How to win the race for promotion

Your less talented colleagues will gain career advancements ahead of you – unless you follow these rules

Expressing an ambition is not pushy, but is important in actually achieving goals

Imeet many people with big job titles who don’t seem particularly special – and others who work hard, are clearly talented, and yet repeatedly miss out on the big promotions. Is there a formula to securing that career jump from good to great? Or are some people just luckier, finding themselves in the right place at the right time?

Luck can certainly play a part, since the timing of opportunities isn’t always coincident with our own ambitions or successes. But I am convinced we can help our luck along.

If you’re frustrated by a lack of opportunity to make the big leap, take a leaf out of my friend’s book (I am disguising some elements of the story to protect his anonymity). A year ago he sought my advice. He was very wellregarded in his position. He was also well paid, and had been promoted a couple of times over the previous decade. But he was not in a “C-suite” position, those “chief ” roles – chief executive, chief operating officer, chief marketing officer, chief technology officer and, in my sector, chief investment officer.

Now in his 40s, my friend wanted a C-suite role, and frankly, he had put in the years and achieved the successes to warrant this. But the position he was most qualified for had become vacant a few years earlier, before he was ready, and someone had been appointed from outside the firm and was doing well.

My friend recognised he had a choice: stay put and accept that he might never make it, or seek a similar position elsewhere. When he got in touch, he’d already made the decision to leave. He had not one but two offers on the table, and there were merits to each. But he was thinking ahead: which would be the best route for the next role, either at the same company or beyond? As we talked it through, it was clear that one would be more visible, perhaps more challenging, with greater scope to fail, but also bring more opportunities to shine.

After spending such a long time at his first company, my friend had learnt a valuable lesson: to really fulfil his potential he needed to strategise about his career and pre- empt ( or overcome) future bottlenecks. That is something we are encouraging all participants on the Diversity Project’s Pathway programme to do right from the start. The Pathway programme is a course designed specifically to develop more female investment managers – shockingly still only 12pc of the total. The course is a blend of technical and “soft” skills, all taught by current and former fund managers who know what it takes to succeed.

One of the soft skills is career activism – essentially, how women can take control of their career. The approach I took early on in my career is quite typical for women (although clearly some men do this too): head down, work hard and hope someone will notice and give us a promotion or pay rise. That may happen, but positioning ourselves to be noticed will make it much more likely.

In the meantime, our reticence to strategise may explain, in part, why women achieve greater academic success than men on average, but quickly fall behind in the workplace. Exams are objective; careers are not.

The Pathway programme leaves nothing to chance. We teach participants how to take ownership of their career and how to take steps to maximise opportunities both within their current position and with an eye on the next move. Building successes in an existing role – and just as importantly, learning from setbacks – and broadening out our responsibilities are important building blocks. Alongside growing the skills, experience and credibility within an existing role, we can position ourselves for the next one. Do we have gaps in our skills to fill? Are there perceptions (perhaps false or out-of-date) that might be holding us back? And importantly, have we signalled our ambition?

One surprise from the first year of the Pathway programme was just how many women want to be portfolio managers. One company told us they might struggle to fill two places. In the end, they had 10 times the number of applicants. This corroborates the widespread theory; that without the right prompts, many women find it hard to signal their career aspirations, perhaps for fear of seeming too ambitious.

In reality, for most women at least, there’s a long way to go before any such worry may be justified. Expressing an ambition is not pushy or aggressive, but an important ingredient in actually achieving your goals.

Something I’ve learnt is that it’s vital to speak up, to be clear that you want something – or else assumptions may be made that you don’t or at least aren’t fussed whether you get it or not. I’ve been at meetings when people have decided who is getting a promotion – largely – on who wants it the most.

So if you want to make that big jump you are clearly qualified for, take a deep breath, and say without equivocation – and directly to those who will be making the decision – that you really want the role. Throw down the gauntlet.