Just Promoted

How to excel in your new position

John works as a computer programmer, among 50 others, for a medium-sized company in Australia, which is growing fast.

John loves his work. He arrives early, leaves late, and just sits and works at his desk all day long. He has an innate skill of programming and no problem is too big for him. He gets results and gets them fast. John gets through a ton of work and the management of the company sees him as one of their better employees.

The management of the company is looking to promote one of the programmers to the management level because sales are booming and the company is rapidly growing. They are looking to promote someone in the company to manage the 50 + other programmers.

Because John is very skillful at programming he appears to be the most likely candidate to be offered the position. That’s exactly what happened, they offered John the management position.

What Got John Here, Won’t Get John There

John accepted the management position and only after a short period of time it was a disaster. John was frustrated, stressed, overwhelmed, and was no longer enjoying the new role or working at the company. Even his fellow work colleagues were annoyed and frustrated with him and not happy.

What happened, what went wrong?

John’s programming skillset

John was a star in his first role because his skill set was an absolute match for the position he held as a programmer. His programming skills were the strengths that allowed him to be a shining star in this role.

It was a perfect match, a win-win, and everyone was happy.

John’s management skillset

Now that John has taken on the position as manager, it requires a completely different skillset for him to operate, do the job, and be successful at it. He needs to know how to manage people, support them, inspire them, and have them produce efficiently, on time, and in a supportive environment.

John will now spend less time programming and will have to manage the needs of his new team.

The skillset as a programmer now becomes a liability for John in his new role as a manager because it’s a different skillset, people management (EQ), that will allow him to be successful in his new position as manager.

How to Excel in Your New Position

What needs to happen for us to move from one position in the company to another more senior position and excel in that role?

• We need to identify the skill set of the new position that is required and that if applied in that role it would lead to a desirable outcome.
• Most promotions would require you to manage other team members and this will require Leadership Communication Skills and EQ (Emotional Intelligence)
• If we already have good communication skills we will need to upgrade them to ensure that we excel in the new position.
• If we don’t have a good foundation of leadership Communication Skills we will need to take training, read some books, get mentorship or coaching to master this new required skill.
• We will need to decide if the new job description is what we want to be doing as opposed to our current position.

Decision Time

I believe it’s very possible and doable to excel in a new position, quicker than we realize, if we are aware of what we will be giving up and what we will need to do to be successful in the new position.

We need to go into the new position with our eyes wide open.

If you are a programmer and all you want to do is do programming all day long on your own, probably the promotion is not for you.

On the other hand, if you want to grow in the company, increase your knowledge and skillset, add more value, and get rewarded for it, this could be a great opportunity to accept the promotion.

Have a conversation with your employer and let them know you would like their support in topping up your skillset to be able to meet the challenge and be successful in the new role. Your employer wants you and the company to be successful in the new role so in most cases they will support you.

If by chance they don’t support you in acquiring your new skills and capabilities, take on the ownership yourself to do so. Your skillset is an asset and where ever you work you will take that asset with you and apply it to be successful.

Endless Possibilities

We are all very capable to do almost anything in life if we are willing to get the knowledge, skills, and capabilities, have a go, and practice, practice, practice.

The question is are we willing to settle for mediocrity or expand ourselves into awareness and abundance, enjoying the journey of life equally as the destination?

Paul Simos is an accomplished Executive Life Coach, Health Coach & Certified Trainer.

He has a fundamental belief about his clients which frames how they work together i.e. they already have everything they need to achieve success. His role as a coach is to stimulate and challenge his clients to unlock their successful beliefs, skills, and behavior patterns.

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