How do I integrate into a new team and get promoted ASAP?
– Private equity analyst
To get promoted, as this finance professional is in a rush to do, you actually don’t want to seem like you’re gunning for a promotion – at least not right away. Make sure you do well enough in your current role that your manager feels you are a valuable addition to their team and that you want to be there, not that you have one foot out the door. That said, you also want to have a proactive plan to advance and ensure you avoid the common mistakes that cause careers to stall.
Getting feedback from your manager – whether ad hoc or ideally in an official performance review – is critical to ensuring you are on track for career advancement. To get as much as you can from your performance review, here are 10 mistakes to avoid:
1 – Waiting for an official review
Some companies don’t have an annual performance review. Or, you might have started right after annual reviews were just finished, so you would need to wait almost a full year for feedback. When you’re new on the job, you need frequent feedback. Even when you’re not so new, regular and ongoing feedback is essential so you can catch mistakes early. Don’t wait for the company to initiate a formal process – ask your manager for a meeting specifically to get feedback on your performance.
2 – Not doing a thorough self-assessment
While it’s your manager whose feedback you want, you also need to do a self-assessment of your own performance. This way, you can capture the wins you have had (for a finance professional, this could be accurate market calls you made or solid investments you identified) and can present these to your manager in case they haven’t properly credited you. On the flip side, you also want to think about areas you need improvement (e.g., analyses that fell short) so you can prepare how you will address these and prevent future mistakes.
3 – Focusing only on your performance and not your goals
Yes, this is a performance review, but an important part of how you’re doing is whether your performance is setting you up for future growth. This means that you need to be aware of what the future holds – both what you want in terms of career goals and what the company may have in mind. Invest some time, not just reviewing past performance, but thinking about your future career.
4 – Not asking your manager for help
You do want to take responsibility for your performance and ownership of how you can develop further. However, this doesn’t mean that your manager can’t or won’t help you. Think about ways that your manager can support you. If you are new and haven’t met as many people as you’d like, ask for introductions. If you haven’t met senior leaders specifically, ask for projects with more visibility (e.g., a chance to present in an investment meeting). If there are specific company processes that are still unclear, share what you know and what you have done to get up to speed and ask your manager to fill in the gaps.
5 – Only asking your manager for feedback
While your manager will be the primary source for feedback, ideally you also get feedback from your colleagues, direct reports if you manage people or other leaders, such as your manager’s peers or even your manager’s manager, if you have worked together. Getting a range of perspectives is invaluable to understanding how you’re perceived at different levels and with different roles and departments. As you advance in your career, decisions are increasingly made by multiple people and departments, so more people than just your manager need to know who you are.
6 – Only getting feedback once a year
If your company has an annual review, that’s better than nothing but still insufficient. Get feedback after each project or at certain milestones if projects are long. For this finance professional, that could mean checking in after handing in analysis on one company or after making an investment recommendation or after quarterly market results are in. Ongoing feedback allows you to course-correct all throughout the year.
7 – Not building in time to absorb the feedback
When you do get feedback, especially if it’s surprising or critical, your natural tendency may be to get defensive. Or, you may want to explain yourself and change your manager’s mind. Resist the urge to react right away, even if you disagree with what’s said. If something is blatantly untrue – e.g., your manager criticizes a company report that was actually your colleague’s work – then you can correct a fact. But when it’s an opinion, it’s best to ask for a follow-up meeting for questions and say you’d like to time to review the feedback.
8 – Forgetting to say Thank You
One way to fight the urge to go into battle right there is to make sure all feedback is met with an immediate Thank You. Expressing gratitude for the feedback doesn’t take away your right to disagree with it or share your different point of view. The Thank You just acknowledges the time, effort and courage it takes to give feedback. Believe it or not, some managers don’t like saying anything that can be construed as negative so they avoid saying anything, even if it could help you improve. So thank your manager for all feedback – positive, critical, big and small.
9 – Not asking questions when something is unclear
While you don’t want to argue about the feedback, without taking time to digest it and prepare, you do want to get clarification when something is unclear. If your manager gives you general feedback, such as “You seem disengaged with your work”, ask for examples. “Disengaged” is a qualitative description and can mean different things to different people. What is the specific behavior that your manager is referring to? Knowing exactly what this is, especially if you aren’t actually disengaged, means you can stop doing the offending action.
10 – Negotiating a raise and/ or promotion at a feedback meeting
A feedback meeting is for collecting feedback, not negotiating your raise or promotion. Some companies do lump in the annual review with announcing what your next raise and/ or promotion will be, but it’s not ideal. So when it’s your choice, make these two activities separate. This doesn’t mean you can’t talk about your career goals and career path issues (see point 3) but getting feedback and negotiating are each full activities on their own and need dedicated time to accomplish thoroughly.
Integrating well into a new role is separate from advancing
The above 10 tips for getting the feedback you need to advance doesn’t address the first part of our PE analyst’s question: how to integrate into a new team. It’s true that what you need to do to start a job strong is different than what you need to advance. When you are new, you want to clarify your role (i.e., explain what you’ll be doing), establish credibility (i.e., introduce your background) and make friends (i.e., share something personal and generate rapport). I didn’t cover this here because I have written about it before – check out my blog on Forbes about how to introduce yourself when you start a new job. Starting strong is just the start.
