How This Fortune 500 High Achiever Earn An Elusive Promotion And Reorged Her Department

You’ve talked to your manager, advocated for yourself at review; spoken to mentors (if you’ve got them!)

Now you’re reading career growth newsletters.

Welcome, you’re in good company.

This was Michelle, a Fortune 500 high performer before she designed and earned a bespoke promotion in less than a year…

Michelle arrived to the Career Strategy GPS program with a track record of results: rebuilding departments, enhancing sales, running multiple campaigns and teams, designing, packaging, strategizing, ideating, and implementing - mostly on her own.

She is respected and regarded as a future leader, and yet despite years at her org, she wasn’t rewarded with the title and compensation to match her responsibilities.

Everyone knew she was valuable, but since she couldn’t succinctly express her unique ability, specialty, or brand, she kept delivering results without getting the promotion she deserved, and had been seeking for the past year.

Would she ever move up at her company, or would she have to move on? Either way, creating a path to upper management was possible, but she needed a cohesive brand and vision to differentiate and elevate her story.

I firmly believe in making no moves without a destination in mind. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, then how do we know what actions to take?

Some people have this future pretty clear in their minds. The question is how to execute. So after completing the first module of the program Michelle was sure she was a future CMO - now the real discovery was "how do I get there?"

What the exercise revealed for her was a vision, not just for herself as a leader but as for the future of her department and org.

She proposed a marketing model that was exceptional and played to her strengths. It was an inventive and unique future that did not currently exist at her company.

In subsequent modules, we refined her expertise, value prop and brand - how she was uniquely suited to bring her department to this future. I then have students go through the exercise of configuring their written story - LinkedIn and resume so the brand is consistent. With the help of modules dedicated to network and influence, she began tapping into her network at creative agencies and brands that might fulfill her vision. With her vision clearly defined, she identified the right players to share it with and over time, as she refined her talking points through the program videos, exercises and coaching. As she repeated and iterated her story, she built up an army of sponsors who were speaking her language and advocating on her behalf.

Then something fun happened.

A few months into her campaign for promotion, at a department meeting, a male senior leader casually mentioned the marketing model she’d been championing for months and was so sure was out of reach, as if it was a given. Don’t worry, he gave her credit 😉

Her idea was starting to gain traction.

No lie. Internal promotions are tricky. It took more than a few months to lay the groundwork, bring along all relevant parties, and align all the necessary stars to build a promotion in her vision’s image. The details are the stuff of a Game of Thrones episode (if it was set in a highly functional corporate environment with mostly reasonable business people).

The path was sometimes bumpy. There were times when Michelle’s bosses stalled on conversations about her promotion’s timing and arrangement. When she would wonder: what can I do while I wait? I’m proud to say, we always found an answer 😉

Michelle’s a natural leader whose vast amount of energy. She just needed to focus on high-impact activities that fed her passions and professional future. Once locked in, Michelle used her influence and commitment against the promise of her value prop to earn her place at the head of a department in the model she envisioned.

Here’s how she puts it:

➡️ Been following along for a while and ready to figure out out what you want from your leadership or if you are clear on that, how to get there.

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