My hope is these blog posts have helped you improve your relationships with your manager and colleagues. You’ve identified your core values and are aligning your behaviors to them. You’ve enhanced your communications skills, and you’ve recognized that YOU, and only you, are in charge of your happiness at work. Only you can give yourself work/life balance. Only you can control your emotional response to what happens at work. If all is going well, you may feel it’s time for more responsibility, that you are ready to continue growing on your career path. At some point, you may feel ready to lead others, to be in charge of a team. One caveat: this path is not for everyone. Some people love being individual contributors and have no desire to lead a team. Perfectly acceptable, and in fact necessary for a successful organization. This post and the ones that follow it in this series are for those who WANT to learn how to manage a team.
Positioning yourself for promotion
One of the great misunderstandings about work is that in order to be considered for promotion, you actually have to be EXCEEDING your manager’s expectations. You almost need to be doing the job you are seeking even as you still do your current job. In other words, if you’ve been in your current position for less than a year, and you are adequately doing the job that is expected of you, it may be too early for promotion. You are meeting expectations, but not yet exceeding them. You have yet to show that you are doing your current job so competently that you are ready to take on extra responsibility. To signal that you are ready for more, you must do more. Sometimes you even have to be doing the job you want to move into – yes without getting compensated for it – to prove that you are ready to be promoted.
If you feel you are ready for more responsibility, the first thing to do is to tell your boss that, using those words. Do not say, I think I’m ready to be promoted. Do not make this about money (yet!). Just have a conversation to say that you feel ready for more responsibility and ask your boss if they agree. That’s a perfect lead-in to a conversation about where you want to take your career. Now, there may or may not be a position at your organization for you to be promoted into. In some cases, people are moved up with a title change, compensation adjustment and extra responsibility, based on performance. In others, there actually needs to be an open position for you to apply for the new job. Either way, it’s important that your boss be your ally in this effort. You may have to wait longer than you anticipate, if indeed there isn’t an open position for you to apply for. Your goal from this first conversation is to learn if your boss agrees you are ready for promotion, is willing to work within the organization to ensure that when a position comes available you will be considered, and to keep you in the loop on what’s possible.
Let’s say a word about compensation, because in most organizations, compensation is directly tied to responsibility. If you are adequately doing your job, you will receive an annual merit increase or cost of living increase, we hope. But when you add responsibility, you should receive additional compensation for that. If you are fortunate, you work at an organization that is solid on compensation, creating salary bands for various levels, and ensuring that compensation is fair. If that’s the case, then when you are promoted into a higher position, your new compensation should fall within the appropriate salary band. Salary bands are often broad and overlapping. For example, a coordinator position may fall within $40k - $60k, and an associate, the next level up, may fall within $50k - $75k. In a lot of organizations, you won’t be privy to salary band information. Even your manager may not know the bands.
Of course, your goal is to ensure you are FAIRLY compensated for the work you are and will be doing. This may require some effort on your part to understand the industry norms for the new position you are taking. Just as when you were hired, your best timing for negotiating compensation is when the new position has been offered to you. At this point, the company is saying “we want you” more than any other candidate we interviewed, so more power lies with you. Typically, inside an organization, a promotion delivers a 10 – 15% increase. If salary is your most important criteria, usually you will get more by moving to a new organization. That’s just the way it works.
When to seek a new job
If you have discussed taking on extra responsibility with your manager, and one of the following happens:
1) They don’t agree you are ready for promotion, or
2) They have no position to move you into, or
3) They cannot offer you the industry rate for the new position, then
You have the decision to make on whether or not to seek employment somewhere else. If your boss says you are not ready, certainly ask what needs to happen for you to be considered eligible. It may just be that you need more time or need to take on extra responsibilities first.
If there is no position for you – this has happened to me – then you need to recognize that the only way to gain extra responsibility is to look for a new job.
If your organization offers you a promotion, but not at the industry norm compensation level -- (Notice I did not say at the salary you want; compensation is a complex science and the laws of supply/demand are deeply in play, as is years of experience, education, organizational history, fairness, and departmental differences) – then you have a choice to either accept the new role at a salary under the norm or to decline the new role. Know that if you decline the new role, most likely you won’t be eligible for promotion again at this organization.
If you are upset about the low salary adjustment in the new role, and think that threatening to quit will help change that, you are probably wrong. You’ve just proven yourself unfit for the higher level and chances are, your company will let you leave. Certainly try to negotiate for a fair salary, but if the answer is no, your hands are tied. My strongest recommendation is to accept the new position and get both the title and experience under your belt. Agree to be under-compensated for a year so you can try to learn everything you need to know and then take your skills to a different organization. You can make up the compensation then. If internal promotions usually net 10 – 15% salary increase, external moves into higher positions usually net 15 – 25% salary increases. Why? Because the new organization clearly doesn’t have an eligible internal candidate and they know they need to pay more to entice someone to leave their current organization. You’ll also have a longer learning curve in the new job than someone who's already an insider.
Throughout our careers, most often, there will be times when we are underpaid, overpaid, and paid fairly. Sometimes it is worth being underpaid because of the experience/knowledge you gain … and then you leverage that in the next salary negotiation.
Your transition to people leadership
Whether you’ve been promoted at your current company or have switched organizations, at some point, your promotion may include a direct report or more. This means that you will directly manage another team member, responsible for their performance, professional development, skills, and decisions. It’s a big move, and one that, sadly, most times comes with no training. If you’ve been lucky in your career, you’ve had the experience of working with a great boss, so you have a role model to follow. But as we’ve discussed, often there are no good role models, and yet you’ve been asked to lead others. Start with the obvious: you know nothing about this. How could you? That humility will allow you to learn and grow. If you think that because you were good as an individual performer that you will automatically be good at leadership, historical stats will prove you wrong. Often times, the worst thing a company can do is move their highest individual performer into team leader. The skill set is entirely different.
Leadership, like any skill, can be learned. Like all relational skills, you can read about it, take classes, go to seminars, and still find that the real learning is by life experience. You’ve never been a people leader before, so you have no life experience in this area. You will have much to learn, and learn you must. Our next five blog posts will go through the basics of how to lead another or a team.
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