For people already promoted that need to interact with multiple parties e.g. newly promoted manager that works on a complicated technical project that requires collaboration of 3-4 teams within the company but outside own region.
Obviously at some point the feedback from the other parties will come up at the evaluation.
For people that go up the ladder successfully how do you handle these cases.
I think that if the feedback comes at the annual evaluation it is too late to do anything about it.
Do you go about doing frequent 360 surveys or does the mentioned manager's manager would do something like that or something else?
2 Answers
In my experience, the best way forward is to follow the process INSIDE the evaluation cycle in your company.
Talk to your manager to find out exactly where you can and want to get to. Then ask for clear objectives to achieve.
As an example, you may be asked to become an expert on a certain subject matter, you may have to mentor more junior people, produce certain business deliverables in a timely manner, etc.
Then have those objectives evaluated. Eventually, you will start achieving them, and get more demanding objectives.
At some point, you will have a record that will justify a promotion.
Outside of the evaluation process, do your job. Overachieving or volunteering for responsibilities that are not ( yet ) part of your role while performing your job well can be expected if you want to show you're ready for more.
Networking is, of course, always helpful.
Still, my experience has been that this is exactly what a formal evaluation process is for, so use it. If you and your manager realize it's not a very good process, make adjustments and suggest improvements.
Keep communicating with your manager and stay at it.
Good luck!
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The formal evaluation process as far as I know in the vast majority of companies is held ~2 times a year. Please correct me if I am wrong. By sticking to that process it means that one has only 1 chance to get to know of an issue and "fix" it by the end of the year just to be able to be aligned with the current role, let alone get a promotion. My question is targetted mainly to those who are already successfully climbing the ladder and have already been promoted at the very least once and not about just making sure you are doing the job right for the current role.– JimCommented Feb 6, 2019 at 23:04
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Suggest more regular meetings to ensure you get your objectives fulfilled and that they are the right objectives to be promoted. The reason you should follow the process is that this also helps your manager justify the promotion further up the chain. I know many people who have achieved promotions mainly by changing jobs, it is generally speaking not trivial to get a promotion within a company, for a number of reasons. Commented Feb 6, 2019 at 23:10
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bytepusher: Let's take a concrete example. Let's say that as part of your role you need to perform X, Y duties and represent the company with major internal or external stakeholders or even customers. It seems to me that in the regular meetings the status of X,Y duties can be presented. But what about the input from the other parties? By the formal process it seems to me that this input would appear and make an impact in the middle of the year or am I wrong here?– JimCommented Feb 6, 2019 at 23:14
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I am saying you will not get a promotion in no time without changing jobs. It's a process. If the company has a process in place for this, it will more likely than not expect it to be followed. I can not speak to the specifics of your company and manager. Commented Feb 6, 2019 at 23:23
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Yes I agree with everything you said. The process is in place and has to be followed. How do successful people realize if they are on-track or not outside of the points that nothing can be salvaged anymore is my question.– JimCommented Feb 6, 2019 at 23:26
If I am looking to get a promotion in X amount of time, I sit down with my manager and say "I want to get promoted in X amount of time. What do I need to do in order to make that happen?" Then my manager tells me, and then I do that. I don't have a lot of data points, but I've found this to be an effective approach.
If your manager and your company are any good, they'll want you to be successful at your job. They should be receptive to a discussion like this, especially if you approach it with an attitude of "what can I do for you that will help me get promoted?" I've found I don't need to do much beyond this, except for the general going-above-and-beyond that gets me on management's good side.
answered Feb 6, 2019 at 23:04
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When that manager tells do X or Y in order to get a promotion is one thing. If the X or Y are actually done in the way expected in order to get the promotion is another. And X or Y many times are not something like finish the project in that amount of time so if you do that you are set but are more abstract especially as you go further up. In this evaluation of where are you at actually performing for X or Y sufficiently it is that I am asking about. I hope this clarifies– JimCommented Feb 6, 2019 at 23:09
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Not always really. Let's take a concrete example. Let's say that as part of your role you need to perform X, Y duties and represent the company with major internal or external stakeholders or even customers. It seems to me that in the regular meetings the status of X,Y duties can be presented. But what about the input from the other parties? By the formal process it seems to me that this input would appear and make an impact in the middle of the year or am I wrong here?– JimCommented Feb 6, 2019 at 23:15
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@Jim in that case you could always request additional meetings, I suppose. Where I work we have regular 1:1's with our managers, so I rarely go more than two weeks without feedback from my manager. If you don't regularly meet with them and you only talk a couple times a year, that's trickier (and should probably change). Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 0:34
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Request additional meetings for what purpose? Should the manager collect that feedback from other parties and have it for discussion in this additional 1:1s? Or is there some other process?– JimCommented Feb 7, 2019 at 8:58
You ask for, listen to, and pay attention to, the feedback that comes in weekly one-on-one meetingslet's say we are talking about a role that has also interactions with internal/external stakeholders and customers. How would the feedback from those parties be collected? Who would be responsible for that?