Often we’ll hold onto a team for a little longer than we’d like for the chance at a promotion. You might’ve been told you have a “promising chance” or something like that, but it’s hard to look into the future and see how your promotion packet will actually pan out.

Here are 3 common indicators I’ve noticed that a promotion your next cycle (assuming it’s in ~6 months) may not happen.

1. You aren’t mentoring others at your current level

Do people at your level come to you for assistance/guidance? Do you create resources/runbooks that people ask for frequently?

If not, try to find ways to help your team (and beyond) at scale. Creating documentation, scripts, templates and things reusable by many is a great start.

2. You haven’t talked to your manager about promotion yet

You and your manager should be aligned on when you’re going up for promotion. If you don’t have a plan ~6 months out, start planning now!

Take advantage of recency bias and work with your manager to have some great staff+ projects lined up for you in the upcoming quarter.

3. You’re not already helping with the team roadmap

Even if you’re not yet in leadership meetings with your manager, you should be helping with the roadmap in some capacity. That could be things like:

• Compiling data for your EM to help them make informed decisions (e.g. incidents categorized by severity and component)
• Creating proposals to help pillar initiatives that include impact and scope details

Conclusion

Most managers mean well (and want you to get promoted!) but we can’t rely on just the hope that it’ll go well. Take advantage of your time before the next promotion and start your preparation now!

Have any questions about your promo packet? Respond to this email and we’ll talk!

Thanks for reading,

Eden