How can women have the promotion conversation?
I worked with Rachel many years ago. She was the head of the HR function at the time that she was hired and over the course of time she has grown from strength to strength across the HR spectrum. Recently over coffee, she was talking to me about a “promotion” conversation.
Rachel has a bunch of men and women colleagues working with her. She leads a team of 83 HR professionals spread across geographies for an MNC in the information security space. What we were talking about is how the men in her team approach a promotion conversation.
She spoke with Sam (a Team Lead for one of her verticals) sometime last year when he had approached her for a move up. Sam had said that he had spent sufficient time in the role as a Team Lead, and it absolutely made sense for him to take up larger responsibilities and probably manage more than one team now. She spoke at length with Sam- highlighting the great stuff that he was anyway doing and brainstormed with him to figure out which parts of his job he was really crazy about. (I am sure Sam wasn’t expecting that!) Turns out Sam loved the trouble shooting part, he loved being the fire fighting people manager. He got bored when things weren’t crazy, and he had been working his team for quite a while now; so he was aware of their unplanned tendencies too. After speaking with him, she said why don’t you take up a team lead assignment with the exit management team and see how that goes. They are forever fire fighting and you will probably be able to structure the madness. Now a year later, Sam was an Assistant Manager there, moved up one rung from being a Team Lead and still very engaged with the company as an employee.
With Tina it was a different story. She came to the table asking for a raise and a promotion almost apologetically. Tina was a fantastic worker. She was well tenured, knew the ins and outs and was wonderful with all her stakeholders. But she wasn’t the best spokesperson for herself. And to make matters worse she wasn’t wrong with asking for the raise and promotion, but the fact that she was doubtful of it herself, made Rachel think twice as hard. There was no strength building conversation with Tina like it had been with Sam. Instead it became a confidence bolstering session. I forget if Rachel agreed to Tina’s requests or not; but come to think of it, right now that’s not even important. Rachel went on to Thrivewithmentoring and say that women need double the number of mentors and conversations that men do. Women have been conditioned over centuries to work with and through frugality, and this is eons of conditioning as the primary bread “manager” at work. So when they have to actually seek more resources, for themselves or for others, they are apologetic.
But in a dog eat dog world, how do women stand out and talk the promotion talk?
Build your sense of safety before you approach the conversation- This will help you participate in the conversation and not be a spectator. To experience the conversation and what it can mean for you- it makes sense to substantiate what you are asking for and why. List down your achievements, wins, tenure, soft skill wins, setbacks over the course of the last couple of years. Also list down how you figure in terms of parity in the industry- are you at par, above average, below- what’s the actual situation. Arm yourself with data to build your sense of safety. This sets communication boundaries when you “ask” for the promotion. Instead of the other side saying their part of the story, your data affirms your part of the story. It makes you confident enough to chat about what you think you deserve.
Use the conversation as an input to your self development- Be open to unlearn and discern. You would have put together your facts based on certain assumptions about yourself, about the system and how promotions are decided. This conversation might challenge any or all of those assumptions. You could get started with new possibilities and a new level of development. A developmental perspective helps with making this conversation easier. You could also become aware of newer contexts and uncertainties.
Level up conversations are a way for both sides to level up, to encounter and to mould each other and the self. When you approach a conversation like that, you go in with an outsider’s view of the promotion conversation. At the end of the conversation, if it has gone well, you have an insider’s view too. These amount to your lived experiences of such crucial conversations and help you convert promotion conversations later on too and also to guide others in doing the same.
