because of my behaviors and my intentions I was given an opportunity within the company to be promoted

So going through the interview process my director he said to me Mark what do you think about going for a promotion?

And I said well I'm not sure but I'll give it a go

I asked him what are you expecting to see in my presentation?

And he actually gave me an overview So when you're banging your head against the wall thinking what should I be presenting What is this person going to expect Ask the question What are you expecting to see from this?

And he gave me a breakdown And it wasn't that he gave me the answers I still had to put it together go through the presentation And that was tough But at least I had a sort of expectation of what he wanted to see and that really helped

he comes up with a question and he says why should you get this job over the other person?

And I said bluntly and to the point I'm not here to talk about the other person I'm here to talk about myself If I do not get this job I will leave the business

Now for about 7 years in my head I've told myself that the reason why I've said that is because I'm the man and what a line to drop and everything And the truth is that actually isn't true And it's only through going for a presentation I did last week about the social pressures of leadership and why people decide to be a leader in the first place And one of the reasons is the social pressure of oh you're not a manager yet Oh you're still doing a sales job Oh I thought you'd be a bit more than that by now

And it wasn't that I fell for that particular trap It was that everyone would have known that I would have gone for this promotion And if I wouldn't have got the job I said to myself oh now I've got a taste of it I have to go for a leadership role But the truth is I thought I'll be so embarrassed going back into what I was doing when everybody across the business you know everyone saw that I was interviewing for it Everyone knew that I was going for that position So that was a little bit of an awakening in the last couple of weeks really because even though yes I felt that oh I couldn't once I got a taste for leadership I couldn't go back into doing just what I was doing But also I came to a realisation that yeah I would have been embarrassed i would have been embarrassed to go back and have that person who i was a team member with have a promotion and me just continue with what what i was doing which you know i was pretty happy with coming in making good money uh but it's 2 ways here one is that i've been identified as a leader my director saw something in me now whether he thought and again this is the journey I've been on you know was I coachable enough Did he see me as the person that could be coachable? And I honestly believe that in the last you know from working with him getting things wrong multiple times but putting my hands up challenging him as well You know you might not think To be coachable you can challenge but he wanted me to challenge him because it was a sort of mentor-mentee thing