Asking for promotion

It is very convenient to assert in the presence of equals, “I always carry a resignation letter in my pocket. If they don’t give me a raise, out I go!”

Why don’t people ask for promotions? Doing so is certainly one of the most horrendous items on their to-do list, simply because they are scared of what-if-it-is-not-granted syndrome.

Entering your boss’ office with such a proposal will undoubtedly create uneasiness and apprehension. You will be at your wit’s end and perhaps also at a loss of words to put across your decision to leave and more importantly the reason for the same.

If you are convinced about the merits of your case and feel that you deserve a promotion, the only way to expedite getting it is asking for it. But you need to do your homework well and get to know what is taking place and what is coming up where. The following tips can be helpful:  

Finding middle ground

It is essential to discern the why and so-what of every activity in your organization. For example, your company is on an expansion spree and a modification to the current organizational arrangement has been announced. The inference is obvious – additional recruitment for various categories of employees, including managers should be on the cards.

If you consider yourself capable and are willing to take on new responsibilities, the onus is on you to make your intent known to the management. Hence it is not only important to know the procedure for asking a raise at work but also the formula for promotion too.

Grounding & Research      

You can send the right signals only if you enjoy the trust of your organization in the context of your value and capability. In the light of the foregoing, you need to get ready for what all the new appointment entails.

If you consider yourself proficient at handling a multitude of tasks, you will have to demonstrate the same. Your work per se should speak out for you. Remember that unless you prove yourself, no attempt should be made to ask for a salary hike; and whenever you do so, you should be well-informed of the proposed salary band of the appointment you are applying for. You need to know your true value.

Priming of the employer

Having discerned your value, you also need to know your employer’s capacity. Stiff competition and rising maintenance costs could well be quoted to justify putting on hold all promotions. The likelihood of employers expressing their inability to promote you thus cannot be discounted.

But since you have been focusing your attention on all possible developments in your company, you are better poised to cite them for their application in your favour. You should courteously clarify the financial growth that has been achieved and the senselessness of losing out an experienced employee.

When & how to ask?

            There is no factor that is more important than the time at which you ask for a promotion. You have realized your true value and know that the company is financially robust. You are aware of the company’s expansion plan too. With your good work also being acknowledged, there can be no better time to seek an appointment with your boss to put across your proposition.

You will have to be very tactful speaking out your intent. It is a peculiar case of marketing; you would be selling yourself, convincing the person at the other end of your abilities. It should not be such that you thrust yourself on the employer.

            Any rigidity of views may be very detrimental to your interests, particularly those related to aspects of remunerations. Remember that nobody is indispensable and that it is not a difficult task getting a person as good or as bad as you as a replacement for the same package as yours. .

Refreshing your negotiation skills prior to meeting the boss is always recommended. Also make it a point to not convey messages like other organizations are waiting to accept you in their fold. The best message that can be sent is that both you and the employer ought to know what you seek to do.

Anticipate outcome

            It is now the time of result declaration. You should be ready to face the worst – it is likely that your point may not have been acceded to. If so, what next? Are you going to stay on or leave? Well, the decision is yours and nobody should ever exert influence on it.

            Job contentment is understandably an important consideration, but is it sufficient by itself? Things may not turn out in your favour; you need not make known your displeasure and threaten to resign. Threats are never welcomed and can be used as an excuse to deny   promotion to you in the future too. The best way to assert is by conveying your awareness of your own abilities and potential; and that a raise is indeed warranted.

            It is also possible that you get whatever you asked for. That should serve to reassure you and your worth. 

The final word

            The best way to ask for a promotion is to be unguarded and amenable, but at the same time very polite. You should convey your standpoint well; a run-through of your conversation is not a bad proposition at all. You also have an option of submitting a written application, but that should always be the last option, and only after some initial discussion with your boss on the issue has transpired.

Avert stagnancy at work

Imagine this – do you have the same food for breakfast and lunch? Or, do you wear the same clothes on two successive days? The answer obviously is a big ‘NO’. At the crack of dawn, when people wake up, they are fresh and have new ideas, new desires and new expectations. They harbour fresh hopes of doing something novel, something new. Besides precluding boredom and tedium from setting in, such an outlook helps people in increasing their self-assurance levels.

            Drawing a parallel fom the above actuality, there is a requirement to eliminate sluggishness and every form of torpidity in our job related existence, However, it needs to be ensured that our principles and values are not compromised. It has generally been observed that people straggle not because they are incompetent or not industrious, but because they do not perform smartly.

Smart work implies being inventive and pioneering. In the job sense, an innovative approach means being flexible and different with the intended objective of worth enhancement. It should be remembered that on the career front if one does a particular thing frequently or continually in a similar fashion, he or she is branded as mundane. Needless to say, the career graph of such individuals takes a downward plunge.

            Principles of marketing management state that the growth of any product in the market is never rapid in the initial stages of its launch. On the contrary, it is relatively slow, though it can be steady. Somewhere in its midlife, it picks up momentum before entering a dull period. If at all there are deviations from this, it is on account of innovative techniques adopted for marketing.

At work too, it is necessary to emit ingenuity and inventiveness. Such an approach will provide an impetus to one’s inspiration and enthusiasm. An environment like this, if created will facilitate figuring out newer methods of performing at work. A stance like this, because of its very stimulating attribute will serve to help out other individuals too, be it directly or otherwise.

              Imaginative ideas have brought about intensely optimistic and constructive transformations in many people’s lives. The sky is the limit as far as innovative propositions are concerned. A couple of decades ago, gobar gas plants became a source of energy in the rural belts. It was nothing but innovation that brought about their adoption, something that altered the lives of thousands of lives. There is also this case of a management graduate who envisioned that a cycle rickshaw can also be a source of some entertainment for a passenger. He came up with an idea that the hackneyed carriage should have an odd reading material and selected beverages to passengers. The idea sold well and boosted the earnings of venturesome rickshaw pullers. Today, they also vend mobile recharge coupons. These individuals, who had a hand-to-mouth subsistence, have now been able to muster savings. 

            Revolutionary ideas apart, ideas that are novel and ground-breaking may need some assistance from others for their naissance. It is not a bad idea to organize deliberations and discussions so that original ideas come up. The venue can well be anywhere – workplace or the home, depending who the participant s are. While at the workplace, the partakers could be peer groups and subordinates, at home the list could include members of the family, relatives and friends. Much that people would not believe, these ‘luminous’ endeavours definitely give rise to wheedle out highly inspired and ingenious thoughts, proposals and plans. And the best part of the entire thing is that the benefits of such exercises cannot be fathomed without indulging in them. 

            The above notwithstanding, it is absolutely inescapable to comprehend that inventiveness, as distinct from resourcefulness is not a magic formula that can be applied by exclaiming abracadabra. Nor is it a recipe that can be followed step by step.

The fact is that creativity is a two-way effort and a joint one at that which is required to be indulged in by every staffer. It is only then that workplace performance will register an upswing. Merely implementing a plan by itself may not suffice. One has to be also on the lookout for impact indicators that would help in gauging whether a plan is booming or not. Should there be impediments, then a contingency plan should be set into motion.

In order to be successful, one has to learn to live with various workplace-related environmental changes that are taking place across the globe. There is a specific need to keep abreast with technological advancements and general knowledge.

One can be innovative alright, but to put such innovation into practice, there are some inescapable imperatives. For example, it is necessary to have a collective and mutually-acceptable visualization, rationale and line of action amongst all those who would be involved in the execution of a project. All key players should have a futuristic outlook and regard alterations, modifications and adjustments as optimistic and encouraging developments. The basis of all innovative ideas may be uncomplicated and relatively easy to understand, however their probable effect is a rather complex issue to comprehend.

But the most important facet of the matter is that innovative ideas of innovative people have dual benefits. They have a colossal positive influence on the professional existence on the individuals, besides also helping the establishments with which they are associated with to accomplish monumentally. And if organizations benefit from an employee, it goes without saying that there is no stagnation for them.        

Keep your career objectives alive

All organizations enforce different operating procedures to attain their targets. It is vital for them to also do some futuristic contemplation by standardizing staff outputs, skill upgrades, capacity building, aptitude management and relief scheduling.

Renowned companies, as part of their employee welfare efforts, make available all opportunities to individuals to acquire additional qualifications. Employees are persuaded and egged on to attend training capsules and advance in their careers. However, the point to be noted is that much of the accent and toil in this context has to originate from the employees themselves. This helps in better career planning; the career roadmap is better charted with an equally good policy to rely upon.

Strategic visualization is one unavoidable component of career planning efforts. You need to set career objectives for yourself. Such objectives have five parts; they are summarized in the word ‘PARTS’ itself as under:

·   Precise: When we say ‘precise’, an unmistakably enunciated responsibility is implied. People should be alert and all ears to the aspiration and need to reach a particular appointment or realize a stage of development. Though career objectives are liable to change with the passage of time, a plain and unambiguous convergence of thoughts on the general objective is inescapable.

·   Assessable: You need to have pre-described conditions with reference to which, you can keep an eye on your steps forward. In respect of most people, performance appraisals by superior authorities serve this purpose. If you have advanced significantly in your career, then there are career gurus who help in delineating various phases of advancement and weigh-up vis-à-vis established aims.

·   Realizable: The objectives that you set for yourself should not defy pragmatism and logic; they should be sensibly attainable with distinctly labeled phases of advancement. At each stage of advancement, objectives and goals can be set. If an objective is impractical or unworkable, your inspiration level dipping down cannot be discounted. Without serving much purpose, out-of-reach targets also induce feelings of helplessness and failure. On the other hand, important targets are difficult and take long time for attainment.

·   Time: It is very vital to spell out deadlines and time limits or else career objectives will never get to be greeted. No career plots are successful in the absence of properly enunciated and definite and cut-off dates and time. In addition, feelings of perseverance, resolve and tenacity are generated and made certain of persistence by cogent and thought through plans.

·   Significance: All career objectives should have an uncomplicated and comprehensible perspective; they should be pertinent to existing circumstances and roadmap proposed to be followed.  In other words, they should be in conformity with a premeditated action-plan. It should be noted that a germane objective offers unmistakable guidance, puts you on the correct course and lets you remain concentrated on your work and career.

Good career advancement generally revolves around a well-organized, well-ordered and efficient career plan. And your aim in having a career plan should be to achieve the overall career objective. Career plans should not be rigid; on the contrary they should be adaptable and supple enough to incorporate skill upgrading imperatives, learning and development efforts and midway work assignments. With these comes the requirement to create time and generate self-motivation to move forward.

What you need to do is a ‘competence and void evaluation’. It will help you discern your weak-points that can be improved upon. Career advancement thus ought to be the justifiable and worthy of end-result of all change-for-the better attempts.

You should appreciate the immense feelings of accomplishment and realization that you would get if you attain your accomplishments; going beyond them would cause unsurpassable pleasure. As you move forward in your career and up in your organization, your involvement and interests increase as also your duties and liabilities. You can be rewarded with greater monetary remunerations and promotions. At senior levels, additional expert credit can be secured through organizations seeking to pick up people with specific expertise and qualifications.

Career objectives can and should never be decided all by themselves. An unlocked and unbolted discussion should be held followed by regular appraisals to make certain that the ‘PARTS’ are always intact. They should be reduced to writing, elucidated and without a doubt be in consonance with any career plan.

            There is no harm in seeking the advice from your immediate boss or any other person, including professional counselors. You will thus have access to varying standpoints and be able to remedy your mistakes, if at all they took place. Needless to say, career counselors and your managers have wherewithal and time-honoured procedures that will assist you in formulating your career objectives and identifying career plans that are practical.

            Determining career objectives is not sufficient. Putting them across to your managers is very important for you to planning advancement activities; it is possible that in the process you may hit upon an excellent career path. Communicating your career objectives to organizations that you aspiring to join, is equally significant as the same is indicative of your aspirations, motivation and concentration. It conveys to the other party in no ambiguous terms what you intend chasing besides also expressing a declaration of definite purpose. During an interview process, you will definitely stand in good stead. It is because of this fact that objectives are invariably enumerated in a resume.

            Career objectives are key agents to describe a career path, a visualization and inspiration for achieving something stupendous. Good objectives are likely to be pursued better if they have all the ‘PARTS’ – particular, assessable, realizable, time and significance. They are quite likely to develop, grow, advance, progress and change as time passes, but they should always comprise a broad and expansive career plan.        

           

Inspiring employees to show good office etiquettes

The functioning environment at any office can be impacted tremendously by the etiquettes displayed by the staff working there. Should the employees not be well-mannered and their general conduct smack of boorishness, a negative atmosphere will be created. Discord and fracas will be common occurrences and productivity will never be high. On the contrary, employees tend to flourish on the professional front if they observe good office etiquettes.

Motivating employees is indeed a difficult task, particularly when managers themselves are not gifted and dexterous. But they can definitely gain knowledge and improve upon their management skills.

Here are five methods that can be used to trigger off good behavior by all at a workplace:

·      Learn minutiae:

Workplace etiquettes are an array of behavioural conventions that all employees are supposedly required to observe. If you want your employees to be impeccable in their behavior, you too ought to know what good office etiquettes are about what they involve.

Conventions referred above manifest mutual respect, appreciation and recognition towards seniors, peers and subordinates alike. In addition, a sense of loyalty towards both work and workplace also forms part of this entire spectrum of conduct and manners.

You would need to make up your mind with regard to the consequence and magnitude of the conventions. By doing so, you would be able to generate more optimistic, encouraging and upbeat situations at the workplace. It is all about being a bit rational and commonsensical; a discussion with an odd colleague will also help arrive at the correct decision.

·      Lead by example:

Once a code of conduct has been evolved, everybody has to follow them. There are no exceptions, including you. If you do not abide by them, rest assured that other employees go along with them.

It should not be lost sight of that you are a model for emulation for the employees and that you need to think of and handle them with admiration and reverence. And if you fail to do so, they too will learn to treat you and their colleagues in a similar manner. 

·      Keep everybody informed:

If you, as a manager are contemplating to bring about some changes in wide-ranging or specific workplace etiquettes, the new set of rules need to be brought to their notice. This can be done by a number of methods. One way is to hold a conference and disseminate the new rules. The new rules can also be juxtaposed on the old ones and circulated for perusal by all. Alternatively, an informal method is also available – talking individually to each employee and making known the new rules.

But the most important part of the entire exercise is to have an optimistic disposition. Feedback, including criticism if any, should be taken in the correct spirit. A flexible approach is thus called for. If some changes are sought, the same can be affected.   

·      Resolve discord:

Once your staff is alert to the changes, some amount of workplace controversies will set in. These will have to be attended to right away. The significance of workplace etiquettes and the common advantages that accrue from them need to be elucidated.

For each conflict situation that may arise, the appropriate way to tackle it also needs to be clarified. This would require great tact and proceeded in a laissez-faire manner.

·      Persist with implementation:

There are chances that the new code of workplace etiquettes may not find acceptance. The reasons could be many and may differ from individual to individual. How do you deal with such a situation?

The employees may have to be given some more time for a favourable reception. Simultaneously, extra efforts would be necessary to retell and go over the import and impact of workplace etiquettes. Educating them on business etiquette tips would go a long way in motivating or persuading them to adopt better behavior techniques.

Resistance to change is a universal phenomenon but once the codified etiquettes are accepted, feelings of gratefulness would flow. The workplace would have been transformed into a congenial location and its productivity set on an ascending mode.