Passed Over for Promotion Summary

Coaching someone who didn't get promoted is challenging. We should try to understand their perspective and the pain of rejection. Salespeople often face rejection, so it's important to cultivate resilience. As coaches, we can ask questions like how they can differentiate themselves and show resilience. Sending a supportive note after rejection can have a positive impact, as it involves their loved ones in the coaching process. It's also valuable to seek feedback from interviewers and stay in touch with them. We must help people see rejection as an opportunity for growth and develop resilience and differentiation skills. Coaching someone who has been passed over for a promotion is tough and I think one of the best things that we can do as leaders and coaches is to get in their shoes as best we can. It is rejection. It's tough to overcome. Most people don't seek rejection strategically, yet when you go for a promotion, when you go for a job, we inherently have to open ourselves to the fact that there's going to be some potential rejection. One of the things that we don't like about salespeople is traditionally they can be very arrogant. Not everybody, and I'm in the sales field as well, but we can be viewed as arrogant. And a lot of that comes back to ego and the ego serves us very well because we are exposing ourselves to rejection. Most of the time people will close 20 to 30% of the business they go after. That means 70% of the time we're told to go away. It's not an easy career. Rejection is tough. So when you're coaching, also think about phrases such as what are you going to do to demonstrate resilience? What do you think you could do to differentiate yourself? What do you think might surprise the powers to be if you got up off your feet and showed them I'm ready for the next challenge? What if you were to demonstrate a positive demeanor and you were happy for the other person? How do you think that would serve you well going forward? Now I roll those off my tongue I think fairly well. The point being is practice those phrases. Practice talking about resilience. Use what questions and it will help use a technique called framing. The other thing I would encourage you to do is to think about the power of the written note right after they get the rejection and during the process of them improving the position themselves for the next promotional opportunity. Send a card home saying, you know what, Julie, I'm noticing that you're really going after this. I know that you're looking in the mirror. I love that you've gotten off the mat, so to speak, and you're resilient. I'm really proud of you. Seems corny, right? Here's something that happens. See, when someone opens that card and you send it to their home if it's appropriate, their spouse, their family members, their significant other will say, who's that from, honey? Oh, it's from my boss. Just wanted to let me know he's proud of me as we're trying to position me to go after the next promotional opportunity. Do you know what happens in that moment? They become your co-coaches. They say, wow, no one even talked to me after I didn't get my last job opportunity. No one even said anything to me. And that's something that you can do. Remember, coaching is like going up this steep hill that's muddy, it's raining. The hill's called Change Hill. What inevitably you're asking someone to do is to continue to pursue change, to continue to pursue rejection. Now the last thing, and we have not talked about this, is going back to people who interviewed you, if it's appropriate, and say, help me understand, what could I have done better? What would you encourage me to do to position myself for the next opportunity? And would you mind if I checked in with you every once in a while? Most people never do that. So if you have five candidates who got rejection going for the same job, and one person does that and the other four don't, who differentiated themselves? That's what we have to do as coaches, is position our people to look at this, albeit tough perspective, filled with rejection, denial, hearing the word no. How do we get them to look at that perspective? Look at that situation from a different perspective, but to look at that perspective opportunistically and from a point of resilience and differentiation.