Former Facebook exec: How to show your boss you deserve a promotion

“If that’s the role that you really want, start doing
it,” said Libby Leffler, pictured.
Steve Maller

• Libby Leffler, a former Facebook executive and Google
  employee, is now the vice president of membership at
  SoFi.
• Leffler said that the best way to show your boss you
  deserve a promotion is to start doing that job today, instead
  of waiting until you get a title bump.
• “You don’t always have to ask for permission,” Leffler
  said.

Recently, a woman came to Libby Leffler asking for career advice.
She wanted a role like Leffler had at Facebook, as a strategic
partnerships manager — but she didn’t know how to get there.

Leffler shared with the woman some wisdom based on her own
experience: “Why don’t you start doing that role today? Not
tomorrow, not a month from now. If that’s the role that you
really want, start doing it.”

Today, Leffler is the vice president of membership at personal finance company

SoFi. She spent about seven years at Facebook, in different
roles; before that, she was an account strategist at Google.

Leffler told Business Insider that, once you’ve begun tackling
the responsibilities you’d earn if you were promoted, you can
come to your manager and say, “Here are all the things that I’ve
taken on additionally in the last [however many] days, and the
ways I’ve been contributing to the team. I’d like to level up and
receive a promotion to this new opportunity.”

Leffler’s advice recalls something I heard when
I worked with career coach Rebecca Fraser-Thill. “Sometimes
we do have to act as if,” Fraser-Thill told me.

That is to say, don’t wait around until someone gives you a title
bump to take on new challenges. Instead, take on new challenges
and then show why you deserve the title bump.

As Leffler put it, “you don’t always have to ask for permission.”

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