Your Strategy to Ask for a Promotion
This is the year you’d like to ask for a promotion. Since your last performance review, you innovated, you pivoted, and you grew despite all of the challenges.
I trust you’ve been leading from where you are, raising your hand for projects, seeking out learning, and supporting your colleagues. Even when you’ve been doing all the right things, the thought of the actual conversation to ask for a promotion may feel overwhelming. If you want to advance your career, you’ll have to make bold moves to advocate for yourself.
Here are four things you can do to set yourself up for success in this process.
1. Build Your Case
Be prepared to demonstrate the value you’ve added to the company over time and how you’re ready for the new role. If you’ve been maintaining your NNTR Updates and AttaGirl folder, you’ve got resources ready with multiple examples. (If you haven’t started these files yet, don’t worry, you can start at any time.)
Find a few examples that you’ll be ready to refer to when meeting with your boss. Remember this isn’t just about doing your job and doing it well, nor is it about the amount of time you’ve been in the role; you want to show how you’ve exceeded expectations and your potential for future growth. You may also want to speak with your mentor or sponsor to get individual insights to prepare for this meeting (especially if they know your boss, too.)
2. Determine an Appropriate Time
Though you may never feel completely ready to ask for the promotion, there are certain times that are better than others. You’ll ideally want to have your boss’ full attention, and this could naturally happen in your regular 1:1s or performance reviews. Even better if you’ve recently had a big win that your boss is aware of, so there’s already a sense of your performance.
Though your organization may be undergoing changes, it’s still okay to initiate this dialogue to get a sense of what the appropriate timeline may be.
3. Make the Ask
Some people advise you send an email to your boss in advance to give them a heads up you would like to have this discussion. For what it’s worth, I’ve never personally done this nor have any direct report done this with me. I feel like it’s valuable for you to practice leading this dialogue, even when it may be uncomfortable, and it’s a boss’ job to be able to handle these kinds of scenarios, even if they weren’t fully planning on it.
If you choose to bring this up in person/via Zoom, you can say, “I’m excited about what I’ve been able to do with our company and I’d like to talk about my continued growth here.” (Note: If you plan to bring up this topic and you can tell your boss is overwhelmed or upset about something else, you may want to wait until the next meeting. Or you might say, “I’d like to talk to you about my growth in the company and I can tell there’s a lot going on right now. May I schedule a time for us to connect on this next week?”)
4. Be Patiently Persistent
Even when a promotion conversation goes well, it doesn’t often happen right away. The approval process for promotions can sometimes take 12 months (or more) depending on your org. It’s appropriate to ask if there’s a timeline your boss has in mind and suggest you’ll add it to your agenda in a few weeks or months, if you haven’t heard before then. This way it won’t be as awkward when you follow up.
Now that you’re ready to ask, I want to debunk one prevalent, counterproductive myth: It’s not ideal to use a counteroffer to get a promotion. There’s always a chance your boss will congratulate you and wish you luck in the next organization. (Or, they could beat the offer but sentiments could change moving forward as they may see you as “looking for the door.”) That said, I know there are some companies that practically require a counter to recognize their employees. I’ve worked for places like this before. If you find yourself in this situation, consider how much they really value you. You deserve great things in your professional career.
Though a lot of effort goes into asking for a promotion, you’re in charge of advancing your own career and you’re your own best advocate. I hope this leads to a positive outcome for you with a new role and then the real fun—and work—begins.