You’ve seen it: Someone who was a great team performer got promoted and is now a mediocre manager.

How do you know if someone is ready to step up?

Almost all of my clients are growing. Four are likely to break $100M within the next 18 months. I had a client last year that grew from 300 to 800 employees in 12 months.

This is exciting. But it is also very challenging.

Growth creates roles before those roles are fully defined. You need more managers, more leaders, and more people who can carry responsibility. But how do you know if someone is ready?

Two Tests Before You Promote

You can determine if someone has the “Right Stuff” for senior-level advancement by evaluating these two things:

1. Past Performance: If their past performance demonstrates that they can carry analogous responsibilities in the position you are considering them for.
2. Propensity for Growth: If their current behavior and mindset show they are likely to keep growing under greater complexity.

Past Performance

Have they carried similar responsibilities or succeeded with similar expectations before? It’s helpful if they’ve had the same role, but often they haven’t. Instead, we look at whether they have been effective elsewhere in the context of similar responsibilities, pressure, ambiguity, people dynamics, and consequences for success or failure.

They may not have carried as much or as often elsewhere. But did they carry enough to demonstrate how they managed it and give insight into whether they can carry more?

Propensity for Growth

The more senior a role is, the greater the ambiguity and uncertainty. Does the person you are considering show the capacity to thrive in that context? To determine this, I like to look for the seven following traits. These will show up in how they tend to behave, make decisions, and interpret both reality and the future:

Growth Mindset: People who believe their abilities and talents can be grown will make better leaders than those who believe their abilities are natural or fixed. Leaders with this mindset not only believe that learning new skills is possible, they assume that a learning curve is normal and are less likely to view feedback from others as a personal attack.

People who believe strongly that people either are or aren’t innately good at things won’t grow as well or as far.

Skilled at Learning: They learn quickly, even things they may not be interested in. They have confidence that they can figure out unknown challenges. They easily apply lessons or tools from one context to another. Some research indicates that this skill is one of the best predictors of future success.

People who struggle with or resist learning won’t thrive in senior leadership.

Internally Driven: They are driven by clear internal values, standards, and a sense of direction. They self-manage and self-motivate. They take initiative. When their values and sense of direction match your organizational vision and values, it creates a potent combination.

People who need to be led can’t lead others well.

Self-Awareness: This is the ability to recognize both their own values, motivations, and emotional states, and how they are experienced externally by others. These are mutually exclusive. Someone can be aware of their internal state but not aware of how others experience them. Or vice versa.

Interestingly, a study by Tasha Eurich published in Harvard Business Review shows that 95% of people believe they are self-aware but only 10-15% actually are. Senior leaders tend to experience a particularly strong gap. As their positional power increases, they tend to receive less honest feedback from others.

Self-awareness is the ability to interpret reality. Leaders who can’t interpret it well can’t interact with it well.

Resilience to Criticism: Effective leaders hear and even seek critical feedback about their behavior. They differentiate between feedback about identity and behavior. They don’t internalize critique as a challenge to their identity, but rather as a corrective to behavior. They try to recognize and learn from mistakes quickly, and fix what needs fixing. But they don’t beat themselves up over mistakes.

Leaders who internalize and personalize criticism tend to shut down feedback and are more likely to hide (rather than address) mistakes or gaps in knowledge.

Openness to Ambiguity: Leadership is only necessary in ambiguity. It is only needed when information is lacking, the rules aren’t clear, and when you can’t know how others will respond to decisions. How well do they create clarity vs. more confusion or opacity? How well can this person navigate the unknown and unknowable? How well can they accept ambiguity and still move forward constructively?

Leaders who can’t handle ambiguity will either quit or create boxes for themselves and everyone else to manufacture an artificial sense of clarity.

Relational Agility: They adjust and respond proportionately and appropriately to their context. They recognize when being directive is helpful vs. being consultative or deferential. They know when to be authoritative and in control vs. being sympathetic or allowing others to have a stronger presence. They can build and maintain healthy relationships with diverse types of people and situations.

Leadership only happens in the context of relationships. Effective leaders are skilled in many different kinds of relationships. One-trick ponies will be unable to handle the vicissitudes of actual leadership.

Conclusion

Hiring well is a challenge. But it is even more challenging to have to address a poor promotion or hire. You can successfully and reliably recognize the people with the right stuff without the process becoming onerous.

Look at how their past performance relates to future expectations and needs. And look at their propensity for growth. These two tests will help you make reliable, effective hires or promotions.

Take good care,

Christian