Question: My manager has promoted my colleague over me.
Fact: The manager knows that if your colleague leaves the organization it will have a greater impact.
It is the manager who is blamed first whenever anyone is denied promotion. And when an employee comes to know that a co-worker, whom he does not consider as possessing better skills, has been promoted over him, he also starts feeling that he has been victimized. He might view this move as the triumph of a co-worker’s sycophancy or as an act of managerial favoritism. There are also those who think that a person has got promotion only because he threatened to leave the organization.
Promotions usually take place when two levels of managers are of the same opinion. While the immediate manager has more say in the promotion, he is not the lone decision-maker. A manager usually bases a decision of promotion on the quality of skills that an employee demonstrates. However, this can cause disappointment among other employees who think that the promoted person does not have skills superior to theirs.
As for the manager, the decision to promote a person over other contenders is not easy to make. Managers frequently face this issue of choosing the right person for promotion based on their expertise in a particular area, and their soft skills which vary with each individual. And if it turns out to be a ‘tie’, the person whose exit would impact the team more adversely would be promoted first. In such cases, transparent and honest communication from the manager helps in retaining the employee who has been denied promotion. While the manager knows that in future this employee could be moved up, he may not make any promises. Also, the management should ensure there is no entitlement culture building up around the promotion issue and that clear criteria are set to determine eligibility.
WHAT CAN YOU DO AS THE EMPLOYEE? Find out the criteria of the next job level and have a discussion with your manager to identify any gaps in your experience. Work out a plan with the support of the manager and the HR department to fill in those gaps. This plan should be reviewed periodically to ascertain whether you are moving in the right direction.
WHAT CAN YOU DO AS THE MANAGER? First, spend a considerable amount of time with the person who has been denied the promotion. Work out what help he requires; this will involve a range of issues—from feedback to coaching, and from training to counseling. In this way, you, as a manager, can turn a potential negative into a positive, and the chances of retaining that person within your team will increase.
