When you’re ambitious and want to progress, I’m guessing your first thought is about how you show you can perform well. That’s often the case for clients who are seeking their promotion to a leadership role for the first time. The problem is, performing well is not actually the secret to getting the opportunities most people are looking for
That doesn’t mean you can be terrible at your job. But as you climb the ladder, performance becomes a hygiene factor rather than a differentiator. If you want to stand out and create career progression you’re going to need to learn some new rules of engagement
Enter PIE Theory. Something I wish I’d known about earlier in my career
What is PIE Theory?
Put forward by Harvey Coleman in his book, “Empowering Yourself, The Organizational Game Revealed”, PIE Theory suggests that performance only accounts for a small proportion of getting on in your career
He created a framework that emphasises the varying roles of Performance, Image, and Exposure in propelling your career forward.
Performance: Coleman asserts that performance only accounts for 10% of career success. This is the foundation, the baseline expectation. Delivering results in your current role matters, but it matters because it’s the entrance ticket, not the winning ticket
Image: In this context image is not about how you dress or whether you’ve brushed your hair (although those things can still have an influence on the image you create). Image is about your reputation. Your personal brand. The way other people experience you and the resulting conclusions they draw about the potential you do or don’t have as a consequence of the impression you create
In the model, 30% of your success is attributed here. If you’ve ever seen people who are patently not that great at their job and yet seem to have got there by talking the talk you’ll be familiar with how influential image can be in creating opportunities.
Exposure: Simple maths will already tell you that leaves 60% of career success being ascribed to exposure. Exposure means it’s not enough to create a great reputation with a small circle of people you already know and work with. You need to consider how to create the same reputation with people who may not otherwise know of you or what you’re capable of
When Performance Stops Working to Gain Progression
In the early stages of your career, performance seems to work as a lever for progression. You might have started your first job after school or university and found it pretty easy to get promoted or be awarded pay rises
So you subconsciously take on the message that performance is how you get on. But then by mid career, when you’ve been a manager or technical expert for a while it suddenly doesn’t work. Why is that?
Well partly it’s because the further you go, the less performance is a differentiator. You’re competing against other people of similar experience, ability and performance levels for fewer senior roles
But it’s also not actually the case. It was always about a combination of performance, image and exposure. But your image / reputation to get up the first rung of the ladder needed to be that you’re a hard worker who learns quickly. And you probably only needed a few people to become aware of you to create the opportunities you needed - maybe someone internally to back you, or being able to influence a recruiter or hiring manager for an external opportunity.
Managing Image and Perception
If you want the opportunity to progress then it’s time to get intentional about creating the perception others have of your potential. When I ask clients how they rate themselves as a leader and what contributes to why they’ve rated themselves that way. I often find a pretty narrow focus. There’s often an assumption that leadership is about how you lead and manage your team. Whether you can motivate people, inspire them and support their development
All important. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Your personal brand as a leader certainly includes how your team perceives you, but it’s not limited to that. It's about thinking about how you are thought of throughout your organisation and beyond it. What are you known for? What’s memorable about you? What do people say about you when you’re not around?
Your brand includes the unique combination of skills, values, and personality traits that set you apart from the crowd. It's the essence of who you are professionally, and it needs to be intentionally crafted and consistently reinforced. Because every leader has a personal brand, it’s just a question of whether you’ve created yours by design or by accident
One thing that’s important to acknowledge here is that your reputation needs to be true to you and who you are. It’s not about setting out to create a perception of you based on what you think you should be or what you think others expect you to be. You’re not trying to copy or emulate someone else. You’re deciding what’s right for you and then choosing behaviours and actions that support building that personal brand
Leveraging Exposure & Visibility
Having a strong reputation and being able to influence others to have belief in your potential is great. But even if you know that the people that know you consistently think of you in the way you planned, there's still a 60% gap for broadening how other people will get that same perception of your potential.
Exposure is all about how you broaden the number of people that are aware of you and would have you in mind for the kind of opportunities you’d like to be on the receiving end of. It’s time to reflect on who knows about you and what you do? Does your boss’s boss know what you do? Do others inside and outside your organisation know anything about you? How readily do you create and take opportunities to interact with new people in a way that lets them know what you’re about?
When I’m coaching people who are preparing for promotion, I ask who knows they want that promotion. The answer is very often barely anyone. When I ask what they have done to get in front of a wider audience (especially of senior people) they’re often waiting for the right opportunity.
Exposure is like the secret sauce that brings together your performance and your reputation to amplify them. It’s a numbers game - the more people who know about you, the more chance there is that one of them will think of you when there’s an opportunity. And it doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming. Simple things like
Offering to be involved in cross functional projects, or to present to senior leaders, or to speak at conferences
Finding and attending industry events and connecting with people online afterwards
Using LinkedIn to talk about topics or insights that are relevant or interesting for people in your industry or niche
Approaching people who’ve made the step into the kind of role you’re aspiring to and asking for specific advice or if they would give you some time to tell you about their career path
Essentially, it comes back to that simple question of, where are the opportunities for you to be more visible as the real you.
Final Thoughts
As an ambitious manager or leader, mastering your personal brand and reputation management is key. Identify your unique strengths, values, and the traits that set you apart, and consistently reinforce them through your actions and interactions.
You get paid for performance, but you get promoted based on what others perceive your potential to be. The more people who are aware of your potential, the greater the chances of creating great opportunities.
If you're preparing for a promotion or embarking on a new leadership role and you’d like some support, I can help. To discuss the coaching options available, you can book a free initial call
Want to hear more about PIE Theory and how it can benefit your career? This podcast episode goes into more depth