1115: How to Earn and Keep Your Next Promotion with Mark Thompson

How to Be Awesome at Your Job

How to be Awesome at Your Job

Sharpening, Self-improvement, Meaning, Winning, Development, Money, Interview, Writing, Health & Fitness, Speaking, Mental Health, Success, Wins, Fun, Skills, Business, Careers, Training, Education, Collaboration, Decisions, Career, Selfhelp, Mockaitis, Thinking

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mark Thompson reveals the principles of readiness that he’s used to help aspiring CEOs get the top job.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) The one behavior that makes you more CEO-like

2) Why to take on your boss’ problems

3) The question that dramatically improves your appeal

Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep1115 for clickable versions of the links below.

— ABOUT MARK —

Mark Thompson is a globally recognized authority on CEO succession, executive readiness, and high-stakes leadership transitions. He has led more than a hundred board-level engagements to prepare C-suite successors to step confidently into enterprise leadership. He is the founding chairman and CEO of the Chief Executive Alliance and the CEO Leadership Plan Review (LPR). Previously, he served as chief executive of the CEO Academy, a SHRM company, in partnership with Wharton and McKinsey.

Earlier in his career, Thompson reported directly to founder Charles “Chuck” Schwab, serving as executive producer of Schwab.com, the first large-scale digital platform for online investing. In 2021, he was ranked by Marshall Goldsmith as the #1 CEO Coach, and in 2023 he was inducted into the Thinkers50 Coaching Legends.

• Book: Admired: 21 Ways to Double Your Value

• Book: CEO Ready: What You Need to Know to Earn the Job--and Keep the Job

• Website: ChiefExecutiveAlliance.com

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Study: “How Leaders Develop Collaborative Leadership for Effectiveness” by Bonita Thompson

• Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey

• Book: Contact: A Novel by Carl Sagan

• Book: Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

• Past episode: 273: Taking Control of your Career with Korn Ferry’s Gary Burnison

— THANK YOU SPONSORS! —

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• Cashflow Podcasting. Explore launching (or outsourcing) your podcast with a free 10-minute call with Pete.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I think that you deserve a promotion in this next year, map a plan.
0:14.4	Think about that as strategically as your biggest project and get some loving critics around you, get some feedback, and most of that from your boss,
0:22.3	and then put it in motion. That's what you deserve.
0:36.1	That's Mark Thompson.
0:45.1	He's been dubbed the number one CEO coach and has a globally recognized authority on CEO succession, executive readiness, and high-stakes leadership transition.
0:59.2	He's helped over 100 C-suite successors step confidently into enterprise leadership, but you don't have to be an aspiring CEO to benefit from his wisdom in this episode and his latest book, CEO ready, what you need to earn the job and keep the job.
1:03.3	So you'll learn one, the one behavior that makes you more CEO-like.
1:05.8	Two, why to take on your boss's problems.
1:09.5	And three, the question that dramatically improves your appeal.
1:12.3	And if you want a quick summary write-up of these actual takeaways,
1:15.4	I recommend you sign up for the free Gold Nugget email newsletter found at awesome at your job.com.
1:17.3	I'm Pete McItis.
1:18.5	This is How to Be Awesome at Your Job.
1:20.1	And now here's Mark.
1:26.1	Mark, welcome.
1:27.4	Hey, great to be here. I love your work. Oh, thank you. I love your work. I'm excited to talk about becoming CEO ready or just advancement ready in general. Yeah. But first, I got to hear, you are the guy who calls Marshall Goldsmith regularly asking him key questions? Tell us about this.
1:45.5	And he and I, I mean, there's nothing more powerful than to be held accountable about something that is your goal.
1:53.7	And yet, we don't follow our own goal. So we will set up a prompt that will be about, in his case and mine,
2:00.2	did you do your exercise today? Did you tell your
2:03.1	spouse that you love her? Do you make sure that you're reaching out to your kids? Have you made
2:08.4	progress writing the book? Oops. Well, you can only lie about that for so long to a good friend.
2:13.6	So there's nothing better than to have kind of that loving critic in your life who is sharing with you the time, the kind of the precious gift of saying, hey, I'm going to support you. These are your goals, though, dude, because you need to show up for them. And so that's what we do. We've done that for many, many, many years. And people will ask us, well, aren't you guys supposed to be like master coaches?
	...

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