If You’re Waiting for Someone to Give You a Raise, You’re Doing It Wrong

Andrea (00:04):
Well, hi there. I am Andrea Watkins. And if you're listening to this while juggling three patient calls, checking in a couple patients, taking a payment, selling skincare, and trying to catch your doctor in between procedures, you might be working in an aesthetic practice.

Blake (00:18):
And I'm Blake Lucas, and this is Practiceland. This is not your doctor's podcast. Welcome back to Practiceland. Thank you all for listening. Make sure you're sharing Practiceland with your friends and coworkers and colleagues. Get the word out. There's some great content here. Love to have everyone back. Today, very excited. We got Kelcy Heringer back with us again. Can't get enough of Kelcy. Thank you so much for being here. Kelcy, tell us maybe a story from somewhere out there in Practiceland.

Kelcy (00:48):
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me back. Love being back. So I'll pull from recency bias of what I just experienced with a client and really I'll frame it as her insight was: I can't ask for a raise. I'm about to have a baby and it feels wrong to ask for more right now.

Blake (01:13):
That is fascinating. I can't wait to get into this. Yeah, tell.

Kelcy (01:17):
Yeah, I mean that's my reaction too. When she said it to me honestly, it was my thought was like this is, just because you're becoming a mom, you have to stop advocating for yourself? But also emotionally I got it. And when we dug deeper, what was really holding her back wasn't necessarily her boss. It was the story that she was telling herself, I already get maternity leave. I don't want to seem greedy. And it was this quiet fear that could have cost her a year of advancement. And so instead what we did of having her avoid the conversation and waiting a year to have the conversation was we talked through with honesty and strength what that you are so fearful about and let's draft that acknowledgement into your talking points so that you can go have an authentic conversation. I think that's sometimes the hardest part, right? Is like how would I even go about having that? Here's a riff on an example of what we said for her to go in and say, which is, I'd love to start a conversation about how I can go from practice manager to director, but before we dive in, I just want to acknowledge how much I love my role and how grateful I am for my upcoming leave. That said, I care deeply about my future here and I want to make sure I am on track to grow and advance in parallel. So she said the thing that she was most afraid of and owned the conversation anyway. And I think that's the unlock is when you voice the fear, it loses power.

(03:09):
And you shouldn't have to choose between motherhood and ambition. So today I was like thinking it would be great to share a little bit more around these scenarios that are very, very common in the workplace that hold us back from feeling comfortable to have the discussions about career advancement or raises.

Blake (03:27):
Yeah, I love the idea of acknowledging that fear right off the bat, just removing or just destroying that paper dragon that's keeping you from accomplishing that goal. I guess a place to start then is, or was there something that you believed about promotions that turned out to be completely wrong? It was a mindset you had and then you were like, you had this aha and it was like, no, this isn't even a thing.

Kelcy (03:48):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I could probably list 20. I'll keep it tight here. And maybe three things. So I was raised by parents, maybe some people can relate here who said, you put your head down, work super duper hard and raises will come, right?

Blake (04:06):
Yeah. The results will come just by working hard. That's all you got to do.

Kelcy (04:09):
Yes. And if my dad is listening to this, I would say you were pretty wrong because he worked for himself, so it worked for him. So that can hold true in spots, but in the corporate world when you're working for other people, it pushes you down further and further when you kind of what we've talked about in other topics before, when you become just this doer, it gets more and more piles of work and less upward movement. So I'd say that was one thing that hard work would be enough. Second was just wait for it to be your time. And I learned the hard way you need to drive it. It's not HR, it's not your boss. You have to do it.

Blake (04:54):
You can't rely on anyone else to advance your own career. That's going to be your responsibility.

Kelcy (05:00):
You can't rely on having a great manager like Blake, you have to drive it on your own because everybody is thinking about themselves and their busy plates and what they need to get done for the organization. And so you always need to be prioritizing and surfacing and keeping you top of mind. So a simple one here is every eight weeks you should be having a development chat. Otherwise you are leaving growth opportunities, you are leaving promotions, you're leaving money on the table. And I can afterwards share a simple agenda if anybody is interested for how to have those conversations. But the point is don't wait for it to be your time. Make sure that you have this built in always on a system to be talking about these things and then it also helps it not feel so unnatural.

Blake (05:55):
Right, right.

Kelcy (05:56):
And then the third one, if you go to my Instagram, you might hear me talk about this way too much, which is the new world expectation is, just doing and being great at your role isn't enough. And so I talk about outsized impact, and that would be the third hard learning is that I thought you work hard, you wait for your time and you crush your job description and you will get promoted. And anymore that's not the truth. Outsized impact means that you are delivering results essentially on top of your day job. And it's something that is quantifiable so that you can say, on top of my day job, I also delivered X, Y, and Z. So those would be the three things. If I could go back and talk to my 20 or even 30-year-old self, I would say I got wrong and wish I would've course corrected earlier.

Blake (06:49):
Love all that. I think it's so practical and I think we do go into depth, I think when we got a chance to talk to you last, I think in episode five we were talking about managing up. We do go into a lot of these things in depth. So if you're listening right now, pause here, go back to episode five, go through all those. If you're really interested, there's a great insights that Kelcy had about these things and practical application of it. I think that's the thing that I always want to harp back onto is how do I execute? We could talk about it for days, but how do I actually action on this or execute on it? And Kelcy, you always bring us great actionable things that I can do tomorrow to advance my own careers, which is love that. So thank you. Getting back into this topic. So I'm interested too, thinking about the clients that you work with, how often do you tell your clients that they should get promoted?

Kelcy (07:38):
Yeah, it's a hard one. I hate when people respond to questions by saying it depends or time isn't a measure, but I will say and be annoying, those are the actual answers and it is the truth. It does depend and it's not about the time spent or even always about the promotion. That might not even be the best success metric, but I definitely want to answer the question and give a rough rule of thumb. So if you are early in your career, let's say entry level to manager, a promotion, every one and a half to three years is reasonable and healthy.

Blake (08:14):
Okay

Kelcy (08:14):
This is your rapid growth phase. So if you're stuck in a role for longer than three years, something's up, something's off.

Blake (08:21):
Okay.

Kelcy (08:21):
Mid-career, manager to director, expecting a promotion every two to four years is a healthy benchmark. The bar is higher here. You're not just being evaluated on what you do as an individual contributor, but it's also about how you lead, how you think and how you grow others. So this is when it becomes more about visibility and influence and strategic impact. Then at the top senior levels like director to VP to C-suite, promotions are definitely slower here, maybe every three to five years, probably closer four to six. But this is also where the big leap happens. And so internal promotions at this level are rare and are oftentimes more limited by politics and the structure makes sense and less about performance.

Blake (09:20):
So thinking about those people that are in those, maybe they're getting close to or have even passed some of these timelines that you laid out for us, and thank you for doing that. I think that's super helpful. What would you say, what advice would you give that person where they feel like if I ask for promotion, it's going to backfire?

Kelcy (09:38):
Yes, such a tough spot. And that's how we kicked this one off, the fear of going and asking. And so I'd say let's talk about what not to do in those scenarios and then what to do. So one of the most common mistakes that I see folks making is that they want to go in and say, I deserve this. They want to go in and say this is overdue, this is, it's about time. So I would say, don't lead with those things. Do not lead with that you expect a promotion or when can I expect a promotion?

Blake (10:18):
Yeah.

Kelcy (10:19):
Instead, you should be thinking about, if I want a promotion, my best case scenario if I bring it up today is six months from now. So as I talk about what not to do, here's some things that I think would be helpful to do. And one of those is writing down this fear of why you're already not having the discussion. And maybe fear is not the right word, but writing down whatever anxiety or roadblocks or fears that you have so that you can figure out how to conquer it to have a natural conversation. Is it you're worried because that it'll backfire because the company is doing poorly or is it because you feel awkward and don't have the guts or do you feel like you're going to get fired or shunned for asking? And so I would really think about what you might state similar to what we did with the, Hey, I know I'm going on maternity leave, but I want to parallel path these discussions to kind of put it out there.

(11:19):
So that would be number one. And then number two would making it built in. I kind of already hit on this in the what would I never do, but if you expect that your promotion is six to 18 months away, the problem is then you must have a system that is going to be the walk back plan from that six months or that 18 months that is this every eight week development chats that are framed as really positive. So your first one, you could say something like, I'm wanting to uplevel and advance in my career, so I'd like to calibrate with you every eight weeks to make sure that I'm staying super close to my development and success here. And so you're building a new habit, building a system and building a safe, consistent place for you to be working towards that. So I always like to say we all manage tons of programs and products and nothing is a one and done. So why would we think managing our career that way is the right way to do it? We should manage it like a program.

Blake (12:28):
You're talking about these plans and having these conversations, and I think it brings up this topic of what does visibility and strategic communication play or what role does that play, those things play in getting promoted?

Kelcy (12:42):
Totally. If you're not telling people your impact verbally, on Slack, whatever other tools that you're using, you are invisible. And I say that, I know it sounds extreme, but invisible people don't get promoted. And I think one thing that we oftentimes make the mistake on is that we assume people know what we are doing, and it's just not the truth. People are busy with their own stuff and it's not personal. So I would say making sure that you're every other week sharing your impact and figuring out a way to do that and stop waiting for the perfect massive win to share your win or aiming for perfection, that mindset will get you stuck.

Blake (13:32):
Yeah, start talking about the little wins, the little things that you're doing, and all those things add up and all of a sudden there's a huge impact that they have collectively.

Kelcy (13:43):
You just nailed it. It's like the micro moments that are going to build the brand and present you as the leader that you want. So start sharing if you just navigated a difficult situation. Start sharing if you coach somebody on your team, loop that back. Start sharing a shift that you made that moved the needle and its outcome and impact. So those are the things that are going to get you start being perceived as a leader and making an impact on the business everywhere. So bet on yourself. People are not just sitting there thinking about your growth and development, even though we'd love for them to be. So strategic communication isn't self promotion, it's truly, you have to adopt it as this is part of being a leader and in today's world, if you want to keep growing it's non negotiable.

Blake (14:37):
Yeah, I think personally, I'm not the type of person that's going to toot my own horn. I feel like I was raised as be humble, don't be this arrogant person that talks about themselves everywhere. So for me, I think that's always been a challenge to find that line between, okay, I'm not being arrogant here. I'm not just trying to wave my own banner. But at the same time, if I want to accomplish these goals that I have for myself and I've set some lofty goals here, they need to know what I'm doing.

Kelcy (15:08):
And I would say if we were talking about this in a coaching session, that there is something that you're like, okay, it's not perfectionism, but you're holding back sharing because of you are super humble, but it's holding you back then from being perceived as a leader because they're not seeing the hard stuff that you do on a daily basis. And I think when you start thinking about it in micro moments, those are the moments when they start building trust in you, right? When you circle back with your leader and be like, Hey, I had this really difficult conversation with this person today and here's what happened, here's what I did, and here was the results. And then you sometimes also can ask for their feedback. That moment is just as powerful as you sitting in a metrics meeting and saying, I delivered 20% of revenue if you're trying to become a leader and grow because they need to see that side as well. And so I think sometimes we hold back and we're like, oh, that person's too busy, or they don't want to hear this, or this is going to come across as self-promotion when really we should think of it as like we're trying to expose people to what we're actually doing on a daily basis so that they can build trust in us as leaders.

Blake (16:29):
What a great way to showcase the immeasurable parts. Being able to conquer a difficult conversation, it's not going to show up on a chart somewhere, but being able to prove that to your leadership team, that's an amazing way of bringing that up without it being uncomfortable and asking for feedback is a great way to make that an interactive experience with that leader. Awesome. We've talked about a ton of stuff here, Kelcy. We have a lot of takeaways I feel like. There's definitely things I'm already thinking of, I'm writing them down, but if there was one thing that we could take away from today's episode getting asking for that raise, what would it be?

Kelcy (17:02):
Yeah, I think it would just be what you and I just talked about. It would be, Blake, get bold. So stop assuming people know your worth and what you're doing. It's really not personal, but they are likely thinking of themselves. And so quit thinking that folks can mind read. And I like to say, assume that they don't know shit and that will pay huge dividends.

Blake (17:29):
Great assumption. I love that one. Yeah, that's a great place to stop. Kelcy, thank you so much again for your time. We always love having you on here. Just as a reminder, can you give us where we can follow you online, your Instagram, Tiktoks, give us your handles so that if we want to hear more from what you've got going on, where can we find you?

Kelcy (17:46):
Yes. TikTok or Instagram, Instagram I'm Kelcy underscore Heringer and thank you Blake so much for having me.

Blake (17:54):
Absolutely. And everyone listening out there, if you have a question for Kelcy you want her to answer, send us a message too at practicelandpodcast.com. And again, make sure to subscribe and share Practiceland with everyone that you know. Thank you again. Good luck out there in Practiceland everybody. Got a wild customer service story or a sticky patient situation? Send us a message or voicemail. If your tale makes it into our "She did what?" segment, we'll send a thank you gift you'll actually love. Promise no cheap swag here.

Andrea (18:21):
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