Being “good at what you do” is an asset to your career, and it fosters a great attitude and a solid self-esteem boost.
But, unfortunately it’s not enough to get you a promotion. In fact, if you’re excelling at your current position, it might be a good reason to keep you where you are instead of promoting you. It’s quite the conundrum; if you’re great at your job, your company might never dream of putting you anywhere else.
So, if it isn’t excelling at your work, then what makes someone “promotable”?
Quite a bit of research has been done on promotability. We’ve also discussed different strategies to move your way up. Although it’s difficult to conduct fact-based research on it, they have come to a few general conclusions on how to get promoted:
- An employee can develop skills for higher-level jobs if they are regularly faced with “challenging” work. “Challenging” work is defined as work where the current rules and routines won’t suffice in getting the job done, forcing the employee to innovate new routines.
- An employee who does non-challenging work (mundane work where the current rules and routines are sufficient) never develops higher-level job skills, and thus may be less “promotable.”
So, how do we get promoted? Ironically, it sounds like we have to break a few rules.