“How do I get promoted to the next level?” This was the question of a young up and coming professional who recently called me for advice. Their question was specifically related to getting promoted to a Director role.

I thought about this question at some length before I provided him a response. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.

1. You need to be phenomenal at your job

“First, you need to be more phenomenal at your job than anybody else. People need to see you as a leader in your job function. If you are only average in your job function, people will not view you with credibility. And without credibility, it will be difficult to move to the next level of any organization. However, if you’re viewed as a leader in your function, you will have credibility, which will make you a clear choice to move onward and upward.”

“There is a concept in business called “Technocracy” where organizations believe technically skilled leaders in a function naturally make good leaders and managers. This assumption is patently false. Leadership and Management are functional skills in and of themselves, and just because you have certain technical mastery, doesn’t mean that you’ll make a great manager. However, you can use that fallacy to your advantage and become technically superior, which would make you a leading candidate to move to your next level. In every case, you will always serve yourself well by being absolutely phenomenal at your job.”

2. Always be learning

“You have to be your own career agent. You have to make professional development happen for yourself no matter what. You can do this in a number of ways – through formal education or professional development, or informal methods like on-the-job training, self-study, YouTube videos, reading books, or getting a mentor. You need to find some way to keep your knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes fresh and current.” Stephen Covey once said, “Imagine that your job will be obsolete in two years – prepare accordingly.” I continued, “Other ways to keep learning is to get involved in your field through associations, communities of interest, and following affinity groups and field leaders in social media.”

3. Distinguish yourself from everyone else

“Beyond learning and professional development you need to find ways to distinguish yourself. The easiest way to do this is either by speaking publicly, writing/blogging, or simply finding and sharing content with others that highlight news, insights, trends, and events in your field, function, or topic of interest. doing this will help differentiate you from others.”

4. Learn more about your business

“You need to find ways of providing greater and greater value to the organization. Guerrilla your way into expanding your role and responsibilities by learning more about how the rest of the business works. The easiest way to do this is to look for natural tie-ins to what you currently do. For example, when I was first starting out, I worked as a waiter. If you worked as a waiter in a restaurant, perhaps a natural tie-in would be to learn how to be a bar tender, then how to cook on the line, and then food and beverage ordering and inventory, then the business functions of scheduling staff, book keeping, profit and loss, recruiting, hiring, training, and payroll, etc. Learning about all of the different functions of the restaurant would allow a person to become a natural choice for assistant manager or manager. The idea though is to find ways to voluntarily increase your value by expanding your knowledge of the business and actively seeking greater responsibility.

5. Become “The Hand” of The Boss (i.e. your boss’s right-hand person).

“In the HBO series “Game of Thrones”, the “Hand of the King” was the “right hand person” and closest confidant of to the King or Queen, and often ran the business of the Kingdom. Becoming your boss’s “hand” is really the easiest way to become ready for your next level. When you become your boss’s go to person, you’ve really done all of the other steps already. You’ve typically done well in your job, you’ve distinguished yourself as a high performer, you are an expert in your function, you’ve already started learning more about the business, and you’ve shown intelligence and aptitude for taking on more. When you become your boss’s right-hand person, if they should ever move on to another opportunity, you would be seen as their next logical successor, because you’ve effectively been doing the job and operating at the next level already. But in becoming their right-hand person, you really need to learn about every aspect of their job, and eventually to be able to do their job entirely. The best way to get exposure to this is to be their backup when they are out of the office or on vacation. You’ll get immediate exposure to the things that they face on a daily basis. If you do this well enough, you will be seen naturally as that person’s next in line.

A Caveat

Question: “I feel like I did all this in my last position, and when it came time to fill my boss’s position, they went with an outside person. How do I ensure that doesn’t happen again?”

“So here is the caveat, there are no guarantees to this. You may do all of this and still not get promoted to your next level job, even though you feel ready for it. You may even be the best person in your organization, but there may be others that are more qualified outside of the company. I’ve seen people who actually took over their boss’s job in an acting role, interviewed for their job, and did not get it. The fact is, hiring decisions are complex and are made based on what the hiring manager thinks is in the best interest of the organization, and sometimes that person may come from the outside. It really hurts when that happens, but if you keep doing all the things we talked about, your time will come. Another thing to consider is whether you have the requisite education, certifications, credibility, time in the job, and even the maturity to handle that new role. You not getting the job may be a gift. It may show a gap or something missing in your candidacy. – or even in the organization itself. If you don’t get the job, ask some honest questions about why you didn’t. Getting that kind of feedback can be invaluable. Be patient with yourself, if a promotion is what you’re after, just know there are forces outside of your control, there may be politics, agendas, changes, and personalities at play that have absolutely nothing to do with you.

If, however, you’ve done everything to be ready for the next level, if you’ve given it an appropriate amount of time, and your organization still continues to not recognize you, then you may need to take your talent elsewhere.”

The mentoring session didn’t end there, they had other questions related to organizational politics, education, and long-term planning, which may be the subject of future posts, but the topic of “the next level” seemed to have most universal relevance.

Update: The truth is, we may be ready for the next level, but often the organization is not ready for us. There is something they feel we are missing – it may be a skill, a certification, an attitude adjustment, a little more time –  or they may need to get to know us more before they will entrust us with greater responsibility.

The individual who contacted me told me that after trying everything we talked about, that he decided to move on to other opportunities. Like I said, there are no guarantees, but the process still works to take you to your next level.

Question: What advice would you give to someone if they asked you how to ‘go to the next level’? You can leave a comment by clicking here.