How To Get Promoted At Work

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Welcome back to Success with Srini. Today on the podcast, I’m answering a question that I have asked myself numerous times in my past life. And a question that I know you have asked yourself multiple times? Or maybe you’re asking this question now, which is, how do I get the promotion? Now, before I answer the question, I suggest that you do some research on the internet, like Google the question, look at what others are saying. It’s amazing. The answers are more or less the same, more or less the same. Every year, there is an answer to this question, how to get the promotion in 2022, or 2021, or 2020, whatever, every year, somebody writes an article and lists out everything.

Now, living in Silicon Valley, being a coach working with people, I have direct exposure to what people are going through. And the answer that I’m going to share here on this podcast is my experience with truth. So please compare what I’m sharing here, with everything that you’re reading online, and you make a conclusion that whatever works for you, I’m with you. But then, what I’m going to be sharing here is something that’s coming straight from me working with people. So let’s get into this. The most common answer, you’ll find to this question on how to get a promotion is to make your boss’s life easy. If you make your boss’s life easy, you’ll get the promotion speared through this, this, it sounds good to the year, maybe it works out that way. But that’s not what my experience is. If you make your boss’s life easier, you probably have a job. But getting a promotion is only something that happens when your boss gets promoted, probably you will get promoted as a result of that.

See, most of the articles and most of the content on the internet are tailored towards as if you are getting promoted to the next role. In my understanding, the word promotion is not simply the next level, the promotion is any level. So you could go from being an individual contributor to being the head of the cost center, maybe the head of the organization, you don’t need to just get that next level. And that’s how you should be thinking, and I challenge all of my clients with this. So listen, why are you looking for the manager role, because you are an individual contributor, or why just become a senior manager, we call your manager, why not go from being a manager to a director or a VP or a CTO or CXO whatever, whatever role that is. So, promotion could happen, you could be promoted to any level, I want you to have that mindset as you’re listening to the podcast. Now, this is my formula for getting a promotion, there are three G’s in this formula, okay. The first G is giving. So, you need to be excellent in giving you give two things, okay. One is instructions. That means, you are communicating that means you are expressing that means you ask or you do things in a way that compels others to do the job. So, communication is important when giving instructions.

So, giving instructions is where it starts. Now you’re giving instructions to others, obviously, you’re giving instructions to yourself, and you cannot give instructions to someone and expect them to do what they’re doing or you give instructions to yourself and get things done or complete projects or whatever, without you being in the right frame of mind. So, there are many things when I say communication instructions, there are many things that have to happen, which is you need to be in the right frame of mind you need to be positive you need to be your mental expectancy should be high all of that stuff, but then Very simply put, you need to give instructions. The second part of giving is you also should compliment and you also give recognition to people compliment people and recognize people for whoever they are, and whatever they do. So that is part of giving. Then the second part is getting stuck to is getting usually if you can get revenue in the get good, you’re golden. And the second part is you need to get impact-driven projects to completion. Right. So you need to get projects to work on that have some well, you know, impact it’s just not about Getting the project? No, there are simple projects that are complicated projects that are public that have high visibility.

So I’m talking about projects that have high visibility and huge impact. So, preferably, if you are given a chance choose projects that are having a high impact, but you know that if you can drive if you will drive them to completion, then they will have a high impact. So, I would focus on getting high-impact projects. The last one is called golf. The first one was giving second is getting third is golfing, golfing means that you need to network with the right people within the organization who are above you, obviously with you, but above you also. And for sure. Below you if there is anything called about below at par and all that. From where I see this, you should be networking with everyone. So he should be networking, you should be promoting yourself across every layer, about you at par with you and below you.

So giving, getting, and golfing are three things you have to do or anybody has to do to get the promotion. Now, a few things will happen as a result of this, either you get promoted to the next level. But you do this right, you could be promoted to multiple levels higher than where you are if done right. Now, those are the things that are all there is to this. Now, there are some other suggestions that I have, right, which is you got to excel in your current job, you need to achieve a level of recognition before you can be promoted at the level of efficiency you have to achieve. You have to learn about your job at a deeper level. All of that. But those are all common suggestions. Now, I’m going to share one last thing before we wrap this up, which is a majority of the roles are now becoming symmetric. Now what it means is, before people were hired to do one specific thing that they were good at back in the day I was hired about 25 years ago because I was really good at doing one thing, I got the job, I was really good at that. And I built my credentials, my income, my success, and my ego because of the job.

Now that job became obsolete over a period of time, because later on when they started hiring other people into the same role, or when I started applying other places, I saw that the people who are applying with me also have other skills that I do not and more experienced than me in a variety of areas that I do not. So it became obvious to me that all that ego that I built up about myself what I can do is questionable. And it’s just a matter of time before I’m gone from the industry. So jobs are becoming symmetric, which means anything that you are doing, anybody can do. Because anybody can do it, it’s very difficult for you to build uniqueness. And not only build the uniqueness, which could take years, but then also what if by the time you really get all the credentials in place, and all the experience in place, you are replaced. I mean, the technology is replaced, the new things will come again, one more loop where you’re trying to learn more. So this is a very difficult situation to be in where you see that there is nothing about you that is unique. There’s also another challenge in this, which is the people who manage you can also do what you’re doing.

So your manager is more skilled, more talented than you. And then because of that, it’s very difficult to replace the manager. And even if you end to go one level about your manager, maybe your manager’s manager can do what your manager is doing. And because of that, your manager is having difficulty replacing his or her manager. So which is a unique situation if you really get deep into and study. So back in the day, it was all a job was a complementary relationship. So you complement in something that they do not have. And they cannot do and now a job is becoming symmetric, everybody, anybody can do anything. So keep that in view. And keeping that in view. You have to build your uniqueness. You have to do everything, keeping that in view. And you know that you are not indispensable, but at the same time, you need to work towards becoming indispensable.

Hopefully, today’s podcast is helpful if it is do me a favor, drop me a message, write a review, read the podcast, share it with your friends and family. And I’ll be back here again. Tomorrow. We will take up one more topic and we’ll deep dive into it. Stay tuned.

How to Read People

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Welcome back to Success with Srini. Happy Hump Day to you. Yesterday on the podcast, I talked about how to read more. And my idea behind yesterday’s podcast was to share some of my experiences, some of the techniques that I use to read more. But towards the end of the podcast, I talked about why to read more kind of deviated from the main point. Today, I want to extend the conversation I want to share with you. Not only it’s important that you read books, but you also have to read people. The number one skill in the world is the art of speaking within which the art of speaking to influence and persuade, that’s the number one skill, you do it, right, you become the head of the country, you could become the head of the world, or dominate the world, literally anything that you want, you could achieve if you know and you learn you, master. And you really dedicate yourself to learning, the art of speaking specifically persuasive speaking, within the art of persuasive speaking, there is this art of reading people. So people respond to you in a certain way, if you can study how they’re responding without saying anything.

They respond to you in gestures, they with the body movements if you study people’s bodies and the body language, then you could really become good at whatever you’re trying to achieve. So it’s as simple as that in my seminars and workshops. I teach an entire session on this, it’s easy to demonstrate how to study the body language, then to kind of speak like this, but I want to quickly run a few by you. So that you can, you can start appreciating it. And you take this beyond this. In other words, you start studying more and doing your own research on this. So the first time, the foremost you got to check when you’re working with people is whether they have their arms crossed. The sitting or standing, specifically sitting with their arms crossed the tuck posture, specifically, what it means is that they’re closed to your ideas and thoughts. So if somebody you are doing a one on one presentation, or one on many presentations, you see some people, their hands are crossed, that means they’re not connected with you, they’re not willing to, for you to present thoughts or your idea, or they don’t receive your idea. So they’re close to your suggestions. If their head is down, you’re presenting and their head is down, they’re looking down. That means they’re trying to hide their emotions. So then they’re hiding their emotion, which means you don’t have the rapport anymore. You haven’t built the trust yet. Maybe they could be shy. And that’s why they’re probably trying to avoid eye contact, they’re not looking directly into you. But then mostly they’re unwilling to share their emotions with you. Okay? Sometimes you’ll find people with their shoulders drooping. What it means is, they might be tired, or they might be bored with what you are primarily bored by what you’re saying. So if you’re listening to this podcast right now and your shoulders are, are drooping, that means you’re bored, you don’t want to listen to this podcast. If they are sitting in a chair, and their head is lifted, and they are looking to the screen. And this is what happens in my seminars, they’re looking into the screen, which means they have the tension, very simple. If they’re looking at you, they’re looking at the board, the whiteboard, whatever the slides that you’re presenting on the screen, that looking the chin is up, that means they’re interested.

Then, let’s talk about some actions. So let’s say somebody reaches out and on the first contact, they give you a very firm handshake. Usually, that implies confidence. And depending upon how they hold the hand, if their palm is a bow your palm, means its dominance. If the palm is below your palm, that means it is surrendered. So the minute thinks to this, but then you get the idea. But mostly, if somebody is giving you a firm handshake, it’s confidence. If somebody gives you what’s called a glove handshake, where they give you the give both their palms and they hold your palm between their palms, right, that’s a glove handshake. Usually, it means they have some political affiliation or they have some politics, or usually, politicians do this where they reach out and hold your hand with both their hands. So you got to read into whatever you want to read into that. But that’s a political handshake, mostly then hands on hips, usually, hands-on-hips mean that people are tired or they’re exhausted, they’re waiting, they’re becoming impatient. Sometimes looking around, you have eye contact with them, but then suddenly, the big the eye contact, they start looking around. That means they’re trying to hide their emotion. And primarily, what it means is they’re not interested anymore. So something you said or something that you did, that completely lost interest. This happens in sales transactions, happens with people who are in sales, in a front-end sales professional, that means that brokers are insurance agents that they know that you know, the prospects know that they’re selling. And they say something and suddenly, the whole transaction goes off, and people get turned off completely, and the prospects completely go cold, they shut the gate, they completely shut themselves down, happens. There is also one other element to this sometimes the way to bring back people mostly into a conversation and keep them in a conversation is by using a technique called mirroring, pacing, and mirroring. So you speak at their level, at their pace, and then you mirror every gesture that they are making. This works very effectively when you are in a one-on-one conversation in front of someone in person. So if you’re talking to somebody in person that you’re trying to influence, then pacing and mirroring help.

Those are some and there is actually there’s more to this. So I highly encourage you at any point in time if you are in any of my seminars, regardless of any of my seminars, and it so happens that you will remember this podcast episode, please ask me to walk through the presentation and I’ll find time to walk through the 75-minute presentation that I have on specifically teaching the body language, the skills of reading the nonverbal messages that people send out, I think that’s the right title. That’s the right title for the podcast, right? The art of learning how to read the nonverbal messages people send out and we send out a lot 70% of all communication is nonverbal. We express our values, our beliefs, our moods, our melodies, our likes, and dislikes without using words. And people read smart people to read. Take this and read yourself, what kind of gestures that you make. In different situations and different circumstances. Your quality of life will improve and you’ll succeed beyond your imagination.

Okay, that’s all for now. We’ll talk more. We’ll continue the podcast more tomorrow. Stay tuned.

How To Read More

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Welcome back to Success with Srini. Before turning on this microphone, I was just making an observation, March 15. And this is like two and a half months into this podcast, daily podcasts. Unbelievable what has happened, thank you for being a listener, thank you for the support. Hopefully, you are liking everything here. Hopefully, this is helping. And my job, my goal, my intent is to shop every day here and share with you something that’s going to empower you that’s going to position you for success, incrementally, maybe first small, little success, but then success for sure. On a daily basis. That’s my goal with this podcast. So today, I want to pick up a topic that is very close to my heart. This is something that I spoke about numerous times on this podcast. And if you go back in time, we don’t expire podcasts here. So this should be at least a few from 2016 2017, even 2020.

Talking about this very topic, which is how to read more. How do you become good, really good at reading? Back in the day, there wasn’t much today, there are so many tools, there are so many strategies, so many techniques, the world is becoming flattered by the day, this information is so amazing how you can access anything literally on your fingertips, made to me five years ago amazed me even more 10 years ago, but then it doesn’t amaze me anymore. Because I’m beyond amazed by what’s happening in terms of technology in terms of knowledge sharing in terms of ad exchanges. If you just have a little bit of intent, you could literally get anything you want, given the times that we are in right now. So that said, let’s get into this. I’ve been asked this question, how do you read more, I have shared that I have multiple books that I read and have been in different industries myself. Anytime I’m exposed to a new idea, a new concept, I try to go deep as much as I can I give it my time, my effort, my energy, my whatever I have.

So along the way, over all these years, I try to read a lot. And long, many, many years ago, I read somewhere that knowledge is not known to enter a wide-open mouth. So people who speak a lot people who talk a lot, usually don’t have a lot, because they are not good listeners. And as a speaker, this is a challenge I have, which is I speak a lot, which puts me in a very bad position because I’m not listening to a lot. So one of my pursuits over the last 1012 years has been that become a good listener. And becoming a good listener is hard because you have natural instincts within you, your body, your minds are structured in a way to perform something in a certain way. So if you’re a speaker, you will speak and perform in a certain way you have difficulty listening, not all but some and I’m one of those people who have trouble listening. So I practiced listening to a lot. And a part of listening is also reading. Because when you’re reading the words are entering through your ear, the way the brain processes it, even though it looks at the words, but the words the way they attach themselves and create the meaning. It’s as if you are hearing as if you are listening. So reading a book is also listening. Now I have a few ideas I want to share in this podcast that will help you become a good reader.

Of course majority of these you can find over the internet and all but then these are some of my personal experiences too, that I experimented with. First and foremost, if you have an elementary school kid in the house, or your kids went to elementary school, ask them how to become a good reader. Because they have really gotten their wherever they are today because you know they’ve been ingrained with all their read a lot. They read a lot. That’s the that’s the point. Back in the day when I was growing up, there was not much reading there were no teachers telling us to take the book, go home, read give back. But here the teachers do, and there is a certain number of books that a kid has to read in a year. So talk to your kids, they’ll tell you everything about how to become a good reader. So that’s step number one. Step number two is to set a goal for reading. Like read at least one book every three months or two months or once a month, something like that set a goal set a timeline, and just read as much as you can. I start the day by reading a page or two in the middle of the morning. That’s one of my morning activities and then I try to read one or two pages towards the end of the day. Then ever you are read two pages in the morning, two pages in the Evening, if you can, it’s a good habit to have. It’s not about coverage. It’s not about how many pages you read how many books you read, it’s not at all the point. But I try to read a physical book. And that’s why I have difficulty in getting rid of books. I tried a pack of books, I gave a lot of books away, give a lot of books on air on my radio show. But then I read physical books, I also have a light that clips onto my books. And that’s an LED light. For me to read books in the night.

I also suggest that you take a speed-reading class, there are so many programs available. Take a speed-reading class I took one long time ago, but I stopped it in the middle. And I never really followed through on it, which was not the right thing for me to do. But now it’s more about how I retained at this age where I am right now than how much you can do for me personally. So speed reading helps. But then every time I try speed reading myself, I end up becoming less. So I end up going back and rereading again. So which is counterproductive in the end. So I read less now, but then I try to retain more, which I do. I also suggest that you take a comprehension class, which is what they teach in schools, it gives a good understanding gives a good footprint, good baseline into language into words into many things, I would start there. Then I also suggest getting an e-book reader even though I’m a big fan of buying books, reading books, and passing books along I suggest you get an e-book reader or something a device an electronic device which you can read on my iPad or what whatever that device. And the reason why I suggest this now is because of something called combined reading.

So what a combined reading does is people listen to audiobooks, so you can get an audiobook. If you already have the physical book, it’s great, but then you get an ebook reader and you play the audiobook, you listen to the headsets. And you read the book at the same time. So sometimes what happens is when you’re reading a book, there are distractions coming at you and things happening around you. So typically people lose the flow. And by listening to what you’re reading what the eyes are seeing, the flow continues, even though one of the sensory elements drop, so your eyes get tired, and they get focused or your ears get tired, they get D focused. And then this overall sensory alignment is there. So you get a good mix. also schedule a time to read. And I think I already made that point read in the morning, read in the evening if you can read in the afternoon, with not about a number of pages, just a little bit of stimulation, what you need a knowledge stimulation or knowledge push. Then the other thing is, if you can then schedule the amount of time we are going to read like, say 1015 minutes, 10 minutes in the morning, 10 in the afternoon 10 In the evening, you don’t do anything other than just reading wherever you are. Okay, then, if you want to also do what is called an in-between reading, like in between activities you want to read any activity, it doesn’t matter, like you do one activity, then you read for five minutes, come back and do the second activity read for five minutes. That’s how I would structure this now one of the early structures I had back in the day, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s, sometime around the time, if I used to go somewhere, I would have to read a chapter after reaching the destination, for example, if I go to Costco, then I reach the Costco parking lot, I park in the parking lot, I read a chapter, then I go inside, then I shop, I come back and then read a chapter and then come home. I used to do that back then till the parking lots became busy. And then people like would like wait behind you to park their car. So I don’t do that now, but you get an idea. So for example, I go hiking, I go park the car, read the chapter and then go hike, then come back, read a chapter and come back home. While sitting in the car I do this. So the different ways you kind of incentivize yourself at the same time you structure this at the same time you plan this at the same time you stack this so different things going into this technique, which is very effective because at the end you don’t feel like you just went from for hiking but you also feel that you completed readings doing something big You’re just doing that one act. So which is powerful.

This is an interesting observation that I, very early on in the earlier podcast, talked about how to read more. I made a comment there very early on a few years ago, which is, you know, I’m not a native. I’m not born into America, and I’m not raised in America. So my vocabulary is very weak. So when growing up, in going to school, I probably had like five to 600 words that I really knew as a kid. And then, later on, I came back, when I came to us, I probably now 25 years living here. But then, by the time I came here, and I landed here, I probably was about maybe 1800, about maybe 2000 words, in English, not not a lot. So there was a struggle, there are some words that I don’t use because I don’t know how to say, and because the way my, my accent is, the way my tongue moves, and the way my overall internal vocal structure is, I can’t say those words, they the sound art, I know, I’m gonna mess them up. So I don’t say those words. I never said that, in any of my podcasts, any of my radio shows any of my seminar presentations, and I get away without saying those words. It’s funny. If I even tell you the words that I avoid, you know, I can probably run a million-dollar giveaway. And I can ask you listen, in any of the recordings, we find this word me speaking anywhere, send me a recording, I’ll give you a million dollars. And I’m willing to bet on that there were some very common words I cannot say, because of the way I was raised and the way my vocal structure is, and the way this whole thing, my tongue, and everything is structured. But I have always been curious, what have I learned? Now that I lived 25 years in America? And then I’ve worked with people. So I’m always curious, did my vocabulary base did it go up? And reading does that if you read? So over the last 25 years, I have been testing myself to see how far I have gone through numerous tests to see what is the depth of your vocabulary? How many words do you know, in English, Paul Newton, and a bunch of others? I think he has a team people came up in 2006 came up with a vocabulary test. And in that test, what they suggested is, for every one question, you get right, you know, 500 words. So they give you 100 questions.

They do a test, let’s say you get 50 of those words, right? That means 50 multiplied by 500 Is your vocabulary, overall vocabulary. Okay, that’s the strength. I keep taking the test. In fact, before coming to this podcast this morning, I did take the test to just be accurate to be precise. How am I doing because I’m going to come here on the podcast, I’m gonna share some data with you. So here is my vocabulary base right now based on this test that I now have about my total base now is 10,000 words. 10,000 English words, word families, at least 10,000 English word families. That’s how they report this. I’m not saying this is the best formula. I have no, no idea, the different ways to test this and all. But you get an idea. At least I get an idea. This is the mark that I use now. And I keep on testing myself. Can I go from 10,000 above? I’ve not gone crossed 10,000 For a long time now. But I need to even improve learning new words. But there’s also another data point here that every one of us, we learn one new word a day for the rest of our lives. So one new word is coming into your life, whether we know it or not. Now I take this data now and I compare that with my kid.

My kids went through elementary school and now one in the high school one is in the middle school when I look at them, but when they were in elementary school, they were already having a base of 20 to 30,000 words already in elementary school. So you see the gap, the gap is pretty wide. It’s very wide. Now. So they at this point in high school, let’s take that as a mark. Then in high school, they already have what 20 to 25,000 words they actually know the probably passively know another 20,000 words that they don’t use So about the bass is about 40,000 words. And here I am, I lived half my life. And I’m not even able to cross the 10,000 mark, despite, you know, trying being at it for a long time, you see how important this is. And learning new words essentially was also nourishing your brain, your mind. I mean, there is another growth happening as a result of you learning a language. So I did a whole different podcast on this because people can question this, they say, you know, why learn the words life is moving on anyway? Well, life will move on anyway, why do all this anyway, right? You can turn this interest in this question in different ways. But now the question is, you made this point, if I still have you listening to this, you ask the question, where do you take this test? No, the website is vocabulary size.com vocabulary size.com. So you go there, take the test anonymously. And you will come to know where you stand with your English. Hopefully, you will do it. And that’s all for me on the podcast. And hopefully, today’s podcast motivates you to inspire co2. Read more.

Hopefully, I justified why you should read more. Yeah, that’s all I’ll stop here. Have a wonderful
day. And I’ll come back tomorrow. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about a new idea on a new concept. Thank you.