One of the easiest ways to set a good employee up for failure is to promote them.

This nearly always happens with good intent. The logic usually looks something like this:

Someone is technically skilled. They are good at making widgets. They are dependable, work well with others, and understand the operation. So, they are promoted to supervise the widget line.

After a few successful years overseeing widget production, they are promoted into mid-level management. Now they oversee production across several facilities or states.

If they continue to perform well, they may eventually be promoted into executive leadership. Now they are expected to set strategy, lead larger initiatives, shape culture, and pursue bigger opportunities.

The problem is that each rung requires different skills than the previous one. Not everyone enjoys, wants to learn, or is good at those new skills.

Differences Between Skills

Technical skill is the ability to build or deliver the widget.

Management skill is the ability to help other people maintain standards, coordinate work, and meet objectives. In short, it ensures that work is consistently done well.

Leadership skill is the ability to establish direction, define priorities, shape culture, and create alignment when the path is not already clear. In short, it decides what work should be done.

These skills can overlap. But they are not interchangeable.

Someone who is excellent in one area may be mediocre, or even awful, in another. A gifted engineer may be a poor supervisor. A reliable manager may struggle with change or uncertainty. A strong executive may never have been the best technical performer in the company.

Some people can climb the entire ladder effectively. But it is a mistake to assume everyone can or should.

Promotions are not good prizes for past performance. They should not be the only way to recognize success. Promotions are decisions about who can carry a different set of future responsibilities.

That means most of what someone does well in their current role may not predict success in the next one. Often, only a sliver of their current work resembles what the next role will require. That is the sliver you should study most carefully.

Too often, someone is promoted from a level of high competence into their highest level of incompetence.

Competencies Needed for Different Roles

Technical Roles

A technically skilled employee might be good, perhaps uniquely good, at the work itself. They design buildings, diagnose patients, wire facilities, write code, or solve complex technical problems.

Success at this level usually depends on two things: technical competence and personal self-management. By self-management, I mean characteristics like dependability, perseverance, effective conflict management, and time and priority management.

Don’t promote people who are unable to manage themselves well. If they can’t manage themselves, don’t expect them to manage others, especially as responsibilities and pressure grow.

When considering a technically skilled employee for a supervisory role, their technical ability shouldn’t be the qualifier. It’s more important to determine whether they have demonstrated basic capacities of self-management and clear indications of their ability to manage others.

Do they manage themselves well? Do they mentor or help others improve? Can they uphold standards without becoming controlling or taking all the work back themselves?

These are indicators of supervisory skill.

Their technical excellence may earn them consideration for promotion. It should not be the reason for the promotion.

Front-Line Supervision

A front-line supervisor needs enough knowledge to understand the work, recognize problems, and maintain credibility with the team. But their primary responsibility has changed.

They are no longer responsible only for their own performance. They are responsible for helping a group of people perform consistently.

Most front-line supervision is a combination of management and ensuring the technical competence and consistency of the team. It involves clarifying expectations, maintaining standards, coordinating work, and addressing performance issues. This is perhaps 80 percent of their work.

There is also an introductory leadership component. Supervisors must keep the team aligned, model the right behaviors, mentor employees, and help people grow. This might be 20 percent of their work.

When considering them for promotion, put more weight on their demonstrated ability with the management and leadership skills needed at the next level.

Mid-Level Management

Mid-level managers are responsible for more than one team, function, facility, or layer of supervision.

At this level, the technical nature of the work usually becomes less dominant. The manager’s contribution increasingly comes from coordinating line supervisors, interpreting expectations, resolving competing priorities, navigating tradeoffs, and creating consistency across a larger part of the organization.

When considering this person for promotion, their leadership competency becomes more important than their management or technical skills. Those skills still matter, but they are no longer as central to success.

Senior Leadership

Senior leadership requires a foundation of self-management and proven management ability. But this is also the point where many otherwise successful promotions fail.

A reliable manager can maintain standards, organize work, and ensure execution. A senior leader must do something more. They must create direction, align leaders around a shared vision, navigate uncertainty, and prepare the organization for what comes next.

Management protects and improves what already exists. Leadership helps determine what should exist next.

Someone who has only demonstrated management competence should not be expected to become a leader simply because they receive a larger title and more authority.

Where Promotions Fail

Someone is strong, or at least competent, in one role. They are promoted based on what made them good in that role, not on what will make them successful in the next one.

That is rolling the dice.

Do not expect a promotion to become the magic ingredient that creates leadership capacity.

Power is a magnifier. Promotions are typically increases in power or authority. If people have already demonstrated that they can motivate others, build alignment, exercise judgment, develop leaders, and navigate uncertainty, you can expect more of that.

If they tend to take more control when stressed, withdraw or become aggressive under pressure, miss deadlines or budgets, or become overly rigid, expect more of that as well.

Promotion should recognize demonstrated skills needed at the next level. It should not be the first place the organization looks to see those skills appear.

Promote for the Work Ahead

The central question in promotion decisions should not be:

Has this person performed well enough to deserve advancement?

It should be:

Has this person demonstrated the skills required by the role ahead?

Past performance matters. But only performance in skills that matter in the future role predicts success.

Take good care,

Christian