How to Get Promoted Anywhere — The Career Conversation You Should Be Having
No matter how transparent or opaque your company's promotion process is, there is one strategy that works in all of them: the career conversation. Here is how to initiate it, and why your manager is not going to do it for you.
How do people get promoted where you work? Is it clear, or is it a mystery?
The three types of promotion processes
- Well-defined and transparent. You know the criteria required to get to the next level. You know which artifacts are required, when they’re due, and who the decision-makers are.
- Well-defined but opaque. There’s a structured process, but you only know some of the above — and your manager navigates the rest behind the scenes.
- Arbitrary. You find yourself saying, “Hey, Jordan got promoted? When? How? Was I even considered?” It feels like an unfair game with no rule book.
I’ve navigated them all. Maybe you’re stuck in something like #3 and think #1 is perfection. Nothing is perfect — all are subject to biases and inconsistencies. Despite best intentions, in all three some undeserving people get promoted, some highly deserving people get rejected, and some aren’t even considered.
This subject stirs up quite a bit of emotion in me, thinking of times I could have done better — for my own career and for the people I’ve managed.
I have future posts in mind advising managers on promoting people in different corporate cultures. But today this one is for you — someone who wants to get promoted.
One strategy works in all three environments
🎯 It’s the career conversation with your manager. 🎯
And you should initiate it.
- Define the career goals you’d like to achieve over the next 3 months to 3 years. Promotion is probably your top goal — but also consider goals that will contribute to long-term job satisfaction, stretch you into new areas, and help you avoid burnout.
- Schedule a career conversation with your manager. The agenda is to review your goals, get feedback, and create a plan together. You might say: “Would it be OK if we had a career-focused conversation in the next two weeks? I’ve been thinking about my goals and would value your insight. I’d also like to collaborate on a plan to achieve them.”
- Make this a recurring meeting to check in and update the plan — say every three months.
The career conversation is not your regular 1-on-1 with status updates. It’s not your performance review — which focuses more on the past than the future.
This is your career conversation. It’s critical, and you should initiate it.
Why?
👉 Because you own your career.
What a good career conversation looks like
During the conversation your manager should help identify gaps, match goals to projects, and suggest growth ideas and next steps. If your manager is confident navigating the promotion process and lays out a clear plan — great. Thank you, career conversation.
If not, seek a mentor or coach and consider bigger changes. At least you found out sooner rather than later. Thank you, career conversation.
💼 Own your promotion. Own your career. Have that career conversation.
