Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership.

An ongoing series of executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today

we're talking about pursuing a promotion. Ailsa had missed a promotion because, as her boss told me, she doesn't feel like a senior vice president yet.

Everyone liked Elsa.

Everyone agreed she would get her promotion someday.

To speed that day along, her company gave her a coach.

Me.

Within the first hour of our first conversation,

Elsa said to me,

You know I could have done this differently.

I was not at all self-promotional.

I never went on some marketing campaign to get the promotion was the promotion

I thought not talking about the promotion was the right thing to do you

know just get my work done? Clearly that strategy sucked. The way she said it made me laugh. She

went on, I think some people saw my silence as arrogance, you know, like I just assumed the position was mine and I was just

waiting to get crowned. But I thought I was playing by the rules. I made a face saying sorry.

So look she said I don't want to miss the train the next time it comes around if

you can make sure that next promotion has my name on it you You bet, bring it on. I held up my hands to say,

whoa, I said, Elsa, I'm never going to know what's the right thing for you to do here.

I mean, you know the culture here? I don't. She said said but we can talk about some things to try right oh for

sure I said so let's talk over our months together, Elsie and I discussed many different factors she might try, always

...