Why Your Boss Won't Promote You :
3 Good Reasons

Office Romance Problems Effects & Etiquette (DOs & DON’Ts)

Why Your Boss Won’t Promote You
(Nor Give You A Pay Raise)
Because Of Your Office Romance: 3 Good Reasons

You need to study this deck carefully, and focus on your boss’ point of you not your own. 

Why? He or she is the one who will make the call regarding your promotion, and pay raise, so he or she is the only one that counts!

In order to do so, to see things from your boss’ point of view, you need to understand his or her potential predicament, should they choose to promote you.

[I’m sick of the “his or her” all the time so from this point on your boss is a “he” for the sake of this video no offense of course it could be a “she” let it go and let’s move on]

You must remember that, your boss has his own performance issues to worry about, without taking on the extra baggage, that comes with you guys. He does not need this extra noise.

So until your boss has the time, and inclination, to deal with it directly, i.e. to confront you, he will just prefer to “bury”, so to speak, somewhere in the team or department, where you can do the least harm, rather than promote you!

Indeed, such a move on your boss’ part (promoting you) is very likely to backfire on him, three ways:

No. 1. Promoting you, or giving you a pay raise, will make for a bad, counterproductive, role model for everybody else!
Seeing that one can be disruptive, and get rewarded for it, will cause your boss even more BossProblems in the future – no boss wants that.

No. 2. Promoting you will burden your boss with your baggage even further! 
If we’re talking about a potential promotion, for you, within this same team or department you are in, the one your boss is the manager of, then this higher position for you means, your boss will have to deal with you more closely than before, thus amplifying the 7 BossProblems he didn’t want to have to deal with, to begin with!
Why would he do that?
He won’t!

No. 3. Promoting you might taint and blemish your boss’ reputation! 
Here, there are two options, depending on what potential position you could be promoted to.

Option a.
If we’re talking about a potential promotion outside of your boss’ team or department, so that you would become a direct report the colleague of his, then your boss will have to deal with the burden of whatever reputation you will carry over, to that other team or department.

And since you can now better acknowledge, how disruptive your office romance really is, for both the industrial peace, and the operational effectiveness, of the team, then, surely you can find it in yourself to understand that, the reputation you will carry over to that other team or department, may not be a positive one. Thus, tainting and blemishing your boss’ own reputation, for choosing to promote you.

So, in this case, as in the previous one, there is no upside for your boss, only a potential downside!
So why would he promote you?
He won’t!

The same principle applies for the second option:
If we’re talking about a potential promotion to a position, that would make you your boss’ peer, then all the more so, all of the above is true:

– Burden wise:
If you become your boss’ peer, he won’t be able to confront you in the same way, he could have when you were his subordinate – the whole dynamics completely alter.

In other words, he won’t be able to tell you off, as easily. So trusting that he does want to tell you off at some point, he just can’t be bothered with it right now, why would he want to make you his peer, which will make it more difficult to confront you?
He won’t!

– And reputation wise:
The danger in this second option is even greater.

Why? Simple: promoting you to a position that would make you your boss’ peer, would also make you your boss’ boss direct report, so he would naturally have a vested interest in that decision, and would be intimately involved in it.

Thus, it would not be up to your boss alone, to make the call. BUT your boss’ boss will have to rely heavily on your boss’ recommendation, because he doesn’t know you as well as your own boss does. And therein lies the danger to your boss’ own reputation. This danger is not only present, (as in the previous option) but even more tangible.

Why? Because before, your negative reputation would be an embarrassment vis-à-vis a colleague of your boss, whereas now, your boss might lose face over you, vis-à-vis his own boss!

Under these circumstances, who’s going to take that chance over you, when you are “embroiled” in an office romance, that is the root cause of this whole entanglement?
No one in their right mind! 
No one.

This relates back to the tremendous importance of understanding – truly understanding – your boss’ psychology. Both as a human being, and as a manager. A human being and a manager whom is, himself, under scrutiny from his boss, just as you are by him!

I say “relates back”, because your boss’ psychology was the focus of the 2nd video in our other Deck called: Passed Over for Promotion or Pay Raise. There, I proved how your boss actually dreads you, after having passed you over, and how you can use it to your advantage – watch it here if you missed it. 

The point is, wherever and whenever a pay raise is at stake (whether through a promotion, or independent of one), your boss’ psychology,is the number one thing you should fully, deeply, thoroughly understand, and gear toward – even before you up your own game – that’s how critical it is!

So, if you can’t be bothered with learning how your “private” affair with your coworker, is rippling all over to your performance, and therefore your team’s performance, and therefore your boss’ performance – if you can’t be bothered with it, then, you are too self-centered (or maybe just too lazy), to be deserving of a promotion and a pay raise, to begin with!

So it should serve you as a clue, as to why you didn’t get it until now!
Food for thought.