Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How a Career Signals Audit Landed a Director Promotion
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this senior manager at a mid-sized fintech company, and she's up for a Director role. She has the results, she has the tenure, she's even got a sponsor. But every time promotion cycles come around, her name comes up and then it doesn't happen. Three cycles in a row. Luna: Ouch. That's brutal. And I bet the feedback was always something vague, like 'you're not quite there yet.' Lucas: Exactly. 'You're not quite there.' 'We need to see more strategic presence.' Nothing she could actually act on. So she did something I hadn't seen before. She ran what she called a career signals audit. Not a self-assessment, not a career plan. She mapped every signal the organization was sending her about her readiness. Luna: Okay, I love this. What counts as a signal? Because I'm imagining performance reviews and maybe a few hallway comments, but I feel like it's bigger than that. Lucas: Way bigger. She listed every interaction that carried information about how leadership saw her. Formal signals: performance reviews, promotion committee notes, the annual calibration. Informal signals: which meetings she was invited to, who cc'd her on what, whether her skip-level manager remembered her name, how often she was asked for input versus just informed. She even included meeting invitations as data. If you're not in the room when the budget is being discussed, that's a signal. Luna: And this is the kind of audit that takes a weekend, not a quarter. She just went back through her calendar and her inbox. Lucas: Right. And what she found was fascinating. She was highly visible in written communication. Her status updates were models of clarity. She got praised for them constantly. But she was almost completely absent from strategic conversations. She was never in the room when decisions were actually made. She was informed after the fact. Her sponsor told her, 'We don't see you as a strategic partner, we see you as a reliable executor.' Luna: That's a gut punch, but it's so specific. She finally had a real gap to work on. Lucas: And that's the beauty of the audit. It converts a vague feeling into a concrete pattern. She had maybe fifty signals in her spreadsheet. And she ranked each one as positive, neutral, or negative. The negatives were almost all in the 'strategic conversations' category. She was invited to zero skip-level meetings in the past year. Zero. Meanwhile two of her peers, who did get promoted, each had four or five. Luna: So what did she do? Did she just start asking to be in those meetings? Lucas: She was smarter than that. She picked two signals to shift. First, she set up a monthly skip-level check-in with her VP. Not to ask for the promotion, just to discuss the department's biggest challenges. She prepared for each one like it was a board presentation. Second, she started sending a monthly 'strategic observations' memo to her manager and VP. Not a status report. Three bullets on market trends, competitor moves, and one recommendation. No ask, just value. Luna: And that's the kind of move that can backfire if you're not careful. But if you're genuinely adding value, it's a game changer. Lucas: It took three months. At the next promotion cycle, her VP not only sponsored her, he cited her 'strategic insights' in the promotion committee. The same VP who six months earlier had never met with her one-on-one. She got the Director title. Same results, same tenure, same company. The only thing that changed was the signal. Luna: That's such a clean story. And it's a great reminder that visibility isn't about being loud. It's about being present in the right rooms. But I want to push back a little. Some people hear 'signals audit' and think, 'Oh great, another thing I have to do on top of my actual job.' How do you make the case that this is worth the time? Lucas: Good question. And the honest answer is, if you're happy in your current role and you don't want to advance, you don't need to do this. But if you're actively pursuing a promotion and you've been passed over more than once, the data shows that your performance is rarely the blocker. It's how you're perceived. And perception is built through signals. So taking one weekend to audit those signals is probably the highest roi career move you can make. Luna: And I love that she focused on just two signals. So often we try to fix everything at once. But she was surgical. What's the framework listeners can actually use? Lucas: I'd break it into five steps. Step one: list every signal you're sending and receiving. Step two: label each one as positive, neutral, or negative. Step three: identify the gaps between where you are and where the next level sits. Step four: pick two or three signals to shift in the next quarter. Step five: track them monthly. And the key is to make the audit a habit, not a one-time thing. Revisit it every quarter. Luna: That's a solid framework. And I want to add a cautionary tale. I had a listener once who tried this and it flopped. She did a signals audit, found she was missing from certain meetings, but her company was in a hiring freeze. No promotions at all, no matter what she did. So the audit didn't get her promoted. But she said it helped her manage her own expectations and she used the time to build skills for when the freeze lifted. Lucas: That's a really important point. The audit is not a magic wand. It's a diagnostic tool. You still need the results. You still need the relationships. And sometimes the organization just isn't moving. But at least you know where you stand, and you can make an informed decision about whether to stay, pivot, or leave. Luna: And that's honestly one of the most useful outcomes of this whole exercise. When you have that clarity, you stop feeling like you're stuck. You either have a plan or you have a reason to go. Lucas: Look, if today was genuinely useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support. If you've got a couple bucks, you can hit up buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It keeps the lights on and helps us keep putting out practical episodes like this. Luna: Yeah, and we're not shy about it because it literally funds the show. No ads, just smart people supporting something they value. Lucas: So back to the signals audit. One thing I want to emphasize is that the audit isn't about gaming the system. It's about aligning your external presence with your internal contribution. If you're doing great work but nobody knows about it, that's a communication gap, not a character flaw. And it's fixable. Luna: I think that's a great takeaway. And I'm curious about the specific questions someone should ask themselves when they're doing the audit. Like, what does a 'negative signal' even look like? Lucas: Sure. A negative signal is anything that tells you you're not in the inner circle. Examples: being left off email threads that you should be on, getting feedback that you're 'too operational,' being invited to the project kickoff but not the strategy session. Or when your manager says 'we'll circle back' and never does. Those are all data points. And they're more reliable than your own self-assessment. Luna: And what's a positive signal? Besides the obvious, like getting promoted. Lucas: Positive signals are when leaders proactively include you. For example, if your skip-level manager asks for your opinion on a roadmap item, that's a huge positive. If you're asked to present to the executive team, even if it's just for ten minutes, that's a green light. If you're cc'd on a decision that wasn't your domain, that's a sign of trust. These are the moments that create sponsors. Luna: So the audit is basically a way to track your 'organizational currency.' And once you see it, you can start investing it more deliberately. Lucas: Exactly. And one more thing. When you shift a signal, don't overcorrect. You don't want to go from invisible to obnoxious. The goal is to be seen as a strategic partner, not a self-promoter. That's why the memo she sent was so good. It was short, substantive, and it gave credit to her team. It was about the work, not about her. Luna: That's a crucial nuance. People often think visibility means talking more in meetings or posting on LinkedIn. But really it's about being useful in the right spaces. So what's the first step for someone listening right now who wants to run their own audit? Lucas: Here's what I'd do. This afternoon, open your calendar and go back twelve months. Make a list of every meeting you were invited to that you didn't initiate. Note which ones were strategic versus operational. Then look at your sent emails. Are you mostly reporting or are you also proposing? If you're mostly reporting, that's your gap. Pick one strategic meeting to get into and one stakeholder to start sending observations to. That's your starting point. Luna: And I'd add: track your next thirty days. See which of those signals you can shift without burning out. It's about being deliberate, not desperate. Lucas: Right. And remember, the audit is a tool you can use more than once. Do it every quarter and you'll start to see patterns. You'll catch yourself slipping into the same blind spots. And when the promotion opportunity comes, you'll already be positioned as someone who thinks at the next level. Luna: Before we wrap, let's bring it back to the listener's reality. For someone who's not even sure they want a promotion, is this still useful? Lucas: Absolutely. Because the audit tells you where you stand, and that knowledge is power. You might discover you're already seen as a leader and you just didn't realize it. Or you might find out you're in a dead-end role and need to move. Either way, you're making a decision from facts, not feelings. Luna: And that's the kind of clarity that makes the difference between a career that stalls and one that accelerates. Lucas: So here's the challenge for everyone listening: take thirty minutes this week and look at your calendar as data. Ask yourself, 'If I were my own manager, what signals would I see?' And then decide what you want to do about it.