4 Subtle Signs You Should Turn Down A Promotion, According To Psychology
How to tell if you’re better off staying put in your career.
Edmond Dantes | Pexels Promotions are a good thing, right? They’re recognition for your effort, expertise, or experience. But they can also mean pumping the breaks on your development and sucking the soul out of the very things you enjoy.
The truth is, you don’t have to take that promotion. It might be better if you don’t. How can you know? Well, some signs might seem obvious: your new boss will be a total jerk, the company is on its way to bankruptcy, or the new position has a retention rate of a rusty sieve.
Unfortunately, you’ll rarely be presented with such obvious evidence. And worse, we sometimes miss signs we shouldn’t do something because we misread them as signs we should.
Here are 4 subtle signs you should turn down a promotion, according to psychology:
1. You’re influential
When you’re influential without a title, you’re functioning as an ‘informal leader.’ This comes with a swathe of benefits that might be eroded if you step into management.
I spent years in this sweet spot. I had enough autonomy that I could work on what was important to me. But enough protection from the company BS thanks to a great manager and the safety of a lack of title.
Before a promotion, expectations are lower. But as soon as you’re a manager, you’re expected to lead. You’re on the hook for not only what gets done, but also what doesn’t. Mistakes, low performers, delays — these are now yours to defend and rectify, chewing up a significant portion of your influence capital and management bandwidth.
The trick is to figure out where you are in your career and what you want to achieve. Then think about whether a promotion will bring you closer to the short-term goals aligned with that path.
If you’re still learning, growing, and developing in the role you’re in, using your influence to continue on this path for now might be best. Influence is a leadership trait you don’t need to be a leader to develop.
fizkes | Shutterstock
2. You love what you're currently doing
If you’re great at what you do and you get a lot of satisfaction from it, management might kill that. A big driver for a lot of people taking promotions is they think they’ll get to do more of the things they value. But the reality is often the opposite.
I left teaching to become a manager of teachers about a decade ago. While I’ve learned a lot, I’ve missed the classroom. Recently I picked up a side gig and have a class again. I’m loving it. But I’ve regressed. I lost the fingertip feel for the classroom.
In his book Someday is Today, award-winning teacher, productivity guru, and author Matthew Decks talks about his experience with this:
“In education, the only way to climb the career ladder is to become more and more distant from children. As a teacher rises to an administrative role, their contact with students evaporates. Simultaneously, the number of hours of work per week and their level of responsibility increase exponentially.”
We can all fall for the allure of a promotion: More money. More responsibility. More status. But ask yourself if you can do more of what you care about from where you currently are. If the answer is yes, skip the promotion this time. If you deserve what they’ve offered, it’ll come around again.
A study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln tested the effects of two work motives, driven to work and enjoyment of work, on managers’ psychological strain, career satisfaction, and performance. When enjoyment of work is not present, being driven to work may facilitate performance but increase strain.
Roman Samborskyi | Shutterstock
3. It seems like the natural next step
Tenure is a funny thing. It gives you the illusion of development and can lead you to feel entitled to something, without actually moving you closer to deserving it. When I worked as the head of an academic management department, I’d regularly post entry-level management positions for teachers to apply for.
During the interview, I made a point of asking candidates their motivation to apply. And in a disturbingly high number of cases, the answer was ‘this seems like the natural next step’. Already a red flag, we’d then continue with the interview and discover through the way they answered the questions that a lot of these types had followed a similar unconscious development path:
Learn the basics for a year then, once confident, stop learning or trying anything new.
So you’d get people coming to you with ten years of experience who felt ready for the next challenge, only to find they had in fact taught the same year ten times. They’d fallen for the fallacy of tenure:
“I’ve been doing something for a long time, so I must be (years doing it) x better at doing it.”
But the truth is the people who tend to be better suited to these steps up are those who:
- Have maxed out their development in their current role and want to try a new challenge
- Have a natural (or developed) set of traits that lend themselves to a management role
- Are high-achievers who can inspire high performance from others either by example, coaching, or implementing smart systems
If you don’t think you’re any of those, maybe it’s better to work on them before taking a step up.
Overall, abolishing tenure might increase turnover and opportunities for new faculty. However, research from the American Association of University Professors found that institutions without tenure have no more, and sometimes less, faculty turnover.
Tenure is intended to make the profession attractive, partly through the promise of economic security. However, for many prospective faculty, this promise is contradicted by the security provided to those who already hold tenure. Of course, it is the occupied position, not tenure, which creates the obstacle.
Drazen Zigic | Shutterstock
4. The money is good
Look, more money is great. Who doesn’t want more money? But money is a shallow motivator.
According to a 2022 study from the National Library of Medicine, monetary incentives increase the motivation of employees, leading to improved job performance. Non-monetary tools keep employees motivated for a particular time, but if organizations do not give employees proper incentives, it will affect their work. Incentives play a part in employees' job performance.
The link between incentive packages and employees' attitudes concluded that several different types of incentives play essential roles in enhancing employees' attitudes toward their work, as confirmed by another 2021 study. Other studies have found that there was a linear correlation between employee loyalty and job performance
Take person A, let's call him Giles. His core values are education, development, and service. He is a visionary leader who wants to design and operate an institution that will positively impact the lives of the children, teachers, parents, and community. He sees this as his calling and any promotion that gets him closer to this aligns with this life’s purpose.
Person B, Marcus, loves teaching. But is sick of hearing his college friends talk about holidays and mortgages. He’s paid his dues, now it’s time to cash in. So he steps up and takes the promotion because it’s the only way for him to earn more, being too old for a career change, and this is the field he’s got all his experience.
Who’s likely to be a better academic manager? When systems are failing, employees are angry, and all the projects are late, is the salary going to be enough to inspire Marcus to dig deep and get everyone over the line? Or is Giles, a man motivated by a higher purpose, going to see these setbacks as a necessary part of the journey to progress and get everyone through the storm?
According to a 2022 Workhuman poll, 1,000 full-time U.S. employees were asked about their hopes and expectations for 2023; workers admitted to paying less attention to the chaotic economic situation and more on factors they can control, like becoming more organized, setting healthier boundaries in the workplace and supplementing their income through side hustles.
If a promotion aligns with your values, gets you where you want to go in your career, and pays more, great. Seriously, that’s awesome. But if the two former don’t get a ‘heck yeah’, the latter isn’t going to keep you going.
Tobias is a writer, leadership coach, and corporate executive. He's had articles featured in Medium and Business Insider, as well as many other sites, and has been working in and around leadership for the best part of two decades.