Promoting a great employee into management can create a workplace culture problem when an organization assumes that being excellent at the job means the person is ready to manage the people doing the job. What we have to ensure in a workplace culture strategy is that we need to have an awareness that the skills that make someone a strong individual contributor are not necessarily the same skills needed to lead a team. Once the promotion happens, the employee is suddenly responsible for setting expectations, giving feedback, handling conflict, making difficult decisions, and holding former peers accountable. If the organization has not prepared the person for those responsibilities, the promotion can create problems for the manager, the team, and eventually the broader workplace culture.
I have been working with organizations long enough to see a pattern that happens with good intentions. When a management position opens, the organization often hires someone inside the company that already knows how to do the job. The top choice for consideration is an employee who is doing an excellent job, is dependable, knows the business, gets along with the team, and consistently produces results.
The new manager may be a great person who really knows what he or she is doing; however, he or she may have difficulty getting people to meet expectations. Conversations that used to be easy can become uncomfortable when the new manager must give direction to a former peer. Sometimes the manager begins doing the employees’ work because it feels faster than explaining what needs to happen or having another difficult conversation. Other times the manager may become overly controlling because establishing authority feels necessary.
I have seen this become a workplace culture problem because the organization made a decision based on one set of behaviors and skills and then placed that person into a role requiring a very different set of behaviors and skills. Gallup has found that organizations often select managers based on success in a previous nonmanagerial role or tenure, even though those factors do not necessarily predict effectiveness in managing other people. Gallup’s research also found that about one in ten people have a high level of talent for managing others, with another two in ten showing some managerial talent that can be developed.
That distinction matters when we talk about leadership effectiveness and team performance.
Individual performance requires a person to manage his or her own responsibilities while management requires a person to create the conditions for other people to perform well. The manager has to set expectations, communicate decisions, address performance problems, give feedback, handle conflict, make decisions under pressure, and maintain appropriate relationships with employees while still holding them accountable. Those responsibilities change the job.
How Does the Promotion Changes More Than the Job Title?
My understanding of this issue is that organizations often underestimate what actually happens when an individual contributor becomes a manager. The job title changes immediately, but the expectations, relationships, authority, and daily behavior required for success change at the same time.
The transition can become particularly difficult when the employee is promoted over people who were previously peers. The Center for Creative Leadership has specifically identified the transition from individual contributor to first time manager as a difficult change because the new manager is suddenly responsible for people who may have previously been peers or friends. The organization has changed the person’s positional authority, which changes the relationships around that person as well.
Think about what that means in an ordinary workplace.
Why Does Promoting a High Performing Employee Into Management Sometimes Fail?
Think about what happens when the promotion is someone who was just part of the team. A few weeks ago, he or she may have been sitting at lunch with coworkers, talking about a frustrating situation or venting about something that happened during the day. Now that same person may be responsible for addressing a performance issue with one of those coworkers.
The conversations change too. Some of the information the new manager is now responsible for cannot be shared with the people who used to be peers, and there may be situations where the manager has to step back from conversations he or she used to be part of.
Even the way problems get solved changes. An employee who was once rewarded for jumping in and fixing things now has to decide when stepping in is actually helping the team and when it is preventing someone else from learning how to handle the problem.
As the new manager establishes a different professional relationship, the team has to adjust to that change. When the organization provides no guidance for that transition, employees begin determining the new boundaries themselves. Some managers become too close to their former peers because they are uncomfortable establishing authority. Others go in the opposite direction and become overly rigid because they believe being a manager means proving that they are in charge. Neither response solves the underlying problem.
Meanwhile the manager may be trying to figure out how to use positional authority while maintaining trust, communication, accountability, and appropriate professional boundaries. The organization has a responsibility to give new managers the leadership skills and support they need to succeed in the role.
Why Isn’t What Worked Before Working Anymore?
I have also seen another pattern with newly promoted managers. The behaviors that made the employee successful in the previous position can become a problem when those behaviors are carried unchanged into management.
Think about the employee who was always the person everyone went to when something needed to get done. He or she was the one who jumped in, figured things out, took ownership, stayed late when necessary, and usually did not need much help. Those are great qualities in an employee, and they are often exactly why the person gets promoted. The problem is that those same habits can create a different problem once that person becomes a manager. If the new manager keeps jumping in to solve every problem, the team can quickly learn to rely on the manager instead of developing the confidence and skills to solve problems on their own.
The same thing can happen with perfectionism, urgency, control, conflict avoidance, or an intense focus on personal productivity. A behavior can produce strong individual results in one role and create problems for team performance in another. This is why leadership behavior and team performance have to be considered together.
How Does the Manager Becomes Part of the Culture?
Gallup has consistently reported that managers account for about 70% of the variance in team employee engagement. Its research connects management behavior with the day-to-day experience employees have at work, including communication, feedback, development, and accountability. That makes the decision about who becomes a manager part of workplace culture strategy.
Employees learn what an organization really values by watching how things are handled every day, from whether managers address problems directly and apply expectations consistently to how they respond to mistakes, feedback, difficult decisions, and disagreement. Those everyday interactions tell employees how the organization actually operates and how it affects employee engagement, retention, communication, and performance. They also affect the manager. A person who was once successful may become exhausted from trying to personally carry the team’s workload while simultaneously dealing with problems he or she was never prepared to manage.
What Happens When the Employee Does Not Want the Job?
In many organizations, management is treated as the next step in a successful career. If an employee wants higher compensation, more authority, or greater career advancement, becoming a manager may appear to be the logical path. That creates pressure for employees to accept management positions even when their strengths and interests may be better suited to remaining an individual contributor. The organization then loses a strong employee in the original role and places that person into a position where success depends on an entirely different collection of skills and behaviors, and that can become expensive.
Gallup’s research has found that organizations often miss when selecting managers, particularly when they rely on previous performance or tenure rather than looking specifically at the person’s capacity for management. This is why I think organizations need to consider if the person wants to manage people and is there evidence that supports that capability.
I work with organizations to observe how people handle responsibility, conflict, feedback, and pressure. I also encourage honest conversations with the employee about what management actually involves.
The Organization Has to Own the Transition
When a newly promoted manager struggles, it is easy to make the problem about the individual. Sometimes the person is simply not suited for management. There are also times when the organization created the conditions for the problem by assuming that the promotion itself was enough.
The Center for Creative Leadership recommends preparing first time managers for the specific challenges that come with the transition, including managing former peers, engaging and coaching employees, building relationships, and responding constructively to conflict.
A new manager needs to understand what authority actually means in the organization. He or she needs clear expectations around accountability, communication, performance management, confidentiality, decision making, and conflict. The manager also needs a place to work through situations that are unfamiliar before those situations become employee relations problems.
I know there are a lot of leadership development courses and strategies out there. However, I also know that leadership development has to connect to the actual work.
As I reflect on this, it strikes me that organizations need to become more deliberate about the difference between being good at the work and being responsible for the people doing the work. A management position changes the nature of the employee’s contribution, and that change affects the entire team. This is why the decision to promote someone into management belongs in a larger workplace culture strategy. The person you place in that role will influence how employees experience accountability, communication, feedback, trust, and performance every day.
Promote people based on the work you need them to do next, not only on how well they performed the work they did before.