#492: 4 Keys To Career Promotion

So my friend asked me, why do I never get promoted? Right? Why are these other people get promoted? Who's this one person who's getting promoted? You know, they're, I'm not going to say what they said. They're this. And surely I'm better than this person. Why can't I get on the. Get on the ladder? Hello and welcome to the Self Belief Chief podcast. You're here with David Holman. If you want to subscribe to the podcast, keep up to date with the latest episodes, research, science, conversations. We upload content all of the time. So feel free to subscribe to the podcast. And let's begin. So I'm speaking to a friend. This was about, oh, God, I don't know how many years and years ago, but I used to work in a big corporate business and there was a friend who was upset that they'd not got a promotion and that this other person had been promoted. They asked me, look, what, what do you think it is now? At that time, I didn't have the experience, the knowledge, the skill, the ideas, the, you know, the career coaching background to know what the difference was. But today I do. Here's the difference. So when you go for promotion, you have to know what is it that you bring to the table? Because every individual in a business adds value to the business and costs the business. So how do we cost the business? Your salary, your training that you might be doing, the mistakes you make, absences, about 10 different things in ways that you can cost the business. And then there's the value you provide. And then between the difference between the value you provide and how much you cost the business, there's a net value. So everyone in a business provides value, costs the business and has a net value. The people with the highest net value are the ones that are going to get further along. The difference with my friend and this other person was that this other person, yes, perhaps they didn't have all the great skills in the world. Maybe they weren't the most empathetic, warm individual to other people. They just knew a few people. But here's what they did really well. So for that promotion, this individual that got promoted was undoubtedly an expert in one particular area, not in everything else, pretty average or poor and everything else, but an expert in one particular area and been developing that for years. This job that had come up, the person who was hiring, the thing they valued most was this expertise that this person had. So this person would be able to go into that interview to give the hiring manager exactly what they value most and demonstrate that they can provide the highest net value, that however much it costs to pay that person or anything else, that the upside was huge. Whereas with my friend, they were talking more like, oh, I'm a hard worker, I ran these projects, I could do this. Well, I did this. I talked about lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of different details, but not in depth about any of them. Whereas this person just talked in depth about an expertise that this person valued. Now this person got promoted. The other thing is, and I'm going to put it into four stages for you, the first stage is knowing the role that you want, knowing the job that you want, the position you want. Right? So they knew that. Okay. The second thing is knowing who that hiring manager is. Right. Who are they? The third step is developing a relationship with them over a period of time. And the fourth step is finding out what they value most and then demonstrating expertise in that value. So know what you want, know who the hiring manager is, develop a relationship with them over a period of time where you're, you know, actually adding value to them and then force it. Find out what they value most and demonstrate expertise in that value. So this is a long term game. When people say in business about playing the game, people think about it in cynical terms. But actually if you just do the basics, give the person that's hiring the thing they value most and be an expert at it. Now I'm oversimplifying it in the sense that it's hard to do those things. I'm not trying to say it's not, but it's actually simple to define. And what this individual did was they had built relationships with these sort of decision makers over a period of time. Really good relationship, didn't build relationships with everyone else, which was a bit of a shame, but with those people, found out what they valued most, became an expert in that thing and then they are perfectly positioned, better than anyone else at their role. So now when you terms of what they value most, When I work with people to help them in this area, there are about eight different things that any business in, end, any, sorry, any business, business in any industry values most. So it doesn't matter what you do. Every business values these eight things. So I show people these eight things and they go and find out which one of these eight things does that person value. And then based on that information, I can help them develop in that value. Right? So some of those values, for example, are innovation, relationships, leadership, expertise, work ethic. There's about eight different ones and whatever that value is, I can help them develop and grow in that value so they can maximize their ability in that space and then give that decision maker a real high level in that value. Remember, people don't appreciate what you understand. They appreciate feeling understood. My friend wanted to tell people, tell the decision makers everything they knew. So everything that, that she knew already or she could do this other person gave them what they valued what so that they felt understood. Does that make sense? So hopefully you can start to get that picture together in your mind is right. What's the role? Who are the decision makers? Build relationships with them, find out what they value and demonstrate expertise in that area. So maybe you have to train or develop or whatever, but those four stages, if you can see that and you can imagine those four steps and you can kind of feel how going through those steps would make a difference and you like the sound of that. And by all means, on the Self Belief Chief website, there'll be more resources and more detail, more information on how to do that. We'll put a link in the description as well. If you want to schedule some time with me for free to discuss working together or you can apply to work with myself, if it's something that I think I can help you with and actually help you grow. But otherwise, my name is David Holman. If you change today, today will change your life. So enjoy the rest of your day, enjoy the rest of your life and I'll speak to you soon.