When you are a leader, you usually have conversations with your collaborators about their achievements, about what they want to achieve, their possible promotions or changes of role, or task, or the next project, their previous performance, planned objectives and salary projections. To a greater or lesser extent depending on the number of people working on your team, you will have these conversations daily or monthly. But they are common currency as long as you have people in charge, so you can have a lot of practice in this game.
However, many leaders of organizations have shortcomings in this regard on the individual side. That is, when they are the ones who want a promotion, a job change or a salary increase, they do not get good results at all or, regardless of the result, they feel quite inefficient in the process. Do you feel identified with this? Keep reading below the 4 keys that will help you solve it…
Define what you want to achieve
Sitting with your boss, getting their attention for a few minutes, and not knowing exactly what you want from that person, is the biggest waste of time and commitment to yourself that I can think of. And the worst thing would be if your boss thinks the same, and already forms a not very good opinion of you. If you ask for a meeting, you must be prepared to articulate a strategy with a goal. Take a few days to put together a short summary of what you want to communicate and your expectations for the meeting.
Value your work
First of all, you yourself must stop underestimating your value, your work. On the one hand you say to yourself "I would like to be considered for this promotion" or "I should be qualified for a raise. But on the other hand, many times you are not thinking about how important your participation in the work is, about the achievements you have obtained, about the importance of the actions you have taken. You basically say to yourself "well, it's part of the task." If it can be. But are you sure anyone else would have the same results? Implement today a strategy that will always be very useful: a notebook of achievements.
Put together a strategy
Whenever you want to achieve something, you have to do something to achieve it. Many times you may believe that coincidences just make things happen without planning or effort, but I would not leave something as important as your professional career to chance or coincidences. Putting together a strategy begins by identifying what you want to achieve, what value you have as a professional to achieve it and what actions you are going to take to get closer to your goal. Put together an action plan.
Be independent of the result. If you do well, great. If they say no, you should try again next time. But most importantly, change something in the process (remember Einstein's phrase “you can't expect to get different results and you do the same thing over and over again). The important thing is not to feel downcast by a result because it is independent of your value. It does not mean that you are not worth it or that you do not serve or that you will never achieve it, it may simply have been that you have failed to focus differently or generate other results. You will do well next time.
Bonus tip: sometimes what can happen to you is that you lack information and don't know how to proceed. Take advantage of the same conversation to get it with a couple of questions (observe the structure of the questions. They are respectful and the answers return concrete facts that you can work on. They do not return justifications - which could happen if you ask "why" - or emotions In addition, they are action-oriented and show your boss that you really want to achieve what you mentioned, but that you are also willing to do something to obtain it):
- What is your expectation about my performance in the next 6 months so that I can fully align myself and then get (this promotion, this increase, this benefit) next time? What do you consider to be my weak points on which Do you recommend working for the next semester (that promotion, that increase, that benefit)?
Don't feel bad if this last question doesn't generate a detailed list that you can work with. Maybe you caught your boss by surprise and can't think of more than a few things that you can improve right then. But surely you can thank him for thinking about it and bringing his impression a little more thoughtful in the coming weeks. I assure you that your boss will also appreciate that you want to align yourself and will notice that you are really committed to your career and to the company. And also consider that if the answer is negative, you should not get frustrated. It is better that you know in advance what things you can get and what not, a correct setting of your expectations can help you make decisions because now you have more information.
If you follow these tips you will feel much more secure in the process and your rate of effectiveness and results will increase, at the same time that you will enhance your professional career.
