[0:02] This is Rusty Gaillard and welcome to Do Something Different. This is a podcast for ambitious high achievers people who want to create even more impact and have more fulfillment in their career we

[0:23] teach you skill set and mindset to break old habits and to accelerate your progress so let's get started. We're talking today about promotion. Most people that I work with want promotion. They want advancement. And there's a couple of reasons for that. A lot of people want, of course, the salary and the title that comes with additional responsibility. But the real driver for that, yes, there's a part of that that is the badge of honor of having a bigger job. But most of my clients, really, this is about impact. This is about the opportunity to have a broader impact on the organization and to really leave your mark both on the team and on the company and on the marketplace, frankly. So that is really the driving force behind a lot of the people that I work with and their desire to continue to grow. Now, the challenge, of course, is for a lot of people, their career starts, progression starts to slow down. You start to see a little bit of this plateau happening.

[1:23] Early in your career, I'm sure, you changed jobs frequently, you got new opportunities frequently, you continued to have advancement and new possibilities showing up in front of you. And it was actually pretty easy. So every year or two, you were moving up. But the longer you get in your career, the deeper you get into your career, the more that starts to slow down. And the question is, why and what can you do to accelerate? Now, of course, the further you climb up the corporate ladder, the fewer positions there are available. And so as you move from an entry-level position to maybe you get promoted, you have a more senior kind of individual contributor, then you become a manager, and at some point you're a director or even a VP, well, taking the next step is harder because there are fewer of those roles open.

[2:11] But there's also a challenge that's beyond that, because a lot of people don't know what it takes to get to the next level. And that's where a lot of this challenge comes in. And the feedback that we get from the people around us, and particularly from our management, oftentimes is not very good, quite frankly. I've had clients come to me and say, well, my boss tells me I need to be better at reading the room or seeing around corners. And, okay, I think we all understand intellectually what that means. But there's a different question, which is, how do you put that into practice? What can you actually do? What behavioral change can you put in place in order to advance when you're given that kind of vague or general feedback? Or for example, you're not strategic enough or you don't have executive presence. These kinds of things are hard to action. And the further you move up the leadership ladder, the more those kinds of characteristics become important. They're the differentiators that get you the opportunity to move up a level, but they're also tend to be vague. and they tend to be subjective. So how do you action those? We're going to talk about that in today's episode because that's a challenge that a lot of people face is I don't get clear feedback. And how am I going to take action on this feedback in order to demonstrate my executive presence or seeing a round corner or reading the room? How do I demonstrate those things so that I actually get the opportunity to move up?

[3:39] Now, the other risk that happens when you get feedback is especially for high achievers, let me back up for a second, because high achievers fundamentally want to be successful, right? These are ambitious people. I'm one of these people, type A, who you put a goal out there, you say, this is what I want you to do. These are people who go out and figure out how to deliver against that.

[4:02] That's what high achievers do. And they've been successful in their career by achieving things, by meeting the goals that are set out, by delivering excellent results, by exceeding expectations. So if you're one of those people and you have defined your career by exceeding expectations, when you get feedback, what do you want to do? You want to deliver on that and you want to exceed expectations against that feedback. So if you're told, for example, to be better at reading the room or to see around corners, and yet you don't know really how to do that, that kind of thinking is going to dominate your thoughts. You're thinking about that feedback is going to dominate your thoughts. And you're going to go into a meeting and you're actually going to be less natural. And this is a huge detriment for a lot of high achievers because they're trying to meet somebody else's standard for what someone else is saying. This is what leadership looks like. This is what you need to look like in order to advance. And now all of a sudden, instead of being yourself and being natural, you're trying to meet somebody else's standard. You're trying to behave in a way that you think somebody else wants you to behave.

[5:10] You're complying with some kind of model that's been given to you, whether that comes through feedback from your boss, whether that's something that you read implicitly in the environment, the corporate environment that you're in, whether it's some model that you got from some other place, maybe from your friends or your parents or from your schooling environment or prior roles, you've got this model of what does it mean to be a leader? And you're trying to live into that. So whether you're, it could be responding to feedback or it could be trying to live into this model. But in either case, what ends up happening is you can be a little bit on your back foot. You're a little bit defensive trying to say, well, I'm trying to do this thing. I'm trying to meet these expectations. And especially if you're getting feedback that you're not achieving it. Now, all of a sudden you're like, man, what am I doing wrong? And you get a little bit cautious and reserved. You end up playing defense rather than playing offense. I think we all know good leadership is not about playing defense. It's about being proactive, bringing your ideas to the market, being yourself, being authentic, being assertive, being confident. These are all very standard attributes that you hear when you talk about leadership.

[6:23] But if you've been given feedback or if you've got a model in your head where you're trying to meet some other person's standard, that's not going to serve you well. So we're going to talk about how do you shift that? because that's a big part of this promotion conundrum. You've been given feedback that your boss says, this is what you need to do to get promoted. But if you're hyper-focused on delivering against that, you may actually be less effective. And that can be a challenge.

[6:48] So, what this speaks to is this common pattern that we high achievers have. And the common pattern is we want to be successful. We want to win. We want to get the right answer. You know, this starts for many of us back in our school days when we're given a test or we're given an assignment, you want to get an A. And you strive to do what the teacher has asked you to do to get an A. And we carry that same mindset into work. Early in your career, that's pretty much what your job is. Listen really well to what your boss is asking of you and deliver exceptional work. Very similar to what you did in school. Listen to what the teacher asked of you and deliver exceptional work. You get an A in school, you get an A at work, and you continue to advance. The problem is at some point that pattern no longer serves you. And this is what I call the A-trap because you're working hard, you're trying to meet others' expectations, you're trying to get the right answer, you're trying to look smart. You're trying to come out on top, but those things are not what leaders do. And this is why a lot of high achievers, smart, successful people who've followed this pattern of success, they stay in the pattern, but this is why they get stuck. This is why your career plateaus.

[8:02] That's why you no longer getting the opportunity or you're getting this vague feedback about how to improve. But it's just reinforcing the same dynamic, this a trap problem that I'm talking about, which is you're trying to get it right. You're trying to please someone else. You're trying to deliver against their expectations. So that is fundamentally one of the big problems that leaders have that highly successful people have in trying to become a leader to get that next step forward in their career. So it's this vague feedback. It's how you respond to the feedback. It's this frustration that happens around the plateau and the notion of an A-trap and trying to get it right, trying to be smart, trying to please other people that can get you stuck.

[8:51] So let's talk about what you can do differently. So I want to give you three key ideas that you can work on that can help position you much better to be promoted, to advance in your career. The first one is to be more strategic. Now, I don't particularly like that word strategic. I'm using it here as a little bit of just a kind of a keyword because I think we all understand implicitly what strategy is and what it means to be strategic. But in the business context, it's often very confusing. Once again, how do you implement that? What do you actually do differently to be more strategic? So let's talk about that. And there's two parts to that. There's part A and a part B. Part A under being strategic is to be more proactive. And what I mean by that is not to just do what's asked of you. We all have in our job, especially if you work in a corporate world, there's a lot of work that comes at you. Some of that comes from peers. Some of that comes from your team. Some of it comes from your boss. But there's a lot of work that is coming towards you. And your job is to respond to that. It's to handle it. It's to prioritize it, to deliver against it, and to make sure that you're continuing to move the company forward.

[10:04] But what's missing in that is the proactivity. And the proactivity is your best ideas about how to advance the company, your organization, and your team. Because oftentimes the work that's coming at you tends to be the keep the lights on kind of work. These are just the things that have to get done in order to run the business. But if you're going to differentiate yourself, you can't just keep the lights on because that's fine. Every company needs people to keep the lights on, but that's what drives growth. What drives growth is innovation and creativity and teamwork and new ideas. So when I talk about being proactive, this is taking that time out to think about what's going to advance your team, your organization, your company. I talked about this when I talked about prioritization because so many of us think about prioritization as responding to all the stuff that's coming at us and deciding what am I going to do first? But I would argue that prioritization is more about being proactive to figure out what's really going to drive the business. So that's the first part about being strategic. But here's the second part, which is equally important.

[11:17] If you don't communicate your thinking behind why it's important and help people understand the context and your perspective, they may not appreciate that what you're doing is strategic. Because what one person sees as strategic, another person who has a different context of the business and a different perspective may see as unimportant. So part of your role here is the communication of why you're deciding what it is that is strategic or important to you and how you came to that conclusion and the perspective on the business that you bring that informed that. If you are not effectively communicating that, people may not understand that you're being proactive, that you're being strategic. Let's just take a very simple example. If you decide I'm going to do this big project that's going to drive revenue growth for the business, and as a result, I'm going to be a little bit less responsive on some of these incoming requests from my business partners. Your business partners may be very unhappy if you're less responsive, if they do not understand what it is that you're doing to drive the business growth, how you decided on that and how it's going to actually help not only the whole company, but even ultimately has some benefit in it for them, even if it's just because they're part of the same company and they benefit when the company grows.

[12:36] So being strategic means being proactive. And you can listen to my whole longer podcast on prioritization because I really dive much more deeply into that. But it's about being proactive and communicating to people how you've decided what area to focus on. So that is the strategic piece. That's part one.

[12:56] Part two is very related to the communication aspect of that. And the part two is that relationship matters more than work deliverable. Now, that's going to be a challenge for many smart high achievers, and myself included, because you may have heard the story, and I'm not going to tell it here, but I'm sure I've talked about it in other places, and you'll hear it again, about a project that I led that failed because I focused too much on the work deliverable and not enough on the relationships.

[13:27] And i will tell you that this is very common for smart ambitious high achievers because they want to get things right they want to look smart they want to deliver exceptional results and what does that mean that means you're focused on the work product and we get overly focused on the work product and neglect the relationships when i worked at apple and was kind of at the cusp of one of these leadership transitions. I was really hyper-focused on the work that was in front of me. And my boss pulled me aside and gave me a great piece of advice. He says, Rusty, you need to focus less on the work and really focus on building relationships with his peers, my boss's peers. So building relationships with people one level above me in the organization, but not my boss directly, but my boss's peers. Because those are the people that are going to influence the decision about my opportunity for growth. And to the extent I want to have a bigger impact in the business, I need a relationship with them because I need to influence them as well. As you think about leadership in an organization, the higher up the company you go, the more removed from the work you are and the more your work is about relationship. It's about influencing other people. It's about making decisions about resources, the strategic thinking I was just talking about as point number one.

[14:52] And it's about understanding what's important to other people so that you can consider that as you're deciding where to put your energy and your effort and what your team is going to deliver on. So relate number two is relationship over work deliverable. And that is going to be a challenge for a lot of people. I've had clients who struggle with that.

[15:12] It's critically important. So think about who are those key relationships and how can you start to build relationship with them?

[15:19] How can you spend more time with them? How can you understand their priorities? How can you inform them about your thinking and your priorities?

[15:28] Point number three about getting promoted, have an opinion. Now, have an opinion obviously about your work and the area that you're responsible for. But not only that, but be visible with your opinion. Share that when you're in a meeting. Have something to say. Listen to other topics in a meeting. Be present. Don't tune out and multitask. Be present in that meeting and contribute to other areas that are not just your own. One of my clients was a pretty senior leader, but tended to be on the introverted side. She would go into these meetings and she would listen to the meetings and her team was presenting very well. So she was empowering and delegating things to her team. but she often would walk away from a meeting not having said anything in the meeting. And she started to wonder, is this undermining my executive presence? Is this undermining the way people see me just because I'm not saying anything? Now, it's not that she needed to correct her team because her team actually had answers and was giving answers that she agreed with. She was working behind the scenes with her team to make sure they were prepared and they were presenting well and they were all aligned. So that's all wonderful management. But what we talked about is being visible in the meeting, having something to contribute, participating in the meeting, because you don't have to dominate the airtime, but participation matters and being visible matters. That is part of leadership.

[16:56] The other place that this shows up, or another way to think about this, is Apple talked about work in different categories or different categories of work. And I'm just going to talk about two categories, category one and two. Category one work at Apple is the job you're hired for. That's what you have to deliver. That's what your core expectations are. Category two work, the way Apple described it, is work that you're not directly responsible for, but that you can be influential in. So these are areas where you would want to influence other people to help drive success in the business.

[17:32] Now, this connects to the first two points that I talked about. Number one, about being strategic, which is about being proactive in terms of thinking about what's important, thinking about the business. Point number two, which is building relationship rather than just focusing on work deliverable. And this point number three is about having an opinion. And having an opinion, especially in this category two. Category one, of course you have an opinion. That's your core area of responsibility. But category two is outside of your core area of responsibility. And what are you doing in that area to be influential, influential, to be visible, to have an opinion? Now, you see how all of these three points working to get work together, being more strategic, valuing and emphasizing relationship over work deliverables, and having an opinion. You can see how they all interconnect. And when you start to do these things, you are being influential to.

[18:29] In a way that is bigger than your specific role so you know it's no longer just about delivering your work but it's about looking more broadly at the company building relationships with other people deepening your contextual understanding understanding different perspectives and now forming an opinion expressing that opinion being influential through the relationships that you have.

[18:52] And driving results that are bigger just than the area that you're responsible for now when you start doing that, you are operating and performing at a level that is bigger than the job you were hired for.

[19:03] And I think we all know from our own personal experience being promoted, but also from our personal experience promoting others, it's those people who are performing at a higher level than the job that they're in that get new opportunities. So if you want to be one of those people that gets new opportunities, think about these three simple things. One, how can you be more strategic, more thoughtful about what's going to drive the business forward?

[19:31] Number two, how can you emphasize relationship and building relationship over the work deliverable? And number three, how can you have an opinion and express your opinion more frequently? Now, a lot of these things bump up against old habits and old beliefs and old personality, right? A lot of people will say, well, that's not my personality. That's fine. But your personality drives your personal reality. It drives the results that you experience in your life. Because what is personality other than a series of beliefs and behaviors? And if you want to get a different result in your life, you're going to have to do something different. That's the whole point of this podcast. The habits that you have and the way you've operated have worked great so far.

[20:13] But if you want to get to the next level, you've got to do something different. So how can you apply these in your work life in the coming week?

[20:24] How can you be more strategic, prioritize relationship over work deliverable and have an opinion and express an opinion more often? Take one of those things, turn it into action and do it. Do something different. See you next time. Thanks for listening to Do Something Different. Make sure to subscribe, like, comment and share with your friends. You can also find us on your favorite podcast platform. If you want additional content beyond what's on the podcast, Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and at my website, RustyGaillard.com.