You’re the first in the office and the last to leave. You answer email at midnight, text your boss on the weekends, and plan the company holiday parties. As far as you can tell, everyone appreciates your efforts and has given you great feedback about your performance. So why haven’t you been offered that fancy promotion you’ve been waiting for?

Remember, performance isn’t the only factor that determines promotion! You might be making some of these missteps that cause your boss to overlook you come promotion time.

1. You didn’t tell your boss you wanted to promote. It may sound obvious, but the best way to share that you want to move up is to discuss it with your boss. (After all, not every employee aspires to promote!) As part of your performance goals and reviews, tell your boss early on that you want to grow within the company. Work together to identify a natural next step—it might even be with another department—and work on ways you can prepare when promotion time comes.
2. You’re relying on your seniority / you’re too new to promote. It wasn’t always true, but these days, tenure is not an automatic gateway to promotion. Shockingly, you are not entitled to promote because you do your job every day! On the flip side, don’t exclude yourself from the running if you’re relatively new to the company. Promotions have very little to do with time served, and everything to do with the best, most promising fit.
3. You haven’t shown your leadership skills. As most promotions come with an increase in pay and responsibility, many often come with an increase in leadership requirements, whether you’re called to manage a team or to spearhead important projects. You may be awesome in your current role, but if you haven’t demonstrated leadership, or even the soft skills needed to lead, you may be overlooked for someone who has. Find out what projects you can tackle to put yourself back in contention.
4. You don’t take criticism all that well. Do you get angry or defensive if a colleague questions your methods? Or if your boss asks you to try a different tack? Truly constructive criticism is not meant to knock you down the ladder, it’s meant to help you adjust to climb higher. So when you receive constructive criticism, your first step shouldn’t be to argue whether it’s true—it’s enough that someone perceived that it was. Instead, see how you can take that criticism and use it to make yourself better. Not all criticism is valid or useful, but it’s worth examining. And above all, be gracious when you receive feedback. You’re sure to get more of it if you promote, and you’ll likely be responsible for delivering feedback to others. It’s important to show that you can manage feedback maturely.

Promotion isn’t all about performance! If you’re getting great performance reviews but you just aren’t seeing that next step, consider if you need to improve any of these four areas. And if all else fails, a heart-to-heart with your boss might be in order, so you can know exactly what you need to do to shine come promotion time!