59 | Do you have the right allies to get promoted?

Do you have the right allies to get promoted?

It's key to have your ally network in place when you're looking at an internal promotion to move into a leadership position.

Check out the episode for an excerpt from my self-paced course Activate Your Allies.

Learn more about the full course at themintambition.com/activate.

xo
Liz

Well, Hey there, I'm Liz St. Jean, and this is the Rise in your Nine to Five podcast. Where I help quietly ambitious leaders who want to have meaningful and fulfilling careers, making an impact in the world. It's where strategy meets intuition to become a better leader with more joy, less stress and endless impact.

So let's break free from perfectionism, imposter thoughts. And that inner rule keeper that keeps you in a career comfort zone. It's time to become unapologetically you. And step into the life you were meant to live. We're going to talk presence, productivity, and having it all. Or as my four-year-old would say, we're going to take over the world. So let's get to it.

Well, hello and welcome to the first episode. Of season four, which is all about getting an internal promotion. So for this first episode, we're going to be asking ourselves a really important question, which is, do you have the right allies in place? To get promoted. Now, if you remember from the previous episode where I introduce season four, I talk about the different types of promotions. So have a listen to that one and have a think about what type of situation you're in and what kind of internal promotion you're looking at.

But no matter what type of internal promotion. You are going to need allies to help get you there. So for this episode, what I'm going to do is play an excerpt from a, a new course I've just developed. So at the time of recording, I'm actually still, it's still in development, but I did have this one, um, lesson that I wanted to share, which I thought was a really perfect one for this season. And for this topic.

And the, so the course is called activate your allies, right? So exactly in line with this. If you want to check out the course of highly recommend it. It's um, very accessible pricing. At the time of the recording, it's priced for $9. It's we're in presale right now. It's $9. It'll likely go up and probably relatively soon.

So, if you are listening to this a bit later, it might be more like $17. And eventually it'll go up to about $27, but I will always have a self-select bursary price available that you always have the option of getting of picking it up for $9. So, if you want to check that out, go have a look@themintambition.com slash activate.

That's the mint ambition.com/activate. Highly recommend checking out the full course. But for this one specific topic about, do you have the right allies I'm going to play for you that excerpt and it's um, when we talking about the six different types of allies that we can have, and what I want you to do is have a listen to that, listen to the different types, how I described them. And at the end of it, I want you to have a think about your own network and think about these different types of allies you could have.

And consider, do you have the right allies in place? Do you need to shift around things so that your, that your contacts, your network aren't. The overrepresented by certain types of allies in the workplace. Okay. So have a listen to that. And if you are, so-called go check it out the course as well. It's the mint ambition.com/activate, but here you go. The six types of allies in the workplace.

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Okay. So when we are assessing our network, And we're thinking about our allies. We want to think about the types of allies that we have in our network. Because there are six types of allies you can have in your network. And you want to make sure that your network has a good mix of each type.

Now, some people will end up being more than one type. But usually the people in our worlds fit one, maybe two categories. So we want to make sure that we're covering all six. So, what I'm going to do now is go over these six types of allies you can have in your network. And then your takeaway activity is to think just generally just get a general gut sense for how your network is distributed amongst these six types of allies.

Now for some of you who really want to get more detailed, feel free to really dig in and think through who might fit those different roles, but you don't have to. All you really want is just have a sense, your intuition, your gut instinct, you know, what is your heart telling you or your gut just tap into your intuition about how you feel about each of these types of allies.

Okay. Ally number one. Is your B F F. Your best friend. At work, we all have them. These are the people that we can talk to about anything we can vent about things. We chat about things. We love to see them. We love either go for coffees or lunches or chit-chats. We're naturally drawn to them. So we, we do want to have that inner network. There's really interesting research by Gallup that shows that people who have best friends at work feel better about their workplaces. So you do want to have some kind of BFF. It may be one person. You may have a few BFS, but you definitely want to have someone who fits that role, but we don't want only BFS.

Okay. So the second type of ally is a mentor. Right. We all hear about mentors. So a mentor is someone who's had career experience before you something that is relevant. They've had some kind of experience that is relevant for your learning. And they're sharing that career experience with you. They're imparting their experience to you. They're giving you advice from, from their perspective, right. They're sharing about what worked for them and how they view the world. And that makes it slightly different than the third one, which is an advisor.

So, if you have an advisor, this is someone who is, who's also giving you advice kind of similar to a mentor. Usually they're paying more attention to you and your experience than a mentor is. Hey, now remember the same person could be both, but when someone's filling the mentor role, they're primarily coming from their own experience versus when someone is filling an advisor role, they're primarily looking at you and your situation. So a slight nuance to it, and you do want both. And like I said, it could be the very same person, but quite often, those are filled by different people.

So number one, your BFF and number two, your mentor, your number three is your advisor.

Then you have number four, number four is having a coach as an ally. Now, this could be someone like myself, a professionally trained coach, whether it's professionally trained within your organization or you're coming to someone outside. Like for me, when I work with my clients, I'm their professionally trained coach.

Or it could even be someone in the workplace who either has coach training. Or is trained to take a coach approach to management. Maybe your, your manager might adopt this role of a coach. It could be a peer coach.

But essentially when I say a coach, what I mean is someone who is helping you figure out what's going to work best for you. So here, the difference from an advisor is that an advisor is going to look at your situation and give you suggestions. The are going to give you advice. A coach will come in, look at the same situation and we'll start asking probing questions to draw out more from you. They're going to help you figure out what's going to work for you.

The analogy I always love to give for coaching is that if you imagine that you're working on a puzzle, so let's say so that the challenge you're facing the issue you're facing as like a puzzle that you're working on. A mentor will come and tell you how they like to solve puzzles. Okay, they're going to tell you what worked for them. And that can be helpful, right? Like, if, so, if you've never learned for a puzzle that you should find the four corners and the mentor tells you that that is very helpful. Right. An advisor is going to come in and they're going to kind of look at you and look at the puzzle , and they're going to give you advice based on what they perceive to be the best way forward. So if they notice, oh, you haven't turned over all the pieces yet.

Well, okay. Let's turn those pieces over. Well, that's a good idea, right? Let's do that. Turn over all the pieces. A coach, what would a coach will do is a coach will come in. Kind of sit beside you, looking at the puzzle and help you figure out the best way that's going to work for you to solve that puzzle.

Hey. There is a place for all three of those roles. There's not one that's better than the other. The benefit of a coach is that they, they help you strengthen your own problem solving skills. So that's the difference between a mentor advisor and a coach. And again, you want all three of them.

Hey, so that brings us to number five. Number five is the role model. So a role model. Those are the people in our companies and our industries that we really look up to. Okay. Now, this is an interesting one because you may or may not be in contact in direct contact with your role model right now.

But there's someone that you think about their career path, or you think about who they are as a leader, you think about what they bring to the workplace or to their industry, and they really inspire you. You really look up to them.

And you want to have that in your network of allies. So again, you may or may not be in touch with them. This is someone who could be so wonderful to be in direct contact with, but you don't have to be, but they can be in a bit of your mental network of allies.

And the six one. The sixth one is where you have sponsors. And this is where it gets tripped up for a lot of people. A lot of people don't have a sponsor. So a sponsor is someone who gets you an opportunity. A sponsor is someone who will put your name forward. They will promote you. In both senses of the word. There's someone, they may get you an actual promotion. Right? They may actually get it for you, but even if they don't, they do promote you, they put your name out there.

They're the ones who are getting you opportunities. Now, like I said, you may have someone who does all six of those roles. But for the most part, a person is usually going to fill one or maybe two, sometimes, maybe three of those spots. And you really want to make sure that your network, that you have all six of these in your network, that you have all these types of allies in your network.

So your action right now, your action step right now is to consider that consider how well do you have each of these roles covered in your network?

Now remember there's also that bonus network assessment tool and assessing each of these six types of allies, how they are fitting into your network is part of it. So you have an option. You can either jot it down, do some journaling, consider it out again for some of you who are more detailed, you may want to really dig into this if you want to, but you don't have to. And then there is that bonus network assessment tool where assessing these six types of allies is built into that tool.

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Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Now, before you go, make sure you click to follow the show this way you don't have to go looking for the latest episode. I'll come to you. Just click the plus button or the follow, and you'll get the latest episode fresh off the press. Thanks again. And remember that you are amazing. Now, get out there and RISE.