How to ask for a raise or promotion without ever raising your voice

Beyond all the smiles, conviviality and comradeship that adorn our offices, the practical truth yet is that the workplace remains a professional battleground. A bunch of careers clash in the workplace – a horde of diverse interests and disharmonious ambitions which need to be protected sometimes even aggressively. Therefore the competition at work is understandably ferocious – a corporate survival of the fittest so to say. Leadership is gluttonously coveted, everyone striving to be in front of the pack. The big question now is: how do you stand out?

Hard work doesn't instantly garner a raise

A common anomaly that currently plagues modern workplaces is the misconception that hard work is a surefire guarantee for a pay increase. The fact that you spend tons of hours more in the office, impressively clearing a mountain of files on your desk, and even mopping the shoes of your boss doesn't automatically infer your paychecks should start swelling – or assure you of a promotion. Congrats you are working yourself off, but your salary rightly covers for all the voluminous effort you are laboriously pouring in!  This is because fundamentally, from the financial architecture of a company – that is the way its finances are structured – your salary is seen as a proportion compensation for all the "hard work" you put in at your level. You can yell loud enough to be heard in Tokyo from New York that you are extremely hardworking, but nobody would be paying you more or necessarily promoting you!

Simply put, agitating furiously for a pay raise or a promotion because you are "hardworking" is wrongly rewarding QUANTITY OVER QUALITY. Therefore your claim for a promotion gains an uncontested validity when you begin to deliver exponential value that trumps the ambit of results expected from your position. This way you make strong claims to earn more when you start delivering next level results. This is possible when you offer more unique value via personal branding than mere quantity via "hard work".

By the time you stand out as a unique brand to deliver these next level results, you consolidate yourself as an invaluable bag of brains to your company not necessarily as a cheap bag of muscles as generic "hard work" would portray you. Hence we see that nourishing your company with exponential value (higher grade results) as typified by great personal branding illuminates your intellectual distinction, hard work rather illuminates your muscular intensity which is discardable. Inarguably, the former (your intellectual distinction) is far more deserving of a pay raise or promotion.

The place of personal branding, therefore, becomes inevitable. A deliberate customization of your personality that glitters in its uniqueness from the commonality littering your workplace. This way by choosing to courageously step out of conventions, boldly venturing outside the common status quo, your personal branding gives you that special glint which in no time becomes obvious in the workplace among your colleagues. This consequently establishes you as a leader.  Career success and personal branding hence are so affectionately bonded both feeding off on each other.

 A strong personal brand vs the silent generic

A strong personal brand largely trumps the silent generic. In consciously boosting your image – by magnificently creating exponential value in the workplace – you practically pick yourself from the crowd. More importantly in creating a strong personal brand, you should not just think outside the box – but rather think MILES outside the box creating value from non-existent possibilities, lavishing your organization with much more value than it actually asked for. 

This is possible by engineering a fresh and relevant personal branding that pushes you to search behind the horizons of the ordinary for invisible opportunities, exerting yourself to excavate unseen value (buried far under the crust of ordinariness) which no one knew could be delivered. This firmly establishes you as a thought leader in your workplace, the intellectual solution bank that your colleagues run to for bailout ideas.

It is more than what is on the paper

The reality is that personal branding critically exceeds the handsomeness of your CV – it is far more than the academic medals you have won, the degrees. Actually, anyone could get those degrees in a very competitive workplace. Personal branding is more of a charismatic differentiation which in most times is conscious and sustained.  You have to deliberately sculpt your personality and "imprison" yourself outside the mundane. This is by creating a character signature that establishes you as the uncontested leader in your workplace spearheading solution and transformation.

Personal branding puts you in a better position to trigger and nourish corporate growth. In your quest for personal branding, for specialness, you would still have to build trust. Personal branding however personalized it is, would only get you up the leadership ladder when you intelligently build strategic collaborations and symbiotic relationships. For this as well, you would need to consolidate your credibility among the workforce. Your personal branding would have to ooze reliability when needed, be able to give the carrot or the stick at the right intervals (bend or stand firm at the right moments), masterfully blending camaraderie with scrupulousness. 

Your passions must be integrated

Most especially for your personal branding to have that crucial flavor of authenticity, the place of your passion becomes very crucial. For full engagement, your passion must be comprehensively connected. Your branding should be configured along the direction of your goals, values, and interests. Otherwise, your personal branding would on the long-term prove ephemerally superficial – falling like a pack of cards – if there is no personal fulfillment or aggrandizement to be derived at the end of the day.

Conclusion

Therefore in your drive for personal branding, you must personally relish your growth and keep a private scorecard of yourself. This way you would be better equipped to know what stains on your personality need to be sponged.  Thus with strategic personality branding, you could even be relatively calm and quiet at work but your value screams thunderously for a pay raise or promotion. This certainly can't be ignored when you consistently deliver higher-tier results.

Personal branding thus puts you in the best position to negotiate that aspired career leap, chasing success hectically may not necessarily get you there as quick as being the value people are chasing. According to Albert Einstein, "Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

Now you see you no longer need to be that workaholic "office-Hulk" who does all the hard jobs just to get some anemic promotion or secure a pay raise – hard work may only get you compliments but only exponential value would get you those mouthwatering dollar wads. Consequently, you must not be loud to stand out. With strategic personal branding, you ask for a raise without ever raising your voice. Now you can keep your screaming voice for the next Super Bowl.