I got back on my evening walk tonight for the first time in a while. Travel, conferences, a remodel that finally wrapped. You can hear in my voice that I have not been walking, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What I wanted to talk about might be a gut check for some of you.
Just because somebody has been with you forever is not a reason to promote them. It is also not a reason to keep them.
Loyalty is not performance
I was talking with a client recently who has someone who has been there since close to the beginning. That person has figured out how to work the system, or more honestly, how to work the version of the business that does not exist anymore. They do not want to grow with the company. They want it to stay the way it was when it was easier.
My client feels stuck. There is real loyalty there. I know this person. I love this person. They are a good person.
All of that can be true and it can still not be a fit. Sometimes you outgrow people. That is allowed. It does not make you ungrateful and it does not erase what they did for you in year two.
The promotion we hand out for the wrong reason
The other half of this is promoting people into management who are not ready for it.
Somebody has been with you five years, or ten, and the natural next step looks like manager. So we offer it. And they take it, because most people will take a promotion that is handed to them. That is not the same thing as wanting the job or being built for it.
Then it gets worse, and this is the part I want to sit on for a minute.
You cannot be mad at someone you never trained
If you promote someone into management and they are genuinely excited about it, what are you doing to grow them?
Are they in a management course? Has anyone walked them through the HR side of it? Are you investing in them the way you invest in yourself?
You cannot be mad at somebody for being a poor manager when they have never been a manager before and you dropped them in the seat. I watch businesses do this constantly, and it is not fair to the person. They might be an outstanding manager one day. It is not going to happen overnight and it is not going to happen on their own.
They need to be trained. They need to be poured into. And they need to be led, not managed. There is a difference there. They need somebody showing them how to communicate, how to handle confrontation, how to set a number and then hold it.
I have gotten this wrong
I have promoted people I was sure were going to be fantastic, and they were not. I have promoted people who were great for a few months and then the role outgrew them.
That is okay. It is information.
Some people are exactly where they want to be
Not everybody wants a title, and we forget that.
I have cleaning techs who want to be cleaning techs and nothing else, and that is beautiful. We need them. I have office staff who are happy being office staff. Also beautiful. Also needed. We all have different goals and different dreams, and a promotion is not a reward for everybody.
We once moved a technician into the office. She did it for several months, then came to us and said she really loves cleaning and asked to go back to the field. Absolutely. I would rather keep a good employee doing work she is good at and passionate about than push her into a seat she does not want because I was afraid of losing her and assumed that is what she wanted.
How to do it on purpose
If you are looking at somebody you think is management material, try this instead.
Have the conversation first. Ask if they are even interested, and mean it, with no repercussions either way. If they say no, nothing changes.
Set a timeline. Let us try this for six weeks and see how you feel. Tell them out loud that they can go back to their old seat if they hate it, and mean that too.
Then do not avoid the hard conversations once they are in the role. Putting somebody in a seat does not mean they own it forever. Maybe it is not a fit. Maybe they are thriving and they start growing the next leader behind them.
None of that happens on accident. All of it happens on purpose.
So be purposeful with your people.
Jen