359: The Invisible Promotion Test & Why You May Not Be Passing It

Promotions can feel deeply personal, especially when you are carrying the workload, delivering results, and still watching someone else move up.

In this episode of The Mid-Career GPS Podcast, I’m asking the question many mid-career professionals have quietly wondered: “How did they get promoted when I’m doing as much or more?”

The answer is rarely “work harder.”

At this stage of your career, hard work matters, but it is not always what gets you promoted. Leaders are often evaluating you through an invisible promotion test that rarely gets explained out loud. They are looking for clear evidence that you can operate at the next level, demonstrate measurable business impact, and lead with the kind of influence, visibility, and strategic thinking expected in a bigger role.

If your work is solid but your impact is unclear, your career may stall. That is why relying on “my work will speak for itself” can quietly hold you back.

In this episode, I break down what decision makers actually need when your name comes up in a promotion conversation. They need examples they can repeat confidently when you are not in the room. 

They need proof that you are not just doing more work, but creating outcomes that matter to the organization.

I also talk about the difference between bragging and self-advocacy. 

Advocating for yourself is not about arrogance. It is about communicating your value with executive presence, connecting your contributions to business outcomes, and helping your manager understand how to champion you effectively.

You’ll walk away with three practical strategies for career growth and promotion readiness: tracking measurable results, making your promotion goals explicit in your one-on-ones, and giving your manager the exact talking points they need to advocate for you.

I also share four diagnostic questions to help you pressure test whether your supervisor truly understands your impact and can defend your promotion recommendation quickly and clearly.

If you feel stuck, unseen, or frustrated because you are doing the work but not getting promoted, this episode will help you understand what may be missing and how to start positioning yourself more strategically.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why summertime workloads can amplify resentment at work
 • What it really means to feel stuck and unseen at mid-career
 • How leaders evaluate next-level readiness for promotions
 • Why visibility and memorable impact stories can change career outcomes
 • The difference between arrogance and business-centered advocacy
 • Why time in role does not guarantee a promotion
 • What strategic thinking and influence without title look like
 • Three ways to advocate for yourself without sounding boastful
 • Four questions to check whether your supervisor can champion you fast

Why This Matters for Your Mid-Career Growth

At mid-career, your job is not only to do good work. Your job is to make sure the right people understand the value, impact, and strategic importance of that work.

If you are tired of feeling overlooked, passed over, or unsure why your career is not moving forward, this episode will help you stop guessing and start building a stronger case for your next promotion.

Listen to this episode and learn how to make your impact more visible, your goals more explicit, and your promotion story easier for others to repeat.

Transcript

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Welcome And Who This Helps

John Neral 0:03

Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. I'm your host, John Merrill. This is the show for mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued, and unsure what's next, and know that doing more isn't the answer. Here, we focus on how you show up. That means how you make clear decisions, build influence, and take control of your career. Let's get started. I've

Why Promotions Feel Unfair

John Neral 0:35

got a question for you in this episode, and since this is just between us, I want you to answer this really honestly. Here's the question. When you think about your current work situation, or perhaps it's a prior one, have you ever looked around at your colleagues and wondered how someone got promoted when you were doing just as much work, if not more? I'm asking you this question this summer because I have found that summertime can often bring up a sense of resentment when it comes to our careers. People are taking time off, you're being asked to pitch in. Maybe it's a particular crazy or hectic time for you at work, and you feel like you're just having to put forth more and more effort, but you're also feeling as if you're not being seen. So maybe you have been told, just keep doing great work. Your time will come. People know you're contributing. But somehow when promotion time arrives or bonus appraisal time arrives, you never seem to make the list. Now, when I talk about being stuck, what I'm talking about is you feel like you are doing everything you can inside of your organization and you're not being recognized for it. You're not getting promoted, you're not getting visible on certain projects. You're essentially stuck in your lane, and that's it.

The Invisible Promotion Test

John Neral 2:21

Your organization sees you doing one thing and they don't see you doing anything else. And this may be uncomfortable to hear, but in this episode, I want to talk with you today about why leaders are evaluating you against a test they never really tell you about. Yeah, it's not about performance and it's not just about your results. See, it's actually about whether or not they believe you can operate at the next level. Are you demonstrating the skills and competencies at the next level above you that leadership can see you successfully doing that role at the next level? Or are they just simply happy with where you are, even though you may be frustrated and disappointed? What I want to do in this episode with you is I want to pull back the curtain on what that invisible promotion test looks like and how you can position yourself more strategically so leadership can become your biggest advocate instead of your biggest obstacle. Regardless of where you work, whether you work in corporate, you work for a Fortune 50 company, you work for a startup, you work for a nonprofit, you work for government, one of the most damaging beliefs I see mid-career professionals fall into is that they repeatedly tell themselves, if I just work hard enough, someone will notice. More than likely, that's part of your work ethic. That's how you were raised. And in an ideal situation, it would be great if we could just sit back and all the scores were tallied up, and whoever works the hardest gets the biggest reward. It doesn't happen that way. You and I both know that many senior leaders are busy. They have their own work, they're managing budgets, they're doing strategy, they're handling staffing issues, they're navigating organizational politics, they're dealing with customers and clients, and they have priorities that are specific to them in their role. What they're not doing is they're not sitting at their desk and looking at their computer and tallying up everyone's accomplishments. What they often know about you is based on what they see, what they hear, what others say about you, and

Visibility Beats Silent Hard Work

John Neral 5:01

the stories they can easily recall. This is why visibility matters. And if you're not visible with your leadership inside of your organization, it can be very easy for you to fall into this trap and say, my work will speak for itself. Now, I want to be perfectly clear here. I'm not saying you need to brag. When we think about bragging in people always talking about themselves, it oftentimes comes across as very, what's the word I'm looking for? Like sleazy or smarmy. Okay. I'm not saying to brag. What I am encouraging you to do in this episode is to really think about how you can advocate for your accomplishments that your leadership don't know exist. In my work with individuals and organizations, I have coached countless professionals who were high-performing, high potential individuals producing exceptional results within their industry and corporations, but they were virtually invisible outside of their immediate team. This is why when I talk about how we show up and what it means to protect and promote your brand, you have to be promoting your brand in a way that people get to know what contributions you're actively making. Because when promotion decisions happen, your immediate leadership or the people who have decision-making authority, if they don't have enough evidence to confidently advocate or champion you for that promotion, it will not happen. The issue is simply awareness. So what's happening is there's a conversation, and I have been in these rooms across multiple organizations, where it comes time to talk about promotion. And the question is this if I promote this person, can I confidently defend that decision to everyone else? Because when you think about it, everybody's got someone they want to see get promoted. If the person who is advocating for your promotion doesn't have enough evidence, enough results to defend you to the entire team, why would they stick their neck out for you? When a promotion recommendation goes forward, senior leaders often have to explain why you deserve it, why now is the right time, and why you instead of someone else. Conversations about they're a nice person, they're a good communicator, they're a hard worker, don't fly. They're important, but they are not the key decision maker as to why someone should be promoted. And the one that I have personally seen, both throughout my own career and in my coaching work as well, is this one. Time in role does not necessitate a promotion.

Advocacy Versus Bragging

John Neral 8:44

Whether it's on the employee side or on the organizational side, a lot of damage can happen when people believe that, oh, well, if you hang out in this role for three or four years, you're gonna get promoted. Or people typically get promoted in three to four years. Well, if there's nowhere for you to go on the org chart, if there's no position at that level, or if you haven't achieved the necessary results and demonstrated the competencies and skills needed at that next level, why would they promote you? When you think about things like strategic thinking, how are you influencing without the title? How visible are you across the organization? However, your organization defines leadership or executive presence, what does that look like? What's your business impact? Where are you driving results that ultimately lead them to knowing you're ready for the next level? Promotions often go to people who combine these things well. And at mid-career, at mid-level, that move from being a doer to a strategist, from someone who executes to creating vision, those are big ones. And if you're not demonstrating ways to do that, or you're unclear of how to do that inside of your organization, that is an opportunity to have an intentional conversation to show up for it. But when you don't know, when you're uncertain, when it's unclear what you need to do, what I have seen is that mid-career professionals get quiet. I get it, I understand why it happens. So many of us were raised to believe that we shouldn't brag, we need to stay humble, let our work speak for itself. The problem is that organizations do not operate on assumptions, they operate on information. And there is a significant difference between arrogance and advocacy. Arrogance is someone saying, Look how great I am. Advocacy is saying this. Here's the impact I've created and how it supports our goals. One is self-centered, the other is business-centric. The professionals who move forward at this level, the ones who accelerate their career, the ones who you see moving very quickly inside of the organization, are the ones who learn how to communicate their value without feeling as if they are boasting. So many times on this podcast, I will say it's about showing up from a place of value

What Leaders Use To Decide

John Neral 11:56

and service. So here are three ways you can advocate for yourself more effectively. Number one is document and share your impact. You should be tracking your activities. If for any reason alone, it's just to make your end-of-the-year performance writing appraisal easier. But leadership cares about outcomes. So instead of saying, I led this project, say something like, I led this project, and here were the results. Where'd you save money? Where'd you make money? Where did you reduce time? Where did you improve efficiency? Where did you improve a customer satisfaction score? Every week, I want to invite you to take 10 minutes, put it on your calendar as a standing meeting, and document it. What were your wins? What were your results? How is it measured? What feedback did you receive? What problems did you solve? Imagine if you did this, how it changes your one-on-ones and it changes your performance discussions. Because now you don't have to worry about things. In a previous role, I managed 21 instructional coaches for a major school system. It was the District of Columbia Public Schools. At the beginning of the year, I sat down with all of my coaches as a team and individually, and I walked them through how they would be evaluated at mid-year and at the end of the year. We had a rubric-based evaluation system. There was a competency. This is how it was measured. Not only did I walk them through it, we collectively as a team normed around what each rating would specifically look like. And then what I shared with them was they then were responsible for keeping that information up to date. And I would check in with them and I would say, are you keeping up to date with tracking your progress and tracking your evaluation? It became a habit for some of them, not all of them, but for some of them. The ones who were most successful in their role were paying attention to how they were being measured and where they needed to be visible. They were not only able to document their success, but they were also able to get ahead of potential problems when they arose

Three Ways To Advocate

John Neral 14:38

and were quicker to solve them. So there is strength in building this habit. Number two, make your career goals explicit. And it is as simple as this. Remember, they're busy too. Don't assume that they understand your aspirations. Have the intentional conversation, show up for it, move the relationship forward. It might sound something as simple as this. I would like to position myself for a promotion over the next 12 to 18 months. What experiences, skills, or accomplishments would help leadership see me as ready? I want to add one thing to this. If your manager or leader doesn't answer that question particularly well in the moment, that is okay. Ideally, I would love for them to be able to answer it. But I don't know your specific situation. And so if there's an opportunity to extend a little grace, what you can do is simply say, I want this to be part of our ongoing discussions. Can we talk more about this next time? Get their buy-in, build the relationship or the partnership with your manager or leader to be ready to discuss the options for promotion instead of merely hoping they notice. Number three is give them something they can work with. And by that I mean this: during your one-on-ones, share your key accomplishments, your cross-functional successes, your impact with your customers or your clients, what your team has specifically done, where you've been strategic. Not as a report card, not as a checklist, but in terms of context. Give your supervisor something that they can use to effectively advocate for your promotion, especially when you are expecting them to remember everything you have done over the year and however many direct reports they may have. Whatever might be going on inside your organization, if you have reorged, if you have had cutbacks, if you have had situations where organizations have shifted in some way and all of a sudden your manager has more direct reports, be understanding of that. Make their job easier to advocate for you rather than expecting them to be everything for you. Now look, I'm not excusing bad behavior on a manager's part for them not doing their job and not paying attention and things like that. But when you build this relationship, when you start establishing more rapport and more trust with your immediate supervisor, this is where evidence comes into play even more. Ask yourself these four questions. Number one, does my supervisor know my goals? Number two, does my supervisor understand my impact? Number three, does my supervisor see me operating at the next level? Number four,

Four Questions To Pressure Test

John Neral 18:53

does my supervisor have examples they can share when my name comes up? If you are answering no to any of those four questions, that is your focus point. Your goal is not to convince people you're ready. Your goal is to ensure they have enough evidence that they can reach that conclusion themselves. You want to make sure that your supervisor is so confident in you being ready for that promotion or that next level, they can explain your impact in 10 seconds or less. They have the finger on the pulse of exactly what it is you are doing and how you are contributing and adding value to your organization. Do not assume they know these things. This is where you get to advocate for yourself. I'd like to be promoted within 12 to 18 months. Versus, you know, I've been here a while. I really should have been promoted by now. Those are two totally different conversations. This is what you get to show up for. So if you're feeling a little overlooked, a little undervalued, a little underutilized

Show Up Leadership Lab Invitation

John Neral 20:14

right now, we can change that. One of the ways we can change that is inside of my monthly membership. It is called the Show Up Leadership Lab. It is the place for mid-career professionals who are looking to level up, to move up, to figure out their next move. And inside the lab, what we get to do is work on your story. Work on how you're advocating for yourself more effectively, more strategically, and differently than you've been doing. So you have a different conversation. Now, that conversation is what I call an intentional conversation. That intentional conversation gets you the information you need to know how to move forward. We do all that and so much more inside the Show Up Leadership Lab. Check the show notes. Visit my website, johnnarrell.com forward slash show up. We're going to be opening things up for the month of August. Would love to have you come in and be a part of the membership. Look, your work matters. You're doing a lot, you're working hard, but your results matter also. And what's more important is you have to be able to communicate your impact to those decision makers and people of influence within your organization that are quietly doing that invisible promotion test and asking whether or not you are capable, talented, and ready enough for the next level. All right, my friends. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Until next time, remember this: 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.

Final Takeaways And Next Steps

John Neral 22:10

If you enjoyed this episode, don't keep it to yourself. Kindly share it with someone who needs it. And if you're tired of feeling stuck, overlooked, or underutilized in your career, go to my website, johnnerrell.com to get started. There you'll find free resources, ways to work with me, and details about the Show Up Leadership Lab, my signature membership for mid-career professionals who want to lead better, get noticed, and elevate their career. All the links are in the show notes. You can grab what you need right there. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. And if you're getting value from the show, take 30 seconds to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Remember, how you show up matters, and I'll see you next time.