Promotion vs Progression

Photo by Lindsay Henwood on Unsplash

When was your last promotion? When do you think you will be promoted? These are common questions asked by ourselves or by others. What stands out is that a promotion is a gold standard to get validated on your performance and progress in your career.

Even when companies have awards, only a handful of employees receive awards. There are many other hard-working individuals that will miss out, which increases the feeling of not progressing their career.

In this article, I want to highlight the benefits of shifting your career focus from promotions to progression. This statement shouldn't detract from aiming to get a promotion. It is changing how we measure our careers and how we are focusing our time. Concentrate your time on the right things will lead to more wins which will propel your career forward.

A promotion is a great feeling, and it comes with organisational and social praise as well as an increase in compensation. So, why wouldn't I encourage you to focus on it? The main factor is that there are things out of your control that results in a promotion, regardless of your hard work or how good your results are.

The four everyday items that are not in your control are:

1. Organisational limits on the number of people promoted per round based on business needs.

2. There is a minimum tenure hurdle regardless of your performance levels.

3. Your manager isn't willing to support your promotion business case due to unknown reasons even when your performance is high.

4. You manager might be bias or unconsciously bias and isn't looking at the extent of your performance.

We can focus all our time and energy on trying to tick all the right boxes, and it still might not result in a promotion. When directing your time and energy on progression, it will leave you with more skills and options if the promotion doesn't come through.

Here are four reasons why focusing on progression provides a better long term career.

One. Ensure you are gaining new skills. Often to get promoted, we spend our effort concentrating on doing tasks in line with your role and abilities. We try and complete more of the same work and do it as perfect as we can. As your experience increases in your position, you create extra time to take on new tasks. You then increase your output or take on something a little more senior to impress.

If you instead mixed up your extra tasks with tasks that are not in line with your current role. An assignment from a cross-functional role of the business that will expand your skills laterally. This would allow you to showcase that you have gone the extra mile in your position. While adding new skills that are not part of your role, expanding your options to move into a new team if you need a new career pathway.

Two. Increasing your options. Now that you are growing skills inline while adding cross-functional skills. You want to choose skills that will round out your resume. One way is to observe people in a position higher than you and find the gap in your skills that you need to learn. It could be technical or understanding how areas of the business work. The other is to review job descriptions for your next step roles and highlight the gaps that you need to start filling.

While learning these new skills, make sure you are talking to the people in the potential teams. Asking questions and learning of others is a great reason to network and get on their radar for future roles. Building your network in an organisation is essential in expanding your career options. Having some of the skills for that role ahead of time will give you an advantage if you chose to apply for a position one day.

Three. Progression is a growth mindset. When you are focused on the promotion, there is a high chance that a fixed mindset will start to creep in. You highlight your small flaws (or your manager does) which directs your energy to be more prevention-focused. You begin to focus on counting the mistakes you think you are making instead of what else you could be doing.

A fixed mindset will encourage you to avoid a new challenge or something risky. You cherry-pick the items based on a short term goal of promotion often missing the bigger picture. We could spend over 6 or 12 months focused on a promotion. Adopting a growth mindset and continuing to learn and achieve new things during this time will add value to your promotion case as well as teach you new skills.

Four. Minimising the emotional toll. We have all experienced the disappointment of missing out on a promotion. It is natural to feel a little down; you have invested time and energy and had it on your mind for a long time only to miss out. Once you start to recover from the disappointment, you realise the next round is 6 or 12 months away, which often leads to further frustration.

At these moments, it is good to be able to step back and check all your options before deciding if you want to try again. Knowing you have options will allow you to bounce back quickly. You need to evaluate your options, assess your new skills, and what your deeper goals are. Then you can decide to use your new skills to head down a different career path or try again for the promotion using the insights from the feedback provided. If the feedback wasn't tangible, you should ask your manager to clarify and help you set specific goals. This is the best away to gain a better understanding of your chances to apply again in 6 months.

"Progress is not inevitable. It's up to us to create it." — Michael Bloomberg

You dedicate plenty of hours each week to work and advancing your career. Each week you choose how you spend your hours and which goals you are focused on. How many options you open up for yourself depends on where you dedicate your time.

Take a step back and put yourself in the driving seat of your career. Understand what is driving you and what your plan B and C could be. Ensure you are spending a small amount of time per month understanding what other teams do, network and build more skills to expand your resume. A promotion is a rewarding feeling, and it validates all the hard work you have put in. It is good to understand that it isn't the only option to move your career forward.

Is promotion the only way to measure our careers? In a culture where being promoted is the gold standard for progress. I want to explore a different perspective on how to progress your career long term by broadening your options outside of just focusing on that one promotion.

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.