Hoo!
Surprise, surprise, I'm not Mike.
Or Emma.
What am I doing here?
I am Hank.
I own a small business, at which I hire, and
sometimes fire, and often promote people.
And I thought that I would thus take that
opportunity to talk to you about how to get
promoted.
Specifically how to get promoted if you happen
to work for me.
Hopefully it will be more broadly useful than
that, but what I will say is that we run a
fairly odd business, so bare that in mind,
things might be different at your company.
Tip #1: Understand your boss's goals, or whoever
supervises you.
Don't just understand what they've asked you
to do.
Understand why they're doing the things they
do.
Why does the company exist?
What do they want?
Does your boss want to get their own promotion?
Does your boss want lots of money and power?
Does your boss want to crush the competition,
or does your boss want to make the world a
better place?
Example: At my company we have video editors.
Their job is to edit videos.
But my goal isn't to have a bunch of videos
that gets edited.
My goal is to make content that gets lots
of views and makes people better people.
To do that, we have to make great content
that people want to share with their friends
at a low cost, so that we're actually able
to pay for it without sacrificing the quality
of the content.
As the person who runs the company I have
internalized those goals because that's the
thing I know I need to do in order to keep
the business alive.
But someone who works for me doesn't have
to internalize those goals, they can just
make good content.
But if they do internalize those goals, then
it affects every decision they make.
It affects every idea they have.
This brings me to my second tip, which is
care.
Okay, passion isn't some magical, mysterious
thing that you have within your heart that
you're born with pointing in only one direction.
You can, and probably have to, at some point
in your life direct your passion.
You have to decide to be passionate about
something.
It's hard, but it's necessary.
If you want to get promoted you have to direct
your passion at the goals of your boss and
company.
It helps if you just let it sort of take over
your life a little bit, like understand and
dissect the details of what your company or
your boss wants the way that Emma understands
and dissects the details of Sherlock.
If you're just doing this so you can make
more money, you're gonna burn out.
You have to actually be passionate about this.
So those two things are basically step one
in the process of how to get promoted, which
is how to be really good at your job.
Understand it, be passionate about it.
That will guarantee you your position, it
will guarantee you regular raises so that
you don't leave the company, but it will not
necessarily get you promoted.
Promotion is a whole new job, usually one
where you're supervising people and making
sure that they are good at their jobs just
the way that you were good at your job.
You gotta be good at people.
God knows this isn't easy, and it's not taught
in school, and I basically pretended to do
it for two years before I even started to
figure out a little bit of what the balls
I was doing.
But here's what I learned and this is going
to be very vague.
Just like doing great work is about understanding
the goals of your boss or your company, being
a great manager is about understanding the
goals of the people who work for you, and
helping them accomplish those goals.
This has got to be a two-way street.
Everybody works for everybody else.
Unfortunately, it won't matter if you're the
best worker in the world and all the people
you work with respect you and want to work
for you if no one notices.
So yes, bring ideas to your boss, show them
that you love your job and maybe even flatter
them a little bit, but not just because you
want to flatter them.
When it's appropriate, when you feel like
your boss has something really cool, let them
know that you think that.
And don't do it more than twice a month or
so, because you can't brown-nose your way
to the top.
It just doesn't work.
Now, second last tip here, oddly enough, if
you are too good at your job, sometimes it
can be a little bit difficult for you to get
promoted out of it, because there's no one
to fill your shoes.
And some people actually try to make themselves
so indispensable at their jobs to protect
their jobs that they end up never being able
to be promoted.
Don't do that, you don't want to be indispensable.
Your boss doesn't want that.
So look around at the world inside your company
and outside and see who's there that might
fill your shoes if you were to get promoted.
Looking around, doing that, even starting
to train people to do some of the things that
you do, that's seen as good leadership.
That's also seen as confidence and security,
which everyone respects.
If you're confident and secure in your own
abilities as a worker then people will notice,
and you will be rewarded for it.
And finally, my last tip.
If you're in a company that isn't growing,
and you're basically waiting around for the
person above you to die, you might want to
be looking at a different company or different
industry to be working in.
This isn't craziness, you don't have to quit
or anything, but you can take what you have
gained from that company and move somewhere
where there is more room for upward mobility.
Those places do exist and they are looking
for good people to work with them.
Promise.
John I will see you on Tuesda-- no, not this
show.
Andy catchphrase!
Bye!
And then Emma and Mike and I are just sitting
here and talk about thing.
When was your first promotion?
Oh, I got promoted when I worked at Walmart,
actually.
I got promoted from stalk man, which was the
guy who got the carts I don't know why that
was called a stalk man, and then I was the
assistant manager for the sports department,
I think?
And at the end of that year - this is a true
story - I had put my two weeks notice in like
a week and a half ago and my manager called
me in and he was like, Hank I just heard that
you were leaving!
And I was like, well that's funny because
I put my two weeks notice in a week and a
half ago and he said, well no I think you
have a future here!
And I was like, I think instead I'm gonna
go to college.
Instead.
Since I can do that.
I think I'd probably have more of a future...
with a college degree... instead of dropping
out to work at Walmart.
Joel was his name.
Glad I didn't take Joel's advice.
