Whether you’re a contract, part-time or full-time employee, your daily performance places you in two categories, which include not promotable or promotable. But what makes an employee highly promotable? Well, regardless of if you want to be promoted or not, below are some of the qualities of a highly promotable employee:
1. Action-Takers
Once you see the COO Salary Statistics, you would definitely do your best just to be a Chief Operating Officer (COO) in the future. To achieve this, you should be an action taker.
Employees who are highly promotable won’t tell you to do something. They see what should be done and they’ll go ahead and do it. They won’t only do it, but they’ll do it well. It’s one thing to come up with plans and ideas, but to put such things into action is a different story. Promotable employees know the ways to execute plans effectively and make a few changes when necessary.
2. Solve Problems And Avoid Making Excuses
One of the qualities of highly promotable employees is they’re not excuse-makers. More often than not, they see a problem, take actions to solve the problems, and look for the real causes. For instance, if you want to be a promotable employee, you have to notice a problem immediately, do something to resolve it, and give possible solutions to avoid it from happening again.
3. Self-Directed
As more and more companies have home-working employees or remote employees, it’s important that workers possess autonomy. To get the projects completed on time and ensuring that all criteria are met, being able to self-direct and self-manage is critical. Employers have many things to accomplish without micromanaging their employees, so employees who can manage themselves have definite promotion potential.
4. Team Players
Many workplaces are collaborative by nature, so it follows that if you like to get a promotion, you should play well with your co-workers. People who are good team players know the strengths that other co-workers bring to the table and approach projects and tasks in a way that positions the whole team to achieve success.
5. Respectful
Highly promotable employees respect everybody, whatever they do and wherever they come from. They don’t get caught up in any kind of company politics and never gossip about anyone. This is because they treat other people with courtesy and perform active listening rather than looking through people. Also, they tend to be selfless and place other people first.
6. Humility
When compared to prideful people who feel that they know everything, people with humility recognize that they have more to learn and more potential for growth. They’re also not afraid to ask some questions and they’ll do any task they’re given.
In a world that’s filled with people who use all the chances they can to broadcast how good they are, being humble will get you noticed just as much, if not more.
7. Outward Focused
Promotable employees look beyond the department, job description, and task. They think of the big picture and how their daily activities affect everything. When working, they’ll always choose customer interests and the team over self-interests. They also recognize their sacrifices are small compared to the advantages of encouraging their teammates and helping the company grow.
8. Adaptable
Successful companies often ask how they can do things better. To make improvements effectively, better procedures and policies should be put in place and employees should adapt to them quickly.
As a matter of fact, in a flat world where you’ll be more interconnected and new technology advances are announced daily, being seen as inflexible and rigid can affect your career.
9. Generous
Promotable employees set personal examples to provide more than what’s expected or asked. They generate higher standards consistently than set by their employer. Once they see a job that must be done, they do it without hesitations and don’t check if it’s under their job description.
They don’t run out of paid time off and won’t abuse break times. They also don’t do any personal business on company time, which includes texting, taking calls, gaming, personal emails, and any form of personal amusement during working hours as they solely focus on being an employee.
10. Focus On What Really Matters
Employees are often bombarded with faxes, emails, meetings and conference calls that demand their attention and time. A good employee prioritizes what really matters and can discern what should be done immediately and put on hold other things until later.
11. Trustworthy
Highly promotable employees set personal examples of bulletproof integrity. Since they’re givers, solvers, and selfless, they have developed a reputation outside and within their companies.
Promotable employees avoid forming close relationships with those who have questionable motives or character. With this in mind, people rely on them with confidential information.
12. Optimistic
One of the best things about optimistic people is that they add energy to a meeting, business or situation. Whereas, a pessimist can drain away energy. Optimists take more risks intelligently and try more things because they’re focused on what could go right. Pessimists may find it difficult to get started because they’re busy thinking about what could go wrong.
13. Understands Job Definition And Stay Flexible
Understanding what’s expected and being adaptable to change is a strength of somebody who is prepared for promotions. The best employee understands their job responsibilities and does them properly. However, employees who are ready for promotions can adapt and understand situations that may go beyond such boundaries.
So, if you want to land a promotion in the future, you should be able to adapt to your work without complaining or holding a grudge. You must also grow and learn from your mistakes. Moreover, you must be able to learn on your feet and determine a new system to get the job done based on the expectations.
Conclusion
Getting promoted may seem to be an impossible thing to do, especially if you’re just getting started and you have co-employees who do their job just as well or somewhat better. But what you should know is that it’s possible to achieve. The only thing that you should do is to approach your work with the above essential qualities and with a little practice and time, you may get promoted in the future.
