34% of workers1https://press.careerbuilder.com/2014-09-09-Majority-of-Workers-Dont-Aspire-to-Leadership-Roles-Finds-New-CareerBuilder-survey want to make their way to a leadership position. And only 7% of employees want to work in a senior or C-level position eventually.
If you have the ambition to make it to the top of the ladder, you are in the minority. And that’s not a bad thing. Few people employ the initiative and strategy needed to climb the ranks, so if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can go far.
Below are 17 tips to help you skyrocket the corporate ladder.
Let’s get right into it.
Let Your Aspirations Be Known
Only some people are equally ambitious. Some of your peers might feel perfectly content in their role.
Your supervisors aren’t mind-readers; they might not know your career desires. Openly discuss your career goals and seek feedback. If you are open with them about your ambitions, you can enroll them to help you advance your career.
Action Step: Schedule a meeting with your manager to discuss your career goals and ask for feedback and advice.
Network Internally
Build relationships not just horizontally but also vertically within the organization. Higher-ups can offer advice and may consider you for opportunities.
Most people won’t take the initiative to build relationships with those above their rank, so doing so will set you apart.
Action Step: Schedule a monthly coffee or check-in with someone above your rank to build rapport and glean insights. Tell them about your ambitions (see step #1 above) and ask them for advice on the next steps.
Master Your Current Role
Before thinking about the next rung on the ladder, focus on crushing your current job position. While the rest of these tips in the article will certainly help, if you’re not hitting your key performance indicators, it’ll be more challenging to make the case that you are ready for a promotion.
Action Step: Ask your manager how well you are doing on a scale of 1-10. If you are below a 10, ask them how to get to a 10. If they gave you a 10, ask how you could be an 11.
Develop Soft Skills
Technical skills may get you in the door, but at the end of the day, businesses are run by people. So, the better your people skills are, the more you will excel in your career.
Action Step: Pick one of the skills from the list below and focus on it for a week.
Find a Mentor
Having a mentor can change the game. They can teach you from their mistakes and offer you career shortcuts. A mentor can provide guidance, support, and perspective.
You can also put yourself in their shoes to better understand how they think. That’s what CEO Aaron Jagdfeld did.
Aaron Jagdfeld2https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/t012-s001-15-ceos-who-started-on-the-ground-floor/index.html started as a staff accountant at Deloitte but eventually worked his way up to CEO of the energy tech company Generac.
Here’s one snippet he gives from early in his career.
“I gained confidence through shadow management: I’d observe my manager (who sat in the next cubicle). When people asked him questions, I’d imagine how I’d answer. Sometimes, I heard how he answered, and I’d go to him later and ask, ‘Can you tell me why you responded that way?’ Eventually, I saw that my answers were accurate 99% of the time.”
When leaders see you’re hungry to become a leader, they often try to help you.
Action Step: If your organization has a formal process for mentorship, take advantage of it! If not, identify a potential mentor (they don’t have to work at your company) and contact them for an initial conversation.
Get Clear on What You Want
When you are clear on what you want, you know exactly where to aim your efforts.
You don’t want to be 20 rungs up the ladder only to realize it’s propped against the wrong wall!
In addition to knowing what you want, it’s also important to reflect on why you want it because this can help you tap into multiple sources of motivation to get you there.
Action Steps: First, write down what you want in your career 1, 5, and 10 years from now. Include the position you wish to, the salary, the responsibilities, and the lifestyle/hours worked.
Then, write down why you want all of this. It can be powerful to brainstorm both personal reasons (e.g., I want this salary because I want a comfortable lifestyle and because achieving this goal would make me feel confident) as well as social reasons (e.g., I want this salary to support my family, and because I want to learn to make more money to help other people struggling with money learn to make money).
The more “whys” you can find for your goals, the greater the motivation you can unearth. Motivations that involve helping others tend to be especially powerful and sustainable.
If interested, here’s a terrific guide to help you plan your professional development.
Ready to start planning your professional development?
Use our free worksheet to get started on your Professional Development Plan.
Look for Problems to Solve
Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you. You can create your opportunities.
Keep your eyes open for ways to help the company save time or money. Then, take the initiative to propose new projects or solve existing problems.
Here’s an example from Monique Nelson2https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/t012-s001-15-ceos-who-started-on-the-ground-floor/index.html. She started her career as an entry-level marketer and now works as the CEO of a UniWorld Group marketing agency.
“In my first few months, I was hitting many walls. I was getting up to speed slower than I would’ve liked. So, I wrote a new employee manual with processes on how to enter an order into the system, acronyms people used, types of pulp, etc. I thought it would help onboarding people like me who came into the paper mill blind.”
See if you can take on this attitude in your work as well!
Action Step: Brainstorm five problems in your department. Then, please pick one from your list and draft a plan to solve it.
Stay in the Know
Stay updated with industry leaders and trends, new tools, and technologies relevant to your job. When your finger is on the pulse of your industry, you are more aware of possible future trends, more educated about how your company fits into the greater picture, and better positioned to seize emerging opportunities.
Action Step: Subscribe to industry newsletters or journals and read one daily article.
Show Leadership Qualities
Ultimately, the higher you get on the corporate ladder, the more leadership responsibilities you will have. So, the more you can demonstrate your leadership skills now, the likelier you’ll be to upgrade your role.
Step up during team projects or take the lead in meetings to display your ability to lead.
Action Step: Identify an upcoming project or an ongoing issue in your department that could benefit from better leadership. Prepare a brief proposal outlining how you would manage the situation and present it to your manager, volunteering to take the lead.
If you do take a project on, consider assembling your team.
Maintain Work-Life Balance
While it might be tempting to burn the midnight oil and work as much as possible to get ahead, it will set you back if you burn out.
Research suggests that when folks are burnt out, their memory and concentration are impaired.
The key is to find a sustainable working rate for you.
Action Step: Clarify when you are clocked into work and clocked out throughout the week. For example, there is no working before 9 am, after 8 pm, or on the weekend.
Bring Others Up With You
Playing a cut-throat or selfish game won’t help your long-term success.
Over the long haul, real, genuine connections will be the ones that will help your career. You never know who will be able to offer you an opportunity. So, if you’re helpful to others now, you are accruing a network of people who can also support you.
As the founder of Y-Combinator3https://www.ycombinator.com/, Paul Graham, writes, “Most successful startups have more than one founder, and usually the founders seem to have been friends for at least a year before starting the company.”
Opportunities come from genuine connections.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, building real, teamwork-based friendships at work will make you feel more gratified.
An example of how far teamwork can get you
David Cote2https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/t012-s001-15-ceos-who-started-on-the-ground-floor/index.html started as an hourly General Electric jet engine plant worker. He eventually climbed up to work as the CEO of the technology company Honeywell.
Cote tells one compelling story of a time early in his career when his team members asked him to do a task he thought was ill-advised. But he was outvoted, so Cote went ahead and did the task.
Soon after, the CEO of the company called Cote into the office and berated him, furious that he went ahead with this ill-advised task. Cote felt he was on the brink of getting fired.
Months later, a teammate of Cote’s mentioned to the CEO that Cote was against the original task but went along with it to be a team player. In Cote’s words: “Impressed, [the CEO] calls me and says, ‘You took a knife for those guys?’ I got a three-level jump to a CFO role in an aircraft engine production unit managing 200 employees.”
Being a team player pays!
Action Step: Write out a list of your coworkers you genuinely like. Then, next to each of their names, write a step you could take to either support them at work or develop the connection. Pick one of those and do it this week!
Here are some ideas:
- Invite one of your coworkers to a coffee break to brainstorm how you can help each other’s career growth
- Share a helpful article or tool with someone
- Offer to help a coworker who seems overwhelmed with a project
Adapt to Change
In a fast-paced corporate world, adaptability is vital. Changes will take place in your work culture, infrastructure, and process. Those who resist change will find themselves increasingly sidelined and less effective.
If you are an early adaptor in your company’s evolution, you can stay ahead of the curve.
Action Step: The next time a change is announced at work, challenge yourself to lead the pack in embracing it
Never Underestimate the Power of Attitude
A positive attitude can be infectious. People will want to be around you if you are appreciative, kind, and optimistic. Research suggests4https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(14)00033-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1364661314000333%3Fshowall%3Dtrue that optimistic folks are more likely to have career success.
Action Step: Practice gratitude by listing five things you are grateful for about your work.
Seek High-Visibility Projects
There will always be a variety of projects to take on, but you can be strategic about which you choose.
While you should weigh various factors when considering projects (e.g., how exciting it is to you, how good you’d be at it, the skills you’d gain, etc.), make sure one of your criteria is how visible the project is.
A high-visibility project can put you in the spotlight in front of decision-makers.
Action Step: Schedule a meeting with your manager to discuss upcoming projects and express your interest in taking on a role with high visibility within the organization. Prepare to make a case for why you’re the right person for this opportunity.
Shadow Up a Storm
Don’t wait for someone to take you under their wing. Proactively shadow people in different departments, learn what they do, and even offer to help them with small tasks.
You don’t need others permission to be proactive!
This will extend your network, broaden your understanding of the company, and introduce you to new skills.
Action Step: Pick a department you’re curious about and approach someone to allow you to shadow them for a day.
Create More Time for Yourself
It’s not about the hours you put in but the value you generate. As the saying goes, work smart, not hard.
Learn to delegate so that you can free up your time and dedicate it to higher-priority tasks.
Action Step: List your tasks by importance and delegate at least one that can be better handled by someone else. Delegate the task to someone within your company or a virtual assistant you can find on a site like Upwork.
Become a Star on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is more than an online resume; it’s a networking powerhouse. Use it to connect with industry peers and to share your insights.
While there’s a lot that goes into LinkedIn, you can’t go wrong with these basics:
- Thoroughly fill out your entire profile (here are a few tips)
- Connect with new people
- Reply to posts on your feed
- Share ideas and articles
- Give and seek endorsements and recommendations
Action Step: Share an insightful article or post on LinkedIn that reflects your understanding of your industry
Frequently Asked Questions About Climbing the Corporate Ladder
Climbing the corporate ladder refers to advancing through a company’s ranks to reach higher-level positions. Think of it as a journey from the mailroom to the boardroom, acquiring new skills, responsibilities, and, often, better pay.
Climbing the corporate ladder is necessary for career growth because it often results in increased income, better job security, and more opportunities for professional development. If you’re ambitious and want to tap into the full potential of your career path, moving up in your organization is often the way to do it.
Essential skills and qualifications needed for career advancement include hard skills related to your job and soft skills like communication, leadership, and adaptability. You’ll often need a combination of these to navigate complex corporate structures effectively.
Networking and mentorship contribute to climbing the corporate ladder by providing valuable insights, resources, and connections you might not otherwise gain. Think of your network and mentors as your board of directors guiding you toward making smarter career moves.
Common challenges and obstacles during the journey to the top often include fierce competition, organizational politics, and the risk of burnout. It’s not just about what you know but also who you know and how well you maneuver through these challenges.
Maintaining work-life balance while striving for career progression is crucial for avoiding burnout and sustaining long-term success. Strategies include effective time management, setting boundaries, and making time for self-care and family.
Effective communication and leadership are pivotal in climbing the corporate ladder because they help you build strong relationships and inspire teams. Mastering these skills can make you a more appealing candidate for higher-level positions and long-term career growth.
Takeaways on Climbing the Corporate Ladder
Your career success is in your hands. Climbing the corporate ladder comes down to pro-activity and strategy.
Here are a few key takeaways to remember:
- Network internally. Set up a monthly coffee with people in your company, especially those with a higher position than you.
- Master your current role. Start by doing well with your current responsibilities and getting quantifiable results.
- Let your aspirations be known. Tell your supervisor your career ambitions, and ask for their help.
- Shadow up a storm. Reach out to employees from other departments and ask to shadow them.
Best of luck in your career journey!
If you’d like to know some of the habits of 10 executive-level leaders, you might find this article interesting.
Article sources
- https://press.careerbuilder.com/2014-09-09-Majority-of-Workers-Dont-Aspire-to-Leadership-Roles-Finds-New-CareerBuilder-survey
- https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/business/t012-s001-15-ceos-who-started-on-the-ground-floor/index.html
- https://www.ycombinator.com/
- https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(14)00033-3?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1364661314000333%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
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