May 15, 2023

Feel you’ve been passed over for promotion? You may need to jump the ‘ladder gap’ and recalibrate, says leadership coach Tara Fennessy. If you’ve successfully risen through the ranks in an organisation, there can come a time when the promotions start to dry up and you see less experienced, even less talented, peers and external hires being promoted above you. In this situation, it may be tempting to look elsewhere to chase that more challenging, and lucrative, ‘top echelon’ financial role. However, with news that the London jobs market is cooling, jumping ship may no longer be a viable option. Chasing that internal promotion can prove a lot more beneficial, in terms of stability, employee benefits and a CV that demonstrates your employer’s confidence in you. So, how can you make it happen?   Closing the career ladder gap Having coached hundreds of finance professionals over the years, I believe that progressing through the ranks is attainable for just about everyone, providing they put some time and effort into closing what I call the career ‘ladder gap’. This ‘gap’ appears at the crucial career juncture where only certain leaders are selected to join the top tiers of their firm. This is when I tell my clients that all that hard work and impact limited to their silo are the problem.   Impact Reaching the very top requires something very different. Leaders are promoted to the top echelons of an organisation only when their messages inspire, their impact across the business is outstanding and they make their job look easy. These individuals act, think and look like the brand ambassadors partners or directors want for their senior leadership teams. Those who don’t are overlooked for promotion every time. If this sounds familiar, take heart. You’re not as far away from career-defining success as you might think. A theme I see throughout my work is that the smallest changes can have an enormous impact on performance. What matters most is taking the time out to consider and put into practice opportunities for ‘recalibration’. This involves three key steps: 1) knowing your message; 2) making an outstanding impact on ALL your stakeholders; and 3) improving your wellbeing so you appear (and feel) relaxed, focused and resilient – in other words, you make your job look easy!

There are three key steps to jumping the ‘ladder gap’ to promotion, according to leadership coach Tara Fennessy. In ‘Don’t get overlooked for promotion’, I spoke about the ‘ladder gap’ that finance professionals can face when seeking internal promotion: the situation where, despite your hard work, you’re overlooked in favour of less experienced peers or external hires. The good news is it’s within everyone’s capability to jump the gap; it just requires a little time out to consider and put into practice opportunities for career ‘recalibration’. There are three steps to achieving this.   What is your message? Starting with why someone does their job is key, as that’s where recalibration matters most. The key is to articulate what you do at your very best; even better, try defining this in eight words or less! This is the message you should be communicating within your business. Remember, it’s not about the day-to-day detail and technicalities of what you do, it’s about your vision and as such, it must resonate with stakeholders outside of your immediate team. Outstanding impact Spotting leaders who lack impact is easy; just ask them to list their key stakeholders. If they give fewer than 10, their impact tends to be very limited and very poor. Promotion starts becoming inevitable when a leader has the broad stakeholder outlook that enables them to deliver outstanding impact across the business – upwards, outwards and sideways. Those who achieve outstanding impact find that clients are queuing up at their door, everyone wants to be in their team, other leaders ask them for advice and their people progress well. Wellbeing When I speak with partners of Big Four firms, they are pretty clear why certain leaders are overlooked at promotion time; they say the talent promotable to the top 2% must be seen to be coping better, handling their workload easily and spending less time doing it. It’s not about eating your greens or getting eight hours sleep – leaders with wellbeing are relaxed, focused and resilient. Experience has shown me that individuals who are mindful of all three of the above – and adjust their behaviour accordingly – quickly make that leap past even the most challenging rung on the career ladder.

We all know that an organisation is only as strong as its leaders. Investing in those leaders is the only true way to ensure growth, innovation and retention. The theme of leadership has been studied scientifically for more than a century, across numerous studies identifying the critical leadership competencies that can make leaders successful. We use a proven neuroscience methodology model that we have developed over our thirty five plus years in senior leaders, and team development. That model is called L.I.M.B.E.R. L – Limbic The neuroscience behind skills development – being brave, challenging the norm, being conscious and rational around your thought-process, as well as mitigating feelings against making decisions. I – Intuitive Understanding personality styles and behaviours (theirs and others) in order to effectively influence and drive the team. The emotional side of leadership, which considers the impact on team members, humility, and ethics. M – Mental Agility Cognitive flexibility is the ability to flex in your role when needed, and have a strong mind set and compass to guide you through the leadership challenges. B – Boost A diagnostic to learn how leaders communicate to their teams, play to individual strengths and build trust and collaboration across your organisation. E – Excellence This is built under NLP techniques (Neuro-linguistic programming) to develop leaders communication, messaging and story-telling skills. R – Results Commitments and objectives (personal, team and business) must be anchored across the leadership development programme to ensure impression is embedded continually. The value behind organisations using this model is that it covers the key capabilities across ‘the ideal leader’ while customising these skills to their commercial role and objectives. Leadership is a journey, not a destination. Start yours today by contacting our team.

For a leader, the critical skill of developing a strong ‘teamwork’ ethos across the organisation is paramount – a leader that has a clear vision and goals, and effectively communicates this to the ‘team’ around them. Productivity levels in a team can be increased by improving communication and facilitating an open discussion to allow team members to openly share their opinions and ideas. What skills should you be looking to develop? Emotion and motivation Leaders should be able to inspire and motivate their team by challenging the norm and using both their head and heart when making decisions. By combining thoughts and feelings, decision-making becomes much more rational, and as a result, the output is more coherent and successful.   Cognitive flexibility How quickly you can shift from one system of thought to another. Leaders should always view their role as flexible; the whole team should be able to call upon them in challenging situations.   Intuition Intuition is important to leaders as it helps them understand the personalities and learning styles of all team members. This can then help the whole team work more efficiently as everyone can leverage on their strengths and preferred working styles.   Impact Leaders should be able to communicate effectively with their team and learn how their actions can affect others to create the biggest positive impact. Sustainable success Success is developed through a synergy of evolution, inclusion, culture and innovation. Measuring success can be done by setting small goals and objectives and keeping track of when they are achieved.   Good team training is commonly found in high performing teams, everyone holding the skills to work through any challenges they may face produces better outcomes. Having a high-performance team is a huge asset to any business as they bring a variety of knowledge and skills to the table. To learn more about how I can support your organisations training and development needs, please contact us.

Courage is an essential part of having a growth mindset. If it is something that would be ‘nice to have’, frankly it will be much harder to learn. For most people change is not a natural default and for some change can be threatening, as our brains love familiarity. As a Leadership Coach, I often ask people going for a promotion what do you really love about your job? The following will help you to think about having a growth mindset and help you to accelerate your learning.   Love it. In her best-selling book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dr. Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University, defines growth mindset as focusing on developing and “stretching” our mindsets through a LOVE of learning and embracing challenge. To truly accelerate your learning and your growth mindset, the key words in my opinion in Dweck’s definition is ‘love’ and ‘embracing’. So, what is it you would love to learn and why? In answering the WHY – your brain will be asking ‘What’s in it for me?’ If you really want to do it, would love to do it and will embrace it- you have an ‘e’-motional reaction in your body. The ‘e’ then becomes the energy which produces action/motion. Feeling excited about something emotionally attaches you to the outcome – therefore much more likely to produce the action to get there.   If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail – Steve Jobs   Daniel, a Director at one of the big 4 accountancy firms was stressed going for a promotion to Partner for the second time and I asked him this question. “What do you really love about your job?” He replied “my area of expertise, the niche I operate in, delivering results for our customers”. When Daniel realised that a Partners job is to inspire and motivate people and be a brand ambassador. The penny dropped that he would be much more suited going for a promotion as Associate Partner which is ideal for industry specialists with Daniels’s strengths. Where the request for change comes from can determine its chance of success. Daniel’s boss and wife had repeatedly told him he should go for Partner. However, on reflection Daniel knew that the responsibilities of a Partner were what he liked least about his job and did not excite him. Daniel was much more excited about the Associate Partner route and was motivated to take action to work on his development area of improving his personal impact and was promoted to Associate Partner within 3 months.   Believe it. If you have a history of giving up on learning things, then it is best to choose something you would love to learn personally or professionally and embrace the first step even if it scares you. Your brain will be surprised, and startled, and neural growth pathways will generate through repeated practice and/or perseverance. Dweck refers to this shift in cognitive understanding as “the power of yet” as opposed to “the tyranny of now.” Shift your language for learning from what I can or cannot (no such word my dad always says) to what you can “not yet” do.   I set my goals and stick to them. Success is more than just luck. You have to believe in yourself and make it happen. – Richard Branson   Visualise it. The key is to believe you will get there and have a vivid vision of what it will look like and feel like and then articulate it and visualise it. Our brains are incredible but also believe what your internal voice says so be kinder to yourself, and really visualise accomplishing greatness. A well-known example of belief is of Roger Bannister. In the 1950’s it was widely assumed that no human would be able to complete a mile run in under 4 mins. Roger believed he could do this and set about training hard with the belief he could, and he visualised it whenever he trained. On May 6th, 1954, Roger ran a world record, 3.59.4 minute mile. He had done it and inspired many other around him too.   The man who can drive himself further once the effect gets painful is the man who will win. – Roger Bannister   Action it. Learning new skills can be difficult at first but each time you mindfully practise it your neural pathways get stronger. Taking the first step, if it’s something you love to do, believe it and can visualise it is a great start. You will be half way there as you will be pulled towards your goal rather than feeling uncomfortable stepping outside of your comfort zone and giving up. Momentum is key – so prioritising your learning and celebrating even the small steps you accomplish, will keep you excited and feeling like a winner!   Being brave isn’t the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but find a way through it. – Bear Grylls   Another client Emma was going for a promotion as UK Managing Director. However, she had no marketing experience. When I asked her what her relationship was like with the current Marketing Director, she said they were in the process of recruiting one who could not start for 4 months. I suggested the possibility of her offering to stand in as Interim Marketing Director till they found the ideal candidate. She could practice the role. She laughed and said, ‘What, with no marketing experience?’ ‘How good is the Marketing team?’ I asked. She said they were brilliant. Well, you are an amazing leader, and they do not have a leader for now. I suggested she asked the Global Marketing Director to mentor/support her for the interim duration who agreed. Within 18 months, she was promoted twice. Firstly, to UK Managing Director and then as European Managing Director – her career goal – as the USA head office were so impressed with her courage and capacity to learn