Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
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.