Promotion Paradox: Do The Job To Get The Job

There’s a conversation that happens in quiet corners of the office (or via Zoom or Slack if your office is like mine). It’s the one about promotions. It’s often tinged with a bit of anxiety, a dose of confusion, and the lingering question: “What do I actually have to do to get to the next level?”

I’ve given every team that I lead the same piece of simple, yet almost paradoxical advice: The best way to get the job is to do the job.

At first glance, it might sound like a catch-22. How can you do a job you don’t have? But this isn’t a riddle; it’s a roadmap. It’s a call to reframe how we see our roles, our responsibilities, and our growth. A promotion isn’t a lottery ticket you hope gets called. It's the natural consequence of the value you are already creating. And more important, it's a process that you control.

Think of it like building a bridge to your next role. You can’t just stand on one side and simply wish you were on the other. You have to actually pick up the tools and start building, plank by plank, from where you stand. The promotion is simply the formal recognition that the bridge is complete and you’re already walking across it.

But how do we do this in a way that’s healthy and team-minded?

What “Doing the Job” Doesn’t Mean

Before we talk about building that bridge, we need to map out the cliffs on either side of the path. This strategy is powerful, but when pursued with the wrong heart, it can lead to burnout, broken trust, and toxic leadership. This isn't just about what you do; it's about how you do it. These are the traps to avoid at all costs.

• Guardrail 1: Don't Mistake Busyness for Impact. There's a pervasive myth in our industry that equates raw hours with value. It’s the "hustle culture" that wears exhaustion like a badge of honor and treats strategic sacrifice and senseless suffering as the same thing. This strategy is not a call to simply redline your engine until it blows. A leader who is always running on empty isn't a hero; they're a liability. Focusing on sheer volume over the nature of your work is a losing game that leads only to burnout, not a promotion.

• Guardrail 2: Don't Pursue Personal Glory at the Team's Expense. An aspiring leader who "goes rogue"—stepping on toes, hoarding information, or solving problems in a way that makes them a hero at others' expense—is fundamentally misunderstanding what leadership is. They are broadcasting their own immaturity. Think of a symphony orchestra. If the first violin suddenly starts playing a blistering solo in the middle of a delicate piece to prove their skill, they haven't elevated the music; they've sabotaged it. A promotion is an invitation to take on greater responsibility for the team's success, and growth that comes by conquering turf instead of building trust is a hollow victory.

• Guardrail 3: Don't Become the Indispensable Bottleneck. There’s a trap that many high-achievers fall into, and it looks like success from the outside. You become so good at a specific task or own a particular system so completely that you become the "go-to" person. Every question comes to you. Every critical fix depends on you. It can feel like the ultimate form of job security. In reality, you haven't made yourself indispensable; you've made yourself unpromotable. Think of yourself as a load-bearing column in a building. It might feel validating to have so much of the structure resting on your shoulders, but the organization can't move or promote that column without risking collapse. By making yourself the single point of failure, you have inadvertently capped your own growth.

What “Doing the Job” Does Mean

So, what does this look like in practice? It’s about intentionally operating at the next level by demonstrating that you have both the skills and the mindset for the role you aspire to.

1. Become an Archaeologist of the Next Level. Before you can do the job, you have to understand it deeply. Don’t just read the job description. Talk to people who are in that role. What does their day really look like? What problems do they spend their time solving? What are the unwritten expectations? You’re not just looking for a list of tasks; you’re looking for the mindset. A Senior Engineer, for example, isn’t just a better coder than a Junior Engineer; they are thinking about system architecture, technical debt, and mentoring—they see a bigger picture.

2. Start Solving Tomorrow's Problems, Today. Once you understand the next level, look for opportunities to solve those kinds of problems within your current role. This is where you shift from brute force to leverage. Instead of just working more hours, you become more effective. You start identifying friction in the team’s process. You see a place where the team could take on more risk for a greater reward. You show your leaders you bring courage to the environment by automating a tedious task, clarifying a confusing requirement to save everyone rework, or onboarding a new team member to increase the team's total capacity. You’re demonstrating that you see the challenges of the next level and are already willing to engage with them now.

3. Make Your Growth a Gift to the Team. The truest sign of readiness for leadership is when your growth lifts everyone around you. True leadership isn't about hoarding critical knowledge; it's about generously distributing it. Your goal shouldn't be to be the only person who can answer the question, but to build a team where the question no longer needs to be asked. Challenge yourself to work toward your own obsolescence in your day-to-day tasks. Document your processes. Mentor your peers. When you learn something new, share it. When you see a way to improve a process, champion it for the team’s benefit. You prove you think like a leader when you build resilient systems—both human and technical. Your growth should feel like a rising tide that lifts all boats.

A promotion, in the end, should feel less like a surprise and more like an inevitability. It's the moment when the title catches up to the reality you’ve already created. You’ve challenged yourself first, you’ve done the work, and you’ve shown you’re ready for the keys to the next kingdom.

So don't wait to be asked. Don't stand on the shore wishing. Pick up your tools and start building. The future you want isn't something that just happens to you; it’s on the other side of your faithful work.