How Execs Make Promo Decisions

My response to Ashley Rudolph’s “I Asked 6 Executives How They Make Promotion Decisions” Article

I just finished reading Ashley Rudolph’s article titled, “I Asked 6 Executives How They Make Promotion Decisions” and it got my wheels turning. Because it’s my belief that one of the most underrated conversations in your career is the one about what comes next.

There is excellent advice in Ashley’s post, that everyone can benefit from, yet there’s one thing that I noticed no one ever discussed: Your manager can’t read your mind.

When we think about promotions, we often delay conversations until the timing feels perfect, as if ambition should only be voiced once it has already become plausible. Once we can present the desire with enough evidence to make it feel less like longing and more like logic. But that is precisely why so many people don’t say anything for too long. They mistake uncertainty for unreadiness. They assume that if the answer is not an immediate yes, then the conversation is not worth having at all.

In my experience, the opposite is true. The conversation is valuable because it brings the future into view. Oftentimes, what comes back is not affirmation but calibration: you need more time in the role, more range, more seasoning, more proof that your strengths can hold under greater complexity. It can sting to hear that. I have heard versions of that answer myself, and I have had to deliver many versions of that answer.

But there is a peculiar relief in having the contours named out loud: feedback becomes practical. You begin to see the distance between where you are and where you want to go, and you get to create a path forward.

And honestly, 9 times out of 10, your manager is excited to support you along the way. One of my favorite questions to ask in calibration processes is “who will be ready for a promotion or a bigger challenge in the next 1-2 cycles?” As a manager, that generally would gives us visibility into a 12-month roadmap, where we can observe and support the path to promotion.

Once you’ve aligned on what the desired destination is with your manager, the hope is that with their buy in, you can start to build the right muscles, ask better questions, choose experiences with more discernment. And just as importantly, other people can begin to hold your aspirations in their field of vision. Even if the opportunity is not right now, it may be right later. Careers are full of doors that do not open on the first knock. But there is power in making what you want known before the moment arrives. Sometimes the most useful thing a conversation gives you is not the green light. It’s the horizon.