Are you a woman in technology feeling fed up and frustrated because you’re watching others get the leadership promotion you deserve?
If you’re working hard but you keep getting overlooked, then this article is for you.
The truth is that working hard and getting good results, is not enough on its own to get promoted.
What helps you get promoted more easily is to get more visible so that the work you do gets noticed and makes a bigger impact which means you’ll soon be confidently striding into your next big role.
Today I’m sharing 5 tips to help you get easily promoted at work.
Effective tips to get promoted at work
1 – Get curious
Get curious about your coworkers and colleagues who’ve been promoted in recent years.
Curiosity puts the the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain information.
Who at work do you respect and admire AND they’re at the level you aspire to be.
What do you notice about how this person behaves and communicates?
What is it specifically that you respect and admire?
What do they do that’s different to you?
What can you learn from this person and what skills you might need to acquire to get promoted.
2 – Talk about your results
Often women are brilliant at getting great results, building strong teams and demonstrating their collaborative leadership skills.
However what they’re not so good at, is talking about their results and successes.
Of course, I’m talking ‘tendencies’ and ‘generalisations’ here.
Men and women tend to behave and communicate in different ways in the work place. It’s not that one is right and one is wrong, just different.
One of the differences is that women tend to downplay our own success or our role in the team’s success because we don’t want to look like we’re bragging or boastful.
However think about this from your manager AND your manager’s manager’s perspective.
Your organisation wants to promote successful people who get results.
We assume our results will speak for themselves but we’re all so busy working hard and getting results, we don’t always notice who else is getting good results UNLESS we hear that person talk about it.
Practice talking about your results and successes so that it feels natural and comfortable to do so.
3 – Take ownership of your team’s success
The next tip I want to share with you is about taking ownership of your team’s success.
Very often we talk about “the team did a great job” or “we were very successful”.
Practice talking about your team’s results and successes using “I” not just “we”.
If you led the team, YOU are responsible for the success. Please don’t downplay your involvement because that’s how others will march past you in the promotion queue.
For example – think of a success your team has had in the last 6 months. First write about it and then tell somebody else about the success.
As you write and talk about the success, use these prompts to guide your thinking:
- what was special about this success?
- what skills did you use?
- what behaviour did it require?
- what were your learnings?
- what was your unique contribution to the team’s success?
4 – Talk about your ambitions
Often women don’t get promoted because they don’t clearly communicate their skills and their value to the business, AND they don’t express their ambitions.
People will make assumptions that you’re not ambitious or you’re not interested in getting promoted if you don’t speak up.
Often the people who get promoted first or fastest are the ones who’ve made their ambitions very clear.
You need to talk about your career ambitions.
Book a conversation today with your manager to talk about your career and your ambitions.
Make it clear that you want promotion; that you are ambitious; and that you’d like their support.
Ask “What do I need to do to get promoted this year?”
This isn’t a one-off conversation. You might need to repeat this conversation to reiterate your ambitions.
5 – Audit the work that you do.
The final tip to help you get promoted at work is about auditing the work that you do.
One of the common challenges for women in technology who want to get promoted, is that they get caught up being busy with work that is not valued by the business.
This will be even more important in the post pandemic workplace as hybrid working and working remotely becomes the norm. It will be even easier to get sidelined and overlooked if you and your work is not visible or valuable.
To avoid this, take time to audit the work that you do and review how valuable it is to the business, using a scale of 1 to 10.
If it’s anything less than 6, what can you do to get yourself assigned to work that’s rated a 7 or above?
Final words on how to get promoted at work
The five tips shared today will help you get promoted more easily at work.
What’s most important is that to avoid getting overlooked for promotion, you need to get more visible so you get noticed and make a bigger impact.
Now I’d LOVE to hear from you – what are your top tips for getting promoted at work? Let me know in the comments.
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