You’ve heard me speak about compensation in Corporate America and I’ve shown you ways to work the system, but that alone will not get you a raise.
To get the highest raise on the team, you must be the most worthy of a raise. First, make the team better because you are part of it. Second, support your boss’s and company’s goals. And third, make your boss look good. Below I offer advice on how to achieve these things.
Raises, especially merits, are often given out in a tiered order – the top performer gets the top merit, the lowest performer on a team will get the lowest merit. Even though this sounds fair, it can be frustrating for managers who have high performing teams. There is always a “lowest” performer on a team, though hard, every team can be stack ranked. But there sometimes are no poor performers. The lowest performer on one team, might still be an extremely productive performer. In some companies, the lowest performers will not get a raise, even if they are extremely valuable employees. This method is demotivating to both managers and employees alike, but the only solution, unless a company changes its policy would be for an employee to seek to be the top performer on a team, and to constantly ask for feedback from their boss on how they can improve.
When your boss is providing you advice on how to improve, don’t argue! Think of it as a gift. This is a little insight on how you can move up on the performance scale. Even if your boss is flat out wrong, you have now discovered a perception that your boss has. Unless you actively work to change this perception, your boss will use it when it’s time to stack rank their employees and give out merits. Arguing in that moment, is not nearly as effective a way to change your boss’s perception as acknowledging what your boss is saying, and spending some time to think on it in ways that you can actively turn that perception around through your actions, not your words.
When working on improving your performance within a team, first work on any and all negative perceptions your boss has about your own performance, and then work on helping your team succeed. Your boss is responsible for the entire team. If your success causes others not to be successful, you are inadvertently hurting yourself. Your actions not only negatively impact your peers, but your boss too – and that will be a reflection upon you. Conversely, if the team is stronger because you are a part of it, then your boss will recognize these gifts as well. In fact, that’s a trait of leadership. The leader doesn’t have to be the smartest person on the team, they should be the one that enables everyone on the team to be their best self and most effective team.
Understand what it is that excites your boss and actively support them in their endeavors. We hear often that managers should understand what uniquely motivates their employees and treat no two employees the same. Employees should do the same for their managers.
When you understand what motivates your boss, and act upon it, you are speaking their language and getting them to notice you. Be sure to regularly check in with your boss, first to understand what they are working towards, and then to ensure that you are in agreement of how you can help them reach their goals, and also to make sure they have seen some of the recent things you’ve done to help support them. Make the conversation about them and not about you.
I hear too often coaching clients say, “I did all the hard work and my boss took all the credit.” Now a really really good boss knows how to divert the credit to their staff, but most bosses will and should get credit for enabling the employee to succeed. A boss’s job is to share a vision, motivate the employees towards that vision, and then remove obstacles in the way of getting there. Now some may say, ah, but this gadget I created was my idea! It wasn’t my bosses vision at all. You are thinking too narrowly!! The vision may be to enable the people to bring innovative ideas to fruition. A good leader understands that they will not have the most brilliant ideas and that team think is exponentially more powerful than individual think.
An employee who makes their boss look good, is of great value to that boss. Oh, but then I will hear, “But I do my bosses job”. Great! Get your boss promoted, and then they will have no choice but to bring you up with them.
When interviewees or coaching clients tell me that they left their old job, or are stuck in their current one, because they have climbed as high as they could go and their boss wasn’t going anywhere, again, they are thinking too narrowly. I learned this first hand from one of my own employees. When I hired Jerry, who was at least 15 years my senior, he told me that his job was to make me look good and that if I got promoted, my role would open up and he would be able to move into it. And it worked!!! Because I was not threatened by him, I was more willing to show him how to do what I did, and then I was freed up to take on more responsibilities and was able to promote him to take on the role I was in when I hired him.
I quickly learned to do the same thing myself. I took on all the responsibilities that I knew my boss didn’t enjoy, and I did them for him. When that freed up time for him to get promoted to VP of my company, I was the most qualified employee to take on his old job – Sr. Operations Executive over all our centers across the globe. Now I didn’t get the job just because I took on those tasks my boss didn’t like, but first I removed as many concerns as I could about my boss’s perception of me, then helped my peer team grow by creating group think meetings to discuss how we could work together and benefit each other on a strategic level, then I ensured I was aligned to my boss’s and company’s goals, and then I supported my boss in any way I could. I also got a top performer rating and received, what I believe to be a substantial promotional increase. You can too! It’s going to take time, so don’t wait to get started. Start today.
MintROI 
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