Why promoting your best person to manager often fails

Promoting your best person to manager feels like the obvious move. They know the work better than anyone, the team respects them, and they’ve earned it.

But being the best at the job and getting the best out of a team are different skills. Without help making that change, the promotion often doesn’t work, for them or for the business.

The signs it isn’t working

A few months in, the pattern is usually clear:

• They’re still doing most of the work themselves.
• Their team’s performance hasn’t improved.
• People are still going to the owner for decisions.
• They’re working longer hours, because they’re trying to do their old job as well as the new one.

Another sign is avoiding difficult conversations, particularly with people who were previously their peers. They’ve been given responsibility for the team, but they haven’t yet learned how to manage it.

What it looks like in practice

A typical example is promoting your top performer and expecting them to make everyone else perform like they do. Often, they don’t know how. They’ve gone from being a peer, a friend or a mate to being the manager, without anyone helping them make that change.

So they carry on being the top performer, while everyone else carries on as before. The business has lost some of its best output, and gained a manager in name only.

You need to train, guide, coach and mentor people to become managers and leaders. Giving them the job title doesn’t give them those skills.

Choosing the right person

Being the best at the job is useful, but the role now involves getting good results through other people. So look at how they work with others:

• Do they help colleagues improve?
• Can they explain things clearly, and listen?
• Do they follow through on what they say they’ll do?
• Can they deal with a difficult conversation?
• Do they take responsibility when something goes wrong?

Most importantly, ask whether they actually want to manage people, and whether they understand what that involves.

The first 90 days

A newly promoted manager needs four things from you early on.

• A clear explanation of the role. What success looks like, and which decisions they can make.
• Time to manage. That means deciding who will take on their previous workload.
• Practical training in delegation, feedback, setting expectations and managing performance.
• Regular support, through conversations about the real situations they’re dealing with.

One course and a “my door is always open” won’t be enough. Where it helps to build those skills properly, that’s what Management Training is for.

The common mistake

Changing the title without changing anything else. The person keeps their old workload, gets responsibility for a team, and is expected to work it out.

Owners can also undermine the promotion without meaning to, by continuing to give instructions directly to the team, or taking decisions back whenever they disagree. The new manager needs clear authority, and the team needs to understand that the role has changed. It’s the same pattern I described in why your managers aren’t managing.

When it isn’t working

Start by asking whether you gave them a fair chance. Were the expectations clear? Did they have the training, the time, the authority and the support? If those things were missing, address them, and agree what improvement needs to look like.

Sometimes returning to the previous role is the right answer. If it is, handle it honestly and respectfully. Someone can be an excellent technical professional and find that managing people isn’t for them. That shouldn’t erase the value they bring to the business.

Management shouldn’t be the only way up

This is the view some advisers might disagree with. Promotion into management shouldn’t be the only way your best people can progress or earn more. Otherwise, you risk taking someone away from work they excel at and putting them into a role they don’t want.

When I ran a business, we had strong technical professionals who wanted to develop and grow but didn’t want to manage people. We created a career path that allowed them to do that.

Businesses need to recognise expertise as well as management responsibility. Get that right, and the people you promote into management are the ones who genuinely want to lead, not the ones who saw no other way forward.