Don’t promote the wrong person
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I had the opportunity to review some leadership promotions for one of my clients recently. There was one manager we talked about who was a great technical specialist but not effective as a leader. He didn’t put the team’s work first, have effective feedback conversations, or motivate strong performance. Another key part of his job was to select and develop strong leaders for his supervisory roles. But he was not doing this, either. Employees went around him to the executive, even skipping the director who was this person’s boss, to complain and ask for help. My client was considering moving this person—a manager with supervisors as direct reports—two steps back to an individual contributor role.
To a large extent, this wasn’t the manager’s fault. He liked the technical part of the job, helping customers. He had been promoted during a time when the whole business unit was changing quickly and they needed someone to step up. He had volunteered. The catch was that he’d been promoted because he was great at his individual contributor job. The senior leadership team thought he showed the potential to do well in a leadership role. But that wasn’t really his passion and he’d stumbled over the transitions. TIP: Never promote someone just because they’re great at their job. Promote people for their demonstrated ability to handle the tasks and responsibilities of the next level, not for accomplishments in the current role. Look for evidence. Don’t just accept their willingness to raise their hand. Leadership roles are too important for the organization to spend months or years with the wrong person in charge. Give them a realistic preview of what they’d have to do in that higher-level leadership role. There are transitions where the person has to leave behind some of the things that made them successful and pick up new values, time perspectives, and skills. (See the Leadership Pipeline video, “An Introduction to the Leadership Pipeline,” 8 minutes, for a look at these transitions.) They have to want to do the leadership kind of work and also have the capacity to build those different skills and switch their priorities in order to be successful. They would need to get energy from that work, instead of being drained by it. I help people with this, both as the coach to the executive and as a trainer or coach to the leaders adapting to their new roles. If you’d like to talk about how I can help you ensure good transitions, reply or schedule some time to chat. As always, let me know what you think or connect with me for networking if this article sparks ideas for you. Helping leaders excel, |
