This will sound dumb. I know how it happens in PE. We know the assets, we keep selling them to IC, then they come to market, we try to get em, and you try to do like a deal or so every few years so they remember your name when they promote people. Distance yourself and allow blame to fall upon others for the disasters and attach yourself indisputably to the wins by making clandestine deals with opinion-shapers in the kings court. One day they might make you head of a group.
But how does it happen for bankers? Do you inherit relationships from senior bankers? How did Blair Effron do the Gilette deal that put him on the map etc?
This sounds dumb, I know. I already said it would
You either fall up the ladder and inherit someone else’s relationships / rely on brand name, or you get out there and make it happen. The latter is obviously harder than the former, but you can just tell when someone really has it at an early level
what makes a great banker is usually a combination of luck / social skills / courting business owners and actually talking to all of them so down the road you are a go to person / having actual views on the industry so you can sound smart to those same clients / character / internal politics
then you also have people who proved themselves in some one-off high pressure situation, like handling an internal crisis or building out a business division from scratch
another angle is that in industries with high turnover there simply aren't that many people who tick all those boxes so firms end up advancing the people who already know the industry and understand how the machine works to keep it working (superstars/rainmakers are, after all, one in a dime)
the overall pattern is that in a service-oriented business where money is the #1 priority, any revenue-generating activity you seem to be doing beyond expectations makes you the preferred pick to be pushed higher and handed more resources (decision making, subordinates, etc.) in the hope you can replicate that same activity at larger scale (understood also that you need to be savy enough to not let others steal it / take credit for it)
management-wise you also have different typologies of people you’d want around the firm. Some are external-oriented (like the rainmakers), others are internal operators (focused on operational efficiency/processes, etc.), others are great dispute resolvers, others are extremely charismatic, etc. so usually you want some balanced mix of those profiles across the firm which also makes more subjective traits matter when deciding who gets promoted, and each is "good" in their own way (very simple example, but you'd have the people-oriented MDs brining the clients, and then pass it to a more technically/structuring-oriented MD, so each plays on their own strengths making them both good bankers even if their skills are different)
strong answer
Seems complicated..
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