Question:
I have been with my employer for 10 years. In that time, I have
accepted every opportunity to develop/learn new skills and completed each
assignment successfully with positive feedback. I have now been passed
over for a promotion by a colleague who has been with the organization for
2-1/2 years and who has little experience in certain aspects in the area
which she will be coordinating. I, in fact, have done her job and hear via
the grapevine that I will be asked to cover her position while she moves
on. How can I deal with this in a professional manner?
First Answer:
Make an appointment with your supervisor. Do not just drop in. Dress well
and make sure you are in a calm mood. Begin your appointment by explaining
you are interested in talking about your career and options for growth
within the company. Keep the dialogue upbeat and brief. Explain that you
value the time you have invested in your company and feel the time is right
for moving up. Ask your boss to give you insight into upcoming
opportunities and tips for better preparing yourself for that move up.
The purpose for the above meeting is to make it very clear that you are
moving up - whether it is in the company you have invested ten years, or
with an outside company. But you cannot complain or whine about your
colleague who was promoted - that would be in bad taste. Ask your
supervisor what is in the future. Ask him/her where they see YOU in that
company in the next 3-5 years. You should be able to get a sense of whether
your boss is holding you back. If there is hesitation, then perhaps moving
on is the best idea.
Remember, bosses cannot read your mind. It is possible that your boss does
not know you want the promotion or believes you can be passed over without
raising a fuss or leaving. Don't get mad, get assertive!
-- Holly Lentz, Lentz Productions
Second Answer:
I sympathize with someone who has done everything asked and now expects to
be rewarded for ten years of loyal service. Unfortunately, the work world
does not reward tenure, loyalty, or even learning new skills and
demonstrating a good work ethic. More and more, employers reward
demonstrated competency, initiative, leadership, passion for the work at
hand, and the perceived "fit" with a new assignment. Using the words
"passed over" suggests that you think employers build "career ladders" for
their employees and are responsible for managing their employees' career
progression. Enlightened employers are assisting their employees in taking
responsibility for their own career growth even if it leads outside the
organization.
Unless you were a victim of favoritism, or illegally discriminated against,
there is some gap in your perceived ability to do this new assignment and
some demonstrated ability on the part of your colleague who won it, whether
or not she has directly comparable experience. Or, you are perceived as
equally or better qualified, but the manager making the decision had to
choose between two comparable candidates and chose the one he or she felt
would best fit in this role or on the team.
What do you do now? First, do your own analysis of the competencies needed
for the promotion you didn't get, rather than focusing on your right to
this position and volume of experience, to see if you can identify where
you might have compared less favorably to your competitor. Next, apply this
analysis to the next promotion you seek, or the next job. Demonstrating
your fit is what counts, by giving examples of how you approached a
similar problem so the interviewer can see your transferable skills.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What am I doing to add to my portfolio of skills, independent of what
my employer offers?
- Which part of my current job do I do least well? What have I done to
improve your performance?
- Have I identified people within the organization who could be promoted
into my job? You may have made yourself so indispensable to the
organization in your current role, without doing succession planning, that
management won't promote you because they don't want to lose your
expertise in the role you have.
- Can I identify the greatest challenges in my field in the next two
years? What have I done to meet them?
- Do I take initiative, or wait for my manager to assign me to projects
and problems?
- How do I operate without instructions or supervision?
- Am I enthusiastic about work and demonstrate high energy, or have I
fallen into a rut and watch the clock?
- Ask your manager, your colleagues, and your subordinates if any if
they would rank you the same way you rank yourself. By creating your own
"360 Performance Evaluation" (having everyone you work with, at all levels,
evaluate their interaction with you), you can compare your perceptions about
yourself to others'.
You could also ask to speak to the manager or the human resources
recruiter in order to ascertain (a) in which competencies did you fall
short for this assignment and (b) what competencies you most need to
develop to prepare yourself for future promotions. Of course there is no
guarantee that you will receive useful answers or support, and there is
nothing to be gained by arguing that you were rejected unfairly unless you
can prove the company acted illegally and are willing to wait years to
have a day in court. Managers get to choose their own teams.
If you do get a helpful answer, you will have learned that the
opportunities you were offered to develop your skills may have been the
ones your employer found desirable at one time, but not the right
preparation for new challenges facing the organization. You may need to be
more pro-active in learning what it takes to stay current in your field and
initiating getting that training instead of waiting to be offered something.
Or, that your educational background isn't enough or is too old or is the
wrong degree to qualify you for specific desirable promotions, and that
you have to undertake more education.
If you don't get a useful answer, this may be a not so subtle message that
you've gone as far as you are going to go in this organization, and it's
time to look outside the organization. You will still have to demonstrate
competency and currency, but different organizations and managers may see
you differently than your present employer, or offer opportunities that
better fit with your strengths.
Assessing yourself and getting feedback may help you decide to pursue a
future promotion with your current employer, to seek additional training
or education, or to look outside the organization for a new opportunity.
-- Carol Anderson, Career
Development and Placement Office, Robert J. Milano Graduate School of
Management and Urban Policy at New School University in New York City;
