If you want career progression as a leader, you have to take your development into your own hands. Promotions come from clarity about your goal and from visibility with the people who decide. Both can be planned.
Organisations map out careers for their people less than they used to. Each of us is responsible for our own development, and if you don’t decide, you stand still. What if you finally took the next step in your job?
An example from my coaching practice: An executive had headed a division of a large international company for several years. His leadership skills were excellent, and his team consistently gave him very positive feedback. Yet the promotion to the executive board never came.
In the assessment at the start of the coaching, we found two main causes. His leadership presence was too weak, and he had no individual development strategy.
He didn’t know how to get onto the decision-makers’ “radar”, who those decision-makers even were or which informal networks existed. The consequences of a promotion were unclear too: Was his succession settled, what price would he pay for the new role, and did his career goals fit his life goals?
A fundamentally important point is your relationship with your own boss. You’ll hardly get promoted by going around them. So ask yourself what your boss gains if you take the next step, and how you can support them.
Many leaders see a promotion as something they can’t plan, a kind of reward for special performance. For career progression it pays to raise the subject openly and plan the next steps together with your boss. That includes saying clearly what added value you’d bring to the new role.
How to move up internally while a search firm is also looking externally is the subject of Executive leadership coaching: 19 ways to an internal C-suite role.
Career progression requires that you know your direction. You need an inner vision, a compass that steers your career and gives you clarity for a distinct leadership identity.
Sometimes it turns out that a promotion makes no sense at the moment, because you’d have to adapt or bend yourself too much. That insight is worth having too, and it brings new clarity.
Before you can move up, you need an honest stocktake. I ask these questions again and again when coaching clients work out where they stand.
Do I even want to continue my leadership career? Am I doing what excites me, and can I excite others with it? How good are my social skills as a leader?
Do I know my career anchors, meaning what I don’t want to do without at work (the term comes from Edgar Schein)? Do I know what has worked well so far and what I’ll need in future? How well do I know my motives, my personality, my strengths and my weaknesses?
What do I know about my attitude and my self-confidence? Do I know my stakeholders and my market value, and am I ready to work deliberately on my reputation?
I’m convinced that leadership presence is closely tied to your own leadership brand. A clear personal profile lets you act with intent and make decisions according to a clear strategy. That’s what raises your standing with the people who decide on your career progression.
The focus is on communication and interaction, in short on your reputation. The aim is lasting, solid relationships with the people who experience your work and talk about you.
Take time to picture it: What do you want to be known for at the end of your leadership career? How should people feel in your presence, and how should they see you? From that you work out how you deal with others and how you show up in person and online.
In my experience, leaders who get stuck in their job usually have a problem with visibility and with the relationship upwards. Both can be worked on deliberately, often faster than expected.
I name one limit just as openly. Career progression also needs an organisation that allows development. So sometimes the honest result of an assessment is this: The next step lies outside your current company.
That’s exactly when it helps to process setbacks properly, as described in Resilience at work: How to get back on course after a setback.
First clarify whether you really want the next step and what price you’d pay for it. After that, it’s about your visibility with the decision-makers and an open conversation with your boss. Both deserve a fixed slot in your calendar.
Good performance makes you important in your current role, sometimes even indispensable. For a promotion, decision-makers also look at leadership presence and at whether your succession is settled. If one of these is missing, the door often stays shut.
Prepare the conversation with your boss’s benefit in mind: What does your promotion bring them and the company? Say clearly what you want, and ask what, from their point of view, is still missing. Then agree a concrete follow-up date.
A coach helps you work out where you stand and build a development strategy that fits your life goals. For this, I agree measurable goals with my clients and offer Pay-for-Results on request.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Professional relationships: 14 ways to build them · Executive leadership coaching: 19 ways to an internal C-suite role · Goal setting: 5 steps from looking back to a plan · Leadership positioning: How to stand out clearly in a new role
Note: This article was first published on 06.03.2019 and was revised and expanded in October 2026.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more
