All around the world, there are people sitting in desks typing on computers right now who are wondering why they have been at the same pay grade for years without any opportunity opening up for them at all. Here are some suggestions on how to change that starting today.

Maybe you’ve been at your pay grade a long time, and you are tired of being there. Maybe you’re perfectly happy with your pay grade, but you get the feeling your boss does not consider you one of their better employees, and that bothers you. There are many reasons you might wish to overhaul your image in the eyes of your boss.

There is one, sure-fire way to get promoted: Get your boss promoted.

It may be counter-intuitive thinking for many, but it is not management that promotes your boss. It is the manager’s employees who get them promoted. Managers, by definition, cannot get anything done themselves. They can only manage other people. Managers set objectives, measure performance, give guidance, give feedback, organize teams, and assign people to their roles. They do not do the work itself. Instead, managers must work through other people. They are at least one layer removed from the actual doing.

This is a very frustrating situations for most people in management jobs. Many of them were promoted to those positions because they were great workers themselves, and they performed well for their boss, who was then promoted and pulled them up a level with them.

Most promotions come because employees drive their boss upward through excellent performance, and then to have your boss reach down and pull you up with them.

Therefore, there are a number of conclusions we can draw about our own behavior at work that will help our boss to succeed and therefore increase our own chances of receiving a promotion:

• Contribute to your boss’s objectives. Your manager probably is willing to share many if not all of the objectives for the year that their boss has set for them or had them set for themselves. If you can find out what these are and then offer to lead an effort to complete one of them, you will have stepped out into the sunlight. There is no guarantee, but I believe a good manager shares their objectives (unless they are for some reasons necessarily secret) with their employees.
• Help your boss. Do not ask what your boss can do for you. Ask what you can do for your boss. I am repeatedly amazed by how many people view their boss as a source of help and support and are disappointed that more help isn’t forthcoming. Training is nice, motivational speeches are nice, too, but really, aren’t you being paid specifically to help your boss? This isn’t so much of a behavior as it is a paradigm shift. Some good behaviors would be to ask peers for help instead of your boss, call peers together to meet about things your boss needs done without your boss having to get involved, and sorting out plans and assignments among yourselves before your boss has to step in and do it themselves. What is sitting on your boss’s desk that you can do? Offer to take it. “Why don’t you let me try and do that for you?” is a very powerful question.
• Become a learning employee. One of my old managers from years ago once told me that the most important quality that he thought an employee could have was “a teachable way.” He preferred, more than anything else, to have his employees actually listen to guidance and take positive action to change their behavior when given feedback. Those of us who responded positively to the guidance he offered received more guidance. Those who did not were left alone. I guess they were happy about that, but he was not. Read books - there are a few listed here on this site. Reach out to different departments other than your own and learn how they do things. You don’t necessarily have to add new skills - just work on self-development and report in what you have accomplished as you go through your experiences. Your boss might have some ideas about what you could learn next.
• Focus on your boss’s strengths. Want to destroy your relationship with your boss? That’s easy. Just say something negative about them to anyone, anywhere, at any time. If your boss is good at doing something, then learn to do the things that they are not good at, or find someone who can, and then provide this support to them. Do whatever you can to ensure your boss is doing what they do best and that they have what they need to do it.

The fastest way to see yourself through to a promotion is to contribute to your own boss’s promotion. A few people get promotions here and there without this happening, but for the most part, any director out there was pulled up into that spot by someone above them who moved up and needed allies where they were going.

It is a law of corporate physics that for every executive promoted to the next level that they will want their favorite people with them wherever they might find themselves. Be that person and your future is assured.