How To Process Being Passed Over For a Promotion
Episode 471 | Author: Emilie Aries
How to handle the sting of this classic career setback and move forward with clarity.
For ambitious women, getting passed over for a promotion is one of those career setbacks that tends to be part of the package deal. We’re out there pushing ourselves, taking leaps, and stretching outside our comfort zones—so, of course we won’t get every opportunity we go after!
It’s completely normal to be passed over for promotion. It’s also completely understandable if you find yourself in an emotional minefield afterwards, especially when you have to go back to work the next day without that new title, working with the same people.
Here are tips for moving forward with clarity and confidence through the emotional aftermath of this understandably frustrating experience.
Tip #1: Give yourself permission to feel your feelings
Frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, rejection. These feelings are all completely acceptable post-pass-over—so don’t gaslight yourself into thinking you’re in the wrong for feeling them!
Rather than ignoring, suppressing, or stewing, take action. Dump all those feels onto the pages of your journal or hash them out with a friend or partner. One process I’ve found really helpful is labeling each of the emotions you’re experiencing. I got into this in Episode 323, How To Lead With Emotional Intelligence. My guest, Marc Brackett, talked about the R.U.L.E.R. Method for processing complex emotions, which can be a helpful guide during challenging times like this.
You can pick whatever process works for you, but do work through the emotional aftermath. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to fall into resentment that will discolor your internal narrative of the experience, not to mention the rest of your time with that organization.
Tip #2: Clarify your expectations for moving forward
The very thought of facing your coworkers the day after a promotion doesn’t pan out can be enough to make you consider calling in sick or quitting on the spot. That’s why it’s so vital to get clear on how you want to show up in the role you’re returning to.
Ever since the possibility of promotion came up, you’ve probably been imagining yourself in that new role. Because of that forward-thinking, you can’t just revert to how things were. You need to reflect on how you see yourself in your old position after not getting promoted—and that can be tough.
The innate desire for growth and progress that likely prompted you to level up usually doesn’t vanish just because this particular opportunity did. In fact, there’s a term for that internal craving we feel; The Progress Principle is a theory coined by Theresa Amabile and Steven Kramer that I get into more back on episode 295. So normalize your desire for continued progress, and be intentional about how you’ll scratch that itch now.
There’s a good chance you were pushing hard at work, putting in 110% to show how much you deserved that promotion. Your future efforts can go one of two ways:
You can dial it back to a sustainable amount of effort and redirect your energy to other opportunities inside or beyond the workplace;
Or, you can take this as a fresh challenge to expand your responsibilities in this role so you still get that sensation of progress and growth that drove you in the first place, new title or no.
Of course, the whole situation might also have you questioning your future at your current organization. So, let’s talk about that trajectory.
Tip #3: Explore what else is out there
It’s totally normal to start looking for a new job after being passed over for a promotion, and you shouldn’t feel bad about that!
If you followed up with your leadership after the experience, and they couldn’t give you satisfying feedback on other ways you might grow in the organization or skills gaps you could fill to elevate your chances next time—those are signals that it’s time to look elsewhere.
This doesn’t necessarily mean giving your notice tomorrow or even applying for another job right away; it can be as low-key as exploring what else exists in your field. This gentle first step ensures you’re putting your own happiness and career ambitions first, and that’s exactly what you should be doing every step of the way.
Whether you’re planning to stay or move on, guidance on navigating and advocating for your career advancement is always beneficial. In my LEVEL UP leadership and management accelerator, we spend six months helping you learn how to project the leadership presence that will get you on track for all kinds of career advancement.
I want to hear about your experience with being passed over for promotion. How did you deal emotionally, and how did it affect your future at that company or your search for something new? Drop into the Courage Community on Facebook or join us in our group on LinkedIn to share your story and hear how other women have navigated this common career encounter.
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
Episode 323, How To Lead With Emotional Intelligence
Episode 295, How to Make Career Progress in the New Year
The Progress Principle, Harvard Business Review
LEVEL UP: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise
LEVEL UP your leadership and land that promotion:
-
[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 471. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I want to talk about how to handle it when you've been passed up for a promotion.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
First, I want to normalize this happening, because if you are an ambitious woman, and I would venture to guess that you are, if you're listening to this show, then you're going to have career setbacks. That's part of throwing your hat in the ring. That's part of being ambitious. That's part of going for things, stretching yourself outside of your comfort zone. You're not going to get 100% of the shots that you take, and that's okay. But how do we emotionally and practically recover from those kinds of setbacks, particularly when these are people you have to continue to work with?
My first piece of advice on this is to allow yourself the space to feel all the feelings that have come up for you in this moment. Of course you're feeling frustrated. Of course you're feeling disappointed. You might even be feeling shame, or embarrassment, or rejection, all of which is totally understandable. So don't gaslight yourself into feeling like you shouldn't feel these feelings. Make it okay to validate yourself, journal about it, talk it over with a friend or a trusted loved one, and let those feelings have their due time. You know what I mean? Let them have their space and give them that time to actually process how you're feeling.
And one of the best ways for you to allow yourself the space to really feel your feelings is to label them specifically. So whatever is coming up for you, even if they're feelings that kind of surprise you or take you aback, walk through the process of really labeling your emotions, preferably with someone you trust, because that will help you get beyond the sort of surface level anger or sadness that you might be feeling.
In fact, I did a great episode with Dr. Mark Brackett way back in episode number 323, all about emotional intelligence, and he's the Founder and director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He talks about his book, Permission To Feel, which really gets into the R.U.L.E.R. Method, for how you can process and sort of, like, work through complex emotions by being really specific about labeling them. Highly recommend giving that a listen if you missed it from years ago. And just give yourself permission to feel, as his book title puts it so eloquently. By creating that space to validate yourself, you can also, in that moment, hopefully remind yourself that there's more to you than this one promotion there's more to your entire career than this one setback. And frankly, there's more to you as a person than your career alone.
So giving that air time to air your grievances is a really important step. Without doing that, you're just going to move forward, defaulting to resentment. And I have seen, seen how insidious resentment can be for folks who were once pretty content at work, then go for a promotion, don't get it, and never can emotionally recover from it, and it kind of soils the rest of their experience at that workplace. That is optional. That does not need to happen to you. So really give yourself the space and time to process those complex feelings and decide what to internalize and what to externalize. How you're going to really conceive of the narrative behind their decision.
My second piece of advice on this is to really get clear with yourself about your own expectations for how you'd like to proceed. How do you want to show up in the workplace moving forward? Really get clear with yourself about how you expect yourself to show up in your current role. When you're interviewing for a promotion, it's kind of like expanding your identity. You start to envision yourself in this other role, and you start to imagine what you would do and what perspectives you would bring to the table. Now it's time to kind of reimagine yourself in your current role. But things have already changed for you in your identity. And in fact, it's perfectly normal to crave progress. That's, after all, why so many of us try to seek out promotions to begin with. We want growth. We want progress. And so you'll want to start thinking about, okay, what does growth and progress for me look like in my current role?
So if this is about pulling back from what your pre existing efforts were in this role, perhaps you were giving 110% because you wanted to be seen as totally devoted to the team. And after not getting this promotion, you don't really see a future for yourself here. So it's time to pull back on that 110% so you can create some space for other opportunities and other growth and progress to be prioritized in your career. That's one way to be really intentional about moving forward.
Or perhaps you are going to challenge yourself to expand your responsibilities and take on new, exciting projects and challenge assignments in role in order to give yourself that sensation of progress and growth. It's Theresa Amabile's theory, and Stephen Kramer write about it in the, Harvard Business Review. And in fact, I alluded to this Progress Principle, as they call it. Back in episode 295, a couple of years ago now, three years ago now, it's this innate human desire to feel a sensation of forward progress. So if you all of a sudden went from envisioning yourself in a promotion to having to reimagine yourself back in your current role, you have to find a way to reframe your expectations for yourself with some kind of forward movement, with some kind of sensation of progress. You can't just default to how things were going before. You have to reimagine yourself in this role. Or which brings me to my third point. Imagine yourself in your next role.
So my third sort of piece of advice here, um, is it makes sense to start thinking about your next steps. If you are getting rejected from a promotion at work, it doesn't necessarily mean you gotta change everything. You gotta throw the baby out with the bath water. In fact, there's a time and a place in your life where stability and contentment are the top priority. But if you're going for a promotion at work because you crave growth, you crave change, you crave progress, and you don't really see a theory of change in your current workplace. Of course, this depends on the specifics of the promotion you went for.
But, if you're not getting the sensation that your leadership sees a future for you that involves growth, and by the way, you can ask them for that kind of feedback after you don't get a promotion. You can say, well, do you see a vision for the growth of my career here? Like, can you imagine me continuing to grow through other promotional opportunities here? If they can't give you a compelling h*** yes. And they can't paint a picture as to what that might look like, or give you actionable feedback for you to close whatever skills gaps you need to close to make yourself more qualified and deemed ready for that promotion, then, of course, you have to start thinking about what's next for your career and how you might be able to get it elsewhere, right?
So you really want to take a realistic and holistic look at your organization and what direction the organization is growing into. And if there's room for you to grow there. If there's not, and you are still craving progress and growth, then it makes sense to explore opportunities elsewhere. Exploring opportunities elsewhere, by the way, is not akin to quitting your job tomorrow. It's not the same thing as applying for a job, even. It just means beginning to explore the very earliest stages of a job search.
So if you feel disloyal for doing that. If you feel like that's somehow bad or somehow like, not respectful of your current workplace, I really challenge you to reframe that as, your current workplace might love you in the role that you are currently in. But if you don't love the idea of staying in the role that you're currently in, you got to love yourself more. You got to love your future more. And be willing to take a little modicum of risk here by starting to explore your options elsewhere. You owe yourself that much, and you owe your future that much. So be willing to take the smallest, littlest, first step to expanding your identity and expanding your career prospects by, you know, picking your head up off the desk and seeing what else is going on in the market around you.
Now, navigating the promotion process, proving yourself ready for a promotion, and projecting the kind of executive presence that gets your qualifications, skills and high performance actually seen as having promotion possibility. That's a tricky feat, especially for women who are up against all kinds of gendered double standards on this, not the least of which is that men tend to be promoted on potential alone, whereas women tend to be promoted only after they have a proven track record of high performance.
If you want help navigating the tricky terrain that is advocating for advancement in your career, be sure to check out Level Up, our six month leadership and management accelerator for women on the rise. And since completing level up, 87% of our alums received raises, and almost 70% of them, 67, to be specific, of alums, have received promotions. So if you are looking to really level up into management and leadership, and you want to be able to project that leadership capacity, that executive presence that actually gets you promoted, not just given high performance reviews without growth potential, check out level up now at bossedup.org/levelup. Our next cohort launches this October, and now I want to hear from you.
As always, let's keep the conversation going after the episode in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook, or in the Bossed Up LinkedIn Group, both of which are linked to in today's show notes, have you been passed over for a promotion? And if so, how did you recover from that? Not just emotionally and in your career, but with those colleagues in particular, did you stick around long term? How did that go?
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
And if you chose not to, if you chose to start exploring, exploring your options elsewhere, was being passed over for a promotion the impetus to get you moving in that direction? I'd love to hear your experience and what has worked well for you. Until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
[OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
