Promotions confirm what you already do. So start doing it.
For when: you are waiting for the title before you take on the responsibility.
Tilen Višnjevec · Finance director, Copenhagen · Here is the single most useful thing I learned from sitting on the deciding side: a promotion is almost never a bet on potential. It is a confirmation. The room looks for people who are already doing the next job and makes it official.
That changes the question from “how do I get promoted?” to “how do I start doing the next job now, in a way that people notice and nobody resents?”
Find out what the next job is
Not the title. The behaviour. If you are an analyst, the next job is usually owning a result rather than a task: being the person who says “the forecast is done and here is what it means”, rather than the person who built one tab of it. If you are a senior, the next job is usually making other people better: the one who reviews, coaches and unblocks, not just the one who delivers.
Watch the people one level up who are respected. What do they do in meetings that you don't? What do they say no to? What do they get asked that you don't?
Take the responsibility, not the territory
The way to do the next job without overstepping is to take on problems nobody owns, not tasks someone else owns. Every team has them: the report everyone complains about, the process that breaks every quarter, the question the business keeps asking and nobody answers. Pick one. Tell your manager you would like to own it. Then own it, start to finish, including the parts that are uncomfortable.
What you must not do is start making your colleague's decisions for them. That reads as ambition at someone else's expense, and the room hears about it.
Make it unmissable
Operating at the next level in private is just more work. When the problem you took on is solved, make sure the people it affected know it is solved and who solved it. Then take the next one. After two or three, your manager's case writes itself: “She has been doing the senior job for six months. The promotion just makes it official.”
The risk
Doing the next job for too long without the title leads to resentment, and resentment leaks into how you behave. Give it two review cycles. If you have been clearly operating at the next level for a year and nothing has moved, that is a different problem, and the last post in this series is about it.
What to do this week
Name the next job in one sentence. “The next level owns the forecast, not a tab of it.” If you can't say it, ask your manager question two from the previous post.
Pick one unowned problem. Something people complain about and nobody fixes. Ask to own it.
Set a date. Two review cycles. Write it down so you notice if it passes.
I picked up a forecast nobody wanted to own, because it was always wrong. I fixed how it was built and started presenting it myself. When the next role opened, I was already doing half of it.
Nobody is promoted into a job. They are promoted for already doing it.