How Do I Get Promoted Without a Clear Career Path?

Coaching Real Leaders

Harvard Business Review / Muriel Wilkins

Executive, Business/careers, Leadership, Careers, Business/management, Sessions, Hbr, Coaching, Review, Society & Culture, C-suite, Leaders, Harvard, Business, Management

4.8 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He’s a self-professed “natural finance guy” and has shown himself to be invaluable to his company. His long-term goal is to become a CFO, but he’s gotten little feedback on what to do to get to the executive level. Now he’s starting to feel stuck in middle management. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches him through managing his career, even when the plan isn’t always clear.

Transcript

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0:00.0	HBR Presents.
0:03.0	I'm Yario Wilkins and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Presents Network.
0:18.0	I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful
0:22.2	leaders who've hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying
0:27.5	their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little
0:32.5	more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing.
0:48.0	Today's guest is someone will call Sam to protect his confidentiality.
0:52.6	He's worked in finance at a major company where he's been for over a
0:55.9	decade. He's a self-professed, very natural finance guy. My long-term goal is to be a CFO,
1:03.5	you know, over the five to 10 years period of time. And I knew in order to get there, I need to
1:08.3	start from somewhere, and you know, make my way up from there.
1:11.6	So when I joined this business three, four years ago,
1:15.1	I had a great conversation with my manager that, hey,
1:17.6	even though I'm joining for a different role,
1:19.6	but the role which I'm doing now, that's the kind of the role,
1:22.6	which I always want to go.
1:25.1	So the moment that opportunity came up,
1:27.1	I immediately grabbed onto it.
1:29.3	I had a good conversation with my manager.
1:31.3	Of course, we went through the formal interview process with my current GM and with the HR.
1:36.3	But I'm glad that everything fell in place, and I was put on the board to lead this role.
1:41.3	Sam has now been leading a team within the broader business for a few years, and he's
	...

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