What factors influence your decision to promote a colleague in your team?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

At Mcgraw-hill, I manage diverse engineering teams spread across multiple
locations and some are remote. Last year, I noticed one of our remote team
members, Maggie has great potential. She is a senior engineer, an exceptionally
talented individual whom I hired in 2020. And during my regular 1:1’s also, she
had also expressed frustration during our regular 1:1s when I was discussing and
probing about her career plans. because he felt her remote status limited her
career advancement opportunities."
Recognizing Maggie’'s potential and understanding that every team member's
growth contributes to the success of the whole team, I made it my goal to mentor
and coach her to get her to the next level.
I initiated a series of actions tailored for Maggie's situation. First, I
increased the frequency of our one-on-ones and used video calls to establish a
stronger connection. I also introduced her to key projects that required
cross-team collaboration, ensuring she had a high-visibility role with
increasing complexity and scope. Moreover, I matched her with another senior
remote mentor who had successfully climbed the career ladder.
Stretch goals
 * More 1:1 facetime and frequency for remote members - It’s a great tool for me
   and my reports to get better alignment, strengthen relationships, build and
   earn trust. It enabled and taught me to improve my coaching and active
   listening skills with empathy, and to provide feedback.

I want to ensure the person is successful and are ready for the next role and
level
 * Leverage Communication and collaboration tools
 * Remote Networking opportunities / Matched to a remote mentor as part of our
   DEI WLI
 * Advocated her to Visibility and inclusion in important projects and creating
   stakeholder opportunities - GoReact Video assignment project which involved
   multiple teams across locations, is a high-visible critical initiative for
   our customers before the new semester starts / stretch goals
 * Created opportunities for bi-monthly travel for in-house meetups with team
   and stakeholders

As a result of these initiatives, In about a quarter and half, Maggie's
performance improved dramatically—she led the critical GoReact Video assignment
project that succeeded on schedule, and also increased system integration
efficiency by 25%. Within five months, she was promoted to EM role, despite the
remote geographical barriers. And happy to say that she is thriving and doing
great in her new role.

Anonymous · Answer

During a promotion evaluation I evaluate the leadership and core-competency
capabilities of the candidate and how the capabilities were used to make an
impact in their role. The capabilities and impact must meet the criteria set for
the level or role that the candidate is being promoted to.

To measure the core-competencies, I look at the speed, scope, complexity and
quality of deliverables. For example: how much help did their code review
requests require, how many iterations did their technical design take, What was
the complexity of the project/artifact they delivered, how many stakeholders
were involved in the project deliverable, how many colleagues did the candidate
lead technically and how is the product/deliverable performing/scaling in field.
These data points can be gathered very empirically and can be compared across
candidates analytically.

Leadership capability is equally or more important than the core-competencies
when promoting a candidate. Measuring leadership capability and impact is harder
than measuring core-competencies. This requires periodically gathering feedback
from stakeholders, peers and through direct supervision. I analyze the data  for
consistently displaying the required levels of leadership capability in and
showing incremental improvements in their growth area. The other important data
I look for is how the candidate is helping other leaders/peers/stakeholders grow
in their roles and impact.

Anonymous · Answer

There are multiple factors which will will be measured for a promotion:
a) Impact the collegue is making for the team/company.
b) Is the collegue setting a higher bar in efficiency
c) Are there bring any significant innovation - which allows us to deliver
faster/better etc.
d) How are they promoting company culture 
At Auctane, I actively promoted my team mates when the demonstrated these above
quality consistently and for multiple iterations. One Example I can give is
prompting my Sr. Eng to Principal. She speher headed adoption of ELK stack which
was new to our company, she quickly become an expert - wrote a wrapper - so
other teams could quickly adopot to this new technology. The impact here was
with her help - other teams could quickly ramp up (multiplier effect) and this
behavior helped me to push her promotion as other EMs in the company already
knew she deserved a promoption.

Anonymous · Answer

Promotion is a structured process. We approach is consistently from one review
cycle to the next tracking readiness status and business fit:
1. Promo is lagging not leading: the person needs to be consistently showing
comfort level operating at the next level. They should meet requirements at
their current level and be demonstrating over 60% of requirements in the next
level.
2. There is always a growth opportunity. We identify them , monitor them through
review cycles, coach, and observe focus and results /improvments
3. There should be a business need to have next level of the person in the
group. If our group does not have one, the person would need to seek  another
group
I had experience promoting an engineer at G, we call her Erica. Erica was
extremely strong technically. She took on projects and delivered large systems
singlehandedly. Erica advocated internship project, hired intern, managed her
and delivered a substantial project together. Erica's development area was cross
team work. She was too attached to her own code and design ideas.
To address it we started measuring her cross-team work and reflect in our 1:1.
At one point I had to deliver very tough feedback. I was able to coach Erica to
see her collaboration from other's point of view. We even practiced it in the
1:1.
As Erica was willing to invest energy in addressing this she achieved
significant improvement that led to peer's recognition, promo submission and
approval.

Anonymous · Answer

I look for the following:
 - Consistent performance
 - Business domain knowledge and current gaps
 - Ability to lead a high visibility project end to end
 - Leading communication on requirements gathering and alignment with
stakeholders and clients

Anonymous · Answer

Short answer would be impact and potential. Impact is how are they performing in
their current role, what have they achieved so far, their brag buckets.
Potential is what does the next level up would unlock for them, how will they
handle additional responsibilities (and are they handling some already & to what
extent?), does the organisation need/have vacancy on the next level up

Anonymous · Answer

consistently meeting the expectation in the work that is assigned. 
very proactive and helps other team members after completing this tasks

What factors influence your decision to promote a colleague in your team?

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