338: Why You're Not Being Promoted | Strategies to Increase Your Mid-Career Visibility

If you are doing great work but still not getting promoted, you are not alone. At mid-career, strong performance becomes the baseline. Promotions go to the professionals who signal leadership readiness, shape outcomes, and are visible to decision-makers.

In this episode of The Mid-Career GPS Podcast, leadership and career coach John Neral breaks down four hidden blockers that stall advancement for high performers: being known only for execution, waiting to be noticed, staying quiet about your ambitions, and becoming too valuable to move.

You will learn how to shift from tasks to business outcomes, increase leadership visibility, build internal sponsors, and ask clear questions about competencies, timelines, and stretch opportunities. I also share practical scripts to help you position yourself for promotion conversations and design a succession plan so your excellence no longer traps you in place.

If you feel stuck, undervalued, or frustrated in today’s job market, this episode will help you move from reliable doer to credible leader with greater clarity, confidence, and momentum.

Subscribe, share with a colleague who feels overlooked, and leave a review to let me know what shift you are making next.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mid-Career Reality Check
• 0:45 Great Work Isn’t The Differentiator
• 3:43 Reason 1: Known For Execution
• 5:44 Reason 2: Passive Visibility
• 6:31 Reason 3: Nobody Knows You Want It
• 9:58 Too Valuable To Move
• 12:21 Identity, Shame, And Mindset
• 14:20 Shift From Doer To Strategist
• 16:10 Build Visibility And Network
• 16:58 Create Promotion Conversations
• 18:20 Get The Info You Need
• 19:56 Embrace A Bigger Vision
• 20:55 Newsletter Invite And Tease
• 22:08 Closing And Ways To Connect

Transcript

Welcome And Mid-Career Reality Check

John Neral 0:05

Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast with your host, John Darrell. This is the show for mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued, or unsure what's next, and know that doing more isn't the answer. Here, we focus on how you show up, how you make clear decisions, build influence, and take control of your career. Whether you're navigating change, seeking a promotion, or redefining success at mid-career. Let's get started. Let me ask you something. Have you ever looked at someone who just got promoted and thought, wait, I do far more than they do. I do better work than they do. How the heck did they get promoted? Let's face it, you're someone who consistently delivers results. You hit your numbers, you're leading projects, you're great with clients, you're solving problems, and yet nothing. No raise, no promotion, no conversation. And you're sitting there wondering what else it is you have to do. More than likely, you are feeling frustrated, full of self-doubt, probably some level of resentment to your organization or toward your boss, and you are quietly starting to feel yourself disengage. Well, if you're doing great work and still not getting promoted, today's episode will help you understand why and what to do instead. There is a shift that happens at mid-career, and it's a hard lesson for us to learn. See, early on in our career, we are so focused on making sure we are putting forth all of the right effort. That effort leads to some level of visibility. We get recognized initially as that tactical go-to person within our organization who can deliver quality work consistently and we're dependable. And so, because we have reinforced this idea that our effort, which leads to great visibility, which is because of our work quality, we think, well, that's what I just need to keep doing at mid-career because that's always served me to this point. But at mid-career, your effort does not equal your visibility. See, when we get promoted at mid-career, it's not about our output. It is about how ready we are for those leadership responsibilities. At mid-career, doing great work is the baseline. It's not the differentiator. And for some of you, when you're going into interviews or you're having performance conversations and you talk about how dependable you are, or how great of a team player you are, or how you're doing great work, it falls flat. And it falls flat because your boss doesn't care about that. Your boss or supervisor is expecting you to deliver that kind of effort and quality. So when that happens and you're not getting the recognition you believe you deserve, this is where problems start to seep in. So I've got four reasons why you may not be getting promoted. And what I want you to consider as I go through these four reasons is which one, two, three, or all of them are resonating with you about where you're feeling stuck in your career. You hear me at the end of every episode say to you, how we show up matters. Well, let me say it here. How we show up matters. So one reason you may not be getting promoted is because you are known for your execution and not for your leadership. Now, I just talked about this, but remember that promotion decisions are based upon future potential. Where does the organization see you fitting in with their org chart that you're going to be able to deliver at a level that they need you to because of your skills and expertise? I don't want to overlook the fact that you can't, you don't have to be competent or knowledgeable in your role. You absolutely do. You have to have a certain level of technical expertise to succeed in any given role. But it's where they are seeing you as the leader to take that to the next level. Are you the right person to step up and lead a unit, a division, a department, an office? What does that actually look like? Because the powers that be that are going to make those decisions for you regarding your leadership, they're going to look at your future potential, not based on your past performance or what you have done. The second reason why you may not be getting promoted is because you're being passive. And by being passive, what I mean is that you're sitting back and you're waiting to be noticed. You might be saying to yourself, I'm just going to let my work speak for itself. If I keep doing great work, someone is going to recognize me. But your visibility is not accidental. Your leadership are promoting people inside of your organization based on what they're seeing and what they're hearing. One of my show up six strategies is about protecting and promoting your brand. Jeff Bezos says that your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. What are people saying about you when you're not in the room? What is a leadership hearing about you, your leadership, your performance that is making them say, yeah, I want you to be part of our new team. I want you to lead this next group. Rule number three, or reason number three here as to why you may not be promoted is because nobody knows you want it. Think about this for a minute. How quiet are you in terms of advocating for yourself and saying, this is an opportunity I really want? What I see so often in my work and with the people whom I work with privately is that they will have this underlying fear that if they speak up about themselves, they may be perceived as being arrogant or impatient, someone who may be rocking the boat, so to speak, or someone, listen very carefully to this. Someone who may have an overgeneralized perception about how good they are. But can we revisit this in a year? That could be a very powerful conversation you may choose to have with your supervisor if you believe that is what's best. But to be promoted, you have to advocate for yourself. It's something as simple as saying this. You're simply indispensable. You are too valuable at the place you are on the org chart for them to move you. And leadership is afraid to move you because they are afraid of what may happen. If you are a high performer, you may often find yourselves trapped on the org chart because you are too valuable in your current role. You're too good at your job. You solve too many problems. And essentially, you are the safety net. You are the bedrock, the foundation, the stabilizing force within that particular business unit or team that to move you out would actually cause a problem. Now, from my lens, what I will share with you is that in my experience, what I have seen is that is not necessarily a you problem. It is an organizational problem. They haven't trained somebody up, they haven't staffed accordingly to fill behind you. That may be the conversation you might need to have to simply say, hey, what's the succession plan here? Because I don't want to stay in this job for the rest of my life. I'm ready to do more. But we don't have anybody to fill in behind me. So how do we create that succession plan? The hard truth is that sometimes you're so good at your job, your excellence is exactly what is keeping you stuck. I bet you never thought that would have been a problem in your early career. That you were so good at what you do that all of a sudden then you realize you might be screwing yourself out of a promotion. But when you want to be promoted and you're not, there is a mindset shift or even an emotional toll that happens. So often at mid-career, we define ourselves by what we do. When we're asked by somebody, hey, what do you do for work? You often lead with a title. I'm an accountant, I'm a financial professional, I'm a project manager, I'm an educator. Our identity gets so seeped into who it is based on what we do, who we are based on what we do, that we often think we're directly tied to the value of that title or where we work. And so when you're not being promoted, when you are essentially stuck and undervalued and underutilized, you may start thinking, is it something to do with me? Do I not possess the necessary leadership qualities to make me an excellent leader to lead at this next step? Did I miss a window of opportunity? Am I too old for this particular role or this particular job? This is where it gets tricky. And this is where shame sometimes seeps in. And it's undue shame or unfair shame from my experience, where you think that you did something wrong. And I want to offer you that you've done nothing wrong. You've just chose to play the game the way you saw best. And somewhere along the line, the rules changed. And you might have missed a few of them. And that's okay. Because there is always the perfect time for you to advocate for yourself and your career. You're not stuck because you're incapable. You're stuck because you've been playing by some outdated rules that somebody told you about or you felt they were the best way to play the game. But when you realize that, this is where your authority begins to strengthen. I want you to go back when you have a moment and listen to episode 184. It is with the amazing Joe Miller. The episode is called The Shift List: Unearthing Leadership Potentials at Mid Career. I have the pleasure of knowing Joe because we have done similar work with an organization. And um, she is a fantastic keynote speaker. And in her work, she talks about what she calls her shift list. And one of her shifts is about going from being a doer to being a strategist. And so when you think about what you might need to be doing next, here's how you can show up in a way without overwhelming yourself. Make this subtle shift from going from being the one who is doing everything to the one who is strategizing. The way that you would go about doing that from my lens is that you speak in terms of outcomes. You don't speak in terms of, well, here's what we did, right? Here's what we did, and here were the results we got from it. You have to tie your work back to a business goal or objective and something that is directly addressing the problem that you are seeing inside of your organization that you know how to solve because you're a doer, but now you're presenting it from the lens of how you would solve it because you are a strategist. You are a strategic thinker. Another shift that you can make is find ways to increase your leadership visibility, share perspective in meetings, speak up more often, speak up sooner rather than later. Communicate your wins strategically with anyone and everyone who's willing to hear it and listen to you. And find ways to build an internal network where you can have career conversations with people who are at the level you want to be at, and what that actually looks like for you to see about how you'd be able to make that pivot or move into that next role. Another shift here is to create these promotion conversations. And one of the ways you can do that is by having those career conversations with your immediate boss or supervisor. But another thing to consider, and just as a reference, if you've gone back and listened to last week's episode 337, when leadership holds you back, you may find that your leader may not be the person you should be having these advocacy conversations with. So if it's not them, then who is it? Right? Asking questions like, what competencies do I need to demonstrate to be ready for the next level? Where are you seeing gaps in my readiness? What opportunities can I take on now that will demonstrate my capability and ability to operate in this new and exciting role? This again is here where you've got to advocate for yourself. Promotions are rarely given. They are positioned. They are positioned based on how well you strategically place yourself in the right rooms, at the right tables, in the right conversations, and with the right people to advocate for you and your professional development. So often on this podcast, I and my guests have talked about how you have to get the information you need, not the information you want. We all want to hear we're doing great work. The information you need to hear is how often are you being considered for promotion? How likely is it for you to be considered for promotion? Can you imagine going to your boss or supervisor and saying to them, I really want to be considered for a promotion? But what I'm curious from you, how long do you think that's gonna take? And if they were to say something to you like, we don't see you getting promoted for another two to three years, if that's grossly different than your timeline, there is an opportunity for you to get really curious as to why they think it's gonna take you that long. Then when you get that information you need, it then allows you to decide how you want to play, how you want to play inside that organization and whether or not it's truly worth it for you to look elsewhere to see if there is an opportunity for you to level up externally. And then does that create leverage for you inside your current organization where maybe they might promote you sooner rather than later? Who knows? These are the conversations that happen because they're personal and they happen inside the coaching relationship to really figure out what the best move would be for you. What I want you to take away from this episode is for you to really embrace your bigger vision. What is the thing that you see yourself doing, and how do you see yourself getting there? Because mid-career is not about doing more. It is not about grinding. It is about having the influence, clarity, and positioning you need to get to exactly where you want to be. Figure out your professional path, trajectory, ecosystem, whatever it is you want to call it, and find a way to get there. That is the joy of building your mid-career GPS. Now, if you've enjoyed this episode, this is only half the conversation. There is another half that goes on inside of my free weekly email newsletter. And if this episode has hit home for you, I want to invite you to join the Midcareer GPS newsletter. Every single week, I share strategies to help you gain clarity, perspective, build influence, and create momentum at mid-career, especially if you're feeling stuck, undervalued, and underutilized. So the way you can sign up is go to my website, johnnerrell.com. It's my name, J-O-H-N-N-E-R-A-L dot com forward slash resources. You can find the MidCareer GPS newsletter right there. Okay. And you can also find it in the show notes. Now, I will tell you, I've got something really exciting coming up to announce to you in a few weeks. But if you are looking for some support, you are looking for some motivation, but you can't afford one on one coaching, I got something and I'm working on it, and it's coming in a couple of weeks. So stay tuned. Because I can't tell you how much work I have put into this and how excited I am to get this out there for all of you. So be well, stay safe, and remember, you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnarrell.com for more information about how I can help you build your Mid-Career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Daryl Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember, how we show up matters.