You Can't Be Promoted Over Your Manager's Objection

In this lesson, we discuss why your manager’s active support is one of the most important ingredients in earning a senior promotion. Even when a manager genuinely wants to help, advancing your career may not be their highest priority, so employees sometimes need to proactively manage the process themselves—prompting their manager, asking for introductions, and making it easier for them to build the relationships and champion support required for promotion.

• Help your manager help you: If your manager is supportive but not proactive, give them specific, manageable requests—such as introducing you to a senior leader who could eventually provide promotion feedback.
• Manager support is effectively a prerequisite: Senior leaders are unlikely to promote someone over their direct manager’s objection because doing so undermines the manager and creates an organizational conflict. If your manager will not support your advancement, you may need to win their support or move to a manager who will.
• Seek managers who actively develop and promote talent: A manager with a track record of helping strong performers advance can become a powerful career partner. The strongest relationships can be mutually beneficial, with an employee’s success strengthening the manager’s organization while the manager actively creates opportunities for the employee to progress.

Original podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WaeGfLnRvc&t=24s