough to share them with me, and I thought it might be helpful to pass along to you.

So if you are hoping to make that executive leap but have no idea where to start, here’s a template that I hope helps inspire some ideas of things you could be doing TODAY to work towards that promotion tomorrow. 

Start here - Your Goals for This Quarter:

1. Surface 5 key insights from stakeholder analysis. List out all of the stakeholders related to your business unit, and identify the top 5 ranked by relevance and clout. Offer to buy them a coffee, or ask their EA for a virtual conference for 30 minutes max. The topic is to pick their brains about a new position or idea that you have. To me, this is just as much about research as it is strategically pitching / planting the seed of a promotion idea: what do they see this VP doing? What does success look like? What do they think they would oversee? How would this VP make their lives easier? 
2. Ask 6 experts for advice (3 internal, 3 external). Outside of the 5 stakeholders you have already identified and spoken with, find 3 more candidates that you see as experts: I read this as current VPs. Again, meet with them and share your aspirations, and ask how they became a VP. They may have some valuable advice for you, especially if they were promoted in your same organization. I would also identify 3 external experts, or VPs in your related field. In my case, I could spend some time on LinkedIn combing through some VPs of Marketing that I admire and do some cold outreach, seeing if they might have the time to share the secrets of their success with me. I think this strategy is a good one to spend a few minutes a day doing, and could also help boost your network in the process. 
3. Identify 3 impressive templates for promotion request. This may shake out in your expert interviews, but how did they go about getting promoted to a VP? Did they use some sort of template presentation that they could share with you? Otherwise, there’s a good old fashioned Google search: I’m sure you can come across something to start with and apply to you! 
4. Generate list of accomplishments, matched to company goals. Now some of the work happens: list out all of your biggest accomplishments at your current organization: go for big-impact initiatives that show off your strategic thinking. Then, tie back how each of these accomplishments ties back to a general company goal. For example, did you pull off a huge company public event for the company? Maybe that ties into a company goal of raising brand awareness, or demonstrate thought leadership in the space. If you are having a hard time with this one, this exercise could be a useful way to identify projects you CAN take on today, and show how it contributed to company goals tomorrow. 
5. Show positive financial impact. For Marketing, I’m a big fan of measuring absolutely everything do. We have program dollars, and we need to be able to demonstrate positive ROI. Regardless of your business unit, quantify your successes as much as possible. How did you save the company money? Did you set a record for sales? Tie your every day role back to the company, and demonstrate your positive impact on it. 
6. Share draft of request with the 6 experts for feedback, schedule meeting to present/discuss. You should have left your expert meetings with an ask to circle back with them to get their feedback on a draft request. Personally I think it’s easier to bang this out in another 30 minute meeting vs. sending off a (potentially overwhelming) document, but you may find that your experts prefer doing this vs. another meeting :) 
7. Submit! You’ve done the work and indirectly gotten buy in from internal executive stakeholders. Now all that’s left is to submit this to your manager to get the conversation going. I would also recommend you take your list of accomplishments and update your resume and LinkedIn profile with them.

Remember, if you get the “maybe, but not now,” answer, ask if you can discuss again in 6 months and get the meeting on the calendar: you can do a lot in that time as well to beef up even more of your accomplishments. And now that you’ve completed this exercise, updated your profiles with impactful accomplishments, and voiced your intention, it may be time to start looking around if you are still feeling frustrated. Use this interview guide to help.