What Do I Need to Do to Get Promoted Into a Leadership Role?

Early in my career, I was certain I knew who was going to get promoted. I was wrong, and it taught me more than any promotion I ever got myself.

How Do You Get Noticed for a Promotion? Start With the Guy Nobody Bet On

You get noticed for a promotion by being seen as someone people trust to lead, which is a wider target than doing excellent work. I learned that from a coworker very early in my career.

He was smart and easy to talk to, and nobody thought he'd make it. He didn't match the picture we all carried in our heads of what a promotable person looked like. He wasn't lazy (he worked, and he did good work), but he wasn't the go-to person when something hard landed. That was the role we all assumed got you noticed.

So we quietly wrote him off. I've been there, and I'm not proud of it.

Then he kept moving up. He eventually became a partner at Accenture and built a great career.

I spent a long time asking myself how we got it so wrong. Here's what I eventually figured out: he had leadership and influencing skills we weren't looking for, so we never saw them. The people making the decisions were measuring something different from what we thought they were measuring.

How Do You Know If You're Ready for a Leadership Role?

You're ready when you can do the work well and also show the skills leaders are actually evaluated on. Most of us assume promotion works like a school grade: do excellent work, hit your numbers, stay late, and the title follows.

Doing the work well matters. It gets you into the conversation. But it's only one of the criteria, and it's usually the one you already have covered.

Author Adam Bryant makes a related point in this SHRM piece: get clear on why you want a leadership role before you chase one.

The other criteria tend to live in questions like these:

- Do people want to work with you, and do they listen when you speak?

- Can you move a group toward a decision without having authority over them?

- Do senior people trust you in the room when things get messy?

- Can you see the bigger picture, or only your own lane?

Nobody posts these on a job description. They're often unwritten, and they differ from company to company. That's why guessing can cost you years.

How Do You Influence Without Authority?

You influence without authority by building trust, explaining why something matters, and making it easy for people to say yes. The coworker everyone underestimated was great at this. He could get people aligned in a meeting without ever raising his voice. He asked good questions. He remembered what mattered to people. When a project got stuck, others naturally turned to him, even though nobody had given him that role. I wrote more about influencing without authority (or herding cats) here.

I came to appreciate this in my own work. Before I ever led a team, I coordinated cross-functional product releases where nobody reported to me. I couldn't assign anything. That skill is exactly what a leadership role asks of you, just with a bigger scope.

If you want to be seen as ready, start practicing it now, before anyone hands you the title.

How Do You Build Confidence as a Leader and Stop Second-Guessing Yourself at Work?

You build confidence by noticing the inner voices that undermine you and choosing a different energy to lead from. Confidence is hardest to find around promotions, because your saboteurs are usually loudest there. (If you want the bigger picture on mindset, I wrote about what a leadership mindset is.)

If you're a high performer, you probably have a Hyper-Achiever saboteur whispering that the answer is always more effort. Work harder, take on more, prove yourself. It sounds logical, and it keeps you busy in exactly the wrong direction.

Your Judge saboteur may be at work too. Mine used to rank everyone around me by how hard they worked, which is exactly how we misjudged our future partner. The Judge compares and decides fast, and it's wrong more often than it admits.

And if you're a Stickler, you may be polishing your deliverables to perfection while the relationships that actually drive promotions go untended.

Energy matters here, too. In iPEC's Energy Leadership framework, the lower levels run on frustration, pressure, and "I have to prove myself." Plenty of people get results from there, but it's tiring, and it makes you look like someone who's grinding rather than someone who leads. Shift up into curiosity and contribution, and you start noticing what's actually valued around you. You also become someone others want to follow.

How Do You Manage Up Effectively?

You manage up by making your manager's job easier: keep them informed before they have to ask, and bring solutions along with problems. It's one of the most overlooked parts of getting promoted.  Harvard Business Review Press has a handy primer, Managing Up: Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges.

Pair that with clear communication. Can you explain a complex situation in two sentences? Can you disagree respectfully and still keep the relationship strong? Can you tell a senior leader what you need without apologizing for it?

These are learnable skills. They don't require you to change your personality. They just require you to practice on purpose.

How Do You Transition From Individual Contributor to Leader?

You transition by practicing leadership behaviors before you have the title. I break down the shift in the difference between a manager mindset and a leadership mindset, and Adam Bryant's The Leap to Leader adds that you first prove yourself as a great manager. Not because you have to be perfect, but because you deserve to stop guessing, here's what I'd do if I could go back:

1. Ask what's being measured. Sit down with your manager, or someone one level above, and ask: "What do people who get promoted here do differently?" Then listen without defending yourself.

2. Find your blind spot. Ask two people you trust what strength of yours they think you underuse. Often the thing you do naturally is the thing leadership notices.

3. Build influence on purpose. Pick one cross-team project this quarter where you have to align people without a title. That's the muscle that matters most.

4. Practice managing up. Send your manager a short weekly update with progress, risks, and one decision you need from them. Watch how it changes how you're perceived.

5. Catch your saboteur in the act. Next time you feel the pull to just work harder, ask yourself: "Is this the right work, or am I hiding behind busy?"

Here's a tiny thing to try: this week, ask one person what they think a promotable leader looks like at your company. Just one question. You may be surprised by the answer, the way I was.

The Takeaway

That coworker taught me that promotion isn't a reward for effort. It's a signal that people trust you to lead. Doing the work well gets you to the starting line. The rest is influence, trust, and being seen for what you're actually good at.

If you're tired of guessing what it takes to get promoted, you don't have to figure it out alone.

Schedule a free discovery call.