There is a lot to unpack in this comment, but in general the situation described here is specific to certain kinds of organizations, with lamentably poor leadership and management cultures. If management views the employer-employee relationship as some sort of zero-sum game - they have already lost that game.
In companies with mature (which doesn't mean old - a relatively young company can also be well-run!) structures, the criteria for promotion are not nebulous. I struggle to see the wisdom in setting goals for an employee's promotion without the intention of rewarding them for working hard to meet those goals.
In general, I would encourage anyone who is in a working situation described above to look for another job - and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview! As interviewers, we are comfortable asking hard questions, I don't see why being a candidate should be any different. Is there a structured feedback system in your company? What is it, and how closely does your team follow it? When was the last person in your team promoted, and how long were they in their previous role? etc.
> and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview!
Is this really useful though. They will always tell you what you want to hear, just like you say what they want to hear.
> I struggle to see the wisdom in setting goals for an employee's promotion without the intention of rewarding them for working hard to meet those goals.
Because low level managers don't really have the power to grant that promotion and are not in position to properly explain why they lost out the promotion to a peer from another team. There are a whole of unspoken things that factor into a promotion like gaining favor by pumping your manager/VP by giving them credit publicly, thanking them for their support ect.
> Is this really useful though. They will always tell you what you want to hear, just like you say what they want to hear.
100% it's useful.
First, not everyone is going to just tell you what you want to hear. I for one am entirely transparent in interviews, often criticizing the org. Hiring someone who doesn't like the culture is an absolute disaster.
Second, you should ask the same question to every person that interviews you. If you get a bunch of different answers you're probably getting bullshitted, or they just don't have a consistent answer across the org for what you are asking. That's valuable info either way.
Third, ask questions that don't have a "right" answer. If you ask "do people who work here care about the mission?" you're going to get a yes every time. If you ask "what would you say is the biggest source of motivation for you and your team?" you'll get lots of varied answers. I know because I've asked that question and gotten countless different ones.
For the leadership/management question they have no way to know what answer you are looking for when you ask about the management philosophy. If they give a nothing answer like "we try not to micromanage" then you push. You'll either find out what it is or you'll find out that the people you are asking don't know, which suggests that there isn't one.
> and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview!
In theory, I agree. The reality is these orgs are crap for a reason...they drink too much of their own Kool Aid, they don't realize they have blindspots, etc.
The point being, good luck getting a transparent and honest answer as that's the antithesis of their philosophy.
True - this is why it's important to structure your questions in a way that makes it harder to BS - same as when interviewing someone, ask about specific instances of things.
It's been a while since I've been a candidate, so I kinda winged it in the above comment, but if you want to be balsy (and why not!) you can ask something like "Can you tell me about the last time you had to give negative performance feedback?" You might want to preface such a question a bit to qualify your reasons for asking it, but that sort of thing is not easy to BS.
Understood. It doesn't hurt to ask. I do agree. I'm just suspect of honest replies. They might not BS in the true sense. They just don't know what transparency and honesty is.
Full disclosure: I just left a marketing agency that wasn't 25% of what they said it was. I had asked questions and the answers didn't match what was actually happening. Nice people. I don't think it was intentional per se. But they were so not self-aware that they had little idea how far off they were.
A lot of orgs don't control their promotion cycle.
Imagine a local unit with the budget given for promotions from global is announced after the yearly promotion discussions of all team leaders happened.
So they had to come up with some form of ranking so that the cut off can be made based on the available budget.
So even if 15 people had done all that their team leads said would be necessary for a promotion the decision hinges on some internal ranking as well as a globally decided budget.
In companies with mature (which doesn't mean old - a relatively young company can also be well-run!) structures, the criteria for promotion are not nebulous. I struggle to see the wisdom in setting goals for an employee's promotion without the intention of rewarding them for working hard to meet those goals.
In general, I would encourage anyone who is in a working situation described above to look for another job - and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview! As interviewers, we are comfortable asking hard questions, I don't see why being a candidate should be any different. Is there a structured feedback system in your company? What is it, and how closely does your team follow it? When was the last person in your team promoted, and how long were they in their previous role? etc.