Lead Through Strengths
Career Q&A: Ready for your promotion? How to convince your manager.

This Episode's Question
I really feel like I'm ready for a job promotion, to take on more responsibilities, and to build more skills. But I'm not sure how to have that conversation with my manager.

What You'll Learn
- How to make YOU the obvious answer when your leadership team considers people for new roles, open positions, or new projects.

- A simple concept about asking for things, and how it gives you super powers for keeping you top-of-mind when your manager considers who will get the next job.

- Thoughts on "as-if" current performance: acting as if you're already in that role so you become the obvious next choice.

- Why it's important to show or communicate your untapped talents so that you are viewed as having high potential (rather than making them worry that the Peter Principle is in effect and you might be topped out at the next role).

- Questions to ask yourself about your current performance so that you know you're not distracting yourself from excelling in your current job.

- Assessing your risk factors: what things will make you seem like a risky choice when they decide who to promote? What things will make them worry that promoting you could be a career-limiting decision for them.

- How to use special projects to demonstrate skills and experiences they haven't been able to see in you yet.

- Why emotional intelligence or social fluency will win out over your technical skill set every time. It is a better predictor of promotability, even though this is counter-intuitive to most people.

Tweetable of the Episode
If you don't ask, the answer is No.

Resource of the Episode
Book: The EQ Interview: Finding Employees with High Emotional Intelligence by Adele B Lynn

Book: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Chialdini

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Direct download: 010-promotion.mp3
Category:careers -- posted at: 2:30am CDT