Top 3 Toxic Habits Ambitious Women Leaders Break To Land Their Promotion
Raise your hand if you’ve been here:
Your company posted your dream job online before they told you anything
Your co-worker got the promotion even though they have equivalent or fewer skills & experience.
You told your manager you wanted to move up but the promotion isn’t coming.
However, you slice it, waiting for a promotion that won’t come fast enough is frustrating and confusing.
At the same time you’re determined to learn. To do better. Find another way and succeed – you just don’t know what that other way is yet.
In this ACelectric.co Mid-Career Reveal, we’re answering the question:
“What can I do better to get that next-level promotion?”
And in this blog, you will learn:
The 4 biggest misconceptions about promotion that are hurting you
What 3 toxic habits to shed when seeking a promotion to leadership
4 biggest misconceptions about promotion
Over the last few years, I’ve coached 600+ women. In that time, I’ve realized something big: for most of us, there’s a difference between what we think should happen and how it actually works.
Misconception #1. Promotions find you
Maybe you had great early success. You did well at school, paved a path you wanted, and maybe even got a few promotions fairly easily.
Here’s the thing: the higher you go in your career, the more challenging your role will become. The more responsibility you will have. That means your competition is going to be sharper or have some other edge you don’t.
For all these reasons and more, good work alone is not the only factor in promotions. Instead, we are called to cultivate relationships with decision-makers and make a case for our leadership.
Misconception #2. Getting promoted means engaging in icky office politics
Office politics has come to mean something very craven. And yes, being “political” - aka using people as a means to an end is a terrible practice.
Behind every decision is a person. And to make a case for promotion you will have to engage with decision-makers that you may not have had exposure to before.
That said, making the case for promotion doesn’t necessarily mean engaging in office politics.
Instead, making the case for promotion means expanding your network to include mentors and sponsors.
And these relationships will not be one-sided. You have as much value to add to these people as they do to you. And there *is* a way to achieve alignment between you and these decision-makers that is genuine and meaningful to you both.
Misconception #3. Promotions should happen every year
I know you’re ambitious and talented. That can sometimes translate to impatience.
And it makes sense. Because reviews happen every year, it could seem like a promotion should happen each time too.
The average annual pay raise is 3%. That should be granted if you are continuing to grow and succeed at a higher scale. However, that does not necessarily mean you are in line for a title or role change as well.
The average time period to get promoted is 3 years. Of course, it can go faster or slower.
If it’s not going as fast as you’d like, understanding promotion criteria can help clarify what’s needed. A nice way to foster mentor and sponsor relationships is to get feedback. Not just from your favorite manager, but from every decision-maker.
If you know how each measures growth and what they think promotion entails, you can then begin to shed light on what might otherwise be an opaque topic.
And not just general feedback which, for women, is often vague and subjective. It’s important to know where you excel and have room to grow and most critically what you need to do in relation to the promotion criteria.
That can help clarify your path and set expectations around how long it might take to get to the next step.
Misconception #4. Promotions will make up for bad negotiation
When you got hired at your company, you set your title and comp expectations well before you got to the negotiation table.
Even as you were interviewing, you were making it clear not only where you saw yourself fitting into the organization but also how you hoped to grow - especially if you were clear that you were overqualified for the role.
However, if for some reason you didn’t set those expectations upfront or negotiated a deal where you’re in a lateral position, then it’s natural to see a promotion as a way to right this wrong.
If you are in this position and you did not advocate for yourself previously, recognize that you may have delayed your promotion.
Think about it.
If you are only informing leadership of your expertise and ambition at review time, it’s only natural for decision-makers to need to play catch up to this new information. Being honest about your needs and intentions sooner than later is always recommended. Just recognize that it can take time for leadership to process and reward this new information.
3 toxic habits costing you a promotion
Recognizing some of our misconceptions about promotion, we can now look at how to shift the habits that no longer serve us.
Habit #1: Expecting people to see you how you see yourself
I hear this so much from people trying to move up in an org, especially if they joined in early career and have grown in their roles over many years. You know you’ve evolved. You’ve become more sophisticated and knowledgeable, but that’s just not how senior leaders see you yet.
This is so normal. I think about it like being in a family. Sometimes parents or older siblings and cousins have a hard time seeing you as an adult if you’ve more commonly been seen as someone who is junior in the family.
Moving up in an organization might not be as simple as earning your stripes (which you’re sure you already have). This is a campaign to transform how leadership and management see you.
Going for a promotion to leadership means you’re inherently looking at a different type of campaign than when you go for a new job. When showing up to a new organization you are an unknown quantity which you can define.
Promotion is a process of transforming from a former version of yourself into a more senior leader.
Habit #2: Telling decision makers you are ready for leadership without showing it
This is related to the first habit in that it requires you to change your relationship to leadership. In this case, you are transforming from ‘follower’ to ‘peer with subject matter expertise.’
You can achieve this by knowing and owning your value proposition at the organization.
In your early career, you are trained to go to your managers for advice and guidance. When you’re young, you’re rewarded for leaning on your parents or teachers. This establishes a dynamic where you rely on older, sometimes wiser people to tell you where to go and what to do.
So, you can say “I’m a leader” then not demonstrate it by being in charge of your own careers and leading our managers, etc toward what is possible for you/them/the org.
A switch needs to occur. From that parent-child or leader-follower dynamic to a peer dynamic. To see yourself as even with senior leaders.
It isn’t that you’re better or know more than them. It’s that you know more about the things you know more about. You have your own subject matter expertise and own it.
So INSTEAD of coming to the manager or senior leader with the question: “what should I do,” it’s imperative that you do your own front-end discovery work. That includes confidence in your expertise, an ability to articulate your value proposition and to paint a vision for your career as well as the dept or org.
Habit #3: Waiting until review to advocate for yourself
Say you’re a kid and you want to ask for a unicorn for your birthday.
You know it’s a big responsibility so you’ve done everything you need to accommodate the new family member.
Secretly, you’ve been taking unicorn riding lessons. You even have a plan for where to keep it (a castle in the sky), what to feed it (rainbows) and where you will take it (to the end of the known universe, via Candyland).
Then, on your birthday you make your announcement:
“This year, I would like a unicorn, please!”
Your parents might know you like unicorns and have a general bent toward magic, but they had no idea you had gone to such lengths. Maybe if they’d known last year, you could have brought them along on the vision, demonstrated you had what it took to keep a unicorn, etc. They could have warmed up to the idea, and eventually, by the time it was your birthday, they could have made your dreams come true.
Instead, they got you a book on unicorns. Not. The. Same.
The time to advocate for a promotion is not at review but throughout the year.
At every 1x1, meeting, or in every visibility opportunity you have or create.
I don’t mean you need to talk about the promotion in every meeting.
Instead, each is a chance to start and solidify relationships with decision-makers so that by the time review rolls around they are all crystal clear on your value proposition, what you do to contribute to the organization and what next steps you’d like to see in your career.
Conclusion
Promotion in mid-career means playing by a new set of rules. That means shedding a bunch of misconceptions and toxic habits in favor of more constructive actions.
Building relationships with leaders, owning and articulating your value proposition and having a vision for your career and the organization are just a few new actions to take to accelerate your promotion.
I want you to be super clear on how to grow in your career. If you found this valuable, I created a free masterclass called “3 Things My Clients STOPPED Doing to Accelerate Their Promotion” In it, I go even deeper on this topic with real-world examples from successful clients, and even more on your next move is. If you’re looking to learn more, take a look here.