Body of Knowledge · Glossary
Growth ladder
An explicit description of what each level looks like for each competency, so that a promotion is judged against a shared description rather than against how assertive a manager is. Also called a competency matrix. It describes what each level involves, and sets no schedule.
Where the standard develops it
- PL-5Career development and growth pathsOne-on-ones, promotions, the Staff+ track, and the IC/manager choice.
Related terms
- Calibration
- Aligning evaluation standards across interviewers, managers or organisations so that the same capability or performance earns the same judgment.
- Disengagement signals
- Withdrawal, cynicism and ideas that stop coming.
- Glue work
- The coordinating, documenting and unblocking work that holds a team together and rarely shows up in the artifacts a promotion process values.
- Key-person risk
- Critical capability, context or ownership concentrated in one person, so that the organisation is destabilised when they leave or are courted.
- Managerial leverage
- Grove's framing that a manager's output is the output of the organisation under them, and that activities differ in how much output they produce per hour spent.
- One-on-one
- The recurring, protected meeting between a manager and a report.
- Readiness
- Already exercising the judgment of a larger scope on real stakes before holding the title.
- Staff+ track
- The senior individual-contributor career path (staff, principal and beyond), of equal standing to management and with several distinct archetypes.
Cite this definition
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Growth ladder. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, GLO.growth-ladder). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/glossary/growth-ladder