4 Ways to Develop Yourself To Get Promoted
Improve your chances of getting promoted by laying down the foundations well before a job opportunity comes up. You need to plant the seeds, build your reputation and your relationships. Read here for 4 ways to develop yourself to get promoted.
1.) Create your own development plan.
Get your job spec and rate yourself 1-5 on how well you perform on your key responsibilities and competencies.
Get a job spec for a role that you would like and rate yourself 1-5 over those key responsibilities and competencies for that higher level role.
By doing this you identify the areas that you need to really work on to get to that next level.
Even if you rate yourself 5, still think about ways you can take it to the next level or promoting the value you’re adding.
2.) Let your bosses know that you’re keen to develop and progress.
Remember your boss may not know that you want to progress and develop. You’ll be letting your boss know that you’re looking to grow by asking your boss for a development plan, feedback or opportunities.
Drop that seed in their heads that you are a potential candidate for future internal openings. By doing this you’ll also get a better chance at being put on that prestigious project by your boss to get that experience.
3.) Build relationships.
This isn’t just about schmoozing (although that helps) this is about being a true business partner where your relationships enables your organisation to improve, where you’re connecting people to other people, or where you can help with a problem.
Get your name out there. Be visible by offering help to everyone, your peers, your juniors as well as seniors. Being known by your boss is not enough. You need to be known by your boss’s boss and you want people around the business to champion you. You want to look like a team player and a leader and that means getting on with people more junior than you, your peers and your seniors.
It may be harder in these days of remote working to strike up a chat in the kitchen so you need to be proactive. Put in meetings with new starters to introduce yourself. Let them know what you do and what you might be able to help them with. If you’ve not really built a relationship with someone you feel you ought to have, just put in a catch up, say that you haven’t caught up in a while and would like to catch up. You can easily break the ice by being open and saying, I’ve been here a year and it’s always been on my plate to work more closely with you and your department, I think there are ways where we can really help each other etc.
4.) Work hard and smart
You have to put the work in to build the relationships to ask for that opportunity to work on that project, but the hard work does not stop there, you need to :
work your socks off on that project
work hard to promote the value you’ve added
work to add it all onto you list of achievements and CV!
All of this is time and effort. But time and effort that is well invested.
Work smart, think carefully about just working longer hours to look like you’re working hard, you can be seen to also look disorganised or lack the ability to prioritise. Always ensure you also spend enough time polishing up on the presentation of your report or project, that final 5% of work can be the most important 5 %, similarly if your work or results are not visible then your time and energy could be going to waste.
Good Luck!
Women On The Ladder
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