How you communicate your value to senior leadership in your career conversations can mean more than the hours you put in. Photo: File.
May Busch passes on the advice of a communications expert on how to ensure you put your best self forward during important career conversations with senior management.
What’s the one thing that can make or break your chances of getting promoted and paid what you’re worth? Hint: It’s not about the hours you put in.
Give up?
It’s about how you communicate your value to senior leadership in your career conversations.
No-one better understands how to do this than my friend and former colleague Carla Harris, a senior client adviser and former vice-chairman at Morgan Stanley, who has built a reputation as an international public speaker.
In our talk for my Career Mastery series, Carla shared the communication skills that helped her succeed throughout her career. I’m going to share three of her game-changing tips that will help you ace your key career conversations.
Gather your data: Before you walk into the room, make sure you have all the information you need to be successful. When it comes to talking about a promotion or a raise, research the market value of the position you’re asking for. You don’t want to be asking for $25,000 more than the position is worth or accepting the role for any less than market value.
You’ll also want to know what it takes to succeed at that next level in the eyes of key decision-makers, and what you need to do in your current role to justify why you deserve to move up. You won’t source all of this information online, so you’ll need to find out from key decision-makers and the people who influence them.
Play the ‘’What if?” Game: The worst thing to happen is to get blindsided by a question for which you could have easily prepared. So, anticipate what the decision-maker might say before you go into the conversation.
“What if they say X?” or “What if they ask me about Y?”
Brainstorm a list of questions or concerns that are likely to come up, and prepare answers and remarks for each one. This way, you’ll be less likely to mess up and more likely to answer confidently. However, don’t over-prepare. You want to be ready with pre-prepared responses, but relaxed enough to improvise in the moment.
Follow up (and follow through): This is one of the easiest ways to stand out in the eyes of senior leadership – after any career conversation, implement their feedback and report back. Amazingly, most people don’t do this. If they gave you advice, follow up and let them know how you followed through. You could say: “I did what you told me to do. Let me tell you where things are now…”
Or if they told you the role you’re after requires a certain skill, you could take a course in that skill and then let them know how it went.
“I took this course in X skill and have since learned A, B, and C …”
May Busch’s mission is to help leaders and their organisations achieve their full potential. She works with smart entrepreneurs and top managements to build their businesses. She can be contacted at [email protected]. This article first appeared on May’s blogsite.
