Why You're Not Getting Promoted (And What to Do About It)

Unless we're willing to get out of our own way, we'll continue to make the same mistakes over and over. I lost my passion. I lost my purpose. I was sucked into everything I worked to train people to avoid.

I stayed too long. I got comfortable. I got complacent. If you're a professional who works hard, shows up every day, and still can't figure out why the promotion keeps going to someone else, this episode was recorded exactly for you.

Our guest, Zelinka, is a CIO with over thirty years of experience leading at the highest levels. In this conversation, he gets uncomfortably honest about the real reasons talented people stall, including the moment he had to admit it happened to him. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what's blocking your next promotion, and you'll have a clear framework for closing that gap before your next performance review. Let's go.

Welcome to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast, the show that helps professionals get promoted, help expand their influence, and lead with confidence. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, Chief Information Officer in the financial services industry, joined by my cohost, Terry Baylor, the CEO of a healthcare tech startup. Together, we've spent decades building teams, transforming organizations, and coaching leaders through the moments that defined their careers. This is Your Competitive Edge.

Now let's dive into today's episode. Right, so let's jump to the next point, why you're not getting promoted even though you work hard. Rob, you kind of touched on that a little bit, right, as to, you know, some people believe that because they're busy, then they should be promoted. But why is it that, you know, for some for people like that, they get stagnant in their career?

Why is that? Yeah. Well, again, I think sometimes people get in their own ways. I'll back to, again, a sports analogy.

Sometimes we need to be humbled. You know, we might feel we're at the the peak of our game. We we never lose, and all of sudden we lose. I was sharing with my son.

He was shocked. You know? The two thousand and four men's Olympic basketball team did not win the gold medal. They won the bronze.

And my son was like, really? And I said, yeah. Really? And he googled it, and he said, LeBron James was on the team.

I said, oh, yeah. He was. And I said, and they lost. And they lost convincingly.

I think it was to Puerto Rico, actually. And he said, that's amazing. I said, yeah. But that humbled them.

And that meant they recognized at that moment in time that they got in their own way. And so oftentimes, unless we're willing to get out of our own way, we'll continue to make the same mistakes over and over. And as someone that evaluates leaders and people, you have to determine not just can the person perform at that level, but can they perform consistently at that level? And will they represent our company, our team, our customers at the level we need them to represent us as.

Mhmm. And so oftentimes, you end up as a leader evaluating people, and it's the same as a coach. You know, you have to evaluate who has the best mind for the game that gives you an ability to drive the outcomes that you're trying to drive for. And I think those are the fundamental things that prevent people from being promoted.

There are people that all and we come across these people often in our lives. They're entitled. Wow. I tell you what, those are the hardest people to work with, when there's a sense of entitlement.

Hey, I went to school. I got this degree. I amassed these certifications. I have these awards, these credentials.

Fantastic. And again, another harsh my team refers to these as Rob isms. These are things that I say that are funny, confusing, frustrating. So one day we were talking about network routing.

If you wanna be bore bored, get into a room with a bunch of network architects and start talking about routing. And so I asked a simple question. How come we're doing it this way? Have we considered this way?

And and my position was I'm seeking to understand, not seeking to challenge. Right. This man, young guy, slid his business card across the table, and it has his name on it. And I'm looking at it.

And then he took a pen and he circled four numbers. CCIEs. Right? I knew it.

And I looked at it, and I said, I'm not following you. I said, Prisoners have numbers too. What are you trying to say to me? Right?

And the whole room so there two types of personas in that room at that moment in time. You could tell the air came out of the room. Some people laughed. Other people wanted to laugh, but didn't want to laugh for fear of what would happen if they laughed, right?

Yeah. But let me tell you, that was the moment that set that person and I up for success because he needed to be humbled. No one had the courage or the commitment to humble him, and he and I became the best of friends, and that person has followed me multiple times in my career because I believe in him, and he believes in me, and together we're better than if we were separate doing it on our own. That is awesome.

That's a fantastic great story. I bet. Is. That is.

It also brings to mind for me too, and Terry, you talk about this all the time with the gentlemen that you met, another thing that leads to stagnation in your career is just not understanding when this season is over. Right? Understanding when, okay, I've done what I was called to do here, it's time for me to move on to this next place that's in my purpose. And we've seen Terry and I know people who have stayed longer than they should have, and then it goes bad, right?

You get to that point of diminishing return to where everything you do now is working against you then is working for you. Rob, have you ever seen that in your career? Not only have I seen it, I recently experienced it, Ralph, and so again, another story, so I beg your indulgence. In my most recent role, I stayed too long.

I got comfortable. I got complacent. The last couple years of my tenure at the company was just hard on me. I lost my passion.

I lost my purpose. I was sucked into everything I worked to train people to avoid. Right? And eventually, I did the unthinkable.

I teed myself up for succession planning as being replaced. And I remember that meeting. It a little over a year ago now, and my HR person was shocked, didn't know what was coming. After that meeting with the CEO and the chief people officer and COO, my business partner from HR said, Rob, what the hell did you just do?

I said, I knew exactly what I was doing. It's time. And so then, fast forward, now I leave everything I knew for the last eight years, and I'm into this unchartered water territory. And the first thing I did is I needed to reset.

I needed to rebuild myself, reinvent myself, which I've done time and time again over thirty years. I'm in this still do because the world's evolving and shifting and changing around us, we can either become a victim of it or we can drive it. We can either disrupt ourselves or be disrupted by these forces, and I choose to disrupt myself. And so once I started the rebuild process, I had to regain my confidence.

I had to get my swagger again, Ralph. Being around people like you was so instrumental in that because going back to baseball, just to make sure that I'm feeding Teri's passions, I had to answer the fundamental question. Do I still have the 95 mile an hour fastball to compete at the major league level? Or is my pathway now, I'm going to be a minor league athlete?

So you think about the Sugar Land minor league team. That team every now and again has a former major leaguer that's there just because they love the game and they want to play, but the level of play is very different than it is at the major league level. And so I really wrestled with, do I still have it in me? My heart is telling me I do, but is it up here?

Do I have the skills and the traits to lead another team? And here's what I concluded after a deep rationalization period where I thought about it. I was vulnerable with people. That's a key with leadership too.

You can't be afraid to be vulnerable. You have to acknowledge your gaps. So I talked to my wife about it. I talked to people like you, Riff, about it, who I trusted, who would give me what I needed to hear, not necessarily what I wanted to hear.

What I really wanted someone to tell me is, Rob, the game has passed you, and you've served well. You have nothing to be ashamed of. It's time for you to consider the minors. But here's what I learned.

I had people tell me, Rob, for goodness sakes, you still got the fastball. Need to be at the major league level, and I really needed to hear that. And that was part of getting me where I needed to be, Ralph, mentally, physically. That's good.

That's good. Oh, man. That's so good. That's so good.

Now Rob, I really, really, really, really appreciate you sharing that because, and I'll share that, I made a decision that, you know what, I've been playing around with my company, but now I need to really just push it. And I had to make that decision be in an uncomfortable spot to pursue my God given goal or dream or passion, my God given work. And so, yeah, you have to get real real with yourself when you get out of that comfort zone. So man, I really appreciate you sharing that.

Again, listeners, please take what is being shared to heart here because there's no better information than when someone is sharing from the heart, right, and real life, real tangible details about how to recalibrate. I mean, that's really what it's about because it happens in different stages, different moments in life, things occur where we have to recalibrate and that's a part of, honestly, it's a part of growth. That's how we grow. It absolutely is.

You know, Terry, so when I left everything I knew after eight years, I needed something to fill the time, the gap. I needed to reestablish my purpose, professional purpose. My personal purpose is always the same. I need to be the best husband and father I can be.

Doctor. Correct. Those are the people I really truly work for. Those are the people that believe in me when I fail.

Those are the people that believe in me even when they're angry with me because I do something silly, or say something silly. But at the end of the day, what helped me to reestablish and reconnect with my professional purpose was the creation of something I always wanted to do, just didn't have the time for it. And that was to create a narrative that I call simply leadership, life, and legacy. The reason those three things are important is I'm a leader, but I also have a life.

The things that we learn in our life apply to how we lead people and how we learn from those experiences. But ultimately, we're all leaving a legacy behind. And so at a high level, the legacy I want to leave behind is I want people to know that I was a good human, that I worked hard, that I cared, that I had empathy, that when I made an unpopular decision, it was with the knowledge and understanding of the implications of that decision on others but that I didn't take it lightly.

That if I made a decision that was counter to the decision of the masses, that people knew that if failed, I'd be the first to say, The decision failed. That was on me. I should have taken into consideration the majority opinion. But that's where you establish yourself as a good leader, and that's, I think, essentially why people have worked with me multiple times over thirty plus years.

I was just reminiscing with someone who I've known for thirty years. That man has worked with me four times over thirty years. Wow. Wow.

I mean, that's an incredible commitment to another person. When someone entrusts you with their livelihood, that's profound. That's huge. Yes.

Yes. I love that leadership, life, and legacy. So Rob, I'm already pitching, man. We're gonna have to have a leadership, life, and legacy segment and you're gonna have to be on me.

Yeah. That's beautiful. Is beautiful. Hey, I wanna take a moment and ask you directly.

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Thank you in advance. And now let's get back to it. Good. That's good.

That's good. Let's let's jump into the next, topic. So how to align your daily work with career growth? Right?

I love this because it really talks to reverse engineering promotion. Not looking at it from, Oh, I'm just going to work hard. Well, that's not enough. You have to understand how you can prioritize and be strategic in your project selection.

Talk about that, Rob. At some point in your career, you start to understand that just turning the widget is not going to be enough to get me promoted. I need to go volunteer for some strategic things that move the needle forward. Will you talk about that a little Yeah, sure, Ralph.

So you start by asking yourself, Am I practicing at the next level? So I mentioned my son who's 11. He's playing with a 13 and under team. Why?

Because that's the next level, and it's hard for him, and that's why he's struggling right now. But it will get easier in time. Last year, he played with a 14 and under team, and and quite candidly, that was a stretch. He was 10.

Mhmm. But he grew as an athlete, as a leader, as a professional. We are growing too. And so by practicing at the next level, by thinking at the next level so if you're a director right now and you aspire to be a VP or you aspire to be a CIO in fact, one of the things I'm doing right now with the Houston CIO group, the NextGen Leadership Team, is I'm helping emerging leaders, next generation leaders, learn the things that will provide the foundation for them to get to where they want to go.

Now I'm also sharing some of those Jedi mind tricks. I'm also sharing some of those Rob isms to be funny and because you have to learn the language of the person you're speaking to. So those are the things that I stay focused on. If you're into F1, which I am, the best drivers are looking two or three cars ahead, not the car in front of them.

That's where the accident is, two or three ahead. And that's what makes them successful drivers. And if you're in your career journey, you need to be looking a layer or two ahead because that's how you're gonna get there. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And without being able to focus on that, you become misaligned. Right? You become misaligned to the to the point of you start to head in a whole different direction than where you want to end up. Right?

To your point. Right? I had a a mentor tell me one time, he said it this way, and it's the same thing you're saying, Rob. He said, You always wanna appear like you're the next person.

And what he meant by that was if your desire is to be in the next role that your boss is in, right, you wanna be acting on that level so that if that person walks away, when everybody looks and says, Who's the next person? It's obviously you, because you're already working on that level. And there's one other dynamic there, I think, that's important. You have to have good rigor, good habits.

So if you aspire to play at the next level up, then you have to be very strategic on your work ethic. You need to take swings. It's interesting. I keep going back to my son who's 11.

He's our everything right now that our older children have successfully navigated their path into adulthood and being productive humans in our world. He tried out for the little league team. Little league team for him is fun. It's not as serious.

It's not as stressful, but you could see him. Like he was in the on deck circle, and he was sizing up the pitcher, And he his swing you I I said I said to his coach at the travel team, said, thank you so much, coach Snipes, for being the man you are and investing in our son. I can see the impact he you've made on him because he like, he's going out there. It's one thing to look the part.

You can put eye black under your eyes. You can I'm learning this new language, guys. My son refers to it as being dripped up. Dripped up means you look I got to get dripped.

Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Miss drip is nice.

That'll only get you so far. Right? You can look the part, and people will give you the benefit of the doubt until they can't. Right?

You gotta be able to act the part. And so seeing him out there acting the part, taking the swings like you would if you were 14 and under. Same way in your career. If you aspire to be a VP and you're a senior manager, you need to start practicing and acting like a VP.

You aspire to be a C level? You need to act like a C level if you're a director. That's right. That's right.

I started almost impersonating some of the things. I started taking the things that I see them do. How do they dress? How's that different from the way that I dress?

How do they speak when they're in a room? How's that different from the way that I speak? Right? And start, you know and I'm not saying lose your own identity, right, but there are certain qualities that you can start to take and start to add that to yourself.

And guess what? People will start to see you on that level once you start to perfect those things, right? So I appreciate that. That is good stuff.

So let's move to the next topic. So how to increase your influence at work without working longer hours. I love this, right, because this is about being strategic. 100%, strategic, right, having influence versus output, and the difference there, right, because again, that's the difference between just being busy, right, and being impactful, right, you know, and strategic meeting participation.

Terry and I talk about this all. We go back to the Jedi mind tricks, right, Rob? I mean, how to how to, you know, ask the right questions to actually guide the conversation in a certain direction so that it can be impactful, right? You know, so like, what what behaviors for you over your career have helped to increase your influence?

Yeah. So I refer to it this way, Ralph, having proximity to the decisions where the action is. You know, in in six six sigma training, you learn about the the Jemba walk. That's where the action happens.

That's where the challenges are. Now it's really important as well that there's some ethical visibility in the mix. Don't compromise what you stand for and what you believe in. If you stand for nothing If you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing, right?

So be who you are. Be true to yourself. And so when you blend those things together, what you're ultimately doing is you're treating visibility as a strategic communication tool rather than a tool that is going to self promote you. You don't have to self promote yourself to some degree.

That will happen on its own. People will lift you up in a room. People will ask for your presence at the table. People will ask for your input on a decision.

And if they're not, that should tell you something. That's good. They're not listening to you. They might be hearing you, but they're not listening, and there is a fundamental difference between listening and hearing, and my wife will tell you this.

I hear her all the time, but she accuses me of not listening because she has to repeat herself. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

So the strategic part of that is being listening, right, so that you can make sure that you understand clearly, you know, what's being communicated, and to be able to, you know, function and act off that. That is powerful. That's powerful. You know, the ability to build visibility, Rob, is definitely one of your strategic superpowers, and understanding that just coming in and turning the widget and never talking to anybody is never going to get you anywhere in your career.

Right? It'll get you a paycheck because that's what they're contractually obligated to do. You work, they pay you. But if you want to actually get some and people forget this all the time, and I harp on this, people are people first, right?

We look at these titles and we look at, you know, all the responsibilities that they have, or maybe compensation that they make, and we think that there's some kind of super this and that, but they're human first. And human connectivity will trump, you know, education, it'll trump, you know, all kind of things, right? So I think that is just fantastic. That's just fantastic.

That's fantastic. So let's move on to the next point, how to stay calm and focused under pressure at work, Critical skill, especially if you want to get promoted, because, and I've heard it said this way, when there's a crisis, nobody cares what your rank is, they care about who's going to be the leader. You talk about how emotional reactivity can damage credibility in the workplace. So calmness ultimately builds trust, and it also instills a sense of reliability, which I would submit are foundational for long term authority.

I'll give you an example of this. We've all been in an area that's unfamiliar, not well lit, maybe completely dark. Think of yourself walking up a set of stairs, and you're with a small child, and the child is anxious, starting to cry because they're in an unfamiliar area. You are the sense of calm for them.

What would happen if you started crying and started to show anxiety? The child would now lose any sense of confidence, any sense of reliability. So true. And you might be terrified of yourself, Ralph, but you're right.

You have to have some situational awareness there. And so as a leader But there's a balance, right? So now I've shared that end. Let me go to the other end.

When I first moved to Houston almost fifteen years ago now, I was responsible for this team, 40 people. We lived in what we called the fishbowl. So we all sat in this open area that was walled off with glass partitions, and invariably people would come in for help, for support. And one of my people said to me, Rob, we don't see you as a human.

And I said, what do you mean? And he said, you never show any emotion. You never get upset. You never tend to react.

You're always pretty monotone. Mhmm. And I pondered that, Ralph, and I put a bookmark in that chapter. And so one day, one of our executives came in as a peer of mine, and she was very demanding and more so very disrespectful to people.

Started name dropping, you know, using colorful language. And I sat in the far back, and I was just taking it all in. And I said to myself, this is an opportunity. And so I got up, and I said to her, I said, look, we understand your frustration.

We're here to help. We're here to serve, but you will not be disrespectful to these people. These people were working hard. They're here to serve and support, but they are not here to be treated this way.

And we gave her what she needed. She walked out and literally And I walked out too. And what I didn't recognize at the time was that was the moment that my credibility rose, because they saw a side of me they hadn't seen before. But you got to pick and choose those spots, Ralph.

That's good. Because if you're one side or the other, you're on this side, you're too passive, and you don't have the backbone to stand up when you need to stand up. But if you're too aggressive on the other side, then people look at you as potentially being unreasonable. And it's very hard to have a reasonable conversation with an unreasonable human.

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So what I'm hearing out of that is that stability brings a level of executive presence, Because again, if you're looking for someone to promote and you want to make sure that you can trust this person to handle it, you're looking at how they deal with stressful situations or things like that. To your point, your story was spot on. I bet that builds such a level of credibility that your team will follow you through any fire, right?

Because they know that you're going to stand up and protect them. But I remember a guy told me one time, he's like, I'm never too high, I'm never too low. I keep it right in the middle. Right?

And at the time, I didn't realize what he was doing was dropping a nugget for sustainability over time for me, right? But I've come to adopt that, so I appreciate that now. That's really good, because calm leaders are the ones who are promoted into complexity. And I would submit to you, Ralph, we see the true mark of a human during times of duress.

Yes. Not when everything is good. That's Most anyone can drive the car, navigate the boat or vessel in calm waters. It's the ones that have to navigate a storm, pothole, dynamics that are out of their control.

Those are the ones that really shine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's good. That's good, that's good. So let's wrap up on our final point of weekly productivity systems for career growth, right?

Been talking about focus and things of that nature. I think a self audit review is something that I know that I've used a lot. So what does weekly focus reset look like for you? Yeah.

Well, we have to be intentional and purposeful in our efforts. We also have to be disciplined. And some of this stuff is basic blocking and tackling, so to speak, or what I call hygiene. So think about it this way, Ralph.

Most humans get up every morning, well intended. They, brush their teeth, they comb their hair. Those are foundational elements. Those, in some regards, are those ruthless priorities, I said.

So no matter what happens in life, you're going to start there, right? If you start with a good foundation there, then it allows you to reset when you need to reset. It allows you to realign when you need to realign, and it also allows you to stay focused on the things that materially matter. Those Yes.

Imperatives that are going to move the needle for yourself as a leader, for your team that you're leading, for your clients that you're serving, your company. And then also that level of focus allows you to eliminate the distractions from every hour, day, week. Because let's face it, there are no shortage of distractions. You probably aren't aware, but my son has popped his head in here two or three times during the course of us talking because, you know, he wants to know when dad's gonna be dad now.

Mhmm. Mhmm. So I've been focused because my commitment, my investment is with you and Terry today. Yeah, those are the things that you have to do.

You have to be ruthless in that regard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that discipline, builds long term momentum, right? Because it allows you to sustain moving forward. Rob, this has been fantastic.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for sharing your gift with the world, blessing us to be on the podcast. Any closing remarks for any of the listeners that you have? Well, thank you so much. It was an honor and a privilege.

I'm humbled by the opportunity to share the things I'm passionate about. I'm still to this day extremely passionate about serving others, sharing my life's work, my experience, learning from others. I look forward to continuing to do that together with people like you, Ralph. Awesome.

Awesome. Well, we we definitely gonna do it together. Thank you so much. And, until the next time, take care and be safe, everyone.

Bye bye. That's a wrap on this episode of the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. If today's conversation added value, I want you to do three things right now. Number one, subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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