Since I’ll bet you're curious about what the easily promoted rockstars do that distinguishes them from everyone else, I'm going to share one of their secrets with you. It has to do with getting and using really honest feedback. I’ll also leave you with five scripts that will help you more easily and confidently request actionable feedback.

One of the things I had to do when I was responsible for Diversity and Inclusion was to really figure out how the promotion process really worked.

What I learned was that there's a promotion committee. They put the candidates being considered for promotion into three groups: definite yes, maybe, and definite no. The committee doesn’t spend any time on those considered definite no. They spend very little time on the definite yes candidates. They spend most of their time arguing, negotiating and jockeying around the maybes and figuring out who's getting through and who is not.

My question was: What is it about the definite...

Let's say you're working on getting promoted or somehow taking your career to the next level, but you're not sure if you have your manager's support.

Here are three things you can do to make sure that you're aligned and that s/he is fully behind you. These are relevant for getting great support in a promotion process or in moving your career forward, whether it's winning a new role, taking on more complexity, responsibilities, taking on managing a team, or even upping your game and your compensation in your current role.

High level: the first one is check in on your current performance, second one is to get into the right mindset to negotiate your next step forward, and the third is to make a forward movement plan together with your manager.

More detail: the best place to start is to check in about your current performance. You want to make sure that before you have any conversations about moving forward that your manager and your stakeholders are satisfied with the performance...