“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy
Once you start a discussion regarding a promotion or raise with your manager, it’s difficult not to focus on the timing of when it will actually happen. In a perfect world, you’ll have the new title within days of talking about it. However, in reality, changes in status or increases in compensation can take some time to go into effect.
Often times, your manager isn’t the sole decision maker when it comes to giving you a raise or promotion. Usually your boss has a boss who ultimately makes the decision based on various factors—and not all of them are even related to your performance and productivity.
Therefore, after you have a conversation related to a promotion or raise, you must exhibit patience in the interim of receiving the promotion. You have to understand that there are many steps to be taken by management and other parties within the business. While this isn’t ideal for many professionals—no matter the industry, it is a reality.
Now, this can be an uncomfortable topic for some, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, I recently came across an article on CIO.com that talks about best practices to take while waiting for a promotion or raise.
See the 4 Tips to Help You Wait for a Promotion below.
1. Be proactive.
The best advice I ever heard is not to wait for a promotion. The best people do the job before they get the job. Often times, the best way to get a promotion is to just start taking on additional responsibilities without being asked. Many Managers are too busy to think about what additional responsibilities they can delegate to you. By simply requesting to take some of the responsibilities you are seeking, or as NIKE likes to say, Just Do It, allows you an opportunity to showcase your abilities. Hopefully, this will solidify that your raise or promotion are justified and deserved. It’ll also show that you’re capable of increasing your bandwidth to take on more duties. It is important to note that when you are successfully completing the new responsibilities you have an ongoing dialogue with your manager to ensure he/she acknowledges you are doing the role.
2. Manage expectations.
It’s important to balance being patient and being pushy when it comes to finding out more about a promotion or raise. Depending on your manager’s style of leading, you may need to prompt further discussion following the initial conversation in order to get more information. Your manager might not be detail-orientated, and therefore, may not think to tell you that you’ll need to wait another three weeks. As long as you keep the conversation going, and manage your own expectations, you should be able to obtain some level of the information you’re seeking.
3. Embrace ambiguity.
It’s usually a good idea to request any changes to your position in writing. This way there is no ambiguity on what aspects of your role are changing or what increases to your salary are coming. While it’s not necessarily a difficult request, there may be delays in receiving the information from management. If you can be patient and wait on exact details until everything is shared with you in writing, chances are the process will go more smoothly in the long run.
4. Get prepared.
Similar to tip No. 1, you’ll want to be as ready as possible for your new role once it’s official. Therefore, you want to start preparing yourself as if you’re already in the new position—to a certain degree. You don’t want to stop performing your current role. You want to consider increasing your level of communication and collaboration and hone in on other soft skills. This can show your manager that you’re thinking as if you’ve already received the promotion or raise.
What are some other tips for spending your time waiting for a promotion or raise to go into effect? Comment below and let us know!