I am a wholehearted workhorse in the workplace. I want to be promoted. What should I do?
I have been operating in a large Internet company for four years.
Every year-end performance evaluation is excellent, but every promotion is not my turn, I feel particularly depressed.
The leader also agrees that my business ability is powerful, but I just can't get promoted. What should I do?
Answers ( 1 )
Workplace workhorse, long-term wholeheartedly work but no promotion.
In fact, many people have encountered this situation.
But few people can look at it from the perspective of their career as a whole.
Especially now, many people have only worked in one company after graduation, and their understanding of career and workplace is limited to the appearance of this company.
They are actually bewildered about "what to do with my future career" and "how to go with my career".
This is actually "a problem that many capable employees will encounter on the way to promotion".
"Accumulating professional competence" is only a necessary condition for promotion, but it is not a sufficient condition, and you also need to show potential (the potential ability to do things you can't do right now) if you want to be promoted.
Otherwise, the cleaner in the pantry is more professional in cleaning every day and accumulates 20 years of "professional experience". Should she also be promoted to the vice president?
The knowledge, skills, and resources that brought you to today will not bring you to tomorrow!
However, most people with ability will fall into the "trap of ability" if they don't pay attention to it.
Professor Herminia Ibarra, a behavioral psychologist, points out in his best-selling book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader that people with abilities often fall into this trap:
1. Do what you are good at until you die.
2. I don't want to change, because I want to be who I really am!
3. I don't even have time to work, how can I have time to make connections?
Trap one: always do what you are good at.
Most of us are happy to do what we are good at, so we do it all the time.
In the end, we will always be good at those things. The more we do, the better we are, and the better we are, the more willing we are to do them.
Such a cycle allows us to gain more experience in this area, but it is like a drug, and we are deeply attracted to it because our happiness and self-confidence come from it.
It also makes us misunderstand that "what we are good at is the most valuable and important thing, so it is worth taking the time to do".
However, this is not the most frightening thing.
The most terrible thing is that after a long time, we will mistakenly think that "this is the only thing I am good at, and I may not be as good at doing other things."
Whenever there is something new for us to invest in, we will flinch and be afraid.
Trap 2: I don't want to change, because I want to be who I really am!
Last year I got an executive coach client from a bioengineering company who is a VP, whose boss wants him to be more proactive in interdepartmental meetings.
When I first chemistry meeting with him, he scoffed at the boss's feedback.
"I'm a scientist," he said. "I don't speak until I have evidence.
And I am introverted, I want to be true to myself."
Many people will use their "true self" as an excuse to refuse to make a change and become a "better self".
In fact, people are multifaceted, and they will show different characteristics in front of different people and things.
In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, the author makes a perfect analogy: "these qualities are like hats.
People wear different hats when they attend different occasions.
The hat will change, but what remains the same is the image of you wearing the hat all the time, which is real. "
Your "image in a hat" ultimately depends on your core values, not on your explicit behavior itself.
Trap 3: I am so busy, how can I have time to make connections?
In the workplace, there is a kind of people who think that connections are particularly dirty and that work is based on strength.
The other kind of people do not feel that these are bad, but they do not have time to spend on these stupid things. They think, "I am too busy in my work, so how can I have any intention to make connections?" "
I used to have a colleague who worked in technology, and then he went to an Internet company.
He works overtime every day, is busy, and leads a team of more than a dozen people.
At the beginning of this year, he came to me and asked me to coach him because they didn't even discuss hiim with his team when the company made structural adjustments.
He felt furious and aggrieved. Usually the tasks assigned by the boss were accomplished flawlessly, and the whole team had also been commended. When they became an abandoned one, they did not even give him a buffer time.
So I asked him, "except for the year-end Review, do you often have an one-on-one chat with your boss?"
He shook his head.
"Do you often go to strategic meetings that are cross-departmental or attended by bosses?"
He shook his head.
"Do you usually have lunch with middle managers in other departments to talk about the company?"
He shook his head.
"Do you have any friends on the HR team who are familiar and can have a heart-to-heart chat?"
"It's not easy to finish the technical problems within the team every day," he complains. "how can I find the time to connect with others?"
I said, "who can you blame?"
In the workplace, no one can casually succeed on his own.
The more you go up, the more complex your interpersonal network becomes.
But no organization is maintained solely by rules and regulations, and all organizations operate by "people-to-people relationships".
But if you don't spend time and energy building your network, who do you expect to support you when you have good ideas to present at the meeting?
Who do you expect to speak for you when you want a promotion and a raise?
So, what if we have fallen into the trap of ability?
How can we climb out of the trap?
I. self-awareness.
The best way to make a person useless is to keep him too busy to think.
When we are busy, we simply don't know if we are already deeply caught in the 'ability trap', and we may still be complacent about our irreplaceable abilities.
Therefore, it is necessary to consciously slow down, make an inventory, and diagnose your career status regularly.
Only in this way can we know how to adjust.
II, seek feedback from others.
A survey shows that "90% of employees think they are the top 10% of the company's high potential employees."
Most people think they are better than others, and they don't know who "others" are.
This overly optimistic judgment of oneself is called "positive fantasy" in the book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader.
When I was an executive coach, I insisted on talking to his boss no matter how senior the other person was.
Most of the time, I find that his boss's feedback is different from what these executives themselves told me.
Compared with ability, "potential" is a subjective judgment. It doesn't matter whether you think you have potential or not. It is crucial whether your boss thinks so or not.
So if you want to have an objective assessment of your potential, the best thing to do is to get feedback from others, rather than being narcissistic.
Therefore, the most direct and effective answer for the students who ask questions is to ask your own leader: "what else do you think I need to improve in order to become an operations manager?"
Generally speaking, there are two things you must do:
1. Redefine your job.
Fake it until you make it .
This is to imagine what that "dream self" is like and what abilities you need to have, and then live by that standard until one day those abilities become a part of yourself.
The same is true for an ideal job, where we need to redefine our job (including functions, abilities, and necessary connections) according to our target position before we are promoted.
Then act according to the redefined job, and you need to entile yourself before you have a chance to get the "Title" you want.
2. Build a network of relationships within the company.
For anyone to succeed in a complex workplace, you need at least two types of dignitaries -- Mentor and Sponsor. For a certain type of problem you encounter in a certain period (whether in career development or business improvement,), Mentor can provide you with effective advice and use his experience to enlighten you and help you out of the bottleneck. They may be your boss, colleague, friend or even your parents.
Unlike mentors, Sponsor is not necessarily your "bosom friend". Usually, they are people within or outside the organization who are several levels higher than you.
They must have known you through some channels and appreciated something about you, so when the opportunity came, they were willing to recommend you to others and endorse you.
Many people who want to be promoted within the company browse the "job openings posted by HR" every day.
But believe me, by the time you see the vacancy, in most cases the candidate has already been decided internally.
Who ordered it?
Sponsor. of course!
If you are also a "workhorse" and feel that you are frustrated for all your talent, then I suggest you test yourself: whether you have fallen into the "ability trap".
Then climb slowly with awareness.
Fake it until you make it!