What training, education, experience, personality traits, or other factors helped you get promoted?

Quick background: I enlisted in 2011 and left active service for ROTC.

1) Planning: I distinctly remember the day that I sat down and decided what I wanted to attempt to do with the rest of my career. My father told me that all military service is honorable and the main factor is where you want to end up. I had to decided if I wanted a chance at being “MSG Ford” or “LTC Ford”. “LTC Ford” sounded better to me, so I decided to ignore everything that didn’t help me get to that point (outside of my daily work duties of course).

2) Accountability: In order to keep from spinning my wheels, I created short, medium and long term goals. I purchased 2 dry erase boards and put both short and long term plans on them. Every Sunday afternoon, I would take an hour or two to honestly reassess my progress. Goals aren’t real until they are written down and checked off.

3) Education/Presentation: I’ve found that if you make it easy for your leaders to help you they generally will. I was always the smartest person in the room about the commissioning programs that I was seeking. I made sure to understand the information in the milpers as throughly as possible so that I could give my leaders easily understandable, actionable requests.

4) Go above and beyond: I took every opportunity to stand out for the right reasons. NCO of the month/quarter boards, both at the battalion and brigade level got me on the radar screen of senior leaders who were essential in helping me get to where I current am.

(Note: All my comments refer to promotion via centralized boards)
1. What Lt Col Charlie Brown said - MEET the requirements for the next higher grade.
It is seriously astounding how many people miss this one and then get butt-hurt that their "obvious excellence" does not give them a waiver.
2. Have your records up to date.
If your records don't reflect #1, it is as if it doesn't exist. Again, it's been a minute, but I recall looking at stats for Officers that showed over 40% never even reviewed their "my board file" going into a board. Hint: It's probably wrong. Yes, HRC/S1 should square you away. Ultimately, it's on you - If you want to get promoted. As they had on the clay tablets back when I went through ROTC - You are your best career manager, nobody cares as much as you do.
Side Story - I don't know what was up, but on my most recent board, they used the new Automated Record Brief. About the only thing that was right on the first pull was my name and dates of (one never happened....I appeared that I was never a CPT) prior promotions. This is despite the fact that all of my documents were routinely uploaded and correct in IPERMS, which is the source they used to update the ARB.

Quite honestly, the two points above will separate you from your peers and get you far for "on time" promotion. If it's a "fully qualified" board, you win.

3. Have a documented record of consistent high performance.
It's no good having some evals that say "rock star", a bunch that say "average", and a few that say "meh." I sincerely recommend you do everything you can to "help" your rater write reviews that match your career goals. The first thing is genuine high performance. The second is helping by documenting your performance in an easily digestible format, that matches what the two of you agreed to in your initial and subsequent counselings, assuming they happened. To be quite honest, I have a time or two (or more) assisted my supervisor by writing a draft eval to "help them get started" at least once, my supervisor's contribution was to sign the evaluation. It's not how it should be, but I'm not going to stand on principle, especially when I know the boss can't write....

It's a bit tricky figuring out what "consistent" high performance looks like. I have a "depriving a village of it's idiot" eval in my file. Seriously, Senior Rater recommendation that I be separated. Luckily for me, the timing of the eval was such that by the time a board looked at my file, it was very clear that that eval was an outlier as it was preceded by a string of "Promote ahead of peers/TOP of pyramid" (yeah, that old!) and followed by an unbroken string of "Best/Above." Had that been a recent eval when I went to the board, I suspect I would have been twice passed over.

4. Do extra. In a way that shows in your record.
In my case, I did the Defense Strategy Course, the Air War College, and the Army War College. I was also a fanatic about tracking my results as a CGSC instructor and a BN Commander. Thus my evals were able to correctly say that I was in the top X% of instructors per student feedback (As opposed to "a top instructor who reaches the students") and that I had increased Unit fill from X to Y. They distinguished my LTC--> COL file from my peers. Very likely not decisive, but you never know the exact tipping point. Find a way to to put your thumb on the scale. What that is will depend on whether Active, Guard, Reserve and roles.

If you do 3 & 4, that will go a long way towards "best qualified" boards.

NOTE: My emphasis here has all been on "shows in your records." That's key, as it is what the boards actually see. I'm not downplaying the "be excellent in your job." You should do that because of pride and being a professional.

There is going to be a good variety. ROTC in High School and a Bachelor degree meant I came in as an E-4. After that it was volunteering rather than being volun-told and have a can-do attitude. After being MOS-Q, doing unit cross training in other MOS, putting in for schools like Airborne, Air Assault, Pathfinder, et., taking whatever was thrown at me and just doing it without gripe or complaint, mentoring other soldiers. And of course there is good ole luck.

N---No one is more professional that I.

C---Competence is my watchword.

O---Officers of my unit will have maximum time to accomplish their duties; they will not have to accomplish mine.

But seriously....It was literally my being in the right place at the right time; never compromising my integrity; and working hard...doing what I needed to do...to gain the trust and confidence of my superiors and my Soldiers.

And all of this was well after I finally performed a rectal-cranial extraction.

I worked very hard; volunteered for tasks, tried my best to go above and beyond. PT was not my strong suite ( my score wasn’t low, but wasn’t a 300 either) so I worked harder in every other area to stand out whenever possible.

Stayed out of trouble.

Studied for boards.

Watched and listened to the ncos/ officers around me so that I could learn their duties.

Helped those in need when I could.

I received a wavier for each rank I’ve earned. And what I can say is :
1- Always be at the right place , right time, right uniform
2- keep a positive attitude at all times , the energy you put out can and will affect those around you. Be proficient at your job.
3- do the things no one else wants to do ie ; SOM boards , COC detail, go to college , do your ssd(s)/dlp(s), do your corresponding courses.