You Keep Getting Great Reviews.
Someone Else Keeps Getting Promoted.

Why being a top performer—and having a manager who values you—might be keeping you exactly where you are.

You're managing a team. Your bonus depends on its performance. Your best employee handles the toughest projects, solves problems before they reach your desk, and makes your numbers look good.

An opening comes up on another team. Are you in any hurry to encourage that employee to apply?

Now put yourself on the other side of that conversation. You're the employee getting excellent reviews, taking on more responsibility, and wondering why your career isn't moving.

We've all heard the advice: work hard, deliver results, earn your manager's trust, and make yourself indispensable.

And it works. You've given your manager every reason to want you exactly where you are.

Your manager might genuinely like you and want you to succeed. But your promotion could mean losing their most productive employee while keeping the same targets, deadlines, and performance expectations.

What's good for your career isn't necessarily good for your manager's performance review.

When managers prepared to leave, employees started applying.

Economist Ingrid Haegele studied this conflict at a large German manufacturing company. Her research, published in the American Economic Review in 2026, examined talent hoarding: managers keeping valuable employees on their teams even when moving them elsewhere might be better for the employees and the company.

Sometimes managers discourage internal applications or limit development opportunities. Other times, employees hold themselves back because they worry about how their manager will react.

That fear showed up in Haegele's employee surveys. 41% of respondents were afraid to apply for internal positions because they worried about negative consequences if their manager found out.

Then something interesting happened.

When managers learned they would soon be transferring to another team, the incentive to hold on to their employees weakened. They wouldn't be responsible for that team's results much longer, and employees had less reason to worry about upsetting someone who was leaving.

Here's what makes that finding particularly troubling: the study estimates that employees who applied because their managers were preparing to leave had a 49.1% chance of getting hired, compared with 27.6% for the average applicant.

That's nearly twice the estimated likelihood of getting hired. Yet until their manager's circumstances changed, they weren't even applying.

Their qualifications hadn't changed. The circumstances discouraging them from applying had.

Haegele also compared employees' private performance ratings with assessments of their promotion potential that circulated more widely within the company. She found systematic patterns consistent with managers understating employees' potential relative to what their performance would predict.

In other words, your manager might be telling you how valuable you are while the people making promotion decisions are hearing something different.

That doesn't mean every manager is deliberately holding someone back. Promotions require openings, budgets, and readiness for a different role. Plenty of managers actively champion their employees.

But it does mean you shouldn't confuse being appreciated with actually moving forward.

Encouragement isn't sponsorship.

Think about two conversations with your manager.

Neither conversation guarantees a promotion. But the second gives you something the first doesn't: a direction, a plan, and someone willing to help you execute it.

And that's the distinction many employees miss. A performance review tells you how well you're doing your current job. A career conversation should establish what it will take to get your next one.

So what should you do?

Start by having that conversation. Ask for a specific target role, the requirements you're missing, who's involved in the decision, and what your manager will do to help you get there.

If the response is another variation of "keep doing what you're doing," pay attention. It isn't necessarily a sign of bad intentions, but it certainly isn't evidence of progress.

If looking for another role might put your current job at risk, start with the process, not an announcement. Find out whether internal applications notify your manager and whether HR or recruiters can explain the rules confidentially. If the risk is too high, explore opportunities outside the company without alerting your manager first.

Then look beyond your manager. Find out how internal hiring decisions work, speak with people who lead teams you'd want to join, and understand what those opportunities actually require.

Most importantly, make a decision based on what you learn. If your manager can't help establish a credible path forward, don't spend another review cycle hoping one will appear. Start pursuing opportunities where your abilities can translate into advancement.

There's nothing wrong with being loyal to a good manager. But loyalty shouldn't mean putting your career on hold because losing you would make their job harder.

You can respect their responsibilities without making their staffing needs your career plan.

A great performance review tells you how well you're doing your current job. It doesn't tell you how close you are to getting your next one.

Before you spend another year proving your value to someone who already knows it, consider a different question:

If your manager left tomorrow, who else would be willing to promote you?

If you don't know, that's probably where your attention should go next.

Johnston Osagie Jr.

Money, Time & Choice