How do you know what your boss really thinks of you? Are they considering you for the next promotion or just trying to make you work harder for free?
Do you think that recognizing you for your outstanding performance is a sign of a future promotion? But does your boss sincerely appreciate your contribution and see you as the top candidate for the next career step? Or are you just being fed with empty promises to keep you going?
Career reality check: 3 tell-tale signs of a promotable employee
Experienced managers know that recognizing their team members’ efforts is the best way to reduce turnover and keep employees engaged. So, your boss’s praise may be just that, an attempt to keep your position filled, but not a sure sign of future promotion. However, there are some behaviors indicating that you are indeed a very valuable employee that he considers for a higher position.
What are they?
- Your boss openly admits to you that he’s not an expert in one (or more) of your professional areas and lacks the skillsets needed to do (or evaluate) your job.
Doing so in your presence makes your boss vulnerable to your potential indiscretion and opens an opportunity to share this information with his seniors, competitors, or other team members. So if your boss feels safe talking to you about his knowledge gaps, it’s because he is sure that you are loyal and won’t stab him in the back. It’s a big sign of trust.
But if he does not trust you, he will go out of his way to keep up the façade and pretend to be an expert in everything – even when it’s obvious that he has no clue what he’s doing.
- You become your boss’s major confidant to discuss his personal and family problems (related to his spouse, kids, parents, etc.).
That’s another sign of his big trust and high opinion of you. It also means he values you both professionally and on a personal level. He is comfortable talking about his private dramas with you because he expects you to be an empathetic listener while also keeping your mouth shut.
Mind you, if he does not trust you, he might still mention his family once in a while, to sound “personable” and “relatable” to you. But the focus of such conversations will be made on successes and wins (“My daughter has just graduated with honors”) or social conventions (“My wife and I went to the art exhibit yesterday”), without mentioning any problems.
A big sign of trust from your boss is when they openly talk to you about their personal or professional issues.
- Your boss tells you about critical strategic changes planned within the company or department before those changes get approved or known to the rest of the team.
Climbing the career ladder, your boss must have learned the art of keeping quiet about the important plans in the making. He knows from experience that plans often crush or distort if there’s too much talking involving too many team members. In fact, strategic planning in any company is often considered quite an intimate process with just a few chosen participants who have consistently demonstrated their loyalty.
Only those trustworthy will be invited to influence the process. If the boss asks for your opinion at this stage of decision-making, to him, you are one of those chosen.
But if he does not trust you, you will only learn about the upcoming changes when everything has already been signed and approved (via a team meeting or corporate email), together with the rest of the team.
In order to raise a successful career and get a promotion, you will need to gain your boss’ support. So, if your supervisor does not demonstrate any of the 3 signs above, but you are really set on moving up the ladder, your next professional assignment should be to improve your relationship with the boss and win his trust.
You will thank yourself later.