Is your ego big enough for your next promotion ?

The biggest misconception about climbing up the corporate ladder

Photo by mariel reiser on Unsplash

I had a good friend over for dinner last night. He works for a fortune 500 company. He’s been there for 20 years at this point, and he was reflecting on promotions and climbing up the corporate ladder.

Then he said something to me which I found really interesting. This is what he said :

‘I don’t have a big enough ego for my next promotion’.

This got me thinking about promotions and meritocracy.

The idea of meritocracy in business is an interesting one.

Merit-based or bulls**t-based ?

The belief that we can get recognised for our good work and ascend the corporate ladder irrespective of our background, colour or creed is what gave rise to HR practices such a performance evaluations, incentive systems, ressource planning, talent management, leadership and succession planning.

We don’t often see it this way, but it’s the idea of meritocracy that gets us to switch jobs; the prospect of finding the right job for us that’ll get us the right salary, the right appraisals, and get us to move up the corporate ladder if we can finally find the right company where we can get recognised for our work.