157: Balancing promotion ambitions against the current workload

We all want our team members to know they have a path to achieve all their career goals, right? Go anywhere they want to go and they kind of need to do the job they signed up for until they get to that point. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease in 15 minutes or less. I'm Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant for this show am I programs with small businesses and corporate teams.

I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time money. Most of all, stress doesn't matter if you're a business owner who realize that running a team isn't as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager learning the ropes, or are a seasoned manager ready to up their game? Everyone is welcome to hang out with managing Made Simple. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more.

We leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing. Kind of hate it and everything in between. Let's go. Welcome back to the show. So We all want our team members to know they have a path to achieve all their career goals, right? Go anywhere they want to go and they kind of need to do the job they signed up for until they get to that point.

And so that's what I want to talk about today, is how to motivate your team member to continue to do their job when they are reaching for the next thing.

Now, this is something that I experienced firsthand working in the corporate world when in one of the tech companies that I worked at, you had to demonstrate proficiency at that next level before even trying to get a promotion like you had to show, oh, I've been doing this already. And that is the case in many other companies. And I think that right there is where the rub happens.

And what I saw all the time as a manager was my team members would say, well, you know, I'm reaching for the promotion. I want to go to the next level. I don't want to do this set of work that I'm supposed to be doing at this current level. I got to do this better, staff. I got to do this higher impact stuff. I got to do this more important stuff. And then I'm sitting there as a manager like, well, who's going to do the other job? Like, I need you to do that stuff first.

And this kind of conundrum, it's actually something that I talk about in my new book, The New Manager Playbook, coming out on January 27th. And if you're listening to this and it's already come out that it's available on Amazon. And what I talk about is oftentimes this actually comes down to both a little bit of expectation setting, but it kind of comes down to trust.

Because if your team member doesn't trust that you're not going to set goals, that you're going to go to bat for them for a promotion and really be an advocate for you, they're really going to want to do those next level things because they're going to feel like they have to prove it.

Now let me give you an example. So let's say you are I'm just going to use my own background because it comes readily for me. So let's say you're managing a project manager or program manager, someone that's kind of coordinating schedules or deliverables, things like that. And that person, the expectation of their current role is that they are really in a more tactical role. So they are setting up the schedules, they're communicating. Those are tracking actions.

Maybe they're taking notes and meeting. Maybe, you know, they're like kind of an earlier career person and that's what they're doing or, you know, and, and and they're really reaching to get to the next level. Now, the next level would be demonstrating a lot more leadership. Maybe they're setting up systems for, the schedule and work tracking and actions. But but they're not in the day to day okay. So this person's going for that promotion.

They say to you, well, I want to be doing more that leadership. I want to set up the system. But well, if I get too far in the weeds with some of the note taking in the action, tracking, like, what if you say, I didn't do enough of that next level stuff? Now, this is something that a lot of our team members worry in their minds, and they try to safeguard it by stopping doing the first job.

They actually kind of step away and leave some of their current responsibilities unfinished, which which puts you in a tough spot as a manager. So instead of letting that happen as you are meeting with your team members and having career, they talk with their goals. I talk about all of this and the importance of this and and share exercises and tools for how to have these conversations in the new manager playbook. So don't worry, I got you covered.

What you want to do is, is talk about this dichotomy. How do you support them in doing their role while also demonstrating competency in the next level? This is totally doable. You have to have that conversation, and then they have to trust that you're going to back them up and they're going to trust you because you brought it up and you had that conversation. So you demonstrated, hey, this is on my radar, and it's happened to me before, and I and I want to make sure to safeguard you from that.

Now, I'll say firsthand, this again, is something I know I wrestled with when I was reaching for promotions, and feeling like, well, how do I do all of this without not having to do two jobs? Right? So this might be something that your team members are worried too,

is, well, I want to grow, but I'm worried I'm going to get stretched too thin and not be able to sustain this at the next level. So you want your team members to feel like you are also aware of that. And then that builds trust and then that builds that follow through. Did you know that I do team workshops on all of the stuff that I talk about on this show with large companies like Google, and also with startups and small businesses like marketing agencies, law firms and men's bars.

Whether it's making those feedback conversations a little less awkward, how to support your team through all of the change and uncertainty making us all, well, a little on edge right now, or delegating to empower your team to step up. As owners, I come into your teams and give you the tools you need to wrestle with all this tough stuff and feel like you've got it handled. Reach out at hello@liagarvin.com, or pass my info along to the decision maker in your company.

And let's make all this team stuff easier and a lot more fun. So let me take an example of that project manager that's trying to work at the more system level, but still does have to be more tactical for now. So here's how you might approach that conversation. You might say, okay, so you know, you as you're setting up the strategy for this in the systems, you because you don't have a team leader, you also need to implement it, okay? You have to be doing that tactic work.

But when I get into that conversation with other managers to talk about promotion or in a talent review or wherever, I'm advocating for your promotion, let's say if there's a committee or governing body or whatever, I'm going to talk about how that tactic will work, really enable you to prove out the system. And that was where the leadership was happening.

You were really demonstrating readiness for the next level because you set the system and you safeguard it in future, proofed it by also testing it. Right. So that's what my commitment is to you is that, hey, you, at the moment you're going to have to do the actual work, but you also get the opportunity to build the system. And that's really where I'm going to focus my energy.

Me communicating that to my team member shows them, okay, you see the value and you're not going to pigeonhole me and say, well, you spend too much your time note taking. You're not going to get that promotion. When I asked you to do the note taking because it was your job or whatever, that thing was. So again, this is something that we can really safeguard by having that open conversation.

This is literally team whispering, you know, at its finest, talking to your team members, foreseeing and anticipating the concerns that they might have,

and thinking, if I was in your position, what might I be worried about? Well, I'd be worried that I'm never going to get to that next level from stuck in this current. When doing all these things, I'm going to be worried about load balancing and time management. I'm going to be worried. Is my manager telling the right story about the impact I'm making? When you come forward and say, I know all this is on your radar, and here's what I'm doing to help you get there.

Gosh, like so much trust is built and so much loyalty to doing that. And your team member has the they have more resilience to if it takes a little bit longer. Right. I think a lot of times we're working with our team members for promotion and it can't happen overnight. It can't happen maybe in the next six months, depending on business need or you know, budgets or whatever, like it may be a year or two.

And so talking about this plan that you have for them and how you are looking out for their best interests. This is going to help them trust you and keep doing that work, even if the time horizon is a little bit longer. All right. So this is how we motivate our teams to keep doing that job even as they're reaching for that next step. This is something that comes up a lot. And I think we don't maybe realize it's even happening. We're just like, why is it my team member doing their job anymore?

Like what's going on? And it might be this, okay, so that's why I want to talk about this day. And it is solved again by having these open conversations, being really proactive and talking about how you're going to advocate for them, really operating that next level and what you still expect to be doing at this level and make it clear, hey, like you can't abandon your your primary job otherwise there's no conversation around a promotion because you won't have been doing any job.

You need to be excelling. You'll be crushing at this job, adding the next level. But you can't leave this uncovered. And again, setting that expectation and making it really clear that, you know, both of these things are part of that acceleration path. It makes sense to people when you say it, but I think sometimes we don't say it and there's confusion there. Have the conversation and you will see these little assumptions and jumping to conclusions, things, they just start to fall away.

All right. So I cannot wait to talk through this in more detail in my book, New Manager Playbook, coming out January 27th. Again, if if you already listen to this, that time passes on Amazon and if this is something that you want a little bit more support on how to frame these conversations, how did your team really in that right headspace around this kind of thing, or on their growth plan or on career journeys?

Send me an email hello@liagarvin.com. This is the kind of stuff I work with managers every day, either one on one or in a team workshop. And it's really, really powerful to get all these things out in the open, talk through them, set some working norms potentially, and figure out, hey, here is here's how we're going to be successful together. So if you want some hands on support for your team again, send me an email at hello@liagarvin.com.

It is so awesome to work with the listeners of this show. It has been so much fun getting to travel all over the country this year to do workshops with listeners of the show who reached out. So if you're a listener, well, I can come to your town, coming soon to a office near you, as they say. All right. See you next time. That's all I have for today.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let's spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.