“Up for Promotion” – Tips and Guidelines
- Participating in an interview where you are a candidate for promotion will require more focused attention than an entire day’s work. “Selling yourself, your background, studies and expertise” requires skill. Develop succinct impact statements that sell your abilities without lauding your praises. Stick to the facts, awards, secondments you may have served and highlight areas of expertise where you are considered an authority on the matter.
- When selling yourself, it is also a good idea not to pretend to be perfect in all aspects. Interviewers are also interested to learn of challenges you have been faced with and how you overcame those challenges.
- When discussing your areas of expertise always remember, that the experience that you have gained establishes credibility and builds confidence, so always relay the experience you have had in an area.
- Always bear in mind that interviewers prefer candidates who are solution-oriented and not problem-fixated. Re-phrase answers to ensure that they are solution-oriented.
- Discover your passion before the interview and find creative ways in which you could enhance this in the professional environment. Themes that set you apart, help you to think creatively or apply solutions to a situation become a great differentiator and will help the panel remember your value proposition.
- Emotional intelligence accounts for 93% of the success equation in leadership. When you’re up for a promotion, the way in which you sell ideas and influence is critical. Remember technical proficiency is a baseline competence. The soft skills are becoming increasingly the hard skills
- Most people will retain 6-10% of the information you present. Your non-verbal impact is by far the greatest influence. Ensure that you project the right image, level of professionalism, non-verbal language and attitude – This is what people will remember.
- Asking an audience to read text on a presentation slide requires more processing effort. Text is a symbol system and must be decoded to have meaning. If text must be decoded during a talk you will lose the attention of the audience. Images on the other hand require less processing because they only enhance and do not distract from the message. By showing meaningful, content-based visuals it lessens cognitive exertion and improves the overall experience. This is very important when you consider that 70% of us process information visually! However, throwing random, irrelevant pictures onto slides to “beautify them” is not helpful either – it can have a negative impact on learning. Images have to relate to, and strengthen the word and idea, not distract from it.
- Listeners experience attention fatigue every 9 to 11 minutes. Our advice would be to include activities, practical applications, quizzes etc. to re-capture attention. Get them involved and talking. Use multi-visual impactors. Our brains are designed to grow when we learn something and this produces dopamine, the pleasure hormone.
- Why is the start so important? Because in those first critical few seconds we will decide whether we are going to be bored or uncomfortable and concerned that this presentation/meeting will not enable us. Never forget that when we anticipate or experience change it creates pain for the brain. Change exhausts the brain. It takes 41 days to integrate new habits into the basal ganglia. Change takes time and is habitual.
- The moment you start speaking your listener is capable of instantly making a negative decision. This is assisted by our reptilian brain – the part of the brain responsible for keeping us safe and enabling our breathing and mobility. This means that your listener will not absorb your information, if they are afraid, bored or disinterested. If, however, your listener feels safe, enabled or interested the chances are that they will retain more information. But even then, don’t get your hopes up! New research is showing that we only retain 6/10% of the information.
