Dos and Don’t In Writing Effective Promotion Recommendations

One of the most fulfilling parts of being a manager is when your people have grown in their skills, increased their impact, and are ready for the next level. You, as their manager, get to write a promotion recommendation.

Promotions recognize the person’s growing impact and ability to deliver that impact consistently. One thing to keep in mind is that performance is relative to level and role, which broadly determine expectations.

This post summarizes some dos and don’t I’ve observed in writing an effective promotion note.

DOs:

• Focus on specific accomplishments. Be as specific as possible, including what was the person’s specific contribution on projects. It’s not enough to say “they were a key contributor on major feature X”, please explain what they did as part of the larger team.
• Refer to Career Ladder. The person you are talking about is great at what they do, but in the recommendation letter, you need to show that their impact is reflective of next level. The career ladder, if your company has one, is designed to give you guidance for what are the attributes important to your organization. In the note please highlight the performance attributes they are exhibiting that place them at the next level.
• Consistency. Every person in the running for promotion has some examples of higher level performance. Note how the performance has been consistent across multiple projects and for how long have you seen the next level behaviors.
• Culture & Values. While it’s possible to promote people mostly based on their impact, do talk about how they achieve that impact, i.e. their values and culture contributions. For more senior roles, part of getting to the next level is about how they make people around them better.
• Keep your audience in mind. Companies have different promotion approval processes, from sign-off by direct manager to approval chain where people higher up don’t know the individual or their role personally. Sometimes there is an independent panel that may be far removed from the person’s team. Think about the audience and add additional context. Explain the complexity of the projects they took part in, how their contributions fit within that project, and remind the audience of how the impact relates to expectations for this level.
• Be honest in areas they still need to grow. While you are trying to sell this candidate as being next level, it’s rare that somebody fulfills every criteria at the next level (this is a stretch for them, after all). You can gain more credibility by highlighting an area they have not yet mastered and explain why you think this should not be a barrier (e.g. this is less important to their current role, or other strengths overwhelm).

DON’Ts:

• Don’t be vague, or write about the person’s abilities generically. One example of being vague is talking about their main job responsibilities, or their general knowledge or experience (“they understand distributed programming very well” or “they do high quality work”). Impact is about translating that knowledge or experience to results.
• Don’t use circular reasoning. I’ve seen managers justifying a promotion by saying that the person has recently taken on additional responsibility, such as started managing people or took on a stretch assignment. You may be giving credit for promise of performance and not actual performance. I call it circular reasoning because increased responsibility is an opportunity to grow, not evidence of higher performance. For example, after a person expresses interest in moving into management, their manager gives them a growth opportunity to start managing people (something the person is new at). Then, during performance review time, the manager says — “Now that they are managing people, and have more responsibility, they should be promoted”. What’s absent from here is a statement of impact. What evidence does manager have that they are doing a great job in the new role (most likely as a new manager they are not, yet)? Implicitly, you are saying “they are a new manager, and things haven’t blown up” — that’s a very low bar.
• Don’t use tenure at level. Being in a role for a while should make it easier to have more impact, but does not by itself lead to promotion.

What has been your experience? What DOs and DONT’s have I missed?