Diana Alt [00:00:02]:
Hey there, y'. All. Today I'm recording a solo episode of Work Should Feel Good. I'm going live on YouTube to do it because why not be a one take kind of gal and it'll go out as a podcast as well in the next couple of weeks. So, yeah, if you don't know me, I'm Diana. I'm an OBS career strategy coach. And today I'm tackling some things that are behind one of the worst pieces of career advice that people report. If you haven't listened to Worship Feel Good before.

Diana Alt [00:00:32]:
One of the things that I do in pretty much every single episode where I interview someone is ask what is the worst piece of career advice you've ever heard? And the top thing that I hear from people all the time. Hang on. Sorry, had to check my mic was okay. The top thing I hear from people all the time is some version of if I work hard, I'll get noticed, or if I work hard and I do great work, I will get promoted. And that's really just not how the world works. But a lot of people don't know this. The idea of doing this episode came up for me last week when I was coaching a client who is in the middle of like, like just getting started on that self appraisal into performance reviews cycle that's so common in so many companies of any size. And I had to kind of set some expectations with this person around what is actually viable in terms of promotion at this time based on everything that he told me about what's going on at his company.

Diana Alt [00:01:38]:
So this doesn't have anything to do with like my client being a bad guy that doesn't deserve a promotion. This person absolutely does. But it has to do with the things that are behind the promotion other than being good at what you're doing. So we are going to help you understand how to play the game a little bit. There's four main categories of things other than your own performance and your current role that play into this at a high level. And I'm going to unpack all of these. That's what the whole episode is about. It's system, positioning, readiness, signal and advocacy.

Diana Alt [00:02:15]:
That's what I came up with whenever I was prepping for this. So the system is basically almost entirely things that you have nothing, no control over whatsoever. So this is things like when are the promotion cycles within your company, role availability and funding, things like that. So realistically for people who are quite early in their career, they usually actually have to start thinking about preparing for promotion by you know, demonstrating their great work, demonstrating readiness for the next thing, talking to their manager about their aspirations at least a few months ahead of time. And when you get into more mid career and senior roles, it can be a year plus. Some companies have a process where it basically takes one to two years of hard work to get the right kind of projects under your belt. Go through like promotion board processes and things like that. Not every company has that kind of thing.

Diana Alt [00:03:13]:
But even for ones that don't have formal promotion board promotion packet type processes, you still want to be ahead of it. So if you wanted to get promoted in early 2026, you usually needed to be working on that mid-2025 or even earlier. Okay, so what are some of these things? First thing I want to say is a lot of these constraints have absolutely nothing to do with your performance and your role. Um, these are just the way organizations work, the way industry works, the way talent development works. So the system, I'll tell you right now, it does not include your ego's need for a promotion because you think you deserve it because you've worked in your role for five years. It also doesn't include your financial need for promotion. Nobody gives a shit what your bills are. Now.

Diana Alt [00:04:03]:
That's not to say you shouldn't pursue it. That's not to say you shouldn't be paid fairly. But if you're trying to build a case for promotion in any way, shape or form, working within all the different things you have to work within, especially for major promotions, you need to drop talking about those things and instead focus on understanding the following things within your company. Number one is promotion cycles. Some companies have promotions whenever and wherever. Usually that's smaller companies, but a lot of larger companies will have promotion cycles, especially when it's something like, you know, regular project manager to senior project manager or senior to principal. Those things typically happen within windows. And sometimes there's only one window a year where those happen, sometimes there's more.

Diana Alt [00:04:47]:
But you need to understand, how does my company even do this? When is this evaluated? And if they're announcing promotions in on say like April 1st, when are they actually making the decision around this? Because a lot of times they've already decided by January 1st, at least who's going to get promoted on April 1st, which means you need to be working on it before that. Another thing is role availability and funding. This has a lot to do with specifically management roles. So if you're trying to get into a people management role and you look around and there's not a role to be had or you haven't heard from, like your executive leadership, hey, we're thinking the team is going to grow and we're probably going to have another manager role next year. You may be stuck because there might just not be a slot for you to go into. And that's when you have to make some decisions about am I going to look for transfer opportunities in a different department, Do I need to look outside, or am I cool? Am I okay with cooling my jets and just making sure I'm as ready as possible whenever such a position comes up? Other thing you got to look at is funding. And so funding can matter for all roles, whether it's moving into a people management role or not. If you are a person who is kind of towards the top of your pay range for say again, the example of senior project manager, and you're hoping to get into principal and get a raise with that, if they don't have the funding budgeted to support the increase that might come with moving into a principal level role, they might not have any opportunity for you to get promoted up that way.

Diana Alt [00:06:24]:
Another thing to keep in mind is that usually the current role that you're in and the role that you would go to next have overlap in compensation. So if you're expecting a giant raise because you got promoted, that may or may not happen, depending on how the comp bands are set up. There's also some organization level constraints that you need to keep in mind, and that is everything from headcount limits. You know, maybe there's a hiring freeze on, and that hiring freeze includes that we can't do any promotions into management or things like that, reorgs that might be in play to support business strategies that you're not even aware of, which could include things like mergers and acquisitions, shifting priorities in the business. If you're working in a line of business that has previously been really important, but it's going to be de emphasized in the future, there might not be as much room for promotions in that area and then just general leadership changes. So a lot of these constraints, again, have absolutely nothing to do with you promotions. When you're thinking at the system level, they are business decisions. They are not personal validation.

Diana Alt [00:07:34]:
There needs to be a slot to put someone in that has the name and the budget and the title that you're looking for. Then I'm going to go into the. The next few things all have kind of a risk management theme to them. One of the things people don't understand about hiring is that hiring is inherently a Risk management, exerc exercise. There's a problem that needs to get solved and companies want to put the person in the seat that they feel like has the best chance of solving that problem and remaining for as long as they hope for the person to be on the team, adding value. So that's very. So some of the, some of the things you have to look at for promotion are the same kind of things you have to consider when you're looking for a job externally. After all, a promotion, especially one into management, where there might be a competitive application process.

Diana Alt [00:08:27]:
It's a job search, it's just internal. So first thing is positioning. So promotions don't start with can you do the job? They start with making sure that you're collecting the experience necessary to do the next job. So what that can look like is you understanding where it is that you want to go next. If you're playing checkers or if you're earlier in your career, you might just be thinking one move ahead. If you're someone that has aspirations for the C suite, aspirations for really some legacy building, game changing stuff, you might be thinking two, three or four moves ahead so that you can make lateral moves that allow you to collect the right experience, or you can be doing consulting or like other things to get that experience. You want to make sure that you're getting onto projects that relate to where you want to go. You're having experiences creating impact and solving problems related to where you want to go.

Diana Alt [00:09:25]:
And of course you need to make sure that you're doing your current job well while you're doing this. And then you need to get access to people that matter. We're going to talk a little bit about advocacy internally later, but if you are an unknown because you've had your head down in your cube, doing great, whatever, your job title is work, and you're trying to get to be the manager of that thing. If nobody knows who the heck you are, it's the same as if you put a plain vanilla, you know, boring resume into an online application that doesn't have anything differentiating you and you don't know anybody at the company that you're applying to. One of the things that I really have learned more and more as I go through my career and especially as I work with more clients, is that careers compound, but they only compound the way that you want them to if you're intentional about what you're accumulating. So when you think about what do I need to accumulate in terms of who I need to know what skills I need are there certifications that are important to the next level? You got to make sure that you're on point with that. I recently was messing around on Reddit and I found there's a R leadership Reddit that has a bazillion people in there and there was a thread about what how do you know that someone really has what it takes to move into senior leadership executive type roles? And numerous people that were in the C suite or VP level said that the people who reach senior leadership tend to think two to three moves ahead and often take unpleasant roles just to collect the experience. Now that might not be you right now.

Diana Alt [00:11:06]:
All depends on your stage of the career. But sometimes you have to be willing to do the crap project to get experience that you need for the next thing. If they're trying to get you on the crap project and it doesn't have anything to do with where you want to go, then you might, you might think about that differently. The next thing is readiness. So this kind of leans into positioning. We said we want to understand where we're trying to go. We said we need to understand the experiences and people that you need to know. This readiness part has to do with the fact that execution excellence in your current role is not the same as leadership capability for your next role.

Diana Alt [00:11:45]:
This is particularly important if you have mostly worked in more technical analytical roles and you're aspiring to go into a role that has people management responsibility. Wanting that role and doing well in what you already have on your plate in your current role is not the same thing. Being evaluated as ready is not the same thing as having gotten exceeds expectations on your last two performance reviews for your current job. When I was in my first job out of college, I worked for a company called CSC Consulting. It was kind of the private consulting arm of a much larger company and they had, they did an amazing job of publicizing what the competencies expected for every single role and every single level in the company were. And we were trained from the time we were baby associate consultants that we needed to be able to demonstrate strong performance, at least meets expectations and ideally exceeds expectations on a number of things for your current role and the role that you wanted to go to. Whether it was a promotion up or a transfer laterally, you need to demonstrate that you had meets expectations level of experience and capability for at least like a third of the things on the next role or you would be considered too high of a risk to promote. And that was really important in the consulting world because if you get promoted too early As a consultant, then you're on a client side and you are incompetent at what you're doing.

Diana Alt [00:13:16]:
That can have massive implications for the client, the consulting firm that's working with that client. It can cause engagements to get canceled, people to refuse to pay bills because you can't bring the expertise that they expected, etc. To give a little bit of idea. There's differences by level when you think about these promotions. So again, I said early in your career, some of the things look a lot the same. If you're trying to go from being a customer service representative to one to customer service representative two, it may not even feel like you're having to think about this stuff because basically you're just doing the same thing, better, stronger, smarter, faster. But when you get into people management, it's different. So if you are going into your first manager role, you're going to want to be able to demonstrate that you can lead people.

Diana Alt [00:14:09]:
And that's not to say that people have reported to you. That's the whole chicken and egg. How do I get experience without, you know, ever having held the job? But if you can show that you have the capability to coach peers or to coach junior people on your team, if you've been assigned to projects where you have been kind of, kind of informally the lead of a cross functional group of people and you're delegating and taking on some light project management, that kind of stuff can really help you when you're moving into management. When you're at the director level, you need to be able to prove that you can manage other managers. So again, if you're not already in the director seat, if you can show that you have influenced sideways other managers that are in similar domains working on similar projects to you, that's going to help you out a lot. Cross functional alignment and then understanding how strategy and the execution that the group you are director of would support, those are the kinds of things they want to see. And then at the VP and executive level, they want to see what kind of organizational impact that you can have broadly, whether you understand risks facing the org as a whole. And a lot of times external visibility is important too.

Diana Alt [00:15:21]:
So sometimes people want their executives, their VPs and higher to be known in the industry. This is one of the reasons why you may hear some people online talking about how executives need a personal brand just as much as any entrepreneur does. So promotions in general, they are not about your past output, they are about your perceived future risk. This does get a little tricky. There's A lot of research that says that women actually get dinged a little harder on this because a lot of times it's easier, according to studies that have happened over the years, for people to see men for their potential to fill a role. And women, they want to see them do more of the things so that they can, they can kind of have those risks that are perceived, mitigated. And that sucks. And I don't necessarily support it, but it is a world that we live in.

Diana Alt [00:16:14]:
So if you are a woman or a traditionally marginalized group, you might want to make sure that you are doubling down on getting experiences that tee you up for the next thing, even harder than other people might have to. The next category is signal. So SIGNAL has to do with whether people know you exist. To be perfectly honest, decision makers can only act on what they can see and have enough information to interpret so they can assess the risk and so they can assess the fit for the person in the next role. And this is really important because it's not just about your boss liking you. In organizations where promotions are in play, there's usually a minimum of someone from HR and your boss that's involved. And the higher up the food chain you go, the more people are involved in making that decision. So some of the things that constitute SIGNAL are the size and complexity of the problems you've been trusted with and also the visibility of both you as a professional and your results and impact inside the organization.

Diana Alt [00:17:23]:
And again, it doesn't usually hurt for you to have some visibility outside the organization. For many years I have been, I've done public speaking of various kinds, including back when I was still in corporate. When I was in corporate, I talked about agile software development and project product management, project management, leadership. Like all that kind of stuff was related to what I was doing. And I joked that I just submitted papers to conferences so I could get in for free because I'm a professional development junkie. But the end result is that I developed a reputation that made people want to come work for organizations that I was in, in teams that I was on because I, I was a known quantity. So I was a draw and fun fact. When you get to executive level, they want to see people that can draw talent into the organization.

Diana Alt [00:18:12]:
So that's some of what I did. There's also a matter of perception and this gets into office politics stuff that I know most people say, ugh, I hate that, I don't want to deal with it, but perception is reality, especially when it comes to promotion. And if you are somehow Perceived as a risk. Just. It can be not even related to your performance. It can be related to are you a hothead? It can be related to do we think that this person is going to mesh well with the people that are already on our leadership team? There's all kinds of things. But if you are not perceived as the kind of professional that you have worked so hard to develop and gather impact and experience for, then you're also not going to get promoted. And again, like office politics is a whole other thing.

Diana Alt [00:19:01]:
Managing your perception, though it's not necessarily a lot of people feel like it's manipulative, but, you know, manipulation, it's not always a bad thing. So if you are trying to deceive by making yourself look more competent than you actually are, or you're trying to steal credit for other people's works, well, then you're just an asshole. And I don't want to work with you no matter what role you're in. But if I would look at this more as what do the leaders value and how do the decisions about these promotions actually get made? And how can I make sure that I'm in the room where it happened? To use one of my favorite Hamilton quotes, Something to understand is that if someone else gets promoted, it doesn't mean necessarily that they were better at the domain skills or even that they're a better leader. It means that they were clearer about what they have done and how they are a fit for the next thing. The fifth thing is advocacy. So something I talk about a lot with job seekers is referrals. Because people got the memo that somewhere along the line this has actually been a thing for a while, but people have latched onto this idea that the way to make sure that you get an interview is to have a referral into the company.

Diana Alt [00:20:18]:
And that can work sometimes in the age though, where hundreds of people are applying for many of the best jobs and a lot of those people have gone and got weak referrals. Like having a referral that doesn't really know your work is not that much of a help. The same thing applies inside. If you know a couple of people that like you that are involved in promotion decisions, that's great, especially if your boss is one of the people that likes you. But if you do not have an advocate that understands the process and can speak to how you fit the future need for the promotion that they are assessing candidates for, then it's going to be very, very hard for you to get promoted. It's There was a TED Talk years Ago, I can't even remember the name of it, but the phrase that came through it a lot was carrying your papers. You need someone that's going to carry your papers, an understanding of what you've done in the past and an understanding of where you want to go in the future and how you've been preparing yourself for that. Someone needs to be speaking for you in the rooms that you are not in.

Diana Alt [00:21:24]:
And so what this means is that internal networking, which a lot of people just automatically put in the office politics thing that they don't want to do, that's something that you have to figure out how to do if you want to get promoted, Especially again, the farther up the food chain that you get. You do not have to love this. You are not required to love the process to get promoted. If you hate it enough that you find it unethical, then you need to be looking at somewhere else to work. But ignoring that this is the reality of making sure that you are visible enough to get promoted puts you at a distinct disadvantage from the people that are figuring out how to work the room all the way through their career anyway. That's it. So we have again to go through the five steps. It's system positioning, readiness, signal and advocacy.

Diana Alt [00:22:18]:
Some of them are easier than others. And basically they're all a symbol of the old. The old saying, what got you there is not. What got you here is not going to get you there. So I hope that as you think about your career growth, you can remember these things. You can kind of depersonalize any weird feelings that you have about not liking these processes. That is something I was not always great at, by the way. I take a lot of things really personal, so sometimes it was hard for me to get past these things.

Diana Alt [00:22:48]:
But if you really are serious about growing your career in 2026 and beyond, I hope that you'll take these things seriously. And I would love to hear stories about things that you have done, especially where signal and advocacy are concerned. Those are two of the areas that people seem to struggle with the most, especially when processes are opaque. Once you understand the system, you can decide how you're going to participate in it, whether you want to play. If you don't want to play, you can stay where you're at, or you can have a lot longer in between promotions that you may have otherwise been ready for. That's all up to you. So that's me, that's. Work should feel good.

Diana Alt [00:23:28]:
And part of work should feel good is knowing the rules of the game that you happen to be playing.