What it usually means
It is not a request to network. It is a statement that the room where your promotion is discussed contains people who cannot picture you.
What else it can mean
- A sponsor gap. Nobody senior would put your name forward unprompted.
- A calibration gap. Your manager has to defend you to people who have never seen your work.
- A distance gap. You report into a head office that sees you through a screen, a few times a quarter.
What to find out first
Which two or three people, by name, will be in the room when your case is discussed.
What the research says, and where it stops
Network position predicted salary and promotions among 448 employees, and it worked through sponsorship and access to information.
Seibert, Kraimer & Liden 2001, Academy of Management Journal 44(2). Limit: Correlational.
The honest ceiling: across studies, receiving career mentoring correlated with promotion only modestly (r = .10).
Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz & Lima 2004, Journal of Applied Psychology 89(1). Limit: Mostly US, mostly cross-sectional; correlations, not causes.
Which door
This is The Ladder — “I asked what's holding back my promotion. The answer is always vague.”