How do I get promoted? Part 1

“I want to get promoted, but I’m not sure how to do it”

Many years ago, I began to look at people in the management and executive leadership roles in companies and I wondered “how did those people get there?”

If you’re like me, you started looking them up on LinkedIn and checking out their resumes, or googling their profiles in companies and seeing what info I could find. I was always looking for that “winning lottery ticket” piece of info that gave away their secret. 

The more profiles I looked at, the more frustrating the process became because I would frequently see things that didn’t make any sense, when paired with my mindset and knowledge at the time. Things like CEOs frequently having less formal education than most of the people that worked for them, or people I considered highly competent not getting promoted into leadership positions, when it seemed obvious to me that they would be “perfect” for the job.

Having spent some time in the military, where the promotion system was essentially based on whether or not you were competent in your current role, it seemed reasonable to me that everything else probably worked that way too. Then I had a setback.

I had been hired by a good company working for a very intelligent supervisor who taught me many useful principles. Then he fired me. Technically, they laid me off, along with hundreds of other people over the next few years, but I knew what was really going on. I stunk at the job they hired me to do, so I was “released, and empowered to seek opportunities elsewhere.”

Many people would have been bitter. At the time, I had two kids and a third on the way, and was notified that I would be let go just before Christmas, only a few weeks after my third child was born. 

Admittedly, for a few days, I sulked and felt sorry for myself, but I kept myself busy doing a few different part time jobs for the next few years. It was during this period that I had my epiphany.

I was reading a book, and the author said that I was looking at my job in the completely wrong way. (By the way, yes, all the books I read were written just for me) The author said I needed to change my concept of my relationship with my employer from one where I expected my employer to provide me with a salary and benefits to one where I earned my salary and benefits by providing my employer with high quality products and services. 

In essence, I needed to realize that I was not an employee, but rather, I was a small business owner, and it was my job to ensure that my customer (aka my employer) continued to buy my products and services by continually offering the highest quality products and services that I could manage. 

I needed to serve my customer, if I wanted to reap the rewards. 

Armed with this knowledge, I set about basically brainwashing myself into thinking this way. As a veteran and a Christian, I already had a fairly well-established morning and evening routine. I incorporated the affirmations for this new mindset into those routines by adding them into my prayers. For me personally, they basically take this form:

“Heavenly Father, thank you for all the challenges and opportunities you have given me. Thank you for the opportunity to serve my family, my community and my company through the knowledge and abilities you have given me. Please help me to do all that I can to magnify these talents you have given me so that I may continue to serve others, and to continually increase my capacity for doing so.”

Recognizing and reinforcing this new way of thinking twice a day, every day for 5 years, I went from “faking it til I made it” to being promoted to a management position rapidly. To be certain, there were many other factors at work here, and I’ll talk about some of them in future blogs, but this one was critical to forming the foundation for everything that followed. 

This practice has changed my life in many ways, but none that are more personally rewarding than the awesome feeling I get when I hear my children saying their prayers and being thankful for their challenges and opportunities.

Bottom line: If I hadn’t taken the time to humble myself and to be grateful for the small opportunities that came my way daily, then I never would have gotten bigger opportunities, and it is very likely that I would have kept being humbled by others.

Challenge: determine what limiting factors are present in your current belief system, and then find a way to be thankful for them as an opportunity for improvement. You could pray about them, or you could write in a journal, or simply say them out loud as affirmations. You could write notes to yourself and post them in conspicuous locations, but make it a habit that each time you see them, you say them out loud. When your own ears hear your own mouth saying things, you’re more likely to begin believing it.

To find out what else I did, click here!

Be strong and of good courage, and good things will come your way.