Promoting People Before They Are Ready

Good leaders develop team members through challenging assignments and stretch goals.

Believing in the talents and skills of team members translates into involving them in projects they are not perfectly ready for.

Sometimes, the best way to grow team member skills is to involve them in challenges that make them uncomfortable. Sink or swim, they learn valuable lessons and develop the resilience to tackle the next difficult assignment with confidence.

While good leaders stretch people, they must be careful not to over-promote them into roles where they are unlikely to succeed.

There is an enormous difference between failing at an assignment and underperforming in a position or role. The consequences of missteps in a project are usually limited. Incompetency in a role, however, will usually derail a leader’s or team member’s career.

There is a fine line between believing in people and giving them opportunities that will stretch them and promoting them before they are ready.

Good leaders walk that line with intention and insight.

Before promoting people into a higher role or one with more responsibility, the best leaders consult a checklist of requisite questions.

• Do they have the foundational skills and experience to succeed?

• Will others around them celebrate their promotion and work hard to make them successful?

• Do they have the judgment necessary to make quality decisions in the role?

• Can they adapt to changes in the role quickly and confidently?

• Will they seek experts to fill in their gaps of knowledge?

• Are they ready to accept tough feedback about their performance and make the changes necessary to succeed?

• Is their current track record of success a credibility booster in the eyes of their colleagues?

The danger of over-promoting a talented team member is real.

Team members and junior leaders who are promoted before they are ready can destroy team morale, team productivity, and team dynamics.

Through poor decision-making and priority setting, they can do long-term harm to a team. The resentment felt by those who must endure their ineptness can undermine trust and hurt talent retention.

Because they lack the skills, confidence, and experience to succeed, others will quickly recognize their incompetency.

Once they begin to stumble, if they lack the foundation of experience and insight, it is exceedingly hard for them to recover.

While leadership experts delight in pointing out the many benefits of failing, doing so in a new role or position can create permanent scarring. Newly promoted failures rarely regain their footing.

The lesson for leaders is to stretch people through assignments and projects, not through roles and expanded responsibility.

While no one is ever perfectly ready for the next position or role, those who lack the requisite skills and experience will likely falter and take others down with them.

The best leaders promote others when they are ready, not when they are available and willing.