4 Ways to Get Promoted Beyond Senior Manager
Same level manager; Effective 360-reviews; Turn peers into supporters; Fighting burnout and discouragement
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I joined Amazon as a Senior Manager after being a VP at 3 different startups.
I moved “backwards” by 2 titles, but I had a deep understanding of how to get promoted.
Getting promoted past Senior Manager is what I think of as becoming a “true” executive. The director level and beyond is where you have the opportunity to generate outsized impact, and also where there are far more qualified candidates than available positions.
This is why getting promoted from Senior Manager to Director is so much more difficult than making it to Senior Manager.
Here are 4 challenges that Senior Managers are facing today, based on questions from our Level Up Community:
“If a manager is at the same level as me (senior manager, but close to Director themselves), the path to director for me is going to be slower than if I directly reported to a director, correct? In this situation, to accelerate path to director, is it better to switch jobs/teams or stay and build skills/expand scope and influence?”
“What's the best way to approach a 360-review? Is there an optimal way to request feedback from folks above/peers/under you to receive good and effective feedback?”
“If your manager leaves and there’s a “hole” to be filled, what is the best way to set yourself up to fill that hole without damaging relationships with your peers? And how might you turn your peers into supporters in this situation?”
“You mentioned it can take 6+ years to get promoted to the next level. What are some strategies for fighting burnout and discouragement when you're at that 6 year mark?”
If you have a question for me, submit it in the form at the end of this article—I look forward to reading through them.
1. “If my manager is at the same level (senior manager, but close to Director themselves), the path to Director for me is going to be slower than if I directly reported to a Director, correct? In this situation, to accelerate the path to Director, is it better to switch jobs/teams or stay and build skills/expand scope and influence?” — Senior Manager
Absent special circumstances, your path to Director is going to be blocked until your manager is promoted.
Even once they are promoted, it is likely to take a while in the current slow growth environment until there is the need for a second new Director in the organization.
Further, you will need to primarily rely on a newly promoted Director to navigate and manage your promotion process. This will also slow the process down.
For all of these reasons, if you can find a better option internally or externally where your path is not blocked and you have a veteran manager as a sponsor, you may see faster progress there.
Whichever choice you make, you always want to be working on your skills. Careers are decades long, and if you stay where you are you probably have a couple of years for both promotions (your manager, then you) to happen. If you move, you will need to re-prove yourself which will also take time. In both cases, the skills you build will set you up for a future when you find yourself in a high-growth situation.
When I came to Amazon in 2005, it was after I had held a VP title in three consecutive startups, for more than 6 years. I had managed six teams and 30 people, but I went “backwards” to directly managing 6 ICs as a Senior Manager. However, having all this previous experience and capacity allowed me to quickly and successfully grow to managing a team of 800.
I had spent years building the skills, and it paid off.
I hope this advice helps you plan ahead for your career. If you’re looking for help growing in your organization and leveling up your career, consider my course, Stuck at Senior Manager - How to Break Through to Executive. The next live cohort starts January 11.
You get 17.5+ total hours of content (7.5 hours of on-demand video lectures for self-learning followed by 10 hours of live sessions which include an intense weekend of live Q&A and peer networking plus 4 weeks of dedicated implementation follow-up advice, Q&A, and peer networking).
Over 1,000 Senior Managers and leaders have taken the course and gave it a 4.7/5 rating.
Our course is also backed by Maven’s guarantee—meaning, you can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the Maven’s completion criteria.
2. “What's the best way to approach a 360-review? Is there an optimal way to request feedback from folks above/peers/under you to receive good and effective feedback?” — Senior Manager
This is a very mature question and I applaud the person who asked it.
There is absolutely a set of best practices to get good feedback.
The first and most important thing to do is to give “social permission” to the reviewer you ask for input. This means telling them that you want sincere feedback so that you can improve and that you absolutely will not get upset or argue with anything they choose to share.
I also recommend that you do not “cherry pick” only friendly reviewers. If you really want to benefit, grow, and improve, it is worth asking some known critics or less generous reviewers for feedback. Even if you do not choose to address it all, it is good to know how you are perceived and what those people expect from you.
Once you give permission and ask your critics, you should request specific feedback as follows:
Ask reviewers to comment on what you are doing well that you should keep doing or increase. Getting positive feedback will help you digest the corrective feedback, as well as focus on strengths to optimize. People are more often promoted for their strengths than for having no weaknesses.
For areas of improvement, ask your reviewers a few things:
“Please provide one or more specific examples of the behavior you are referencing for improvement.”
“Please tell me what would have been better for you.”
“If you have suggestions of how to improve (what to do or change), please include them.”
Finally, once you get the feedback and choose your follow-up actions, it is good to go back to your reviewers and tell them what you are committing to do. You can also ask your feedback providers for support in implementing these changes.
If you do all of these steps, you will both grow quickly and earn the respect of many leaders around you for your maturity, poise, and responsiveness.
3. “If your manager leaves and there’s a “hole” to be filled, what is the best way to set yourself up to fill that hole without damaging relationships with your peers? And how might you turn your peers into supporters in this situation?” — Senior Manager
The best way to set yourself up to “fill the hole” begins long before your manager leaves.
In an ideal case, you have been building strong relationships with your manager, your skip-level, and your manager’s peers. In this process, you have expressed to your manager that when there is a hole at their level, you would like to be considered. Your hope is that when they leave, they recommend you as their successor. By the same token, you want your skip-level manager to know you and trust you.
When a manager leaves, the skip level goes from one job to three jobs. They now have to continue to do their old job, fill in for the missing manager, and hire a new one– three pressing tasks.
At this stage, the best way to set yourself up to be promoted is to ask your skip what you can do to help fill in. This slots you into one common path to promotion: Being the interim manager, then becoming the full-time replacement.