You Just Got Promoted. What Now?

Way back in the late 90’s I was cruising as a sales professional. I was exceeding goals, earning maximum commissions, and winning awards. I was working hard and loved what I was doing. Then one day my manager asked what I thought about going into management. In truth, I hadn’t. And as a salesman proud of my success in an eat what you kill system, my opinion of management wasn’t super high. But my manager thought it was right for me and a good next step.

We went on to discuss an open first-line leader position. It sounded like a challenge, and I wanted to expand my contribution. So, not long after this discussion I posted for the job. I updated my resume, prepared for expected questions, interviewed, and was told no. Bummer.

But like any good salesman who’d seen Tommy Boy I wasn’t going to take ‘no for an answer’ (a funny sales scene from a late 90’s classic). So, I waited for the next opening. When it came up, I practiced, polished, and posted again. This time I got the job. I was now a first-line sales manager. The company recognized my consistent performance, passion, and commitment. And put me in charge of others. It made sense. My track record proved I knew my stuff. Now, with a brand-new title and a team, I was a leader. Right?

Wrong, and woefully so. I was a subject matter expert coming into first-line leadership with little reverence for the importance of the role, and zero awareness of how difficult it is to make the transition from leading self to leading others. I had no clue that the skills and knowledge that helped me earn my promotion would not be vital to my success in my new role. In short, while I may have been motivated to lead, I was wholly unprepared for the leadership journey. (Not a surprise – research shows 84% of new leaders admit to being unprepared at the time they’re promoted.) 

There was a lot I needed to do and a lot I needed to learn. But the very first thing I needed to do, the thing upon which success in this new role would depend, was ‘to promote myself.’

Our sense of time can be fickle. In some ways the late 90’s seems closer to three rather than thirty years ago. But from a technology standpoint its paleolithic compared to today. Social media didn’t exist, literally. It would be several years before the term’s first use. LinkedIn hadn’t been founded and a 13-year-old Zuckerberg was at home playing with a primitive version of AOL Messenger. So, for those not working back then, by promote myself I don’t mean Facebook marketing or LinkedIn posts announcing my new role.

No, promoting yourself is about mindset. More specifically, it’s about building the right mindset. It’s breaking mentally from your old job and preparing mentally to lead in your new one. Promoting yourself is not external, its internal.

Like I said, it was a long time ago when I entered the ranks as a first-line leader and first learned this foundational truth. But it’s never been far from top of mind over the course of my career working with leaders in different stages and in different capacities.

While I lived and learned the lesson of promoting myself in the late 90’s, it wasn’t until the early 2000’s that I first read the concept as I am using it here. That credit goes to Michael Watkins and his international bestseller The First 90 Days.

At the time I read it, I was a Leadership Development Director building a new leadership development program. I was so engrossed that I reached out to him and his organization to explain how I had lived the experience just years before. Unsurprisingly, they had heard the same story from hundreds of leaders before me, hence its inclusion in the book!

Despite being slow on that uptake, I was quick to incorporate the concept into my new development program. We began asking every new leader class the question that serves as the title of this article – You’ve just been promoted, what now? Interestingly, it was not uncommon to hear some pretty good answers. New first-line leaders would talk about things like setting expectations, building the team, strategy, goal focus, etc. Some even had written 30-60-90-day plans.

But, despite knowing the fundamentals and having well-developed plans, these new leaders lacked the essential awareness of promoting themselves. None clearly identified the need to break from their previous roles as individual contributors. None shared the recognition that the skills they relied upon in the past would not deliver success in their leadership future. Both are characteristic of the mindset needed, and vital, to successfully making the transition from leading self to leading others.

Take a second to reflect on the paragraph you just read above. Despite being simple and straight forward, I see many leaders struggle and a fair amount fail to fully adopt this understanding.

By full adoption I mean more than simply acknowledging that every transition begins with an ending. No offense to William Bridges, but it’s the adoption of a mindset that results in, or at the very least allows the development of needed skills. I train and coach it with new (and sometimes experienced) leaders in two parts.

The first part is simple but difficult. Mentally accepting the fact that your previous experience does not matter. A lot of leaders struggle with this concept, and I have developed an answer I call the Parable of the Climber. As parable suggests, it’s long. The short version is that every mountain is unique. And despite a mountain climber’s subject matter and technical expertise, every climb requires a fresh perspective, change in focus, and different preparations. Similarly, making the transition to first-line leader, requires a change in mindset and a ground-up skills inventory. The good news is that making this mental shift prepares you to engage the team that did not choose you as their leader. The mindset points you towards better behaviors like sharing your vision and learning their aspirations.

The second part is all about target of focus. As an individual contributor your target of focus is on self and things. You are working hard to lead yourself, you are working on yourself, and you are doing so by managing the things relevant to your role. As a first-line leader your target of focus is on others and people. You are asking questions like: How do my actions affect the work of others? Where do the people on my team need support? What do the people on my team need to achieve their goals? What’s getting in their way? And how can I help?

More good news. Right behaviors follow the right target of focus. New leaders focused on how they can help others will engage through vision, build trust through communication, foster a culture of accountability, develop people through work, and deliver through productive relationships.

Depending on the source and situation, researchers have the failure rate of new leaders ranging from 54% to 80%. A big number to be sure. But one I know would be smaller if, after getting promoted, more leaders were to promote themselves.

Great leaders are learners for life. And every day involves getting a little better. It’s not easy, but it really is simple. So, if you just got promoted, what now?