RICHtip - How to effectively ask for a promotion.

How to effectively ask for a promotion. And I found it interesting that that's the word that they used. It wasn't just about how do I ask for a promotion, it was how do I effectively ask for a promotion. So there's two kudos I want to throw out to this individual. One is the fact that you're going to be asking. That's huge and I applaud you and, you know, Great job in even wanting to go and, and ask, because unfortunately, um, the majority of women do not, even though there's statistics that say yes, 39% of women ask for promotions or raises, and that's even against the 36% of men doing it. Um, so, and I'll touch on a little bit, you know, um, about that as we get into this question, but kudos for asking, because that still leaves 61% of you that are not asking. And we need to get that number down. We need to, you know, take it from 60, and I'll take 50, and then I'll take 40%, and then we can work it down to where all of you are finding it within yourself to ask for what you deserve and you've earned. Alright, so let me touch on— oh, and then the second kudo I want to throw out, sorry about that. Was wanting to and reaching out for advisement on the effective aspect of asking for a promotion because most people walk in very unprepared and when they don't get it or they don't get exactly what it is that they want, they then kind of throw the blame back on the boss or the company. And so the effective word in this question was very appropriate because there is an effective way of doing it versus just kind of by the seat of your pants. All right, so let me give you some of the details that I talked about that I wanted to drill into a bit further. If you follow leanin.org, that's— oh my gosh, her name just went right out of my mind. Oh boy. All right, the Facebook COO, and I'll come up with it by the time I'm done. Lean In. And then she's partnered with McKinsey and Company. To do studies on a yearly basis, and the 2016 report was their second annual, so it's only been for a couple of years. But they look at and they poll tens of thousands of women and ask a lot of different questions about kind of women's, you know, approach to their career and to their business. So what they did find, I'm gonna repeat that first statistic, is that 39% of women do ask which is fabulous, versus even 36% of men. Where it falls off the cliff is that only, um, or not— yeah, only 30%. 30% report that of women report back that they did not get that promotion or they did not get that raise, versus 23% of men don't get what they ask for. So even though there's more women asking— uh, unbelievable— there's more women asking, and yet less of them are getting what they want. Now, what really kind of irked me when I read this was, of that 30% that didn't get what they wanted, that the reasoning was due to negative performance feedback. Now, that could be very true. Negative performance feedback— I want you to remember that because that kind of ties back to this effective way of asking for a promotion. So the negative feedback, ladies, and you've heard these words before, so don't be surprised, is bossy, aggressive, and intimidating. That's often that negative feedback that someone's receiving. Well, first off, what I want to say in regards to that is F 'em, pure and simple. Ignore those 3 words. Ignore the whole negative feedback thing. We're going to, as long as women are standing up and having a voice and they're going about things that, you know, as confidently and assertively as men are, they're still going to have these unconscious biases or blatant biases that automatically assume that someone that asks, or a woman that asks, is bossy or is intimidating because of her confidence and her, you know, um determination. And then aggressive, of course, a lot of people don't know the difference between aggressive and assertive, and so it's easy to tag aggressive as a label to women when they're asking and doing and going after what it is that they want. But I want you to put all of that stuff aside because you have to learn how to deal with, you know, the haters. And not even the haters, just purely the ignorant people, the ones that are, you know, have these biases unconscious or not, that they just hang on to. All right, so let's put those things aside and let's just address the effective, um, request for a promotion. Now I'm going to sound like I'm going to contradict myself here for a bit because I told you to put those things aside, but what I do want you to always remember is you have to recognize the perceptions out there that we— that men and other women have of women who step up and ask for something, especially when they do it effectively and they do it with a lot of evidence to support the request. All right, so you first need to be able to recognize those perceptions, know that they're out there, just don't let them prevent you or stop you from asking. Just make sure that you know that those things are there. Now, the reason why I ask you to do that is because if you know— and actually, there's an episode that I did about 3 or 4 months ago, and I'm just remembering it, so I'll put it back up kind of more frequent, more recent. Um, I did an episode about the fact that there, you know, this radio show that I was on, um, where the radio host attacked Hillary for being bossy, aggressive, intimidating. And then when looking at Trump, that it was a total contrast. Oh, that's leadership. His, his bullying is leadership. It's him knowing what he would want. I'm not going to get into all that. Go back and look for that episode, and/or I will kind of raise it up in the recency of it so you can Find it out on our Shedding the Bitch radio page. So, okay, so recognize those perceptions exist. Know that people are looking at you, even the person sitting next to you, across the cubicle, or in the other office, and their own bitches, as we call them here, their own insecurities, their own doubts about themselves, their own lack of self-worth, are going to look at you as being someone who's stepping up and asking for what they want and they deserve. They're going to look at you in a hate type of way. It could be a mild, mild jealousy, envy, or it could be a very, you know, um, very strong hate. Again, ignoring that because you know that those people are going to exist. I mean, social media is evident of that. So, but knowing that, you need to then build a case around it, and that's really what this effective request really means is you can't just go and ask for, for something. You really need to ensure that you're going to do it effectively, and to do it effectively, you have to build a case for why you deserve that promotion and/or a raise or anything else. So I suggest to my clients, and I do it for myself, mind you, even on my own, I don't report to anyone, although I could report to the few investors that I have and the few advisors that I work with, and even my coach certainly holds me accountable. But what I do advise those that do have bosses that they report to, and they do have HR that they have to go to, to kind of request something, is keep an account all year round of your performance— good, bad, or indifferent. Just keep an account. Get a little book, whatever, however you operate. I keep journals, as you all know. And just notate throughout the year your performance. If you have accomplished something, if you were assigned to a big project, if you got into a situation that, you know, didn't favor you too well, make note of everything and anything. If you've completed a project, if you went and got, you know, kind of recommendations or testimonies regarding your performance, just keep a record all year round. Because what happens is a lot of times People, even when they have to sit down and do their performance reviews or when bosses have to sit down and evaluate who's gonna get that next promotion, they often forget because it's not about them, it's about someone else. And so they certainly remember their own ups and downs, but when it comes to yours, unless you're touting yourself and you're keeping a count of your own performance, will your boss or anyone else for that matter really be tracking it effectively? All right, so first, keep an account of your performance and make note of the history of your performance throughout the year, uh, because this is what's going to happen. So you go in, you ask for that, that promotion, and they make comments, this negative performance type of comments. Well, you need to be able to challenge that. You need to be able to, you know, request, require exact feedback, facts, situations, the people that they're referring to, the event or experience or, or situation that created that negative performance. You need to make sure that whoever's saying this to you can justify and prove. You don't have to prove. It's not your place to have to prove it because they're the ones raising it up. And you would hope that they raised it up when the situation happened, or when someone made a comment about someone's, you know, aggressiveness or bossiness or intimidation. Then they should have come to you and addressed that with you, and then they would have been fresh in that memory. Well, too bad if they're not fresh in that memory. Don't allow someone to evaluate you, to assess you, to judge you without being able to defend it with facts, with figures, with dates, with people, with the situation. Alright, so that's why you want to also maintain this account, good, bad, or indifferent. If a bad situation happened, maybe you got into an argument with a client, or you, you know, got into a disagreement, a confrontation with a, with a boss, you need to make note of the situation, the outcome of that, and any next steps or any kind of follow-through that you did around it. And then when I say effective business cases, I mean put together a business case. If you're asking for a promotion, you need to justify that. So what in your experience, in your performance, in your years of advancement, what justifies and what accounts for you being able to have this promotion? Now it doesn't mean you have to be 100% for that promotion, and ladies, we won't go into all that, but you know, you need to realize that men are asking when they're 30 or 40% ready. Women wait until they're 70, 80, 90% ready. So I'm not saying you want to make sure you're 100% ready for that promotion. No. What in your experience, what are the accomplishments you've had, what are the results that you've generated, what are the testimonies people have given about you, what has been your performance feedback in the past? Build a case as to why you are the best person for that promotion and present it just like you would if you were going into a client meeting or you were going into an internal, internal review, business review with the bosses. You need to kind of build a case for why you want that, and that definitely is what makes an effective request for a promotion because then there's really not a lot of argument there, and what you would hope that they're doing is kind of bouncing multiple business cases of the people that have requested or want or they're planning to promote and put into a different position. So build that case, and again, when you're tracking it all year long, you can actually be building that case. The actual, you know, results that you got, not just saying that you improved revenue or you took, you brought on more clients or you mitigated or saved you know, cost and expense. What, how much, how many clients, what did they say about you, that kind of thing. You want to gather feedback regularly, and what I mean by that is throughout that year, if you have closed out a project or maybe a client account or a sale, then go back and get kind of an assessment of how, what you contributed to it, how you performed. What worked, what didn't work, and make sure that, you know, all along you are gathering feedback from your boss. So, you know, after a big business meeting, maybe afterwards, you immediately say, "So what do you think?" You know, "What did I do well? What could I be doing differently? What should I stop doing? What could I continue to be doing? What should I, you know, start doing?" And get that feedback on a regular basis that both helps to make you better and then also kind of builds that case for you. All right, all around being— making you prepared for that effective request for a promotion. Tout your performance. Ladies, we talk about it and we call it honor your riches. You know, men don't hesitate to kind of boast about themselves, and I'll use the word boast But I don't want you to think about that negatively. There's nothing wrong with you kind of, you know, ensuring that your team knows the role that you've played and they played in making a project successful or a client account successful or whatever the case might be. There's nothing wrong with you, you know, going to your boss and kind of making sure he or she is well aware of the role that you played. In whatever the situation might be. You have to learn to be able to tout yourself and your accomplishments, what we call honor your riches, in an effective way that ensures that people recognize your role. Alright, proactively seek out your mentors and sponsors. Obviously that would make requests for promotions and raises and anything else so much easier, especially— and we won't go into the difference between a mentor and a sponsor, but those sponsors are those people that when they talk about you, basically this is what it is, they talk about you when you're not in the room. And when I say talk about you, that is a compliment. They're talking and making sure people are aware of you and your performance and your ability to contribute when you're not even in the room. And those are the type of people that make all of this so much easier. Although you always want to build a case, because you even want to be building a case and touting your experience and your accomplishments, even with your sponsor. So it kind of all goes hand in hand. And then, you know, as you're in the, in the request and you're making your case and there's any type of apprehension or any type of disagreement, you know, ask for clarity, ask for explanation, ask for, you know, just their justification for whatever it is that they're telling you. And should you be overlooked for that promotion, should you be overlooked for that raise, whatever the case might be, go back and say, okay, so what could I have done differently, or what should I be doing differently, or what could I be just doing in order to get this promotion, you know, within the next 6 months, or whenever, you know, is reasonable. Just don't take it on face value that no is no. Just really want to understand kind of how, why, where, when, you know, the outcome could be different the next time. All right, but once you start really thinking about how to effectively build— not build cases, but request promotions, request raises, to take on a sponsor and look for, you know, mentors in your circle, so to speak. It's all about you not just simply assuming you deserve it or expecting that you've earned it. You're building a case and you're able to support it with a lot of clarity, a lot of focus, a lot of facts and figures, a lot of testimonies and recommendations and the like. All right, I hope that helped for how to effectively ask for promotions. Now when we get back, we're gonna take a short break. This leads into— because people think, oh, it's fourth quarter, it's December of the fourth quarter, it's year-end, it's holidays, people are distracted— but this will lend into also what we're going to talk about as far as if you were to get laid off, as our our person did, the Monday after Thanksgiving. And she wants to understand why that is, that they always wait till the Monday after Thanksgiving. You know, she's throwing up her hands thinking, oh well, it's December 5th and there's not much I'm going to be able to do before the end of the year. Ah, not so fast, not so fast. We'll get into all that when we get back.