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Today, what I want to talk about is how to get promoted. I've seen a lot of videos out there where they talk about tactically, how to ask for a promotion, what it should be structured like, and all the, like, nitty gritty pieces of it. But I want to break down for you guys today is how to actually get promoted from a strategic standpoint. So what I mean is, like, as somebody who has employed hundreds and hundreds of people, what do I look for in somebody? And what are the common character traits of how someone has to ascend through the organization in terms of how do they change their behavior to get promoted, how do they act towards others, how do they collaborate with the team? And so what I want to talk about is basically those steps that I've seen, I want to break it down stage by stage, as well as why so many people get stuck, don't get promoted. So here's the secret that nobody tells you, or at least bosses don't talk about, is that efficiency is important, but adaptability is imperative when it comes to getting promoted in organization. It's actually much easier to be someone who can be constantly doing things, staying on the same track, doing the same thing day after day. But what a boss wants is somebody that can constantly be taking on new things, new challenges. They can adapt to change. And so a lot of what you're going to hear highlighted here is that your ability to adapt to change is going to be directly correlated with your ability to get a promotion. And so a lot of people are as successful as their environments allow them to be. But what creates someone who's going to be able to level up an organization is someone who can be successful despite the environment, someone who can continue to level up in their behavior despite what's going on in the organization. And that's really what bosses look for. Adaptable companies are the companies that are able to survive. If you look at everything that's changing now, especially within the workplace, tech technology is like increasing at a faster rate than ever. People are what create the change in a company. And so if you actually look at the rate of change in a company, technology is changing faster than companies can. Reason for that is because people are what create adaptable companies. You cannot have an adaptable company without adaptable people. You can constantly adapt an organization and move up so you can get the promotion you wanted. There's three levels of employees in terms of what they do in the organization, and then what the sticking points are between each of those levels. In order for those people to level up the first level is a producer. A producer, someone who is able to create positive business change through their expertise, influence and vision. Now the level up from producer is going to be a manager. A manager is somebody who's responsible for directing and overseeing employees so that they can create positive business change based on progressing in the organization. A leader is somebody who looks at how an organization can be improved and they rally people together to make that improvement. So leaders move people through influence more than they do through micro management or through tactical hands on things. And then lastly is an owner. That person is really like the chief resource allocator. That person's job is to deploy resources. Whether it's time, attention, money. They're the one ultimately responsible for the leaders, the managers and the producers of the organization. So first off, we've got producer. A producer typically holds the belief that in order to lead the way, you must first go the way because in order to then lead, you have to have first done. Now is that an absolute requirement for every organization? Not necessarily a. But for most organizations, leaders are much better off if they've been in the dirt before. They ascend to meeting and overseeing the people in the dirt. So some of the common traits of producers that are the highest level producers, they're industrious, they're driven and they're autonomous. Industrious is that they drive results for the organization. They're not sitting there just checking off lists and pressing buttons. They're actually driving results and that's what they're measuring their success upon. Now, driven means that they're self motivated. What people don't want is, if you think about managerial debt, managerial debt is occurred when you have people in an organization who they can't manage themselves. And so a leader continues to acquire all this debt upon themselves because nobody else under them can actually manage themselves. And then the last piece to that is autonomy, which autonomy kind of goes with being driven and industrious. Because if someone has autonomy, you don't have to motivate them. And I think a lot of times people assume, well, Layla, isn't part of the job motivating people. And I would say I phrase it as if the job is to motivate people, but it's really to make sure that you don't demotivate people. You want to hire people who are motivated and then you want to make sure that you don't manage them to an extent that you're actually demotivating them. So it's ideal if we bring people in or already autonomous and they already are self Starters and they're already doing things on their own and they just have clarity provided by their bosses rather than their bosses pushing them to go do something. Now what are the top skills of somebody who's a producer? One that you can set your own goals. One of the hardest things is when you are a manager and you have to try and set goals for the people on your team. Now what you want to provide is you want to provide clarity of the vision and you want to provide support and be someone that they can obviously bounce things back and forth with. But if you can actually set your own goals and see how those tie into the greater vision of the business, you're going to crush it as a producer. Now the second one is technical expertise. In order to be high level producer in an organization, you have to have some kind of technical expertise. It might be like you're insanely good at it. And cybersecurity. It might be that you're a crazy good salesperson. You just turn out sales over and over again. It might be that you're great with customer success and you can always save clients and retain them and, and you prevent us from having higher churn. The difference between a producer and a manager or a leader is that once you get into manager or leader, you can't necessarily be as much of a technical expert as somebody on the lower level. And so that's why a lot of the times you actually get more information from people from the lower level because they're such experts at the thing they're doing and they're hands on. And so they hold a lot of that knowledge for the organization. Now the last piece that goes with that is time management. One of the primary things that you have to learn how to do if you want to be a producer that has the potential to move up is that you need to learn how to manage your own time. So if your boss constantly has to be saying, saying like where's this, where's that? Why didn't you do this? And you're just a liability. You're not an asset to the company. If you're a producer and you can identify with some of those skill sets, the common question I get is like Leila, how do I move up and become a manager or a leader? So I could tell you how to move up, but I'd rather tell you how people stay stuck. The number one reason people cannot become a manager from a producer is that they don't know how to delay gratification. When you're a producer, you're in There you're solving the problems yourself. It's very gratifying that every time you see a problem, you can just go dive in and you can do it. But in order to become a manager, you have to solve solve problems through your team. Actually what happens is your team will not feel heard, they won't feel important, they won't feel like you trust them if you constantly dive in to solve the problem anytime one arises. And so it's actually being able to delegate problem solving. And the reason I say delay gratification is because we get a sense of satisfaction and a relief from pain when we solve problems ourselves. When you then have to go through somebody else, there's a delay to that and there's a feeling of loss of control. And a lot of people can't get get past that. Here's the thing, it's completely normal to feel this way at first. Everybody just has to train themselves out of it. So for me, when I first was a producer and I was leveling up into manager, I hated it. It felt like crap because I couldn't go in, I couldn't solve things myself. But I had to learn that that just took time and patience. It's completely normal. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be a manager, it just means that you're learning and you've never done it before. And things that we haven't done before are uncomfortable. Now. The second reason that people wouldn't ascend into a management position is really lack of a such self awareness. There's a lot of people who are great producers, but if you were to ask them, you know, should you be a manager? They'd be like, absolutely, yes. Top sales guy is like, I want to be sales manager. I'm like, do you really want to be sales manager? Because like you love closing people, you love making a shit ton of money. And if you become a sales manager, you're actually gonna make less money and you gotta manage all these fuckers. A lot of the times it's a completely different skill set and it's not anything like closing, I can tell you, because I was one of the top closures that one of my past job. And then when I got asked to be a manager for the first time before it was my own company, I was like, hell no, I don't want to be a manager. It's very hard to run a sales team if that top closer isn't aware of their own deficits and the things that they actually want and enjoy. Then they'll say, hey, I want to be manager. And I'm like, I don't think you want to be manager. Let me tell you what it really looks like. But if that person says, hey, Layla, I understand that I'm a little too selfish and I'm a little too money driven, but I would like to change. I would like to actually be more of a leader. And I realized that I have to give up these things in order to do that. Can you help me get there? Then I'm like, at least this person has an acknowledgment of their own deficits and so I can work with them on whatever those deficits are, are to get them to that management position. Then the last reason that people can't move up from producer to manager is they lack linguistic and people skills. I'll tell you a story. Had a woman who was a customer service rep and she was killer. Like, she was the best customer service rep we have. She was really great with the team. The issue was that she was very bad at articulating things. And so it's kind of like how some people are really bad at interviews. You get on interview with them and you're like, this person doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, but their resume looks amazing. Well, that's how she kind of was. She did such great work, but then every time she would verbalize her work to the team, it just didn't sound right. The best managers and leaders are actually able to articulate very well the work that they do, the work that their team does, the impact they have in the organization. A lot of times what you're doing as a manager or leader is you're selling yourself to the level above you. You're selling them on this last week and what you did. You're selling them on what your team is on. You're selling them on the impact that you're having. But a lot of people don't see it the way. It's like they're almost too shy and they lack the articulate skills to actually give that to the leader above them. And the leader above you has so much going on that yet what you have to understand is that you're not pushing up information to them. They're not getting all much there information that they want. So the second level is management. The core belief of a really great manager is that management is service, not control. The worst reason to become a manager or try and get into management is because you want to control people. You want to have a ton of influence, and you Want to do less. Somebody tells me they're like, oh, I love being a manager. I'm like, why? Oh my gosh, I have to work way less. I'm like, that's not the right reason to be a manager. In fact, if you are a manager, you actually are probably working more if you're doing it correctly. If you're a producer right now and you want to get to manager, if you can position management as you soon as service to the rest of the team rather than control over the team, and you're probably actually going to be successful. Now, there's really three core traits that you need in order to be a good manager. Okay? The first one is reliable. When a boss brings a manager in, they want attention back. They want to bring you in and think, I don't think about customer service anymore. Now you think about customer service, but if you're late to meetings, not showing up, not answering your teammates, and then things start to spur up to your boss, then your boss is like, shit. Now, not only do I have attention on customer service, but I have attention on the fact that you're not good at customer service and I might have to fire you. Your team wants to see a predictable boss. They're going to feel safe with a predictable boss. If you are not reliable, you're not always there for them. You don't always respond. You're always kind of erratic with what you do and how you manage the department, they're not going to feel safe. And ultimately they're not going to produce their best work either. Second is that you have to be organized. Typically people who are producers, they can get by with like spotty organization. But in order to level up into a management position, you have to have some kind of formal management structure in place. A lot of the times people come to me and they're like, layla, I'm really struggling with accountability. I say you're probably struggling with accountability because you're not organized. You have to constantly be referring back to things that you've said in the past that you've talked about in the past in order to hold people accountable. And if you don't have those things stored in an organized manner, then it's really hard to go back and actually bring those things to light that you're holding that person accountable for. And so that's why organization is such a core skill. If your data is not organized, then how are you going to present organized data to the leader, leadership above you? And then the last trait going with those is competence. I know this Sounds crazy, but I have seen it in so many organizations where somebody gets promoted to manager and they don't have that confidence, they don't show up with that confidence in themselves. And obviously when you're a first time manager, you're going to stumble at first, but if you constantly are beating yourself up in your head and feeling insecure about yourself and your job, that's going to show up in how you lead people and that's going to prevent you from getting to the next level, let alone keeping the current job you have. And so I think a lot of the time, times when I say that and I'm like, you need to be confident, people think, oh my gosh, how do I get confident if I've never done this before? Confidence is being okay with where you're at. So if you do suck at some of the stuff you're doing when you're managing, it's being okay with that and not letting that get to you and create even more insecurities around it. It means not judging yourself with the fact that maybe this is something that's new for you so that you can at least still show up like you know your shit. When you go to a management meeting, if one person is not confident, then they're going to just get completely pit bulled by everybody else on the team. The number one skill that people miss as a manager is forward thinking. So a lot of the times when you're a producer, you're thinking more week to week. As you get to a management level, you need to be thinking month to month, quarter to quarter. And a lot of people aren't able to make that switch. And so what happens is the boss above them is actually constantly pointing to the things that are coming up, reminding that person rather than that person having a formal forward thinking structure in place. So I like to tell people is like, when you're a manager, every week, one time on Sunday, you're looking what's happening in the next month, two months, quarter, and am I on track to my quarterly goals now? The second piece is accountability. But a lot of people just honestly don't have the cojones to hold people accountable. They become a manager and then they think to themselves, like, gosh, I wish my team was doing better. Like your fucking job to make sure they're doing better. But you're not doing anything about it because you're uncomfortable telling people where their deficits are or where they could do better. How you hold one person accountable is not going to be how you hold everyone accountable. I can tell you the way I talk to a sales department is completely backwards from how I talk to finance department. And how I hold those two departments accountable is going to be completely different because they hear things differently and they're different kinds of people. And so it's also understand that you want to mold yourself into whatever your team needs in terms of how you communicate and how you hold them accountable. And then the last piece is really communicating and motivating. So a lot of people get into a management position, they're like, fuck it, like, we can't do this, we do that, here's the rules. And they put a lot of structure in place that's honestly not necessary. Because if you're really driving an organization by values and by culture, you don't need 17 million sops and rules in terms of how you dictate and how you run a department. It's learning to hire the right people who are autonomous, putting them in the right seats and then giving them the clarity so that they can drive things forward and that you have minimal structure in place, just enough so you make sure that you don't do anything illegal. The place where most people get stuck, they can't move from a manager to a leader. But going from a producer to a manager requires more organization. You know, you have to speak up more, you have to be more confident. But I think that actually moving from a manager to a leader is probably the hardest shift behaviorally. So one of the biggest reasons that people can't move from management to leadership is they stay super stuck in the details. What I think the most like savage managers or leaders are is like they have this ability to get their hands in the dirt and then also zoom out and see everything strategically from like a five year timeline. A lot of people get so anxious and stressed over the details of their department that they can't zoom out and they can't see above what's happening. And so because of that, they just bog all the leaders above them down in details. And the leaders like, gosh, I just wish they could drive things forward. But they're so busy looking at what's happening today and trying to micromanage it that they can't move anything forward. And they certainly can't zoom out and look at the five year vision. The second reason is because they don't take time to solve problems for themselves. So a lot of people that are in management level position bring their problems to their superior. Listen, have you taken five to 10 minutes to just sit in silence and actually think through how you could solve this problem yourself, or did you just bring it to me immediately? And if you want to be a leader in an organization, you have to learn how to think. I know it sounds crazy, but a lot of what we do when we're producing and managing is a lot of tactical, a lot of hands on, a lot of things that we can do without too much thought. It's just shifting through a lot of work and a lot of the times learning and acquiring new skills and. But we're not strategically thinking as much. In order to get to that leadership level, you have to develop that strategic thinking, and that starts training yourself to think in general. And now the last piece in terms of why people get stuck and they can't move up from manager to leader is that they treat their team like employees and not like loyal followers. I really want that to sink in because the way that you treat someone that just, hey, they're here for a paycheck, check in, check out, like, I'm just here to manage you versus how you treat someone that you're like, I'm, I'm investing in your growth as a person, and I am loyal to you and you are loyal to me, and we're here to make each other better. I think it's just a frame shift that a lot of people never make. You lead people through vision and through influence, and you can't influence somebody if you don't take the time to understand them and you're just spending all your time judging them. Now, the last level in terms of moving up an organization is becoming a leader. Okay? The core fundamental belief of leaders is that if I grow my team, my team grows the business. Typically, when you're a producer, you're completely external. You're looking at other things outside the business, and you're managing those things functions. When you're a manager, you're kind of on a dual level, which is you're managing a small team, but you're also still always looking externally to make sure that team is managing the external factor well. And then when you become a leader, you actually are just almost all internal, which is you're only looking at like, do I have the right people on the team? Do I have the right people in the right seats? How am I encouraging them? Do they have clarity? Have I given them positive feedback lately? And so the thought that you have, and the thought I wake up with every day is, how do I grow my team so that the business grows? I'm no longer solely responsible for growing a department or a company. I'm responsible for putting the right people in the right place and growing those people, investing in those people to then grow the business. You're still servicing a customer. You just have a different customer. That customer is now your team. I'm the boss or a leader in the company. I now pour into my team, and then my team pours into the customer. So how you treat your team is how they're going to treat your customers. If you can make that frame shift, that's going to allow you to step into that leadership position and actually make a big change for an organization. Now, there's really three traits that you have to acquire in order to get to a leadership position, or at least to be a leader of impact in an organization. The first one is humility. I can tell you the top reason I've ever fired someone leadership position has been humility. Most common is that people are sharp, they're smart, they can manage people, but they have an ego. That is the most common reason that I fire leaders. And a lot of the times it's not that they are technically inept, it's that culturally they're inept. They're now a violation of the culture you're trying to build, and they're now a detractor from the team rather than somebody that's adding to the team. You know, I had a specific person, this is about three years ago on one of my teams, and she was amazing. I mean, like, producer wise, manager wise. She was very tight, ran a very tight ship, but she was just terrible to work with. And I tell you, the moment that we took her out, it was like a weight was lifted off the organization. Everybody else did better. And we were even able to make more sales because people in sales weren't afraid to go to that department specifically. Do other people want to work with that person? And having humility as a leader is such an important trait that's going to make all the other leaders want to work with that person. The second piece to that is empathy. So a lot of the times we are very empathetic in the beginning of our journey in a company. And then over time, that empathy kind of gets chipped away at. And I can tell you this because I personally have gone through it, and it's because so much stuff happens. You know, someone screws us, a client, you know, does something really unethical, someone on the team, you know, completely leaves you high and dry. There's so many things that can happen and. And they accumulate. And if you want to get to that Leadership level. What you have to do is you have to not let the past affect the present. Can't let those things that occurred affect how you treat people. Now. In order for people to feel heard and seen on a team, you have to remain empathetic. Does that mean you feel bad for a person? Hell, no. We don't feel bad for people. It's not going to help people make a change in their lives. But we do understand people and show empathy towards them and we relate to them. And if you're constantly, you know, mistrusting of others because you've been burned in the past, then you never open up that doorway for people to actually improve because you have empathy. And then the last piece that goes with that to kind of finish it off is really poise. Poise is what you get when you get to a leadership position. So it's something that has to be earned. It's a sense of unwavering confidence, knowing that even when you don't feel confident, you have poise, meaning you're not reacting to the fact that you don't feel confident. Now, in terms of the top three skills of a leader, okay, first one is problem solving. If you want to be a leader in an organization, you have to solve problems. When you go to your boss, you have to go to them with not just the problem, but the solution that you've put into place. And then if anything, ask them for feedback. You never want to be going to your boss saying, I've got a problem. What do I do about it? Leaders don't do that. And that's the biggest difference between a manager and a leader. Now, the second piece is influence. I had someone on the team and he was a fantastic manager. And he was like, layla, how do I get to a leader? And I was like, you lack influence. And I was trying to put my finger on why he couldn't influence people in the organization. How you act in the workplace is not the only way that you influence people, but it's how people see you act outside of the workplace. I know it's a controversial topic, but social media nowadays allows people to see all other aspects of people's lives. And so for that person specifically, I was like, your life outside of here is a complete mess. And so if you're constantly, like, you know, posting about your, like, weekend warrior and then like, the fights you get into with your spouse and things like that, and revealing too much of the negative personal life, people aren't going to be looking up to you less. So will they be able to be influenced by you. And so that was the biggest difference. And once he saw that, he realized that the way that he carried himself in his personal life was actually going to affect his work life. He started getting his shit together. And then the last piece in terms of being a leader is decision making. So a lot of people use their feelings to make decisions. Leaders study decision making and come up with methodologies around how they make decisions. And so I can tell you that if I'm in a leadership meeting and we have a decision to make, people will refer to different methodologies of decision making, and they'll break down different scenarios based on frameworks of how to make good decisions, not based on emotions. But once you get to a leadership position, you have to really come to your boss, come to the company, come to the leadership team with like, a framework around how to make decisions so that you can have influence on that organization. That's based on facts, not feelings. The question really is, how do you stay stuck? So if you. Let's say that you have room in an organization where you can go from a leader to maybe someone that's an owner, maybe you can acquire equity. What does it take in order to go from a leader to more of an owner of an organization? Somebody who's really a stakeholder, someone who has, you know, they can sign on behalf of the company, they have equity in the company, whatever that may mean for you. There's three things that keep you stuck as a leader. One is that you think about making products rather than seeing your team as the product. When you become an owner, you look at the value of the organization, not just the value you provide to the marketplace. It's a hard shift to make. But once you can get there, and I would suggest, like if you want to get there, studying private equity, studying investment firms, looking at what people's thesises are around buying businesses. Because if you study buying businesses, then you can figure out how to build a better business. The second one is a short time horizon. So the biggest difference between a leader and an owner owner is the time horizon they operate in. An owner is okay with losing in the short term if that means they're going to achieve in the long term. So I gave an example which is like acquisition.com we help people, you know, in five years triple their business. And a lot of people might say, well, you know, this other guy said that they could get me to 10 million in just 12 months. And I'm like, of course we could get you to 10 million in 12 months. But the Question is, how easy is it going to be to get to 40 million after that's done? And a lot of times the way that you get to 10 million is going to prevent you from getting to 40 million. Whereas somebody like me, somebody that's like an owner level or investor level, is thinking, how do I get them to 40 million the fastest, not 10 million the fastest. And sometimes that means it's slower to get to 10, then it's like a skyrocket to get to 40. And then the third reason is that we put what's best for ourselves over what's best for the company. An owner doesn't do this. An owner's constantly going to sacrifice themselves and their personal preferences for what's best for the company. And if you want to have that sense of ownership over a company, that's what you're going to have to do. When we sold Gym launch, the biggest change in behavior I noticed with, with our CEO and COO was that they no longer put their own personal preferences before the business, but they put the business's preferences before their own. If you want to be an owner of a company, you have to be willing to sacrifice as much as the person who formed it, because if you aren't willing to, there's plenty of other people who will. So what I would suggest that you do now is I want you to identify what level are you at? Are you a producer? Are you a manager? Are you a leader? Are you an owner? And what would you have to do? Maybe the top one to two things that you need to do to level up to get to the next level. And the easiest way that you can remind yourself of this is just get a sticky note, put it on your computer, I'm not even kidding, with the top two things you need to work on. And then you see that every day, and you're constantly reminded of things that you need to do to get to the next level.