While many people may be focused on how to get promoted, there are also those in the position of making promotion decisions that want to ensure they select the right person. If the wrong person is thrust into a position for which they are not ready, or if the person who is promoted is only in it for themselves, it can have disastrous consequences for the team.
Why promoting the best candidate is so important
There is an axiom that “people don’t leave organizations; they leave leaders.” If that is true, then who you put in leadership positions is critical to your business’s success. When someone is promoted into that role of influence they will either use that influence for the good of the team and the mission or for their own personal gain. And that intent is easy for the team to sniff out. If you promote someone solely based on how long they have been at the organization or how accomplished they are in their trade, you might be promoting a person who doesn’t know how to lead other people. Finally, if you find yourself forcing someone to take a promotion, you might find yourself with a person who does not put any effort into their new role.
Best Practices
To avoid these promotion mistakes, there are a few things to consider:
- Follow your organization’s protocols
- Technical skills should not be the only contributing factor
- Being “voluntold” may not lead to a successful promotion
- Tenure may not be the best indicator for promotion
- Reward the values and behaviors you want the team to demonstrate
- Promotion to take care of your people
Following Protocols
Many organizations have some formal process for promotion. While those processes are not the subject of this article, it is important that you understand what your company’s processes are and follow them to ensure each promotion is awarded fairly. If your organization does not have a formal process, you must still be extremely diligent in how you select people for promotion to ensure that everyone is provided with the same opportunities. One of the worst things you can do is put your newly promoted leaders in a difficult position with their team because of the nature of their promotion. However, whether you have a formal process or not, the same recommendations we are about to detail still apply.
Technical vs Leadership Skills
One of the most common things we see in the companies we work with is that many people are promoted because they have superior technical knowledge. And when this is done, it is almost always accompanied by a plea for help from us because those new leaders are struggling. They are struggling because those expert abilities that made them successful in their old role are failing them in their new one. While technical expertise is critical for the projects they were previously involved in, what they are missing is critical for successfully heading a team. They are missing leadership skills. A person’s ability to lead should absolutely be one of the most critical parts of a promotion evaluation. This does not mean they must be a perfect leader to be promoted. Leadership skills can be learned, but there is one thing they must have if they are going to be able to gain missing leadership skills – humility. Humility is the most important quality of a leader, and if you promote someone who is not humble, you will find yourself and the team in a very difficult situation.
The “Voluntold” Balance
We’ve all likely heard the phrase “voluntold” before, and its meaning can often be applied to certain promotion situations. When you have someone who shows real promise but doesn’t seem to be interested in a leadership position, it can be tempting to ask/tell them to volunteer for the position anyway. There is a critical balance that must be struck here. While it is important to push your people beyond what they think they are capable of, there are also many people who are perfectly content in their current position, and that needs to be acceptable. Some people prefer to be rockstar individual contributors and would rebel if forced into a leadership position. The best way to ensure you find the right balance is to know your people. Build relationships with them to truly understand what their reservations are before you push them into a promotion.
The Right Person or the Most Experienced?
Another common promotional criterion is experience. Whether that is experience in a particular technical profession or experience at an organization, people often mistake experience for an ability to lead successfully. That tenure in the organization or the wealth of knowledge of the industry will certainly help that person in their potential new role, but it is often weighed too heavily when making employee promotion decisions. Again, leadership skills and a willingness to learn from others are often better indicators of who will be the right person for a position. If you are deciding between someone with a lot of knowledge and experience who is not humble or open-minded and someone who is open-minded and ready to listen but is less experienced, the latter may prove to be the best choice in the long run. Experience and skills can be gained, but humility is not so easily taught.
Values and Behaviors for Successful Leaders
At Echelon Front, we have a very simple set of leadership behaviors that we expect from all of our employees, but the ones who stand out for promotion are the ones who consistently do these things well. You may have your own leadership attributes and values within your organization, but they are likely very similar to these. If you have found multiple candidates who are humble and do their job well, you can use the following behaviors to narrow down the best employee for promotion.
- Cover and Move – Teamwork across the entire organization
- Simple – Effective communication that ensures that everyone understands and can execute
- Prioritize and Execute – Detaching from emotion to ensure you are working on the most important things
- Decentralized Command – Empowering your people by explaining the why so they can make good decisions on their own
- Extreme Ownership – No excuses, not blaming anyone or anything else, and owning all failures by implementing solutions to solve problems
If you choose to promote people who do not align with your company’s core values, you are sending a message to the rest of the team that those values and behaviors you say are important are actually optional. Be cautious of promoting someone for reasons outside of performance and their ability to lead.
Taking Care of Your People
One other consideration for promotion. Promotion may not always be about changing positions. Sometimes, promotions are simply meant to provide a means for better pay and higher-level projects. However, these same considerations still apply. Just because someone isn’t being promoted to lead a team doesn’t mean the decision to promote should be taken lightly. Those decisions still have ripple effects within the organization as signals of what the company values in an employee. At the same time, those promotions are also a way to signal that the company values its people and wants to take care of them. Finding opportunities to reward your employees with this kind of promotion is also worth considering when possible.
In summary, if you evaluate your candidates based on their ability to check their ego above anything else, you will likely find the right person to promote. Additional leadership skills, such as being able to build relationships, keep things simple, and empower others are also important. Finally, their ability to perform is also critical to promotion. If you have someone who is performing and willing to learn from others, you have found the right person to promote.
To learn more about what we suggest for people who are looking to get promoted, i.e. what we look for when promoting someone, check out this course, How To Get Promoted, on our Extreme Ownership Academy. It might also be worth sharing with those in your organization aiming to be promoted.
