Why great engineers get passed over, and what to do instead
Early in my career, I wanted one job more than any other.
It reported directly to the general manager of the chemical plant. I could picture myself in it. I’d earned it.
It went to someone else. Someone with a year less service than me.
The feedback?
“You’re doing great work. You’re just not ready for the position.”
I walked out with a compliment and no instructions.
So I filled in the blanks myself.
I’d been the glue on that team. I was carrying the bulk of the work and, in my opinion, doing it better than the person who got the job.
He’s more political, I told myself. I don’t want to play politics. He’s a guy, and I’m a girl.
Those stories felt true. They also let me off the hook. If the problem was politics, there was nothing for me to fix.
So I did what engineers do. I doubled down on the work.
It got me a few promotions here and there. It never got me past that sentence. And that conversation stayed with me for years.
What finally moved me onto a senior leadership team wasn’t more technical work. It was learning to communicate and influence.
If I could go back, I’d start on that in year one. Nobody told me how much it mattered.
Not even that GM. Looking back, I’m not sure he could have.
He wasn’t hiding the answer. He didn’t have the words for it.
In my experience, most leaders don’t. They’re promoted for technical judgement, then handed a team. Few are ever trained in influence.
The research points the same way. A Center for Creative Leadership study looked at 64 real promotion decisions in three Fortune 500 companies. Technical skills came up in 50% of cases. Leadership came up in 47%. Interpersonal and communication skills, 45%.
People skills mattered almost as much as technical ones. Most of us only trained for one of them.
The researchers noticed something else. Bosses sometimes assumed a strong individual contributor would make a strong manager. Their recommendation? Train the decision-makers in how to assess people.
So leaders can feel the gap. They’ve watched one engineer’s update change nothing, and another walk in and move the room. They just can’t explain the difference.
Leaders can’t name the gap because they were never trained in it.
So it comes out as “you’re doing great, you’re just not ready.”
And you walk out and do exactly what I did.
More work.
More Work Isn’t the Answer. It’s the Trap.
Doubling down feels right because your whole career has rewarded it. Better work earned you better results and more trust.
Until it didn’t.
Engineers have a name for what I was doing back then: glue work. The coordination nobody assigned you. Mentoring the new hires. Keeping three workstreams from colliding.
It’s valuable. It’s also almost invisible when promotions get decided.
Read the engineering threads online and you’ll see one story again and again. Someone told they weren’t promotable because the department would fall apart without them.
Being indispensable didn’t qualify them. It kept them exactly where they were.
That’s the trap. More work makes you more valuable in the job you have. It doesn’t show anyone you’re ready for the next one.
Stop Promoting Your Past. Start Promoting the Problem You Solve.
Your record is proven. It’s done. It’s not what’s being decided.
The future is.
The fastest way into that conversation is a leadership problem you can solve. Not a task. A problem. The handover that keeps slipping. The two teams that can’t agree on a definition. The quarterly commitment everyone quietly knows is fiction.
So ask yourself: what’s the problem in your department that everyone sees and nobody owns?
That’s your opening. And this is where Decode, Adapt, Move comes in.
Decode. Before you speak, read the room. What’s driving the people in it? Where’s the real hesitation, as opposed to the stated objection?
Adapt. Flex how you communicate to the person deciding. Some want the risk first. Some want the people impact. Some want the numbers. It’s like ballroom: same dancer, different partner, different rhythm.
Move. Move people, not tasks. End the conversation with a decision, an owner and a date, not a summary of what you covered.
None of that asks you to talk more. It asks for a better conversation, in the room you’re already in.
Your technical skills got you here. Your influence skills get you to the next level.
“Do I Have to Become Someone I’m Not?”
That’s the question sitting underneath almost every promotion conversation I have with engineers.
Online, it shows up in more honest versions. “I love engineering, but I’m not a people person.” “Being a team lead as a quiet, introverted person.” “Being an introvert in an extroverted world is so tiring.”
The answer is no.
Communication is a skill, not a personality.
You already adapt every day. You talk to a six-year-old differently than you talk to your manager, and differently again than you talk to a regulator. Nobody taught you that. You’re just doing it by accident.
The problem with accidental adaptation is that it disappears in the hardest conversations, which is exactly when you need it on purpose.
Some of the best leaders I know are introverts. They don’t fill the room with words. They speak in the moments that move a decision.
You’re not changing who you are. You’re choosing which true thing to lead with.
Visibility Isn’t Bragging. It’s Reporting.
The second belief is about everyone else.
“Visibility is the same as bragging.”
“I don’t want to play politics.”
I know that one well. It’s the exact story I told myself after that GM job.
It felt principled. Really, it was protection. If I never put myself forward, nobody could judge me for it.
Here’s the shift. Claim the work and share the credit in the same breath.
“We cut the handover delay by two weeks. Sam’s sequencing made that possible. Here’s the next problem I’d like to take on.”
That isn’t bragging. It’s accurate. It brings your team with you, and it points at the future.
What to Do on Monday
Do this. Before your next one-on-one, write down one leadership problem you could solve. Open the conversation with it. One sentence, about the future.
Avoid this. Don’t open with a résumé of what you’ve built. Your record isn’t the argument.
Ask this. When the vague feedback comes again, say: “I hear that I’m not ready. Can you help me understand what specifically is missing, so I can work on it?”
You’re not arguing. You’re helping your leader name what they were never trained to name.
Where to Start
Take the Leadership Communication Diagnostic. In a few minutes, you’ll see your natural style, the strength that got you here. You’ll also see the style that may be creating your gap.
Imagine the next time you hear “you’re doing great.” This time, it doesn’t end with “but.”
It ends with “When can you start?”
Stop promoting your past. Start promoting the problem you solve.
Source to link at publish: Ruderman & Ohlott, The Realities of Management Promotion, Center for Creative Leadership, 1994: https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/RealitiesMgtPromotion.pdf