Episode 32: How to bring up the promotion conversation

Earlier in my career, I approached my manager with a business case for promotion. I talked about how my role would expand, what that meant for who does what on our team, and why it was good for me. It felt like a win-win-win.

My manager’s response: “I wish you had told me earlier…it’s too late now.”

I was so pissed - both at myself for getting my hopes up and thinking it was going to be so simple, at my manager for his noncommital response of ‘let’s see what happens next cycle, and angry at the business.

I learned a lot from that painful experience and looking back; I can’t blame it all on the company. Yes I would have liked to see some improvements in how these conversations were handled as well as more transparency on what growth looks like, but now looking back there were quite a few things I should have done differently.

Connect back to the business

My business justification was about the team’s ability to do more for the company. I had (mistakenly) assumed it was clear why these new things were important.

I didn’t cover any alternatives or why we should consider doing this as soon as possible (vs. at some point in the future). Said differently, my business case wasn’t framed at the right altitude at all.

Today all my justifications are from an ‘owner’s mindset’ —> I frame things as if I were the company's CEO / talk about tradeoffs for the business to not invest in this today.

Example business case of why we should hire more people for a marketing team:

• Version A: Today, the team is slammed / working evenings to get their work done. This is not sustainable and if we want to keep these employees we need to add more headcount to the team to spread the work.

• Version B: The marketing team has been generating qualified pipeline for the sales team to close. X% of our revenue comes from this qualified pipeline. Our #1 source of qualified pipeline has been events. We want to double down by doubling the # of events we do each year and increase the # of staff today. We can either pull additional sales folks or we can hire dedicated events folks under marketing.

Version A focuses on individual incentives and challenges. While completely valid, this framing won’t resonate with people outside that function (i.e. a CEO’s directs).

Version B works backward from a specific goal and walks through options of ways to solve that goal — one of them being hire more people which would in turn decrease the burden on the team.

Whether it’s hiring or your own promotion - talk about the benefit to the business not yourself.

Consistently bring up your career goals

Once you define what you want as a next step, consistently discuss it with your manager. Don’t wait for a promotion conversation to reflect on what you’re doing well or not well and what you want to do more of or less of.

When I brought up expanding my responsibilities to include pricing, I had the right idea, but the timing was off. It turned out my manager and their boss also thought this skill set was missing from the team.

They had opened a rec and had someone they wanted to hire to fully focus on pricing. Even though I had talked with the rest of the team about how my taking on this responsibility would benefit the team / make sure it adds value to all of us, that was the wrong justification.

My manager had made a case to hire a full-time person, and here I was, advocating for myself to do the role part-time. Objectively, it didn’t make sense, hence his lackluster response of it being too late.

In the end, we did hire a full-time person for pricing, and I was able to work very closely on quite a few projects, but it still stung.

I reevaluate my satisfaction with my roles/responsibilities once a quarter, but I also make sure I understand what the business needs and how what I want ties back to what makes sense as a business. Once these incentives align, conversations to promote people, hire more people, or do a different role have been extremely straightforward.

Write for no context

The most dangerous thing you can do when articulating a promotion is to make assumptions. Assume everyone reading has 0 context about how you spend your time, how you improve the business, and what you plan to do in the future.

My go-to format for any type of proposal:

• Recommendation: Tell people what you are trying to convince them of

• Problem statement: Frame the problem your recommendation will solve in 2-3 lines/bullets max. It should be very simple.

• Context / Rationale: Why did you choose this solution? How did you come to the conclusion?

• Risks: What else did you think about and why are those not a good idea. How might your proposed solution not go well?

If this is purely for promotion then this additional context may seem like overkill, but your manager needs to defend your work/impact to the business to people who may or may not actually work with you at all.

Adding in this context will make sure they anchor on the reality of what you are delivering rather than their interpretation or assumption of what you do.

As always, feedback is a gift, and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋.

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