Ask Christa! How Can I Convince My Manager I'm Ready for a Promotion? (S5E57)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and today’s listener question continues our season’s theme of career growth: promotions! Specifically, when you believe YOU’RE ready but you feel like your manager needs a nudge.

And if YOU’D like to submit YOUR question, head over to my show's site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H.

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question, “I’ve been with my company for two years as business analyst. I work in the transformation group, and we lead the initiatives that enable our employees to work better while assuring our organization can thrive. It’s the second company I’ve ever worked for, and much bigger than my first company. I was with my first company for four years, right out of college. They were a small company with about 200 employees. I started as a market analyst in finance. I was promoted at my two-year mark due to the growth I demonstrated and the value I added.

I know large companies work differently, but I’ve learned so much since I was hired and I feel like I’m ready for a promotion. My manager and I have put a development plan in place where I need to meet a series of milestones in order to be promoted, and I am committed to that, but it will take another one-to-two promotion cycles, and I’m getting antsy about this. I feel like I’m ready now. I can do my job really well, and even though I’m still learning, I don’t see why I have to wait. How can I convince my manager that I’m ready for a promotion?”

Promotions are every bit important for the organization as the employees …

I understand the energy that comes along with ambition, and I certainly appreciate what it’s like to feel ready for a promotion. Our listener is asking how to convince their manager that they’re ready for a promotion, but… their manager needs no convincing: they have a plan in place to promote our listener.

There are a two really frustrating scenarios I want to talk about when it comes to promotions. The first is when you have a manager who doesn’t know how to set their employees up for a promotion: doesn’t know how to elevate the work, doesn’t know how to speak across functions to assure others understand your value, doesn’t know how to coach their employees for what it means to be promoted. Worse yet, they talk with you about a promotion, but there’s no further action and therefore, no promotional outcome.

Then there are organizations that rarely, if ever promote.

In both of those cases, the hungry, ambitious types will cycle through—which is fine if that’s how the organization is setup. There are companies known for onboarding early career professionals to do very specific tasks with the understanding that only a few might promote from each cohort. The value to the employees is they end up with a pedigree company name and excellent task-related, hands-on training for the years they are there. 

But it’s not great if you are looking to build and grow your organization OR if you want to get the most out of the good humans on your team. It often surprises top leaders to learn that professional growth consistently ranks in the top half of what drives employee engagement, or that energy where employees willingly go above and beyond their role. Let me say that again: when employees willingly go above and beyond their role. With or without a promotion.

It sounds like our listener’s manager is working with our listener to do just that: manage the process whereby our listener gains the valuable experience, knowledge, skills, and practice to operate at that next level SO THAT our listener can be promoted.

I don’t think our listener has to convince their manager of anything: the manager is convinced, and there is a process in play.

Promotions are about readiness for the next level, not mastery of your current one…

So, the manager has already committed to a promotion process on behalf of our listener. What I hear from our listener is less about the manager’s agreement and more about our listener’s concern about how long the process might take.

Now, there are times when a promotion is an obnoxiously long cycle, times when people have been demonstrating they are ready for the next level BECAUSE they’ve been doing the work for some time with appreciable and DOCUMENTED results. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

In our listener’s situation, our listener’s development path is specific to a promotion, and as our listener says, they are still learning. This is the part that trips employees up, and also what I wish organizations were more clear about. 

Promotions are about—or at least SHOULD BE about—how ready you are to formally be at the next level, with the right title and pay AND the commiserate accountabilities and metrics that go along with it. This is important. The best promotions occur when employees are operating AT THAT NEXT LEVEL; they have achieved the trust and application of work at that next level. Promotions aren’t—or shouldn’t be about—whether you have mastered your current role. Promotions also aren’t about getting to the next level and THEN learning the role when you get there. Promotions are about your readiness to move into that bigger role and succeed right away, that first moment.

Promotions often come with learning (and with patience) 

But my answer for our listener is more about advice: stay the course and celebrate that promotion when you achieve it, because it will feel wildly satisfying when you realize how much you learned and had to learn in order to get to that next level.

If you feel things drag or your manager re-negs on what was planned or that your promotional activities (those activities written down in your development plan) stall out, THEN feel impatient, and also address it—directly and without hesitation. But for now, you are in a large company, which means you likely have a lot of resources available to you. Take full advantage of what you have in front of you, recognizing that a formal plan makes things formal—and when it comes to promotions, that’s a good thing. 

If our listener said they had been talking about a promotion with their manager without any formal plan, or that last year the manager said there would be a promotion, and this year they’re saying the same thing, or that their manager promised a promotion then never talked about it again (and these are ALL things people have heard in their career), THEN I’d worry and become impatient—even frustrated.

But now’s the time to align yourself to a plan and enjoy the learning that will come with it. If nothing else, you will have the benefits of the learning and preparation for your next job if it’s two promotional cycles from now and there still isn’t any movement (… but for sure, you’ll be able to see how things are going before your next promotional cycle). 

Stay open, and enjoy the amount of investment being put into your development path and potential promotion. 

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve included an article from Leapsome, which is a software vendor focused on HR and employee processes. It’s called “10 criteria for employee promotion justification,” and it’s focused on the manager’s position: what it takes to setup and promote your employees. This is an important perspective to have when you’re curious about what it takes for YOUR promotion. It’s an EXCELLENT article, thorough and easy to read, with several links included that will offer additional insights. Read it, use it to your advantage, and learn from it. (and if you have a great boss, think about whether it’s time to say, “thank you,” after you read this article). 

I’ve also included an article from the Indeed Editorial Team updated June 2025 called “What you need to know about job promotions.” It includes a video for how to ask for a promotion also, although as I always say: these kinds of career growth elements are always performed best in the context of your organization’s culture and norms.

The article goes through a variety of considerations, from timing to ask for a promotion to some of the characteristics and job results you should be demonstrating in advance of asking. It also touches on how to prepare to ask for a promotion.

And I’ve included a report called “The Impact of the Promotion on the Employee’s Productivity,” which examines promotional processes and what happens to productivity if they are perceived as unfair. It provides a lot of perspective for what goes into a promotion, and at just eight pages (the last being citations), it will give you a boost in your knowledge of promotions at the foundational level.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Questions

And that’s a wrap for Episode 57 of Season 5 focused on Career Growth! 

You can submit YOUR question on my show’s site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H, where you will see all my episodes listed based on category and season. While your there—sign up for my More Answers… newsletter, where you will receive additional content on Sunday nights to set you up for the work week. 

As always, thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!