Want to understand why you haven't been able to land a promotion?
This one factor might be why, but don't expect to hear about it from your boss
For the past few years, I’ve taken on a role at work called “search committee chair.” My job is to oversee the search for a new faculty member in the psychology department at NYU. It’s a ton of work, often done during weekends and after hours, and I don’t get compensated for it (with actual money or with a reduction in other job duties). But I do it anyway. In fact, I’ve done it 4 times in the last two years.
Why on earth would I keep coming back to the trough of free labor? Like many other driven people, I don’t think I’m alone. This role, like a lot of others we “do for free,” is prestige based. Only people with good leadership skills are tasked with running search committees. You’re holding a lot of power in your hands, deciding who among the 280 or so applicants will make it to the top 10. And even if the search fails (which happens more than you’d think), it’s still “good for your career” to have gone through the experience of running the thing. Ostensibily, roles like “search committee chair” are the kinds of things that important decision-makers look for on a resume or CV when they’re trying to decide who to promote next.
But lately I’ve been questionning this assumption. Plenty of people have made it to leadership positions without becoming search committee chairs. And plenty of people who have been search committee chair have failed to climb up at work. If you look at the data, there seems to be a modest correlation, at best, between the people who chair search committees and the people who are handed real power roles at work. The ones that pay actual money.
Perhaps my belief about the importance of this role is off. And if so, there might be a lot reasons as to why. Maybe there was a norm, at one point, that successful leaders held this role, but that norm has changed and no one told me. Or maybe there’s disagreement among leaders about the role’s importance—some people think it’s really important, and other’s don’t care—and I just happened to get the one who was “pro committee” when I was asked to do it.
My point is, it can be very hard to know if you’re taking on the right roles at work. Even those that seem to have an easy answer—like the ones with the words “chair,” “lead” or “manager” in them—might not be as useful as we think.
In my upcoming book Job Therapy I have a chapter on the “Runner Up”—the person who can’t land a raise or promotion, despite coming close time and time again. I did a lot of digging to figure out what they’ve been doing wrong—from mis-reading their own status at work, to failing to change their behavior following a shake up to the status hiearchy (like when two teams merge into one, a new senior leader is named, or a company goes from private to public). In series of studies, I compare the experiences of those who failed to land to a promotion to those who did recently land a promotion, and to bosses and leaders who make promotion decisions.
I gave all three groups of people—those who failed to land a promotion, those who recently got one, and leaders who handed them out—a list of reasons as to why they landed a promotion, failed to land or, or gave one to someone. Each group indiciated, among a list of 14 reasons, whether they were told it was a reason, they weren’t told it but believed it was possible, or they definitely didn’t think the reason was relevant.
Among those who didn’t land a promotion, the usual suspects show up in the “I was told this” column: poor performance, a shortage of promotions that could be made (a scarcity claim), insufficient leadership experience and insufficient training.
In the search for the answer to the question, “what are people doing wrong?” a surprising answer came up: those who failed to get promoted believed that the roles and responsibilities they took on at work were more important to landing a promotion than they actually were.
After sifting through the usual suspects, I came across a finding in my data that made me think about my own experience as search committee chair. Among those who failed to get promoted, 55% of the people in my study reported that “I thought the roles and responsibilities I took on were more important than they actually were to landing a promotion.” But shockingly, only 13% were explicitly told this.
There seems to be a feeling “in the air” that role mis-steps were at play, even if no mentioned it.
These people are clearly onto something. When I looked at the data for decision makers, around 74% indicated that this exact reason factored into their company’s decision not to promote someone (among which only 33% indicated that they told the person this).
And among those who were promoted, around 44% were explicitly told that the roles they took on factored into the promotion decision—the third most common reason, in fact, followed by being a top performer (63%) and having their contributions valued (59%). In fact, only 10% of promoted people believed that the roles they took on did not factor into their promotion decision.
One of the big reasons why people are failing to land a promotion is that they are “off” in their perceptions of how important their roles and responsibilities are.
This finding wouldn’t be so surprising if it wasn’t for that glaring 13% statistic. Remember, only 13% of runners-up were explicitly told that they they had taken on roles that were not as important as they thought they were. They seem to be “reading the room” but not getting any real feedback.
As a next step, I had people list out the top two roles they hold at work. I compared the amount of time that runners-up and the successfully promoted spent in these roles, why they took them on, and whether they were getting paid for them.
By and large, the groups are comparable across these things, with a few exceptions.
Both groups spent about 30 hours a week in their primary role at work, and 21-25 hours a week in their secondary role. The most common reason why someone took on a role was because it was the job they were hired to do. The two groups are equally likely to list side gigs as one of their roles (and equally likely to indicate that their primary employer knows about their side gig). It doesn’t seem to be the case that runners-up are side hustling too much, and it’s interfering with their ability to get shit done.
Among the 21 reasons why people took on roles, only two reasons had notable differences between those who were promoted and those who were not: About 4% more successfully promoted people took on a role because although there were others who could do it, they thought they were the best person for the job. A small difference, but a failure to understand whether this was actually the case could be contributing to the promotion gap.
But more striking, about 12% more successfully promoted people took on a role because “this role or responsibility is important for my career development” than unsuccessfully promoted people.
Perhaps these folks were having more honest conversations with leaders about the pragmatic utility of their roles. Perhaps they work in organizations that are more explicit about what roles are important to take on and which they side step. The reason for this difference is unclear, but in social science, 12% is a big difference.
The “why” question continued to nag at me, so I took a look at the content of the roles people listed in all three groups. Perhaps it’s the case that promoted people were doing more roles with the phrases like “leader” or “manager” in them. Fancy things with the veneer orfprestige.
But this is not at all what I found. Below is a word cloud of the role descriptions of the promoted people.
And here is the word cloud for people who failed to land a promotion:
The two groups have roughly equal contributions of the words “supervisor,” “manager,” and “senior.”
Here’s where things get surprising.
The promoted people have twice as many roles with the word “assistant” in the title than the runners-up.
You might be thinking, “what? that sounds backwards.” I agree! But it is certainly possible that part of getting promoted is taking on “next step” roles that aren’t sexy, but really showcase the skill you need to climb up. Roles that build between positions of power and status, serving as the connective tissue between where you are now and where you want to go. These roles often don’t come with lofty titles (“project assistant” and “assistant director of corporate relations” are two examples from my sample). They certaintly aren’t designed to play to people’s egos.
I was equally shocked when I checked out the roles of the decision makers who promote for a living. Their number one role word: Committee! Titles like “Events committee lead,” “sales growth committee,” and “safety committee.” Jobs that involve working in teams (“teams” is also a word that shows up more among the successfully promoted). Again, not sexy. But clearly come with power and status.
What should you take from these findings?
First, many of us are probably taking on roles at work that we think will help us land a promotion one day, but will not. And there is a very slim likelihood that you will ever get explicit feedback from a boss that you’ve role mis-stepped. 13%. Remember that number.
Second, those who’ve landed a promotion seem to have a better awareness of how their roles directly will feed into their ability to climb up at work.
And third, climbing up at work probably doesn’t mean taking on roles with lofty titles. In fact, it can mean just the opposite. Being someone’s assistant or working on a team can be just as important for landing a promotion as taking on a role with a “manager,” or “lead” in the title.
Given these things, how can you improve the chances of landing a promotion?
The lack of communication between leaders and runners-up is startling. If your role mis-steps are playing into your failed promotion, there’s a good chance no one will tell you. Perhaps it’s the case that doing so would involve throwing a colleague under the bus (“I can’t believe Larry told you to be search committee chair. That was a total waste of your time!”). Or perhaps it’s the case that when the decision maker who made promotion decisions came on board, you were so embedded in your bad role that there was no way to extract you, even if doing so would be good for your career. There are a lot of reasons why leaders won’t be honest with you.
So what should you do? It is up to you to start having very explicit conversations with your boss, and your boss’s boss, and other leaders in the organization who don’t directly oversee you, regarding the reputation of specific roles. Do not assume, for example, that just because a role allows you to press the flesh with powerful people, it will help you get promoted (if you aren’t showcasing your job-relevant talents while pressing said flesh, it certaintly will not). And when you interview for jobs, don’t just ask whether a role is important for promotion, ask how. In what ways will your performance for that role get baked into a promotion decision? Who knows about your performance in that role, and does that person have a say in who gets promoted?
Understanding the lay of the land for the roles you take on is key. And don’t chase lofty titles. Clearly being an “assistant” can help you climb up if you’re assisting the right person doing the right work.
As for me, I’m still on the fence with the utility of search committee chair. But for now, I think I will stick with it. Afterall, “committee” did land as the top role title for decision makers.
Do you want to learn more about the data I wrote about here?
You can pre-order Job Therapy now! Check out tessawestauthor.com for more tidbits, including a quiz to help you sort out whether the “Runner up” (and other chapters) are for you.
Looking for a new workplace podcast? Check out “On Air with Ella”
One of my favorite all time interviews for Jerks at Work was On Air with Ella. We talked all about the 7 types of jerks (what makes them tick, why from our perspective they seem hell bent on ruining our lives, and why they might be more clueless than we think). Check out this episode, along with many others, here! This podcast hits on a lot of themes, from health and wellness, to getting along well with others at work.
Wow! That really is fascinating. Thank you for that article. I'm going to get your book because I want to know more about the tenure of the 'senior manager, leader, director' group over the 'assistant' group. Do they tend to stay around in jobs for longer? I also want to know whether there's some correlation with hunger and aspiration in the assistant group.
Brilliant.