When a promotion may not be possible: 7 ways to grow sideways
As I wrote about the “Great Resignation” last week, I started to think about the top reasons people leave companies. It used to be that people left managers, not companies. This was the buzz phrase for many years to promote the importance of being a manager and having the right skills and mindset as a manager.
I still feel being a people manager is one of the most important roles anyone can play. The relationship between manager and employee is critical to productivity, trust, engagement, happiness in the job, effectiveness, building relationships and networks, and improving performance. People still leave managers, especially if they have one that is completely ineffective or even adversarial.
Compensation and career development/path have also become top reasons people leave. When I speak to people who are newer to the workforce, I am finding they are in a hurry to be promoted. There can be an expectation that they join an organization and in 2 years or less, they are promoted to being a manager with a lot more pay.
Of course, this can happen depending on the company, climate and individual. But, oftentimes, I find that I am counseling people on four main factors:
Two years may not be a reasonable expectation to get into management
It is important to determine whether being a people manager is right for you (and it is okay if it’s not!)
Moving up the ladder is not the only way to grow your skills and experience
Being a manager is not the only way to grow your income (although in some companies, this may, unfortunately, still be true)
All four factors can sometimes be difficult to understand and accept. Numbers 2 and 4 are linked together and will be the subject of next week’s blog. Doing some self-reflection to figure out if management is right for you, takes some time and experience to determine.
Numbers 3 and 4 have a lot to do with organizational leadership and culture. Are there other opportunities outside of being a manager that allows someone to grow their skills, scope and, ultimately, income? Hopefully, the answer is yes.
So, the bottom line is…if you can’t grow up, grow out!
If you don’t think people can grow laterally and grow their income at the same time, I can provide many examples but here’s just one. Let’s take a former colleague of mine. He spent many years striving for more money and, therefore, was promoted to being a manager after demonstrating great skills in his job as an individual contributor.
He took the promotion as it was indeed more money for he and his family. After a time, he started to struggle. He was spending so much time managing that he was left to do his own work after hours, which cut into family time. This may sound familiar to some. I hope not but this can be reality. He quit and took some time off to figure out his next step.
He took a project manager role at a technology company where he did not have direct reports. He also took a pay cut to take this job. Over time, he was offered chances to be promoted to lead the team because he was so talented in managing projects. He turned these offers down but asked for larger, more complex projects to manage instead. The company made that happen. He grew the complexity and impact of his job, made more money but remained an individual contributor.
Sometimes, managers and leaders don’t see there are others ways to grow outside of being promoted to management. This is why being your own career advocate and coming up with creative ways to create mutually beneficial outcomes is so important. Some organizations are still stuck in the mindset that if you are a talented project manager, you will be an even better people manager of project managers. Maybe, maybe not. Another topic for another time.
I fully admit that the techniques I am going to share depend on the organization you work for. However, I hope with more demonstration and acceptance, we can break the myth of the corporate ladder as the only way to grow yourself and your wallet. Here are seven ways to grow horizontally.
Ask to take on more work.
I know. I must be crazy because we do so much work now. This is true. But, to grow yourself, this sometimes may mean to raise your hand to take on an additional project that will develop skills you want to. I certainly have done this in my career. If an opportunity pops up to work on something new, it may be worth the extra time to demonstrate you can take on more work — another project, process or client. Sometimes, not all times, more work could lead to more money in your current role. This demonstrates your commitment and ability to juggle.
Offer to broaden your work.
A little different than above, offer to broaden the scope of your current work. In one role I had, I was focused on creating sales training. I felt this was valuable but also narrow. I offered to broaden my focus to include customer service training and sales management training — two related areas that no one had capacity to focus on. By broadening the focus of my work, I demonstrated I could do more. As a result, I took over all business-related training and was able to hire four contractors to help supplement my workload. Managing contractors gave me a little insight into what managing a full-time team would be like without the responsibility of conducting formal performance reviews and coaching. This was a great experience that helped me decide if people management was for me.
Take on more complex work.
As I wrote above about my former colleague, offering to take on more complex or larger programs or processes is another to grow your skills and scope while not moving into management. While working for a global organization, I was managing product knowledge training for the US. I offered to take on product training globally to inspire consistency in training, content and systems to access product knowledge. This was way more complex and challenging and showed my ability to own and drive complex, global work across many stakeholders and departments. My colleague was managing a work stream of a project. he offered to manage the entire effort and thus multiple work streams to up his skills and level of work. This helped move him from Project Manager to Senior Project Manager after some successes. In this case, he did receive an upward promotion but not into people management.
Try out completely different work.
If you want to grow more than your current job allows, talk to others in related functions or areas. Is there work they can’t absorb you could help with? Is there a space you could lean into and use your current skills to gain new ones? Early in my career, I managed, developed and delivered training. Through this work, I learned there was a huge need to facilitate strategic planning sessions. So, I offered my services to various teams to facilitate their planning meetings. This was different from stand-up training but I added a huge amount of value and met a need no one else was meeting. By doing this, I became known for this service and was regarded as invaluable. I was given a double digit percentage pay increase and invited to management conferences and other high-level meetings as an individual contributor.
Volunteer to do special, initiative-driven work.
Keep your ear to the ground to learn about cross-functional projects or new initiatives spinning up. This is where a mentor can also help you identify new opportunities. To grow in place or laterally, you can’t be shy. This is something I have coached others on — you can’t wait to be tapped on the shoulder. Sometimes, you have to express your interest directly and make it known you are looking to add value outside of your current role. If you notice the same people get tapped over and over again, tell someone, like your manager, that you would like to participate next time and why. I have made a career (almost) of being a special projects person. This is how I have received most of salary bumps, until I chose to get into people management. I leap frogged from special project to special project until I was very visible and proactively named to help out on new and critical work.
Acquire new skills through learning.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that whether there is new work adjacent to your current role or not, you can always develop your skills through formal learning from your company, universities or other online learning providers. I would encourage you to not just stop at the formal learning but to find work, from the list above, to apply it to. Taking a class in data science is actually the perfect way to volunteer your new skills on a project. I can’t think of one leader who would say “no thanks” to a proposal like the following: “I just finished a curriculum from Coursera on Data Science and would love to join x project to apply these skills”. Amazing. If someone came to me with this proposal, I would take them up on that every time.
Develop skills through other groups.
Volunteering with a charity or getting involved in a committee with a professional organization is another way to grow in place. Just as with formal learning above, I would find a workplace situation where you can leverage and apply any new skills you have gained through this volunteer, pro bono work. If you gained marketing skills by sitting on the Marketing Committee for the local Project Management group, then offer to use these sills on a new or related project at work.
There are many ways to grow your skills by continuous learning, reading, joining professional groups/networks, volunteering, working on a side hustle, etc. These may or may not result in a lateral promotion or more compensation. However, continually growing your own skills on the side can only help. Pursuing other work, like the five examples above, will position you to be visible, flexible, and make you an invaluable, go-to player. You may find people start to rely on you and recognize you as someone to watch. Raise your hand and find the unique opportunities to grow sideways.