Some of this is blunt feedback I wish I’d been given, early in my career. Some of it is blunt feedback I wish I — or someone — had given various colleagues & employees. Why is it so hard for people to be frank about this stuff? Maybe it’s because I live in Minnesota, where the official state personality is passive aggressive, but sugar coating or ignoring this stuff doesn’t do anyone any favors.
1. Stop obsessing about pay grade. Obsessing about pay grade is the wrong strategic move. The more you obsess about your pay grade, the more I think you have no common sense and the less I want to increase your pay grade. Why? You care about pay grade because you want to make more and feel like you’re being promoted.
But to make more and get promoted, you should instead obsess about outperforming in your current role, getting new marketable experiences, and getting marketable title advancement. These are the things you talk about on your resume and in your interviews, not pay grade.
Plus, pay grades usually overlap by enormous amounts, so is not necessarily an indication your compensation, just your upside. Jumping pay grades doesn’t guarantee more cash. But outperforming and racking up marketable experience both increases your likelihood of getting a raise (more cash) and jumping pay grades (more upside).
PS: title is more important than pay grade because title goes on the resume and sets compensation expectations. For example, in my company, there are certain Analysts who are higher pay grades than some Managers. But Manager flags as higher-compensated on a resume.
2. Fix your image. Sorry to remind you but humans are evolutionarily wired to make snap judgments based on appearance. Image includes clothes, hair, makeup, ironing, tie, jewelry, fingernails, etc. For goodness sake, use a q-tip! Want to advance? Dress like you mean it. Don’t dress like your kid, or yourself from ten years ago, or the funky free spirit that you think you are. Right now, you are over estimating how professional you look. If you tell me that “suits are uncomfortable,” or “suits don’t fit me,” than I believe believe you’re not thinking maturely or strategically about your career, because it’s plenty easy to find a suit that fits, and by the way you need to get comfortable with using a tailor.
This rant about suits comes from the suit culture I work in: you need to carefully examine the culture of your own organization. How do the leaders in your company present their image? How do the people you admire in the job you want (not the job you have) present their image? Follow their lead.
3. Your communication style is getting in your way. If you are not an excellent communicator, people aren’t recognizing your smarts & your contribution. People are getting tired of fighting the communication battle with you, or being eternally confused by you. The more tired you make them, the less they will want to work with you, or for you, and to promote you.
4. You need to manage up more. If you don’t know what that is, you need to find out or get a mentor. It is not the same as brown-nosing: it’s managing expectations, ensuring your actions are aligned with your manager’s goals, appropriately triageing issues, ensuring your manager knows your successes, making life easy for your manager and making your manager look good. Everyone wants their manager to have their back, right? Think of managing up as returning the favor.
5. Invest more time in your boss and your boss’ boss. You can have the greatest relationship in the world with the client or your team, but if you don’t ALSO invest in having a great relationship with your boss – and for that matter, your boss’ peers, your boss’ boss and anyone filling in for your boss – than you are not going to have a great review or get looked at as promotable, or get great new assignments. Or be able to have a candid enough relationship with your boss such that you can say no, influence priorities, and call her on her bullshit.
6. Own your own weaknesses, start mitigating them and take off the blinders. Why is are so many people so reluctant to own their weaknesses? Maybe because so many of us have been punished for weakness in the past. But what, do you think you are perfect? Only a perfect person would either have no weaknesses or not have to mitigate them.
7. Stop taking everyone’s advice indiscriminately. Instead ask: out of the menu of advice I’ve gotten, which is most applicable for this current situation or this current culture or this current personality?
This goes for my advice, right here, too. I’m just a data point for you, and you can’t use every data point — I might be an outlier. I don’t have some magic solution or the key to it all. If I had the key, I wouldn’t need to be writing this blog to figure out what I am doing.
Posted by mfk 
Posted by mfk 
Posted by mfk 
