28 Proven Ways to Get a Work Promotion Without Asking

This article will provide a proven 28-step system for propelling your career up the corporate ladder to help you fulfill your career aspirations.

It is compiled from my 26 years and 10 promotions in large corporations. This article is split into four sections and includes a printable cheat sheet guide that can be downloaded at the end.

If You Have To Ask For A Promotion, It’s Already Too Late. Get Promoted At Work Without Asking. Be The Natural Choice.

There are four critical factors in getting promoted:

• Deliver on your goals consistently.
• Deliver your goals on time.
• Deliver your goals in the right way with professionalism & integrity.
• You are already a natural choice.

Section 1: Deliver On Goals With Integrity

1. Deliver On Your Goals Consistently

If you are going to be a trusted employee and be considered for promotions and career development, you have to be clear on your goals and deliver those outcomes.

In my experience of Silicon Valley corporations, you are only considered for a promotion if you deliver on your targets. If you are the one that delivers results, you are usually going places.

Also, it is not just about achieving some of your goals; it is about building a reputation that you always deliver. The best compliment I ever received was my manager telling me, “Barry, you always deliver.”

Delivering Your Goals Tip: We all get distracted at work with side jobs and issues that arise day-to-day. Ensure you deliver the big things, and the rest will fall into place. Print out your major goals and refer to them weekly to check if you have made any progress against them.

• Related Article: Being Productive Helps You Deliver Your Goals

2. Be Crystal Clear On Goals

Whether you seek promotion or not, you need to be clear on your goals. Many low-grade managers want to micro-manage their staff and individually assign small tasks. If you want to claim you can consistently deliver on your goals, you need to quantify them with your manager and get a sign-off.

• Know the outcome: Increased sales, better customer satisfaction rating, new products developed, projects completed.
• Measure the outcome: a 10% increase in sales, a 2-point shift in customer satisfaction, the development of three new products, and the completion of projects on budget.
• Know the timeline: 10% increase in sales in 6 months, 2 points on customer satisfaction in 12 months, one new product every three months, projects completed on time.

Now that you are clear on your goals, you need to keep your boss and team updated on them. If you feel you need support to achieve the goals, ask for it from your manager or even your team.

[Related Post: Be Goal-Oriented – SMART Goals]

3. Deliver On Your Goals With Integrity

It is not enough to deliver on your goals. If you hit your targets and are disrespectful, inconsiderate, or in any way intolerant of others, this will damage your career.

• You need to be patient and consider other people’s viewpoints and situations.
• Never cross the line by being too intimate or personal.
• Never discriminate against religion, gender, color, lifestyle, education, or anything in any way.
• Never be rude or dismissive.
• Never, ever RAISE YOUR VOICE.

Integrity Tip: Treat others as you wish to be treated with respect, tolerance, and honesty.

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4. Build Trust With Your Manager

If you are the type of person who starts fires rather than helps put them out, you will have problems. Ultimately, all but the most egotistical people want a good working environment where everyone gets along.

Build a good relationship with your manager by being the “safe pair of hands.”  That means you are the one who does not drop the ball on an important task or deliverable. If you communicate enough with your manager, you will understand the state of the business and also understand their goals.

Additionally, with any good working relationship, you will understand how they tick, meaning how they operate and how they like to do business. The more in tune you are with your boss, the more you will be empowered to make important decisions without consulting them. You build trust by ensuring that when an important decision needs to be made, and you are not 100% sure of the right decision, you speak with your boss and discuss it to clarify the point.

Building Manager Trust Tip: Don’t just ask what to do; state the problem and what decision you think is the right one. If your manager agrees to your solution or even tweaks it a little, you build a bond of trust.

Section 2 – Team Dynamics & Relationships

5. Build Trust With Your Team

Being a colleague people feel they can trust is critical to getting a promotion. We discussed earlier achieving your goals the right way while treating people with respect and dignity. This extends to all your activities, whether in a team meeting, at the water cooler, or on a lunch break.

Make each interaction with others positive, and they will not have a word to say against you. It only takes one bad interaction to start a cycle of mistrust within a team.

If you are the type of person people enjoy working with, you have the first base covered.

Building Team Trust Tip: Make each interaction with others positive, and they will not have a word to say against you. It only takes one bad interaction to start a cycle of mistrust within a team.

6. Help Others Succeed & Build A Following

Meeting your goals is one thing, but to build a strong following in the team, you need to help others achieve their goals. Never think of it in terms of “if I achieve my goals and others do not, I will be the one promoted.”

Never achieve your goals at the expense of other team members. Building a reputation and a following means helping others achieve their goals. A great manager’s main function is to help the whole team be successful. If you can help your manager achieve that by assisting others, you will boost your credentials and lay the foundation for success.

Helping Others Tip:  Take some time to look around the team to see who is struggling with their tasks. Approach them and respectfully offer your assistance.

7. Mentor New Team Members

If your team is growing, then there will be new people joining the team regularly. Speak to your manager and let them know that you are willing to help onboard new team members to help settle them in and introduce them to the team. This is time well invested as you will be onboarding a follower and building a strong relationship with that person.

Coaching Tip: Speak to your manager and let them know you want to help new team members. 

8. Do Not Play Politics Or Favorites

Workplace politics can raise its ugly head for many reasons. One particular reason is if multiple people are aggressively seeking career advancement. An average ambitious employee believes they need to promote themselves at the cost of others. They may exact that cost in terms of talking about others behind their backs, belittling the work of others, and making a show of anything they do to self-promote.

Please do not engage in these activities; they waste time and can lead to mistrust and a poisonous work atmosphere. It would be best if you rose above it all.

Avoid Politics Tip: Train yourself not to engage in gossip or discuss others behind their backs. If you get dragged into a conversation like that, politely excuse yourself from the discussion. People will quickly get the message about your level of professionalism.

9. Develop Job Mastery: Be The Go-To Person

Another vital element in your getting promoted checklist is actually being good at your job.

Most well-paid jobs require certain technical skills. Whether you work as I.T. technical support, a trainee accountant, or in sales, mastering your job is a must for promotion.

Most teams are organized into a function. If, for example, that function is sales and the next promotion is to the sales team leader for a region or channel, you need to demonstrate that you have sales mastery. You must demonstrate a track record of hitting sales targets and keeping customers happy.

Why? Often, a promotion means more seniority and the ability to leverage your skills across more people. If you know how to make sales, you will be responsible for ten other salespeople, and your job is to enable them to succeed. You cannot do this without mastery of your job.

Job Mastery Tip:  Make continual learning a way of life. To be great at your job, take the time to learn from the best at work and develop your skills outside the team. Research professional training courses and use Podcasts, Audiobooks, and books to expand your horizons and knowledge.

• Related Article: The Best Audiobook Services Review

10. Take The Tough Jobs

Inevitably, tough jobs come along. You know they are tough because no one wants to take on the task. By stepping up and taking ownership, you can use this opportunity to extend your reputation and build credibility within the team. This will build your profile, and your team will respect you for it, but it can be a double-edged sword. You need to make sure that you have the skills or can build the skills to complete the job.

Taking the Tough Jobs Tip: If you think the job is highly likely to fail, specify this clearly to your manager. e.g., “This has a 20% chance of success, but I will take it anyway.” If you succeed, then you are a hero against all the odds. If you fail, well, they were warned.

Section 3 – Personal Attributes For Success

11. Be Prepared For Meeting With Your Boss

If you want to impress, be ready for meetings with your manager. The best situation is to have a notebook on your desk or an Excel spreadsheet always open to note down topics as they arise during your working week that you need to discuss with your boss.

Topics will include new business ideas, updates on critical meetings, difficult customers, new business wins, and inputs on important decisions.

If you do not develop the habit of capturing them when they occur, then you will forget them by the time your one-to-one meeting happens.

One-on-One Meeting Tips: When the one-to-one meeting happens, it is 5 minutes of “Hi, how are you? How are the family?” and then 25 minutes of powering through 10 different topics—no time wasted and maximum results. Your boss will love you for that.

12. Punctuality: Be On-Time

There is no doubt about it. In most companies, especially big corporations, there is nearly always time pressure to achieve goals and targets. Be on time when you are invited to a meeting, whether with a client or an internal team meeting.

Being consistently late for any appointment shows you have the following characteristics:

• You are badly organized.
• You do not perceive time correctly.
• You cannot plan ahead.
• You cannot meet deadlines.
• You do not respect the valuable time of others.

Demonstrating any or all of the characteristics above means you are not eligible for the promotion.

Counting The Cost Of Being Late. Think of it like this: if ten people are in the meeting and they are all waiting for you to arrive, and you are 10 minutes late, you waste 100 minutes of their lives. They will not thank you for it.

In my experience, the most often used excuse for being late is that the previous meeting overran. If you were leading that meeting or did not inform the meeting leader that you must leave at a certain time, it is your fault you are late.

Punctuality Tip:  Make it a point of pride and personal integrity to always be on time. If you arrive a little early, you also get to chat and build a relationship with others before the meeting, making you feel more comfortable and giving you time to think about the meeting and what you want from it.

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13. Be A Good Oral Communicator

The ability to speak clearly and with structure is a huge plus in the race for promotion. I am not even talking about presenting to an audience of 1,000; I am just talking about small groups and one-to-one discussions. Of course, being comfortable in larger groups is also a huge plus.

Clearly and intelligibly getting your point across is vital in today’s business world. Your words should also mean something. Avoid giving strong opinions when poorly informed; if you do not know something, say so.

Oral Communication Tip: Everyone can improve their speaking skills, from the CEO to the individual contributor. If you seriously want to grow your confidence and engagement, the single best way to do it is by joining the not-for-profit organization Toastmasters. I was a member myself for two years.

14. Be A Good Visual Communicator

When I want to convey an important point, I always use a visual. A visual is a graphical representation of the key points you are trying to make.

Important points warrant pulling up a PowerPoint presentation or a whiteboard. However, in team meetings, it is simply worth sharing the agenda and minutes so that the audience can see what the topic is and who the actions belong to.

The brain’s visual side is much more receptive than the audio receptors. As they say, “A picture paints a thousand words,” which is as true in remote team meetings as in an art exhibition.

Visual Communication Tip: Keep your visuals to mostly images and diagrams, not pages of text.

15. Be Positive & Speak With A Smile

When I was 17 years old and in college, I landed a tough summer job. I was being paid to go door to door trying to sell double-glazed windows. In the late 1980s, double-glazed windows were like the electric car in terms of innovation; yes, it is sad.

Suffice to say, the people who answered their door to a snot-faced, pimply teenager trying to sell them windows were not the most polite.

It was a miserable job, but I did learn to put a big smile on my face at the beginning of any interaction. A big smile and a firm, energetic, and friendly voice—do this with every one of your co-workers, and you will do just fine. It could be worse; you could be trying to sell them double-glazing.

Positivity Tip: Use a big smile and a firm, energetic, and friendly voice. Do this with every one of your co-workers

16. Share A Little Humor

The best compliment you will ever get from a British person is they will say you are a “good laugh.”  The British love humor; that does not mean they are all funny; it just means that even trying gets you bonus points.

Inject humor into your interactions with people, and they will warm to you. I do not mean telling jokes; just trying to see the lighter side of life.

Humor Tip: Keep it clean and light-hearted

17. Attend Team Meetings & Speak Up

It is easy to sit and say nothing in a team meeting, but you will be slowly forgotten over time. To be successful, you need to do the exact opposite. If your manager is good, they will usually make time for a team roundtable so that everyone can share their progress and updates with the team.

Team Meeting Tip: Be ready for the team meeting, have at least one topic to raise on the roundtable, and speak regularly on the fixed agenda. This does not mean speaking just for the hell of it; make it meaningful and value-adding, and you are on the right path.

18. Be Focused On The Job At Hand

Distraction and interruption are the enemies of getting any job done. This is very prevalent in meetings, especially in group meetings. Some people love the sound of their own voice and can hijack simple discussions to introduce another topic. Be aware of that; after a while of being mindful, you will learn to detect it quickly. Be polite and request that the distracting topic be tabled for another meeting.

Focused In Meetings Tip: If you need to get to a solution or outcome in a certain timeframe, be structured in the planning for the meeting. Plan the right time and include time for questions. Do not try to solve world peace in a one-hour meeting.  

19. If You Raise A Problem, Suggest A Solution

To be a candidate for a promotion, you need to demonstrate you are a problem solver. Imagine you are a Marketing Specialist, and one of your campaigns is running behind schedule, and there is a risk of missing the deadline.

You do not approach your supervisor and say, “We are behind schedule; what can we do?”

The best approach is to take ten minutes to consider possible solutions. If you cannot think of solutions, chat with more experienced team members and see what they think.

Then you can approach your supervisor and say, “We have a risk of running behind schedule, so should we add some people from other projects until we are back on track, or move this deliverable until after the deadline because it is not critical to the project’s success. Or do you have another suggestion?”

Solution Tip: Take time to organize your approach and suggest solutions

20. Build Your Work Network

A good network of people in the company will help your career prospects. If you foster good relationships, people will speak highly of you, opportunities will start to flow your way, and you will be considered. When problems come along, if you cannot fix them, you should know someone who can.

Build Your Network Tip:  Attend work functions, team lunches, and the occasional evening out. Rotate who you go to coffee with during working hours, and be friendly and chatty at the water cooler.

• Related Article: The Best Tips For Creating Career Opportunities & Getting a Payrise

21. Be Committed

Most people mistake being committed to staying late in the office for doing lots of unpaid overtime. Sure, we all burn the midnight oil occasionally to meet a deadline, but we do not make it a habit.

A good manager will not expect you to give up your personal life and family to get a promotion. If they do, find another role in or outside the company.

When I was at university, I promised myself that I would never turn into one of those corporate guys who worked every hour that god sends and end up losing my wife and having no relationship with my family and friends.

This is easier said than done. The more you are promoted and the higher up the career ladder you climb, the more money you earn, and that means greater expectations on your shoulders. This leads to burnout.

However, you can show your commitment in other ways.

• Commit to the quality of your work, not the number of hours.
• Show your commitment by supporting your team in being successful.
• Commit to helping your manager be successful and achieve business goals.
• Demonstrate your commitment to the business by suggesting ways to improve the product, service, or even productivity.

22. Continually Develop Your Skills

We are surrounded by information and knowledge everywhere we look. Unfortunately, most of us choose to ignore most of it.

Every six months, you need to take some time out of your schedule to think about your career:

• Where do you want to be in one or two years?
• What knowledge, training, or experience will you need to get there?
• Make a list, and take action.

There are so many choices available, and you can make them fit your needs:

• Professional Qualifications – ask your employer to pay or contribute.
• Industry Journals – your employer might pay for them.
• Books – the time-tested, cheap, and effective way to improve knowledge.
• Audiobooks are my preferred way of absorbing knowledge and expanding my horizons without sitting in front of a computer or in bed with a book. I listen to books while exercising, gardening, commuting, or cleaning the kitchen.
• Try the DIY MBA – Do A Personal MBA in One Day

Self-Development Tip:  Plan where you want to go in your career and choose the best method for attaining the knowledge you need.

23. Get A Mentor

It is rarely done in business, but it can be very effective when done properly. A mentor is a person who is preferably senior and has more experience than you. Normally, they will not be in your direct organization, so they can provide you with impartial advice.

If you feel having a mentor will help you, speak to your manager about it, or approach someone in your network whom you respect and ask them directly.

Get A Mentor Tip: Do not be afraid to approach someone and ask; by asking someone to be your mentor, you will have paid them a huge compliment, and you will go up in their estimations. Seeking a mentor is a sign of ambition, not of weakness.

Section 4: Promotion to Team Leader or Manager Tips

24. If You Want To Lead, Do It Before The Promotion

You do not need an official invitation to be a leader; you can lead many activities without infringing on your manager’s authority or creating resentment among your teammates.

• Offer to stand in for your boss during vacations.
• Organize work events and get-togethers
• Volunteer to represent your team to other teams and organizations
• Offer to lead team meetings.
• Be a thought leader by planning and researching specific topics of interest to the team or group objectives.

Leading Before The Promotion Tip: Lead from the front, but bring your team with you. Challenging tasks can be simplified by bringing others on the journey, involving them, and giving them kudos for helping, and you will gather a following.

25. Demonstrate You Can Make Good Business Decisions

Being promoted to your first leadership position means demonstrating good business decision-making. Good business decision-making means you need to be able to synthesize everything down to return on investment (ROI).

That does not always mean how many dollars you will make per dollar invested; it means a lot more than that.

Some examples of good decision-making using ROI analysis:

• Investing in a training course for an employee. Returns a more skilled and committed team member
• Investing your time to help a struggling team member deliver a project. Returns a more loyal follower and a deeper professional relationship
• Investing in one more member of staff. Returns more output and more sales, or less over-time for the overworked team members
• Investing in productivity improvements or work elimination. Returns lower costs and more capacity for value-added work

Business Decision-Making Tips:  When you need to justify anything to management, you must have a well-thought-out Return on Investment (ROI) argument. If you have planned ahead, you will get what you need.  

26. Ask Your Boss What You Need To Improve

If you plan this well in advance, you can gather input from your manager about what they think it takes to get promoted to the job you want. A good opportunity is in your yearly performance review or any talent planning activities that occur.

Ultimately, this is precious information as it will probably be your boss who awards you that promotion.

27. Tell Your Boss You Want A Promotion

This is not the same as asking your boss for a promotion. The key is to inform your boss that you are interested in future career progression. You are not asking for a specific promotion; you are letting them know you want to progress and grow within this team or company.

Do this before any job openings occur, and give yourself time to get in shape for the step up and for your boss to see you in action before a new job opens up.

Tell Your Boss Tip: No one knows better than the person awarding the promotion what the new job entails.

28. Lack Of Opportunities; Make Your Own

It can certainly happen that no matter how much you want a promotion, there is simply a severe lack of opportunities. Working for a small company or if the company is stagnant or declining are good reasons for the lack of job openings, and this does not reflect on you.

It may simply be that your direct management or senior staff have minimal turnover; therefore, your opportunities are limited.

It may even be the case that you have a personality clash with your direct boss, and they are holding you back. This happened to me when I first joined the Compaq Computer Corporation head office in Munich, Germany, in 2000. My boss was so incompetent, and I was so competent that he deliberately tried to make my life hell through his fear of being replaced. I did not want his job, but he irrationally feared me. After six months, I applied for a job in another team, and within 12 months, I was promoted to team leader and manager. This was the start of my serious career progression.

The company’s senior leaders eventually saw through my ex-managers political games and bullying, making him redundant within 12 months. The great thing was that I had nothing to do with him leaving. I moved position and continued to do my best in another team.

Lack Of Opportunity Tip:  If there are limited opportunities, you may need to look outside your team or find a company experiencing strong growth. Eventually, your time will come.

• Related Article: Great Books on How To Start A New Business

Print Out Our Getting Promoted Checklist

The number one factor in getting a promotion is achieving your goals on time and in the right way. A good manager sets clear objectives that are aligned with the business’s goals.

To be considered for a promotion, you must demonstrate that you are a safe pair of hands that always meets targets and deliverables.

Secondly, deliver goals on time. When accepting a goal or target, ensure you have the skills and resources to deliver it by the due date. Nothing pleases a manager more than a job well done and on time.

Finally, it is not just what you achieve but how you achieve it. Delivering the objective while treating other co-workers, customers, and your manager with respect and integrity will demonstrate that you can be trusted.

Delivering on your goals consistently means you have mastery of your job; this is a strong indication that you are ready to take on more responsibility and grow within the organization.

What to avoid:

• Many people looking for promotions feel they must work all hours of the day and always look busy; this is not the case if they have a good employer.
• Too much overtime impacts productivity and increases your chance of missing a target or deadline.
• Playing Politics

Getting promoted to a team leader has special requirements that managers look for:

• A qualified candidate for a team leader position will already lead people in some aspect of their job. Suppose you are collaborating well with team members, helping them be successful, or providing informal coaching within the team. In that case, this shows you are already a leader of people and care about the success of others.
• As an employee, you should seek to demonstrate these attributes of your work and back them up with proof in your performance review.
• Regarding attitude, I look for people who remain positive, even in adversity. Balancing that, I also respect people who are willing to challenge a decision as long as it is done the right way.

One of my most successful employees used to challenge me when he was unclear about a specific decision. Still, if I respectfully won him over to the direction I had set, he would be my number one advocate and supporter.

Proving your job mastery and consistent achievement of goals, combined with your ability to collaborate with respect and integrity, is a winning combination for a promotion bid.

How To Get Promoted Cheat Sheet Download

Promotion Checklist Contents