Ten years ago, I made a transition that I have barely talked about since. I have spent years documenting what happened after I became a VP, the jump from IT to HR, building out ESG, leading safety and transportation. But I hardly ever talk about how I actually got to the VP level in the first place.
The move from director to vice president was not a reward for being the most technically capable person in the room. It was the result of a fundamental shift in how I thought, how I communicated, and who I chose to become. Most directors I work with today are stuck at the same wall I hit. They are working hard, running solid departments, delivering results. And they cannot figure out why the promotion is not coming.
Here is what I had to learn.
The short version: the promotion had nothing to do with technical skill. It required building peer-level relationships with the executive team, getting out of my office and into the field, communicating in business outcomes instead of technical architecture, learning to delegate my identity, and delivering on every single commitment. The sections below break down each shift in detail.
Why Executive Peers Matter More Than Your Team at the VP Level
I know that sounds counterintuitive, especially coming from me. But hear me out.
At the director level, you can win by running a strong department. You can keep the servers up, hit your SLAs, and check every box. That is enough to be a good director. At the vice president level, it is not enough anymore.
The executive team needs to see you as a peer. Not as the person who keeps the lights on. Not as the IT guy they call when something breaks. As a peer. That means building real relationships with them. Not a surface-level coffee chat. I mean sitting down and genuinely understanding what matters to them, what is keeping them up at night, and what success looks like from where they sit.
When you make an executive the hero of a story where you played a supporting role, something shifts. You start getting invited into rooms you were never in before. You get exposure to parts of the business you did not know existed. All of that feeds directly into the next shift you have to make.
Why Directors Need Field Experience to Get Promoted to VP
I used to believe that, because I understood the infrastructure and had managed countless IT projects and implementations, I understood the business.
Understanding the technology that runs the business is not the same as understanding the business. The only way to close that gap is to get out of your office and go spend time where the actual work happens.
I will never forget sitting in a boardroom while listening to the rest of the executive team make a decision based on the data they were seeing in their spreadsheets and thinking “that’s not right”.
I eventually had to speak up and say “I was there last week and this is the actual reason you are seeing what you are seeing in the data”.
My differentiator was that I was the only person actually going out to the field.
That ability to bridge the field and the boardroom was not something I picked up from a certification. It came from showing up, asking questions, and listening.
How to Communicate Like a VP: Business Outcomes Over Technical Architecture
The first time I put together a full presentation mapping out the entire data center, the redundancies, the interconnects, all of it, I was so proud of it!
Nobody cared…
What they actually wanted to know was:
How does this protect us?
How does this drive revenue?
What is the risk if we do not invest here?
I had to stop proving I was the smartest person in the room and start speaking the language of the people I was trying to influence. That is a different skill entirely. It is not about dumbing things down. It is about translating technical reality into business outcomes. When you make that shift, people start viewing you differently almost immediately.
Why Delegation Is a VP Requirement, Not a Nice-to-Have
This one was the hardest for me.
My identity was wrapped up in being the best solutions architect in the room. I loved the technology. I had spent years building that expertise and it felt like a core part of who I was. But it was also the thing holding me back.
Letting go means delegating. And delegating means accepting that your team is going to do things differently than you would, and occasionally they are going to get it wrong. That is the job now. You coach them, you develop them, you give them room to grow. You build them up, and then you let them run.
When you stop doing the work and start enabling the people doing the work, you free yourself up to focus on the things that are actually required from a VP. Building relationships, communicating strategy, and solving problems that have no clean technical answer.
How VPs Build Executive Trust: Deliver on Every Commitment
This one falls squarely in the extreme ownership bucket.
If you say something is going to happen by a certain date, make it happen. It does not matter what it costs you in time or effort. You honor that commitment.
Now, there is nuance here. You absolutely have the ability to push back on unrealistic timelines, but you have to do it at the beginning of a conversation, not at the deadline. When a business leader comes to you with a due date, that is your moment to have an honest conversation about tradeoffs. Which existing projects go on hold? What resources shift? What are we actually choosing here?
That kind of conversation is what separates a peer from a service provider. Reliable under pressure, consistent over time. That is what builds executive-level trust.
Why Networking and Visibility Are Non-Negotiable Skills for VP Promotion
I spent years with my office light off and my door closed, head down, doing the work. I genuinely believed that was the path to promotion. It is not.
At some point I had to start attending conferences, networking with other executives, and watching how the best leaders operated. It gave me enormous anxiety at first, but every time I went, I would see CIOs and VPs who were completely at ease in those environments and I would ask myself, how do they do that? Then it hit me… they practiced. They put themselves in uncomfortable rooms until it became natural.
Networking is not politics. Navigating the organizational landscape is not manipulation. It is learning to operate effectively in the environment you are actually in, so that you can show up and deliver for your team and your business.
The Promotion Is Not About the Title
The promotion is about the person you have to become to deserve it.
I had to stop seeing myself as a technologist and start operating as a technology executive. That meant owning enterprise-level outcomes. Thinking long-term. Protecting the business and the people in it, including the ones who made my life difficult. Because everyone is watching how you respond, especially under pressure, and especially when it is uncomfortable.
When you lead well through the hard moments, people notice. And eventually the title follows.
If any of this is hitting close to home, drop a comment or send me a message. This is the work I do every day with executives who are ready to make that leap.
