Wouldn't you love to know what those executives are talking about in talent review meetings? Who are they talking about, and what are they saying? Let's pull back the curtain a little bit, it's such an interesting process.

What is talent management? Talent management is a process by which senior leaders come together to consider and plan for the people in their organization to make sure that they're preparing a great bench of future leaders to be ready to go when they are needed.

Senior leaders want to ensure that they don't have any big risks (e.g., only one person can do a mission critical job), that they don't have continuity issues (e.g., someone’s getting ready to retire and no one is ready to step into that role), and that they have leadership development practices that produce the results they’re looking for.

To get the most beneficial impact for your career out of understanding of the talent process, I invite you to put yourself in the execs’...

Career success is based on three key factors: performance, image, and exposure, according to a theory published by Harvey Coleman in 1996.

The relative importance of these factors might not be how we typically think of them though, because the performance, while being imperative, only accounts for 10% - 20% of the success.

The other 80% - 90% is accounted for by image and exposure. Often, we are so focused on our performance that we're not managing our image and exposure. What I’ve heard about those who are considered to be rockstar, easily promotable candidates is that they're definitely managing their image and their exposure.

How exactly does one manage their image and exposure? In this post, I'll provide you with a step-by-step approach to integrating managing your performance, image, and exposure into your career efforts and your daily way of doing business.

The first time I got really present to the importance of managing your image and your exposure was a bit dramatic....

What distinguishes the high potential, high-performing, promotable rock stars from everybody else?

One thing I discovered in my interviews with executives about this topic is that the rock stars actively seek to find out how the promotion and talent management processes work in their company. Specifically, they look to uncover how the company identifies who they want to invest in and who they feel has the potential to go to the next level. Then they reverse engineer their career development and perception management efforts accordingly. And those conversations begin to foster alignment and trust.

Consider the impact of that action. Now they're competing for the best development the company has to offer and future leadership roles with their colleagues who maybe don't know how the process works, who are quietly waiting to be recognized based on what they're doing intuitively, and whose actions may not be best aligned with what needs to be done for them to be perceived in the best...

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...

Wouldn't you love to know what executives are talking about in talent review meetings? Who are they talking about and what are they saying?

I help corporate women who want to accelerate their advancement and drive their own development. If you find this information to be useful, please share it with corporate women in your life who want to move forward.

So let's talk about it. I want to pull back the curtain a little bit, it's such an interesting process.

What is talent management? Talent management is a process by which leaders come together to review the pipeline of talent and to make sure that they don't have any big risks, that they don't have continuity issues and that they're preparing a great bench of future leaders to be ready to go when it's time in their organization.

So imagine you're an executive. You've invited all your team to come together. They come into the room with information about either their direct reports or their...

I know you're all interested in the promotion process as I've heard from you. I want to walk you through it. I'm Christina DelliSanti-Miller of Full Potential Realized.com and I help women to build careers they love by driving their own development.

So let me tell you a little bit about my background. I worked for 20 years in corporate in Fortune 100 companies, responsible for Talent Management or Diversity & Inclusion or Leadership Development and Succession Planning.

I spent a lot of time with executives behind closed doors talking about their people challenges and helping them to build leadership teams that were high-performing and balanced. And sometimes we got to the balanced part, but sometimes we're “still working on that”…

 And so I was thinking about what we could we be doing - I mean I thought about this all the time - what could we be doing to support more women and people of color to push through to senior leadership levels.

 I...

He looks at me right in the eye and states it flatly. “You’re not doing anything.” Excuse me? I think I have misheard him. “You’re not doing anything.” At the moment I’m leading six committees, consulting to the executive of the business and designing and facilitating three-hour Diversity council meetings monthly. I protest.

“All that. Yeah. It’s not doing anything.”

I’m on a listening tour, meeting with each of the senior executives in my business to collect feedback. I’m sitting with the head of sales and I have to admit I did not see this one coming. He is one of the most important and vocal executives on the team. I am really confused. And pissed. In this moment he has given me an incredible gift, I just don’t realize it yet.

This when I first learned the importance of carefully managing your image. I really assumed that my contribution would be obvious to anyone who saw me working so hard and...

Every time I read a report about women in business like the one that came out last week from McKinsey and Lean In, it occurs to me that women need to take their advancement into their own hands.

Register for my live masterclass here.

That means generating multiple options that will provide them with choices. That means owning their leadership and skill development as well as building relationships that will create opportunities.

Some work environments are better than others. Companies have great intentions and are trying to figure out how to make it fairer for women, yet in many cases change is happening quite slowly. We see it across industries and over time. I know from being on the inside just how complex it is to transform dynamics that have been in place.

Partnering with your company to build a career you love is ideal, and the more active your engagement in driving your path, the better you will fare.

In my upcoming free masterclass, I’ll lay out a three-pronged approach...

Imagine you’d like to take on more responsibility, complexity, scope, impact, and/or be promoted to the next level in your organization. How much time is enough time to start your promotion planning before you hope to move forward?

Leaving ample time to prepare yourself and implement your promotion plan is part logistical and part mindset issue. Allowing enough time to thoroughly research your proposed advancement can help you put your best foot forward.  As we’ve already discussed, before you ever initiate a promotion conversation with your manager, you would have already: 

·          Ensured your performance has differentiated you positively 

·          Gotten to know norms and people involved in the promotion process 

·          Established and begun to build trusting relationships...

Strengthening your ability to request and graciously receive direct feedback to build your awareness of your strengths and weaknesses will serve you well as you work to expand your career possibilities. The key is to have an open and honest dialogue with your manager and other stakeholders to ensure clarity about how you are perceived.

I interviewed a variety of Financial Services executives and HR colleagues about how and why people do or do not get promoted to more senior levels. Some of the perspectives they offered behind closed doors might seem a bit harsh. The good news is that by providing transparency about the tough reality, they help us to take actions to navigate the scene with aplomb.

In seeking examples of those who sailed through the system well and those who did not, there were many mentions of promising performers who were passed over for promotion and didn’t know why.

“...was behind others -- has never been given feedback to understand why...