Mentor tools III: Promotable goals

As mentors, one of our purposes is to come along with our mentees in their career progression. For that, it is important that we help them set their goals, keep track of their progress and handle expectations.

How can we face these challenges? Let’s dive into some ideas that I’ve explored during my time being a mentor. In this article, I’ll cover some tips on setting goals. I’ll talk about keeping track of progress and handling expectations in the next one. So, keep tuned!

Setting goals

Goal setting looks like an easy task. Many of us have thought: “This year I want to improve my physical health. I’ll join a yoga group”. But how many times do we all fail in achieving a goal? Answer it yourself 🙂

Luckily, nowadays there are a lot of techniques to avoid failing in fulfilling goals. For example, there is the SMART goals process, which helps define goals in order to make them more achievable.

I won’t dive into this kind of technique in this article; I’ll consider that you already have a background on this. Instead, I’ll talk about another important concept that can speed up your mentee’s growth in your company: Promotable goals.

Promotable goals

Promotable goals are those that can foster promotion within a company. At first sight, it can be considered that all goals will contribute to getting compensation, e.g., a salary raise or a promotion, as its fulfilment involves making an effort. But this doesn't work exactly like that.

Think about this situation: you’ve carefully followed the SMART goals process and you’ve fulfilled all your goals. You think you deserve compensation but, after a performance review, you don’t get it, or you get a lower one than expected. What could be one of the causes for this unexpected result? Maybe you’ve been working on achieving non-promotable goals.

Therefore, knowing what promotable goals are is really important to helping your mentees achieve their professional objectives. So, according to my experience, these are the main attributes of promotable goals:

1. Valuable to the company

Imagine that, as a developer, you set taking a Chinese language course as a goal. You are really good at learning languages, and you also enjoy it. That is a great goal, fully aligned with your interests and abilities but… will it carry a compensation in your company? It depends. E.g. if your company has Chinese clients and your knowledge will improve communication with them, it probably will. But if your company has nothing to do with the Chinese market, probably not.

So, a promotable goal should take into account what is valued in your own company. If it doesn’t bring value to the company, you’ll be making efforts towards your own growth, or maybe your growth within another company or the market, but not towards your growth inside the company you are working in right now (and, consequently, not towards a compensation there).

At this point, you as a mentor will probably have more knowledge on what will bring value to your company, so you can give good guidance to your mentees at this point. And, if you are not sure about it, you’ll probably know who to ask to get this information. Don’t hesitate in asking the people who know. Maybe they can give some ideas on goals that can bring value to the company and match your mentee’s motivation!

2. Adjusted to role

Apart from setting a goal that is not related to your company's needs, another example of a non-promotable goal could be one that has little to do with your role or what is expected from your position. Moreover, if this can be done by many other people in the organization.

For example, think about tech interviews with junior candidates to join your company. If this task can be accomplished by experienced junior developers, this can probably be a promotable goal for them, as they will get experience in this kind of task. But if you are a high mid/senior developer and you set this as a goal, you could be spending your time and effort accomplishing a non-promotable goal, as this task can be done by someone less experienced and is probably not expected from your role.

As a mentor you’ll probably know what is expected from your mentee’s role. You are likely to be a more experienced colleague that has gone through your mentee’s path before, so you will be a capable person to give good advice on this. Anyway, if you are not sure about what is expected or not from your mentee’s role, you can go and ask the people in charge of handling career paths in your company.

3. Visible (out of sight, out of mind)

Another worthwhile attribute of a promotable goal is being visible.

Imagine that you have really good soft skills, and you know you contribute in some way to make people around you happier at work and, therefore, more productive and committed. You feel this contribution deserves some kind of compensation but maybe this is not perceived by people who don’t work around you. What can you do to make this visible to people in charge of taking decisions on compensation within your company? Well, maybe you can give a talk to share some tips. Or maybe you can write an article. This way, you will not only be sharing your valuable knowledge with others but also your skills and experience will become visible.

Another way to make your goal visible is to accomplish it within a team. Especially if your company collects peer feedback, taking part in different initiatives where you can work closely with other people can make your contributions to the company more visible. You can lead that initiative or join as a team member, that depends on your seniority and motivation. But don’t hesitate in joining any group in your company to achieve a goal if you feel like doing it. If you do a good job, it will definitely give you visibility.

Finally, you can propose a new initiative that you think could bring value to your company to make yourself visible. You can lead a conversation group on, for example, software architecture. Or you can even write a newsletter on a monthly basis about news in tech. Think about what is expected from your role and could bring value to your company and start working on that!

4. Measurable

Last but not least, promotable goals should be measurable.

Imagine this conversation between the person that has been doing a follow-up of your goals during the year and the one to take the decision for your compensation:

I think my mentee should be promoted/get a salary raise because she has been studying a lot and has improved her tech skills…

Now, imagine this other conversation:

I think my mentee should be promoted because she has obtained an AWS certification and written an article about…

How do you think it is easier for the person taking the decision of your compensation to understand the value of your work? Probably explaining measurable results.

So, to sum up, help your mentees to set promotable goals to make the most of their time and efforts in terms of compensation.

Obviously, don’t forget about helping align these goals with your mentee’s interests and skills. Without their motivation and skill alignment, goals are less likely to be achieved. And your mentees will probably get better results if they can bring out and develop their own natural skills. But my advice is to take into account these four attributes of promotable goals if the purpose of your mentee’s goals is getting compensation in the company you are working for.

Final thoughts

Now that you’ve got some theoretical knowledge on promotable goals, I’ll leave some questions you can ask your mentees before setting a goal to test if it is promotable:

What (direct/indirect) value will bring this goal to the company?
Is it expected from your role to have this goal?
Can someone with another role or less experience do it?
Will people deciding your compensation notice you are working on this?
(If not) What can you do to make it visible?
Will it be easily measured?
(If not) How can you make it measurable?

Once these questions have been answered, you’ll probably have helped your mentees choose great goals for their career growth, congrats!

Anyway, setting promotable goals doesn’t 100% assure compensation. There are some circumstances that can’t be controlled by mentors or mentees that can come along the way. But I’ll talk about this in my next article.

See you in the next one!