Overheard chat about why people don’t progress at work

What kind of boss do you have and what kind of position are you wanting?

I agree with @InDarkModeToday

Your posts are obviously coherent and written in clear English but I still find it difficult to get the nub of what you are either asking or describing.

Not sure what the conversation in the cafe has to do with the rest of your post...? What were they saying?
I don't think a snippet of a half-overheard conversation in a cafe is worth too much thought and self-flagellation.

Personally, I think not everyone (myself included) is destined to be top of the career ladder, and that's okay. I'm certainly never going to be, and I'm fine with it. I know I'm too lazy and don't care enough. I'm also not massively motivated by money, so that doesn't really help either. I don't want a job that's all-consuming, and for that you have to be happy with a job that isn't at the top of the ladder, and doesn't pay the big bucks.

This. I don’t want to “progress” much further in my role as it just means going into management which I don’t enjoy and find management a boring job.
I enjoy my technical/specialist type job and I’m quite happy doing what I do, which still involves line managing a couple of being but management is just a small part of my job rather than my whole job. It’s a bit annoying that you don’t get paid as much as management roles for being a specialist but that’s just the way it is I guess.

Don’t give up. 💜

Use chatgpt. Get it to ask you questions on random topics or work topics or a topic of conversation (you can be as random or specific as you want) and type in replies and ask it to mark them. Get used to responding on the fly. It's just a computer so won't judge you- just let you know how far you are from a "good" answer.

@OchreCrab
There are two ways to 'progress' in work: going into management, or becoming a technical expert / specialist in a narrow field.

Management is all about communication and being a 'people person', as well as strategic thinking, organisation and planning.
Being an expert often means higher pay but minimal line-management and few or no employees under you - although you do still have to communicate to the business managers what you have been doing and achieving.

Is your role at all technical or specialist? That might be a pathway that suits you better.

I recommend that you read free materials at this resource. Wes Kao is writing a lot how to improve your written and verbal communication especially on executive level (if you want to progress) and gives excellent PRACTICAL advice.

www.weskao.com/newsletter

If you are sounding confused/unclear/waffle it can be an issue in climbing the corporate ladder and become head of something. However the good news is that these skills can be improved if you focus on them.

Good luck! You can do it.

It's crap having no money, but (without meaning to be patronising) life is not about the job you do.
Your role in life is raising four autistic kids, as well as you can. That is your direction.
I would say something like "I'm sure you are brilliant at it and a wonderful mother", but of course I don't know that, even if it is true.

Sending you good wishes and strength.

You may feel a lack of confidence speaking in a meeting etc. because you need to prepare. No teacher/lecturer would just walk into a class and wing it. They will have spent a long time preparing for what they are going to say and how they are going to say it, have notes etc.

You should do the same. So if you are going to a meeting and you are worried you will be put on the spot and get tangled up with what you want to day, you need to read the agenda and write down what you want to contribute to the various topics. Then stand up and practise saying your comments.

You will need to practise several times and still not be confident in the meeting so take some notes. Just a few words on each topic to remind you of the most important things you want to say.

No one can not prepare and hope to wing it and expect everything to be fine.

If you prepare you will become as confident, fluent and articulate as the next person - practice makes perfect.

Not saying it is the case with you because I dont know you but I do think there is a level where people can reach and that's it.

For instance I will never be a CEO or anywhere near. I dont have the skills to do it a lot of the soft skills are hard to learn or fake. So anywhere near CEO is out of reach for me.

On the plus side, communication skills can be learned and you clearly used them when you ran your own business.

I hear you! After 16 years as a high performer, delivering over and above the role description and continually overlooked for promotion, I left. New company - 18 months as a horizontal move, 3 months of that at higher level duties, promoted to director role. 12 months in director role, murmurings of senior director in near future with acting options at higher again. It's refreshing to be recognised and rewarded.

Communication skills are a very important part of management and leadership. You will get into all sorts off HR issues without them and you won't be able to keep people who report to you accountable. Have you done communication training? Have you done leadership training? I did MBTI years ago, it's very outdated but helped a lot in understanding that people have different styles. There's much newer stuff about different styles. The VIA character strengths survey is also helpful. Most likely your mentor may suggest you do that.

After reading your posts on this thread, I wonder if this might help.

To be effective, communication has to be precise and have clarity. Otherwise people have to ask follow up questions or misunderstand what you are saying and communication becomes confusing rather than effective

Eg your thread title stated that you overheard a conversation which made you doubt your ability to progress but you didn't elaborate on that. Were the specifics of conversation relevant or did it just trigger a thought process in you?

Several posters have said they don't understand what you're trying to say and you've misunderstood one response. Take time to consider what you actually want people to take or understand from your communication.

I'm not saying this to criticise but because this suggests to me that maybe you need to take time before communicating to mentally prepare what you want to say/communicate. Maybe your thoughts get a bit jumbled? Take time to process what someone else has said, even if that means asking them to repeat what they have said or reading it more than once? Take a deep breath before responding more slowly maybe.

These strategies will buy you a little bit of extra time to process your own thoughts.

I wonder of this is related to an issue growing up when you felt criticised for what you said or that you had to be perfect? Because panic about responding to people, being uncertain about your own position on something, being unable to express yourself clearly and low self esteem can be related to that.

I must admit OP, I'm very upset at the misleading title. I thought you were goug to divulge some juicy gossip like, "I don't progress because I won't give the boss a bj". This was 90% of people's comments I heard when someone missed out. All the people getting their promotions were close friends of the boss. It does help as they are with you more so can give you more tips, but you just need to find out what the manager wants to hear. Very rarely is it about he actual ability to perform, more just talking the talk.

I suffer with this.

I think if you are having trouble communicating your feelings, then you need to work on understanding your feelings first.

so if someone asks you about a new intiative, and you’ve been put on the spot, and actually haven’t formulated an opinion instead of just blurting out something like ‘ Yes that’s amazing, wow um yeah let’s do this!’

what I’ve learned to do is pause, take stock of my feelings (which are usually ‘ why the fuck are you asking me? I don’t even care, I haven’t even grasped what you are trying to do here and how much extra work it is, plus I don’t think it’s going to work anyway) then you speak slower and add waffle at the beginning of a sentence to give you time.

so you say ‘Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for asking for my thoughts. I can see you’ve spent a lot of time on trying to improve the xxxx issue, and it will be key to moving forward in xxx area. (You are buying tile to process your feelings, regulate your emotions and come up with a waffle answer). My intial thoughts are positive, I’m really interested in how it will look like on the ground and how it will be received by the team (basically good luck with that) and how we can use it as an opportunity to build on the really good existing relationships we have as well as develop others. I’d be very interested to hear (because I’m a great listener and you’ve picked on me so you can fuck off) what others think.

Basicall you need to learn to bullshit a bit, bounce shit back and watch others very carefully and learn from them.

I have always taken a lot of secondments to take the next step up and learnt from other people.

Being put on the spot can be uncomfortable but you are allowed to say that you will take that as an action and come back to everyone - admittedly not every time but you do get to it after a while.

I've been lucky to have had good jobs and managers who I have loved working for, but there good because I have enjoyed them. Pay progression is important but it's not about being a head of department or being the most senior person in the room it's about doing your job well and looking around for new opportunities.

Unfortunately, being a good communicator is key to progressing in a lot of roles. Toastmasters is a great and low cost way to practice both your formal presentation skills and thinking/speaking off the cuff.

I'd also be wary of too much job hopping as I've always found it easier to get promoted internally (although I've always worked for very large organisations). Are you jumping ship before you've given enough time for promotion? Do people know who you are in the organisation? Do you network internally as well as looking for jobs outside?

In my experience you usually need to be working above the level expected of your role in order to be ready for promotion. Do you have a competency framework and can you work towards demonstrating that you're performing at the level above?

Most people have a job not a career.

The one thing that gets people moving up the career ladder is confidence. If you don’t have confidence in yourself and you ability you’ll stay exactly where you are.

Sorry but you come across as scatty and not knowing what you want, apart from ‘a top job’. You need to be more focused. You need to understand your current role inside out and where it fits within the business so you can see where you could move to next.

OP - I’m not being nasty, but I think this might be a problem in progressing with some jobs where communication is key. In management roles you’ll need to be able to communicate clearly and precisely with your team. I know from experience that managers who can’t communicate cause all kinds of trouble.

Is it that English isn’t your first language (in which case, you’re doing pretty well) or just that you find yourself tongue-tied at expressing yourself due to anxiety or lack of vocabulary? For any of these situations it’s possible to improve things with training.

I'm a "Head of" and think you'll struggle if you can't communicate clearly.

Senior management level is all about communication.

Sharing your vision with stakeholders and getting them to buy into it, giving clear feedback to those who you line manage, reporting to the Board on your successes to justify your role! It's endless.

I'd say you can comfortably be a bit crap at the actual job at this level (I'm not of course! 😅), so long as you can communicate.

None of us do, but OP is coming across as barely literate in her comments here. I know she has identified communication as an issue, and it seems like it is perhaps more than just verbal communication that's a problem, given her difficulty in writing a coherent sentence here. That in itself might indicate why she might find it hard to progress at work. I actually wondered while reading the thread whether she might have a learning disability.

Sorry that was supposed to quote a previous post.

You just need to be fluent at talking pure 💩in an interview.

Its mumsnet FGS. I dont write as professionally on here as I would at work 🙄