Most directors who are passed over for VP promotion are not passed over because of poor performance. They are passed over because the criteria by which VP readiness is assessed are rarely made explicit and because the qualities that make someone an exceptional director are not the same qualities that signal readiness for the next level.

This is not a cynical observation. It reflects a genuine shift in what the role requires. Understanding it is more useful than waiting for feedback that may never arrive.

The shift that most directors miss

At director level, value is created primarily within a defined scope. Success is measured by how effectively you lead your function, deliver against your objectives, and develop the people in your team. These are legitimate and demanding requirements, and meeting them well builds a strong reputation at that level.

VP roles require something different. The scope is no longer defined in the same way. Value creation at VP level tends to happen across organisational boundaries: through influence rather than authority, through the ability to shape thinking in rooms where you do not have direct control, and through a quality of strategic judgement that operates at a level of complexity that director roles rarely demand.

The transition is not about doing more of what made you an excellent director. In some respects, it requires doing less of it: stepping back from functional ownership and operating instead at the level of organisational direction.

What VP-level thinking actually looks like

The distinction is easier to observe than to define. A director who responds to a budget constraint by finding efficiencies within their function is doing their job well. A director who uses the same constraint as an opportunity to redesign how resources flow across the organisation, (and builds the coalition to make that happen), is demonstrating VP-level thinking.

The difference is not one of intelligence or effort. It is one of altitude. VP-ready leaders tend to be consistently operating at a level above their current role:

• framing problems in terms of organisational opportunity rather than functional challenge,
• building relationships horizontally across the business rather than primarily within their own team,
• thinking about the organisation’s future rather than their function’s present.

This kind of thinking tends to be visible to C-suite leaders long before a promotion decision is made. It shows up in how someone speaks in senior meetings, which questions they ask, and whether their perspective extends beyond their own area of responsibility.

The access gap

What makes this dynamic particularly consequential for ethnic-cultural professionals is the role that informal access plays in closing it. The directors who understand VP-level expectations most clearly tend to be those with direct, sustained exposure to senior leaders who have made the transition themselves. People who can name the informal criteria, describe how they are read in practice, and offer candid perspective on what the organisation is actually looking for.

That kind of access is not evenly distributed. It develops through the same informal networks and proximity dynamics that shape sponsorship, and is subject to the same structural inequities.

Understanding the unwritten criteria is a necessary starting point. Having the relationships and visibility to demonstrate them is what ultimately determines whether readiness translates into advancement.

A structural note for organisations

Organisations that leave VP promotion criteria largely implicit will tend to advance the directors who have already figured them out through informal means. That is a narrower pool than the available talent suggests it should be.

Making the criteria explicit, (and ensuring that high-potential directors have genuine access to the senior perspective and sponsorship they need to demonstrate VP-level thinking), is not a diversity initiative. It is a pipeline investment with direct consequences for organisational capability.

The question is not whether the criteria exist. They always do. The question is whether they are accessible to everyone with the potential to meet them.