You have settled on the best month or couple of weeks in which to ask for your pay rise, promotion or whatever.
When is the right time to ask?
Now the time has come to fix up a specific meeting with your boss. You might have been expecting to settle this whole thing over an informal chat or a drink together after work. But in fact you are far better off fixing up a formal meeting with the boss. The more professional format gives you several advantages:
• It signals that you are serious about this – you’re not just asking because it’s ‘worth a try’.
• It gives you the opportunity to make a proper presentation to your boss, laying out all the arguments in your favor carefully. This can be quite difficult in a crowded pub, and in any case feels uncomfortable in an informal setting.
• A formal meeting should mean dosed doors, phones diverted and no interruptions – far more conducive to getting your boss to focus on the subject.
• Your boss will set aside time for a formal meeting which they might not for an informal chat. This means they shouldn’t be constantly looking at their watch and itching to get off to their next appointment.
• A formal meeting gives you an excuse to jot down the key points made and copy it to your boss later (whereas it’s hardly common practice to minute your lunchtime trip to the pub).
So how are you going to ask? You may feel that your boss will resist the suggestion of a pay rise and that you don’t want to announce in advance that this is the reason you’d like to meet. You can perfectly well ask for a meeting in order to discuss your work and leave it at that. If they ask you for more detail, explain that you want to talk about your performance and perhaps mention that you want to review your overall compensation package. You certainly won’t need to be more specific than that.
Don’t Jump the Gun
It’s possible that your boss will agree to meet and will suggest a time in the next day or two – maybe their diary is full all next week and then they’re off on a conference. If you haven’t prepared your case fully yet, you’re going to be in trouble. So don’t ask for a meeting until you’re ready for it.