How to Earn a Promotion in a 9-to-5 Job

TL;DR

Excel in your current role before asking for more responsibility, because leaders first notice employees who consistently outperform expectations. Promotion candidates also stand out through a figure-it-out attitude, enthusiasm, business-wide curiosity, flexibility, and speed, while extraordinary career outcomes generally require more effort than an average job.

Transcript

What are the factors or the characteristics of those people that you look at in your office and go that's she's going to be a star, he's going to be a star. What is it about them? What are they doing that others aren't doing? Well, I you know, and people ask me this all the time. I think that the sure way to put yourself in a position for more resp... Read More

Key Insights

• Exceptional performance in a current role is the clearest foundation for promotion. Grede looks toward employees delivering at what she calls 120 percent, rather than people requesting new opportunities while performing their existing responsibilities at only 70 percent.
• Attitude can matter more than prior experience when leaders make hiring decisions. A winning mentality, visible enthusiasm, positive energy, and a willingness to figure problems out signal that a candidate can accept responsibility and continue developing inside the organization.
• T-shaped employees combine deep expertise with broad commercial understanding. A strong wholesale salesperson becomes more valuable by learning about ecommerce, stores, planning, and merchandising, because this wider perspective helps the person see beyond a single role or division.
• Flexibility is essential even for experienced senior executives. Knowledge accumulated over 20 years can become a limitation when someone assumes that an established method is the only solution, particularly as technology continually changes customer and consumer experiences.
• Work-life balance is treated as an individual's responsibility within a flexible workplace. Grede says her organizations allow people to attend appointments and family commitments, but employees must determine how work fits with transportation, childcare, and the broader structure of their lives.
• Profitability and employee benefits are connected in Grede's view. An organization must operate efficiently and compete successfully before it can provide a supportive workplace, flexibility, and benefits that extend beyond traditional employment expectations.
• An average job and an extraordinary ambition require different levels of effort. Grede believes people should be able to earn security, afford housing, enjoy holidays, and live well without routinely sacrificing evenings and weekends, while top leadership usually demands more.
• Extraordinary success is associated with speed, agility, responsiveness, and sustained attention to work. Grede argues that ambitious people may need to work beyond five standard days, while also accepting personal responsibility for preventing exhaustion and organizing a workable life.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can an employee improve their chances of promotion?

An employee should first become excellent at the job they already hold. Grede says leaders are more likely to offer additional responsibility to people who exceed expectations than to those requesting new opportunities while delivering incomplete or merely adequate results. Strong performance should be accompanied by energy, enthusiasm, problem-solving initiative, flexibility, and curiosity about how the entire business operates.

Q: What does a figure-it-out mindset mean at work?

A figure-it-out mindset describes an attitude of approaching challenges with confidence, initiative, and a willingness to find solutions. Grede identifies it as part of the winning mentality she values when hiring, often placing it above experience alone. It signals that an employee will engage actively with unfamiliar responsibilities instead of depending entirely on established methods or narrowly defined expertise.

Q: What is a T-shaped employee or leader?

A T-shaped employee has deep expertise in one function while developing a broad understanding of other parts of the business. Grede gives the example of an excellent wholesale salesperson who also wants to understand ecommerce, stores, planning, and merchandising. This combination helps employees see beyond their immediate lane, understand organizational connections, and become more interesting candidates for leadership responsibility.

Q: Why is flexibility important for experienced executives?

Flexibility allows experienced executives to apply their knowledge without assuming that methods used for the previous 20 years remain the only valid approach. Grede views inflexibility as problematic because technology continually changes customer behavior and the consumer experience. A strong senior hire therefore brings substantial experience while remaining willing to adjust methods, reconsider assumptions, and respond to changing business conditions.

Q: Why can asking about work-life balance hurt an interview?

Grede considers the work-life balance question a warning sign because she believes candidates should take responsibility for organizing that balance within a flexible workplace. Her organizations allow people to attend medical appointments, haircuts, and parent-teacher conferences. However, her reaction is a personal hiring perspective, and the discussion acknowledges that candidates may ask because they need to understand expected days and hours before accepting a role.

Q: Does career success always require working weekends?

Grede distinguishes between maintaining an average job and pursuing a position at the top of an organization. She does not expect everyone to work seven days a week simply to hold an average role. However, she argues that highly ambitious employees seeking extraordinary advancement will probably work more, respond quickly, think about work frequently, and sometimes use evenings or weekends to reach that level.

Q: Can employees have a good life without extraordinary career ambition?

A good life does not require pursuing public recognition or the highest organizational position. Grede says most people want a secure, well-paying job that covers rent or a mortgage, supports a nice car, permits holidays, and provides comfortable living. She believes employees should be able to achieve that standard without routinely working evenings and weekends or investing the extraordinary effort associated with exceptional ambition.

Q: How are company performance and employee benefits connected?

Grede argues that a company must be profitable, efficient, and competitive to provide employees with flexibility and a strong working environment. She describes employment as a reciprocal arrangement in which people work hard and receive an excellent workplace in return. Her example is an office fertility seminar that gave hundreds of employees information about egg freezing and related options beyond their normal job responsibilities.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Promotion begins with exceptional performance in the job an employee already has. Emma Grede favors people who exceed expectations, bring energy and enthusiasm, solve problems without waiting for instructions, and understand functions beyond their own department. Asking for another opportunity is unconvincing when current responsibilities are only being handled adequately.

• Strong candidates combine specialist expertise with curiosity about the wider business. They seek knowledge of areas such as ecommerce, stores, planning, and merchandising, allowing them to see beyond their own division. Experience remains valuable, but it must be paired with flexibility because technology and consumer experiences continue to change how organizations operate.

• The discussion distinguishes a secure, comfortable career from an extraordinary professional ambition. Grede believes an average job should support a good life without routine evening or weekend work. However, reaching the top of an organization usually requires additional effort, responsiveness, speed, and personal responsibility for managing work alongside other areas of life.