Getting Promoted

About this course

Good work does not promote itself. Promotion decisions are usually made in a room by people who have never seen your work, arguing from what your manager can describe, against other candidates, under a budget. That single fact reshapes everything. This course covers what levels actually measure — scope, not effort or quality — and why being excellent at your current job is not an argument for the next one. Then the difference between visibility and self-promotion, which work advances a case and which is invisible by construction, and the organisational housework problem that keeps capable people essential and unpromotable at the same time. The last section is the conversation itself: when to start, the three conversations rather than one, the evidence page that lets a manager argue for you without reconstructing your year from memory, and how to handle a review or a no.

What you will learn

• Explain how promotion decisions are actually made, and who needs to be able to describe your work
• Tell the difference between doing your job better and operating at the next level
• Build visibility through facts rather than claims, without self-promotion
• Identify which work advances a case and which is invisible by construction
• Run the three promotion conversations, starting one to two cycles ahead
• Write a self-assessment and an evidence page that a manager can argue from

Before you begin

• Most useful if you are currently employed
• Some experience of a workplace, at any level
• Norms vary by organisation; confirm how yours works