A day doesn’t go by where someone doesn’t ask me this question. Getting promoted at work is much easier than you think and doesn’t require you to do any crazy tasks to get there but simply care.
Work is all about attitude, engagement and delivery. If you can remain motivated, you can deliver on those three items daily. To stay motivated, you can use some of these tips.
1. Put a picture of something you work for (vacation, car, family) on your desk
2. Create a social network for yourself at work, but remain distant and professional
3. Increase your skills by helping out on projects or another department
4. Leave your office for lunch and enjoy the weather
Now that you are motivated it is important to understand what I mean by attitude, engagement and delivery.
Attitude: This is your ability to have a real smile, and a positive attitude about work no matter how bad it gets. You must remain positive that you can achieve goals you are assigned everyday and make sure that your attitude is contagious. Others will notice your can do attitude and you eagerness to take on challenges but more importantly your ability to work well under pressure.
Engagement: Be corporate with your boss, meaning make sure they see that you are living the brand and values of the company through your work daily and that you are passionate about your work. Most of those that don’t get promoted are due to their lack of engagement, they feel like they are there to get a paycheck and go home. Make sure that your boss and their boss sees your level of commitment to their organization and believes that you can influence others to do the same. Engagement can be seen through simple gestures like taking a shorter lunch in order to get more done, or offering constructive feedback.
Delivery: This is the hardest and to me, probably not the most important of the three but still a must to get promoted. Deadlines, project goals, sales goals are all part of what makes a company profitable and are necessary in order to pay your salary. The more you contribute to that the more profitable you look to those you don’t interact with daily or weekly, such as CEO’s or CTO’s. The major part here is to show that you pay for yourself by bringing good profits to the organization. In other words, you are worth the money and will make an asset if moved up the ladder. This isn’t as important unless you are in charge of the profits and losses of your group, branch, office, as you will not directly report out the profits you were able to attain.
Combining the three while keeping yourself motivated and challenged will be the reason you are noticed by the key players in your organization. These same people will remember your name and will make it easy on you when you are looking to transition to their teams.
