092: How to Land a Promotion
How to Land a Promotion
In this episode, we're discussing how to land a nursing promotion and how to set yourself up for success in the future.
One of the main challenges people face when trying to get a promotion is not setting themselves up ahead of time for that role.
To overcome this challenge, I recommend working from your future self or planning from your future self. The idea is to think about what your future nursing self would do differently to set up for success. Consider what actions your future self would take to succeed in landing the promotion.
I have provided 5 steps to help you set yourself up for success in the future. By adopting this approach and following these steps, you can increase your chances of successfully obtaining a nursing promotion.
Key takeaways:
05:28 - Clinical experience
05:38 - Leadership: How you can create opportunities for yourself to lead
06:58 - Education
09:15 - Quality Improvement
14:12 - Network
19:01 - Applying with confidence
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**This transcript was automatically generated using Descript.**
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about how to land a nursing promotion. I feel like I've done this in the past, but I'm gonna recap all over it because I think that there's so many opportunities right now across the boards, and I want to help.
As many people as I possibly can to get into that next role. Now, one of the main challenges that I've seen when it comes to landing a promotion or what I call a promotion, it's like moving up to a new role, a higher role, or moving to likea left field, turn to another role is that we don't set ourselves up ahead of time for that role.
So I wanted to dive in today and get you thinking about how you can set up your future self, your future nursing self. For success. Now, I know it's a little meta . It's a little bit like woo woo. but stick with me because this is so valuable. This is actually something that I practice in my business.
It's something that I learn in coaching that has changed my life, and I want to give you an example of how I use it and then we'll dive into explore how you can use this to land a promotion. When I'm thinking about what I'm doing in my business, let's say with the podcast, for example, of course I come on here every week and I try and give as much value away to everybody that listens and I'm thinking previously what I've been doing is I've been thinking from Liam, currently I've been thinking like, oh, I've got a podcast.
Super fun. Let's just play in chat. , Jenna, ref and do of the things. And when I do that, when I think of Liam right now, that's not really thinking bigger picture and longer term I get Liam right now results. Like I don't get incredible results because I'm not really intentional that much about it. Okay.
And if you go back to some of the first episodes, you'll notice that hopefully it's not too obvious, but what I mean by working from your future self or like planning from your future self, it's like allowing your brain cognitively to go to the place where you're like, oh, what does Liam, who has 50,000 podcast downloads in a year think about this current strategy and what would he do differently?
So I'm trying to set up my future self for success. I'm literally paving the way so that Liam, at the end of this year, I'm sitting there on the 31st of, December with a glass of champagne and I'm like, we did it. We had 50,000 people listen to the podcast this year. Right. So when I go to that place and when I operate from that future planning self, I get super creative about how I'm going to get to 50,000 downloads.
Now, it doesn't matter if I never get there, but I allow myself the space and I allow myself to dream and to explore and to come up with big ideas about how I could possibly make that possible. Now, is it possible? Totally. There are people that have 50,000 downloads in. . so I want you to think about it.
How can I play with my future self in planning out my promotions within my career? So for you, what that would look like is thinking about where you are now and thinking about what your goal is. Is your goal to become, a maybe a cns, maybe to become like a registered nurse level two in some states and territories?
If that's where you want to go, what would your CNS future self be thinking of? And what would they strategically be doing between now and landing that job to make sure that it's a no-brainer? This is how you strategically. Bypass everybody else, and you make sure that you land that dream job. Now, I can't account for biases and all of that.
Okay? I know it happens. I've been the victim of it myself. It's just an industry thing. I've sat on panels where it's been, it's happened, and I've also sat in feedback sessions where people have been told for the fourth time that they're not good enough despite doing all the work. That's actually why I started this business.
So, When we think about your future self,let me talk through what the five things that I would be doing to make sure that you set yourself up for success in the future. you're like passing the banner, you're like, yeah, it's done, you know, to your future self. Like the pay rise is coming, you know, I'm gonna be working last night, shift.
All of the things. You gift that to your future self. From the actions that you take today. So the first thing that I want you to be thinking about is if you're going for any kind of promotion, right? And this doesn't matter whether it's a cns, whether it's a C N C, a, na adon, an Aon, an educator, a project officer, whatever the role is, there are kind of four main common themes.
I'm like, is there four? Is there four? Let's see. How about this? So number one, every job that you go for in healthcare is gonna require you to have some form of clinical experience. Amazing. You're already doing that. Tick, tick, take. I think there's five. The second thing is thinking about how you can create opportunities for yourself to lead.
Whether or not you're going for a leadership role, I want you to create opportunities where you can go out and lead your people, lead your team, whether that's leading the whole team, whether that's leading a meeting, whether that's leading the morning handover. Maybe you just lead half of the ward. Maybe you ask the CNS that's on nights.
If you can lead. Your half and they lead their half. Sure. You might not be paid the extra allowance for it, but it's incredible experience for you when you get to your job application and your interview and you go, I've already been leading what happens every single time. It has happened so much, and for me, it makes my job much harder when you come and work with me and you're like, Liam, I wanna apply for this job.
And I'm like, okay, tell me about your education, your leadership, all of the things, and you're like, I haven't done. anything I'm like, okay, let's explore. It. Doesn't mean we can't do it and we have done it with lots of people, but it makes it so much easier for you and you will be more self-confident in that approach, right?
If we think about the self-confident episode we did, if you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to it. You'll be more self confident in your approach cuz you've got all of this evidence to prove that you can do it. Okay? So clinical experience, education. No, I said leadership. Leadership. Oh my God, I haven't been drinking, I promise.
Leadership education is next. So again, whether or not you wanna be an educator or not, I don't care. Do some education, whether it's informally at the bedside, whether it's you take a student and you really commit to that, whether it's you become known on the ward for a specific thing. I used to work with an EN who was incredible at her job, and she loved the wounds.
So she was the wound champion and she educated everybody on wounds, right? Maybe it's hand hygiene. It doesn't have to be fancy. educate. And don't just go out and educate and be like, oh, I've done it. Now tick the box, repeat it. Collect feedback, collect data. So when I talk about data, I'm like, collect the number of people that you've educated, right?
Doesn't matter if it's only 10, you can still put that on your application. Provided, you know, adult learning, educational sessions to 10 clinicians of. experience about wound care, whatever that might be. Okay? That could be an achievement on your cv. It's still gonna be much more impressive than no education, right?
Remember that you are educating your patients, so use that as an opportunity as well. , you can use the feedback integrated into your applications, your cover letter, your selection criteria that people have given you. You can even take it in as a portfolio. Right. I actually did that for one of my jobs where I took in my portfolio of all of the things that I did.
Now it was pretty basic reflecting on it, but it bloody wowed the panel. They did not expect it. No one else didn't. And I can tell you right now that the portfolio was a. Paper folder that I took in that had some of my posters that I put out for education to increase engagement. It had some of the policies that I'd worked on in there.
They weren't gonna look at it, but it was there and I gave them something and they were like super, super impressed. That was some feedback that I got. So if you're an educator and you've. Educating people and you've created a PowerPoint, put that in your portfolio, take it with you. Show them, give it out.
take four of them for each panel member. Be like, this is something I created. This is the level of my work. Right? That's self-confidence. It's knowing that you put yourself out there, you trust yourself, you have your own back. You're open to rejection cuz you're now giving them something you created.
Then they might critique it and you're managing your mind around it. Okay? So educate, educate. it's not the last thing. No. There's definitely five . I should stop with the numbers. Hey, next quality improvement. I want you to engage in some form of quality improvement. Okay? Now, a lot of people say to me, Liam, I can't deal.
I've got too much on my plate. I work. you want me to educate, you want me to lead? Like when am I gonna do my actual job? I hear. I hear you. If you want to progress, you have to create the time for these things. I'm not saying come do them in your own time, but you do have to factor them in. And if you're 100% honest, shifts are busy for sure.
But I also remember very vividly sitting at the desk for sometimes an hour, sometimes more than an hour, collectively throughout the day where I didn't have a lot to do. I also. Spotted my team on a number of occasions, sitting at the desk from one o'clock till 3:30 So I know not every area is the same, but, there's always time.
You can always create time. And if it matters to you, you make time for it It's as simple as that. So when I'm talking about quality improvement, couple of things that I want you to think about. Number one, the easiest way to do this is just to collect data and evidence for the local. Quality assessments, right?
So become a champion of. Standard, the national safety, quality and healthcare standards. Become a champion, collect the data and see if you can contribute to reporting to it. The next level of that is, actually creating a report on the data and noticing that last month we had 50% compliance and hand hygiene, and this month it was 40.
So, I'm gonna take the initiative and I'm gonna create a whole quality improvement or a practice improvement plan around this to help my busy nurse unit manager that's gonna hire me as a CNS or an educator or whatever you want to do. and build a bit of rapport. And build a bit of connection.
Now a lot of people don't tune this cuz they think it's kissing. It is kissing ass. but at the end of the day, if you want the result, you have to put in the work. And I can tell you having been a nurse unit manager or never thought that it was kissing ass, I always was like, please, thank you so much.
Take this. I've got so much to do. I'd love you to run with this and make it your own. . If you've got a unit manager, they will support you 100%. If they say to you, nah, we don't have any assessments, nothing. Red flag, there's so many things to be done. find the opportunity, create it. Talk to your educator.
Ask you a don, ask you don c Find somebody that will help support you to achieve your goal. Cuz this data, this information, this experience is gonna set you up for success moving forward. Okay? You're. Evidence again. So the next level is creating a whole quality improvement project. Renderers. Now you don't have to go huge.
You don't have to like blow it out the water. You can create a very simple. assessment document. There's probably one already. You can collect the data. You can maybe find a couple of juniors that work alongside you, maybe even some students. Get them on board.train them, use them as the education, and then you're leading them as well.
And then from there, collect the data, report it back to your nurse unit manager and tell them about how you're gonna help improve this moving forward. Give them your ideas, be innovative, be creative. And then from there you can run with. You can run with that and you will gather so much information. If you focused on one area, like one specific, subsection within the standards for six to 12 months in the lead up to your applications, you would have immense data and you would be so impressive at interview.
Can you imagine? Oh, yeah. You know, in 2021, we started this project around hand hygiene. We had 45% compliance. And, you know, through that year I built engagement. I educated the team. I educated thorough clinicians. I worked with the multidisciplinary team. I reevaluated the policy and worked with the infection control team.
I delivered bedside education. I educated families and patients on the importance of PPE and hand hygiene. , and based on all of that work, we went from 45% in 2021 a year later to being 95%. Now that is impressive. That is the level of detail that we are looking for When you go for any promotion, not just a cns, not just a C N C, not a numb, not an educator.
They're looking for it across the boards. This is how you blow it out of the water. Cuz every other person comes in and they're like, oh yeah, I've thought about doing a quality improvement project. you know, I was thinking about starting wound care and they haven't. And straight away that person is like a red flag and a no.
So if that's your approach going into these interviews at any level, , be worried, be really worried. It's a super easy, simple fix. Do the work, do the freaking work, do the quality improvement projects. Okay, so what are we gone over? My memory's terrible. We've gone over, clinical leadership, education.
Quality improvement. Okay, the last thing that I'm gonna put out there is, and notice, by the way, I didn't say go and get a master's. I didn't say go and get three masters. I did not say, do your trauma course . I didn't say you needed your als. These are things that you can action tomorrow, okay? They take time, but you can action all of them tomorrow.
So please do if this is your path. Now, the final thing that you need to think about is telling your direct supervisor or manager that you have a desire to be whatever that role is. Okay? So if it's cns, you tell them. You make a meeting with them and you sit down and you say, you know, I've been thinking about my career.
I really love working here. I want to know how I can help you. I also wanna build my professional experience and growth so that I can become a CNS in the future. What would you like to see from me to make me a suitable candidate? It's that simple. You can even put that in an email and then from there you action everything that they say.
They might have different opinions. To me, they might be like, you need to have a hundred percent mandatory training compliance. You need to, I don't know, put in your three years, but at least you know. Most people don't even know what's expected of them in each area. And maybe it doesn't align with your career.
Maybe it doesn't give you the opportunity to be promoted in the timeline that you want. So wouldn't you rather know than wait three years, do all the work apply and they're still like, no, you need another two years. Cuz you know, in nursing we have this ridiculous, stupid rule that is you need to have four years experience before we'll, consider you Okay, break the rules.
My friends, break them. They're there to be broken rules. rules are there to be broken. Break them, test it, see how you land. And the worst thing that can happen is a no. We approach it with self-confidence and you've got your own back. So you just move on to the next thing. I was in a job once where I knew that I wasn't gonna get promoted.
I knew it wasn't ever gonna happen. The new manager came in and they were horrific. and I was bullied and all of these things happened that I've talked to you about today. I was delivering to the max as a high performer, and I knew straight away that wasn't gonna work for me. So I asked the question, I said, do you see me progressing in this organization?
And they were like, I think you've got a lot more to learn and a lot more to do. And maybe they were right, but it came from a malicious place because I also went for the job that they went for. So, you know, we both had a bit of beef with each other, so, it was good for me to know that in that moment because what did I do?
I went away and found a new job, I found a different opportunity that would allow me to grow and to develop. So don't box yourself in, right? Don't put yourself in career person for a few years without even knowing the answer ahead of time. So talk to the people that you need to talk to. Make the connections explicitly.
Tell them what you want to be doing so that they know, and then just be like, how can I help you do this? How can I help make this any human that walks up to nurse unit manager, an educator, Don an ADON that. says How can I make this a better place for everybody to work and for our patients to receive care?
I want to build and grow my career, and I want to contribute. Anybody that asks that question and doesn't get a response, you need to leave that job. Okay? If you get a response, that's incredible. If you don't get a response and meh, nah, it's all good. We've got it all covered. You're in the wrong job, okay?
She a high performer that deserves more and deserves opportunities to grow, so go and create them for your. So of course, five things now that we've learned how to count . Five things that you can do to set your future nursing yourself up for success. Love it. Set yourself up for success. So when you get to that point, You're as good as done.
You're gonna be so, so confident, okay? Do not do the opposite where you just wing it for a year and you hope that it's gonna come through. And the one thing that will sabotage your nursing career dreams for the rest of your life. The one sentence is, I've been here for X amount of years, I deserve this.
, it doesn't land, it does not land. Experience does not equate to evidence that you've grown and develop. Right. Think about it. You could do a job for 10 years and do the bare minimum for 10 years and never learn a thing. It's kind of hard. But there are people that do it, right? Like we all know somebody that's been in the job for years and still can't do the thing, right?
So how is that even possible? So time does not equal evidence that you are capable or suitable for the job. We need to scrap this idea. In nursing it is literally killing the industry. Because we're taking people with 10 years experience over somebody that is maybe two years out, but has got a background running a massive multi corporation, I don't know, ngo like these people exist in nursing.
Like most people come into nursing a bit later in life. They have the experience. We shouldn't make them wait, tap into their genius now. So if that is you, don't hold yourself back. Look at the job ads. And just break the rules and apply it anyway and give yourself the opportunities. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about this.
but it's something that, you know, I see day in day out and see it stopping people. we worked with, well, I worked with, six nurses in my last nurse unit manager job, who for the last three years before I worked there, two, three years, had been applying for the CNS position and they got rejected every.
I came in and I sat them down and we were like, I was like, what's your goals? Like you're a high performer. What's your goals? They're like, I really wanna be a level. . I said, okay, how can we make that happen? What do you need to do? And we worked it out. We created a plan. it took 30 minutes, so nursing managers listening, make this time for your high performers.
Give them the opportunity. It will reduce your workload immensely. And then from there, they went out and executed. And then, , no student manager listening and educators. Then I supported them with their application. I wasn't running this business at the time. I just helped them because I wanted to help them thrive.
It was better for me to have six new level twos when my FTE and vacancies were super short. I needed them, so I made the time. And they were incredible and we did their applications. We sold the skillset set and we made sure that they had the missing pieces cuz that was a problem. They thought that because they'd been there for 20 years prior that they were suitable.
And I had to explain to them, no, it's all about how you demonstrate your suitability through the work that you do. It's no longer enough to have just been there for 20 years. We need 20 years plus the evidence. Clinical evidence is separate. Notice I mentioned that at start and I didn't really talk much about that, cuz yeah, you need to clinically be able to do the job, but you also need to do all of the other things as well.
And the other things are usually what's stopping people from moving forward. So go out and create them. Those six people now are all level two nurses. One of them has been a nurse for over 45 years. She trained in Africa, and she moved to Australia and she loves her work and she's one of the best nurses I've ever met.
She's an incredible leader, and she just kept getting overlooked. And this was the secret formula. This is what transformed her career and now, She's a level two. She makes more money. Yeah, she has more responsibility. Sometimes. She probably wishes she was back on the floor, but she now has amazing opportunities from that.
I know all of them have been asked to step in and backfill CNC positions. The possibilities are endless, right? When you create. the career that you want on your terms and you set yourself up for success. If this podcast has resonated with you, please share it with a PO who is working towards a promotion.
Of course, as always, you know that we do this. This is what we do. If you wanna make it super easy for yourself, you wanna get all the support, you want us to map all of this out with you and apply for the job and guarantee yourself success. You know where. , like we're the only in our career coach that does a career coaching service that does this and guarantees your success.
That's how confident we are, in our ability to help you. So do not delay. There's never a right time. now is the best time to make your career dreams happen. We're here for you. All the links are in the show notes, and I'll see you in the next episode. I want to hear about those of you that put this into place, that get a promotion in a year's time.
I want to hear about it. Okay, , I'll see you in the next episode.,
