Welcome back to the Hirewell Hot Corner where sports and recruitment meet. I am your host, Dan Spittel, joined as always by my Ironman co-host, Louie Morici. Louie, great to see you again. Let’s jump right in. What’s going on in your world and the world of sports today?
Coming down to the end with NBA and NHL finals. Both are in the final rounds. You got the heat. And the nuggets. And then in NHL you got Vegas Golden Knights and the Florida Panthers. So unfortunately we’re getting to that lull where it’s just baseball, which is a tough time of year for sports fans because there’s 162 games. So, let’s face it, it’s not-
you miss one, it’s not the end of the world compared to some of these other sports. But, you know, that and also professional soccer wrapping up all over the country, all over the world. We had a lot of sports news in the last 24 hours, I would say. Wow. We’ll come back to the soccer in a second because we had what we had, PGA and LIV combining. We have new stadiums breaking ground, new stadiums being announced for the NFL.
Lionel Messi going to join the MLS. Which is such a shame for a lot of MLS fans unless you root for Inter Miami. Yeah. Personally, it’s a weird time right now cause FC Cincinnati is the leading team in the MLS, which is really cool for the city. The one team in Cincinnati I can actively root for that isn’t a main rival of ours in Pittsburgh, so that’s been fun.
But yeah, and then you mentioned soccer leagues. Our friends across the pond, the Premier Leagues wrapped up. Congratulations to Man City for yet another league championship. Whether you’re a fan of them or not, they are quite impressive. And another batch of promotions and relegations across English football.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s exactly the talking point to segue into our recruiting, like this week we’re going to talk about promotion in soccer leagues. If you’re an overachiever, a consistent achiever, and segueing that with promotion in corporate America or corporate type business structure.
So, you know, we saw teams in the Premier League and for those who don’t know, there’s relegation and there’s promotion. So if you are in a middle league or the top league, there’s a possibility of getting relegated If you’re in the bottom three of that year, or if you’re in the top three of a lower league, you get promoted up.
That’s just for everyone who doesn’t follow soccer as closely, or fútbol, if you will. Want to make sure we’re touching on all cultures with that. But, yeah, so that’s where I think we’re going to take this today. Absolutely. Congratulations to those teams who have been promoted up through the league.
Though my favorite of them is Luton Town, with their very unique football stadium overlooking people’s backyards in a very small crowded neighborhood area. It’d be interesting to see a lot of big names in the Premier League have to go into a place like that. Talk about home field advantage.
On a bit of a lower level, but fun for a lot of people in the US and across in the UK, Wrexham getting promoted up to the championship for Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s Club. Apologies for any spoilers if you’re waiting for the docu-series to come out, but started following the team this year and they won their league, so always cool to see.
And you mentioned a lull when we get into the later part of the summer when it’s mostly just baseball. A cool part about that time of year is the summer call ups, though, and it’s very relevant to what we’re going to talk about today because it’s that first taste of professional, like top level, major league baseball for a lot of young, exciting prospects here in Cincinnati.
Elly De La Cruz got called up yesterday. Made his debut last night. They actually walked it off with another rookie hitting the walk off double. So it’s a fun time of year even if you’re not a baseball fan. It’s exciting for the fans to come sell a little more tickets for some of these smaller market teams.
Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, you’re seeing what you would think is the future of your franchise getting their first at bats, literally. First go at it and seeing what the hype is about first and foremost. And then from a promotion that’s promotion from AAA to the majors in soccer, fútbol, you know, promotion from maybe the championship, like we’re seeing with Burnley, Luton Town, and Sheffield United moving back into the Premier League.
So, you know, it’s exciting times, especially if you’re a fan of those. And when it comes to corporate America, it’s an amazing time for an employee to get promoted. You know, and I think one of the best ways to talk about it is how does that happen? We talked about how it happens in sports, but in corporate America, it’s really in your control and some of it’s not in your control.
So, yeah, in terms of things you can control as far as candidates getting promoted, you can one, be vocal about your intentions, your goals, your trajectory. You know, everyone has a desire for more typically in the careers. But your manager’s not some soothsayer who can predict what you’re going to say and what you want to do with your life. You need to be vocal and whenever you have these consistent one-on-ones or meetings with your manager, be vocal. Voice your goals, your promotional aspirations.
Let them know you’re willing and able to take on more and you know, kind of set that scene for them and maybe develop a plan with them, as far as getting to that next level. Find ways to gain skills maybe that you haven’t acquired yet in your area of the corporate world. Find ways to get on projects that involve those skills.
Find people who have those skills. Maybe they’re more senior members of your team. Learn from them, and just find other ways to jump into the relevant experience that’ll kind of get you to that next point. You’re not going to be able to just jump in and say, become a manager, without managing people, without leading people, you’re not going to be able to run projects on things you’ve never done before.
It’s a stepping stone. And just finding little areas to do that. Another way that I always like to promote is continuing education. Certifications, online training courses. A lot of companies offer these various things internally and there’s a number of opportunities. LinkedIn learning is a great one.
You can get certifications through Google, through Microsoft. Find ways to sharpen your skills. Much like these guys in AAA baseball, need to sharpen their skills in terms of getting better at patience at the plate or better defensively, before they can make the jump up to major league baseball.
Yeah, there’s definitely that learning curve, and I guess that’s kind of a pun, talking baseball, but, you know, biting off more and more responsibility. And I think we’ll touch on what managers can do to kind of help the people that they’re managing become the next leaders, but, biting off more responsibility.
In sales, that could be being a team lead, and that means maybe sitting on calls with a current rep and teaching them on the spot doing call shadows. But what it comes down to, and I think what shows internal managers, directors, people who do the promoting, is being able to expand your capacity without losing quality.
So in sales, you have a goal that you need to hit as a salesperson. If you’re hitting that goal, and then some and then they give you more responsibility, they don’t want to see you not hitting that goal anymore because you have this, it’s biting off as much as you can chew and working at a high capacity. So I think that that’s a great segue into what managers can do to help promote some of the members of their team into these manager roles. Yeah, for sure. A lot of it does fall on the shoulders of the individual who’s looking to get to that next level. But the best managers, the best leaders are the ones who have the growth mindset, the ones who are always looking to get the most out of their people, both for the betterment of the company and betterment of their team, but the betterment of the individuals as well.
So what can managers do to help get their people promoted? Well, there’s a couple different ideas. They could identify those top tier individuals. Identifying potential. Coming back to that scouting episode we did a little bit ago about the draft, just understanding that this person is doing really well in their current role.
Let’s expand that role a little bit. Doesn’t have to be overnight change where they become a team lead, become a manager. But there’s a reason that senior level roles tend to exist, intermediary other opportunities, find ways to expand what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis. Opportunities to, as we mentioned on the other side, jump into projects that would get them exposure to areas that they need in terms of the next level. Opportunities to work with newer people.
Even if they’ve only been there, in their role, a year or two, they can start mentoring younger or newer people and getting a little bit of exposure to leadership, to management. Just always being on the lookout for ways to expand, improve, their situations. But again, like you said, expanding that capacity without losing the quality of the work they’re still doing.
because they do still have a role in the company that they do have to fulfill. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re a good manager, you want to see your people grow and helping them do that and expand their skillset, delegation, expansion of their roles and responsibilities and, you know, helping them get a bit of a taste of what it would be like to be a manager. A responsibility here, responsibility there.
If they were to get promoted, they’re not just like, well, I’ve never done any of this. Like, you could say, oh, I’ve done this before. Now it’s all kind of putting it all together. Yeah, absolutely. And we talk about these minor league guys, the top tier guys getting promoted and whatnot. Sometimes it’s the big flashy name coming out of high school, college, whatever.
A lot of these times, these guys, they’re the ones who are just putting in the extra work putting in, getting extra reps in, always training, always working to be better. And you get some success stories of guys who were, maybe they were undrafted, maybe they were not even in the top 100 rank of prospects. They come up and they make an impact at the top level. It’s not always these big flashy things of this is going to happen. It’s consistency, it’s producing time and time again, and just working hard at it.
Yeah, I think reliability is what it comes down to. It’s weird if you could hit 250 constantly, granted that’s one out of every four you’re on base, like you’ll have a long career in the MLB. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s also not like you’re hitting 300, which you’ll make ESPN if you’re hitting 300, they’ll have the graphics up. But if you’re hitting 250 and you can do that consistently, That’s going to provide you a lot of options to get into better spots.
So, you know, I think that’s what it comes down to is consistency and reliability. If you broke it down in the corporate world like you do in the sports world, if you were successful three out of every 10 times you did something, you’d be a hall of famer if you could keep that up for the length of your career. So yeah, keep that in mind.
Louie, two minute drill. Take us home. So I know we talked about ways to get promoted. How to be a manager to help folks get promoted, but unfortunately, sometimes it comes down to things that are not in your control. If someone gets promoted or is not promoted, it could be because there’s just not room for someone.
So I guess it’s really control what you can and make it a very easy thing to do as far as promote you based on what you’ve shown them. But sometimes, unfortunately, it’s not going to work your way at all facets. So be patient, keep putting in the work, and believe me, it will come and do time. Like Mike Tomlin said, control the controllables.
And keep on grinding. Stay consistent. Not only with your performance and the actions through the work, but stay consistent in communication to your manager. They’re here for you. But they’re also here for everyone else on the team. Be open and transparent with your communication. How am I doing?
Am I still on track for the goals we’ve set or am I still on track for this promotion that I had mentioned that I’m interested in six months, in 12 months, in two years, whatever that may look like. Consistency is key. Communication is also key. Those are two important facets that you maintain those, sky’s the limit as long as there aren’t any external circumstances.
Yeah, a thousand percent and you hit it right on the head. Stay open, communication, am I tracking? And like I mentioned squeaky wheel gets oil, I’m sure I’ve said that a few times, but if you voice that, you want it, believe me, you’re going to be the first person that pops in their head when it’s time to promote someone.
No question. Well, on behalf of Louie and myself, thank you once again for tuning into the Hirewell Hot Corner. Please do join us again in two weeks for our next episode. And as always, stay classy LinkedIn. Have a good one.
