How to Ask for Growth (When Your Manager Won't Give You a Straight Answer)

Why asking for growth signals that you're not ready and why telling your manager that you’re ready is a better approach. Here's how to do it, the right way.

Welcome to Reframed by Ashley Rudolph. One idea, every week, that changes how you see your career.

Last week, I wrote about how to become a better presenter. If you get nervous, have sweaty palms when you’re called on in a meeting, or don’t feel like the most confident version of yourself when you present, you’ll find some helpful tips inside.

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This week’s inspo: Itaysha Jordan for Essence

We treat being stuck as a verdict; as if someone with more authority looked at us, saw what was missing, and decided it wasn’t our turn yet.

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One of the biggest lies we’re sold about careers is that someone else has to tell you you’re ready for your next step. They don’t.

It’s a realization that I’ve only come to by running up against friction points in my career. The lows I’ve quietly filed away in my “flops” folder. Navigating them felt impossible while I was in it, but now I know that some of my biggest wins were waiting on the other side.

After all these years, I still viscerally remember how stuck each one made me feel.

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CAREER STORIES

I cried over a spreadsheet. Then I changed the trajectory of my career

I had a manager who gave me a crash course in toxic leadership. He took credit for my best work, blamed me when things went sideways, and manufactured drama between me and my colleagues. He controlled leadership's perception of me and used it for his own benefit. In the end, months of anguish forced me to take control back: I advocated my way onto another team.

Getting away from that toxic manager meant moving to a team and a new manager who became an advocate and an ally of mine. Waiting for my old manager to move me would’ve gotten me nowhere. Taking action by advocating for myself is how I built the momentum (and support) to switch teams.

Another low: the afternoon an outside consultant showed me I was the lowest-paid leader on my team. He slid me a spreadsheet and told me to check the salaries tab — covertly signaling what no one inside the org would have (that’s not how corporate works!). And to this day, I’m grateful for the gift. He didn’t just share data with me, he inspired me to learn how to negotiate.

After crying over that spreadsheet and venting to friends about the disparity for months on end, I asked for a raise.

I decided that being the lowest-paid leader on the team didn’t reflect my remit or my value. From the outside, you don’t see the spreadsheet, the heartbreak, or the months of working up the courage to advocate for myself. You’d just see the LinkedIn updates and $50K in raises over 12 months. It looks lucky on paper, like a reward for the work I was doing. It wasn’t. I fought for it.

We treat being stuck as a verdict; as if someone with more authority looked at us, saw what was missing, and decided it wasn’t our turn yet.

Then, we do exactly what we were rewarded for our whole lives as high achievers. We find our deficits, surface them to our leaders, ask for help closing them, and then wait for someone to tell us we’re ready. And when that doesn’t work, you get frustrated.

If you’re reading Reframed, let me be clear: you don’t have gap that’s preventing you from getting to the next level. It’s that no one above you is in any hurry to make the path clear for you. And, most of the time, the reason isn’t necessarily sinister. People are looking for leaders who can confidently step into what’s next, who know they’ve earned their next step and can articulate why. Asking signals you’re not ready, telling signals that you are. So they wait for you to signal that you’re ready.

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REFRAME THIS

How to ask for growth when it feels like your manager is being cagey about your next steps

So that discomfort you’re feeling? The frustration with your role, the sense that you’re not valued, the suspicion that you’re capable of more than what you’re currently taking on? You’re right to feel it and you’re probably ready to do something about it. The solution is a conversation, usually a 1:1 with your manager, and the nerve to walk into the convo differently than you have before.

Here’s what to do:

1. Get clear about what you want

Not "growth." Not "more." The specific title, scope, salary, or project that you want to take on. This is the step everyone skips, because staying vague is comfortable. And I get it…if you never name it, you can never be told no. But vague is also how you end up stuck in your manager's version of your career instead of your own. Do the unglamorous work of deciding what you're actually after, so you can steer the conversation towards a destination.

2. State your strengths, wins, and tell them what you need from them.

This is the entire reframe. Early on in our careers, it was reasonable to ask a manager to find our gaps and help build a plan to close them. But that thinking doesn’t serve you as a leader. You've just made your growth their project; one they have to prioritize against everything else on their plate. Leaders drive their own careers. They don't outsource their career plan to the person above them. So come in having already done the thinking. Use this frame:

• Here are the strengths I bring to this team.

• Here’s what I’m already doing at the next level.

• Here’s the one or two things I need from you to get there.

3. Get a commitment

Telling instead of asking doesn't mean you ask for nothing. It means you stop asking them to assess whether you’re ready and start asking them to commit to your next steps. When you ask what do you think? or what do I need to do to get there?, you point them at your gaps. They go to the smaller things you're still working on, the stuff they'd “want to see more of first.” An opinion is free. It costs them nothing and commits them to nothing, which is exactly why a cagey manager will hand you one all day.

So don’t ask what they think if you want a solid plan. Ask what happens next instead: What are the steps and by when? That turns the conversation into a plan you can hold them to.

Instead of asking for their take, ask them to commit: Are we on the same page and what are the actual steps that get me there?

Or, if you’d rather not spend another six months reading the tea leaves:

Is [the title, the role, the raise] on the table for me this year?

See how different that sounds?

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

I was inspired to write this after facilitating a workshop last week for Her Workplace on the “3 Habits That Make You Look Less Senior Than You Are”. We went into way more detail than I was able to in this newsletter.

During Q&A, the discussion turned to how to ask for growth. The vibe in the room changed entirely when I shared the reframe I just outlined. If you want to grow as a leader, treat your frustration as information. A sign that something needs to change and that you’ve likely outgrown where you are. You’re ready, you just have to let everyone else know.

Good luck. See you next week!

Ashley

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