Passed Over for Promotion? Here’s What to Do Next
In this episode, our host Porschia explores the tough experience of being passed over for a promotion, a moment that can feel discouraging but doesn’t have to derail your career.
If you’ve been overlooked, you’re not alone. This conversation offers encouragement and practical steps to turn this setback into an opportunity for growth.
Porschia discusses how to process the disappointment, seek meaningful feedback, and create an action plan to position yourself for future success.
Through insights on skill-building, leadership presence, and increasing visibility, this episode gives you the tools to navigate career challenges with confidence.
Tune in for thoughtful advice on how to move forward and set yourself up for the promotion you deserve!
What You’ll Learn:
- The 5 most common reasons professionals are passed over for promotion and how to address them.
- How to seek constructive feedback to understand what’s holding you back.
- Practical steps to develop the right skills for a promotion and demonstrate leadership readiness.
- Strategies to increase your visibility and showcase your contributions effectively.
- Why resilience and a growth mindset are key to bouncing back from setbacks.
- How to turn this challenge into an opportunity for career growth and future promotions.
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s both challenging and deeply personal for many, being overlooked for promotion. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or an ambitious professional, this can be a difficult moment to navigate. It’s more than just a missed opportunity. It’s often tied to your sense of self worth and personal identity.
We’ll [00:01:00] explore the common reasons people are passed over, the negative emotions that can arise, and most importantly, how to process the experience and use it as a springboard for future success.
Let’s start by acknowledging the emotional weight of being passed over for a promotion. For many people, it can feel like rejection, a blow to confidence, or even a questioning of one’s capabilities. It’s natural to experience a mix of frustration, sadness, and even anger. After all, you’ve likely invested time, effort, and maybe even made some personal sacrifices to position yourself for that opportunity.
Remember, these feelings that you have are valid, but they don’t define your worth. What matters most is how you choose to respond.
Now let’s take a moment and unpack what I [00:02:00] think are the five most common reasons people aren’t chosen for a promotion. And this is crucial because understanding the why can help you to shape your next steps. Number one, skill gaps. So sometimes the role that you want to be promoted into requires more specific skills or expertise that you haven’t fully demonstrated yet.
Number two, perceived leadership readiness. So management or the leadership team at your organization might feel that you’re not ready to lead at the next level. And that can be due to a lack of experience or how you’ve handled challenges in the past. Number three. Is visibility. So it’s possible that your contributions have been great, but they just haven’t been visible to decision makers [00:03:00] and in a way that they can recognize the value of what you’ve done.
Number four, organizational dynamics or team dynamics, right? There are internal politics, restructuring external hiring that are made that come into your organization and all of those things can influence decisions on who gets promoted. And number five is feedback history. Past feedback performance reviews other conversations that have occurred.
There’s always the chance that feedback hasn’t been addressed properly in a way to really play a role into your future promotion. So now that we’ve got that out the way in terms of what the reasons are why people aren’t chosen for a promotion, you know what these things are now and you can work on them.
And it’s important [00:04:00] to remember that, this isn’t the end of the story for you.
So you’ve been overlooked. Now what the first step is to gather constructive feedback, so approach your manager or the other decision maker with the mindset of curiosity and growth, right? So you can ask questions like, can you help me understand what factors influenced the decision? What specific skills or achievements would position me better for future opportunities?
Is there anything else that I should know about this opportunity?
[00:05:00] So you want to listen openly and avoid becoming defensive to what you might hear. This is about gaining clarity roadmap. For improvement. Now, once you have the feedback, I want you to create an action plan that enhances these three areas. First is skill development, right? Think about the skills that you need to develop, that you need to grow in or maybe that you just need to demonstrate more at work and enroll in relevant training for these skills.
You can also take on projects that stretch your abilities [00:06:00] in these ways. You can also seek mentorship or work with a career coach. The second area is your leadership presence. So this is a time for you to do things like volunteering for initiatives that showcase your ability to lead and collaborate.
Many of you know we have a whole leadership system. Series and a leadership development series on the career one on one podcast. And then third, you want to increase your visibility. You need to figure out how to regularly communicate your contributions and achievements to key stakeholders and decision makers in your organization.
Now, this is going to look differently for everyone depending on, your company culture, your company size, your industry, and all of those things. But it should be part of your plan. Most importantly, you want to [00:07:00] stay resilient. Each step that you take forward is progress.
Sometimes being passed over is actually a blessing in disguise. It can redirect your focus, highlight areas for growth, or even push you to explore new paths and new ideas that you hadn’t considered. It’s really helpful if you can use this moment to reflect on your broader career goals. Is this the right organization for you?
Is this the right role for you? Or, is being passed over a nudge that you need to pivot? Remember that many of today’s most successful executives faced setbacks. For example, Oprah Winfrey was told that she wasn’t a fit for television. Howard Schultz was turned down multiple times before building Starbucks.
What they share is the ability to learn, adapt, and [00:08:00] persevere.
If you’ve been overlooked for a promotion, know this. You’re not alone, and it’s not the end of your story. I have talked to so many professionals who actually reached out for coaching because they were overlooked or passed over for a promotion. If that’s the case, this is an opportunity to recalibrate, refine your skills and come back stronger by taking proactive steps and really maintaining a growth mindset, you can turn this temporary setback into a powerful comeback because promotions are vital to your career development.
We’re going to have a whole series on the Career 101 podcast focused specifically on promotions. Over the past few months, I’ve been honored to be a guest on a few different podcasts [00:09:00] hosted by some amazing professionals. I dug into how to get promoted at work, getting promoted faster, and
I am excited to share these interviews with you coming up on the show. [00:10:00]
