Watch Out: Promoting the Best Can Be the Worst

Early in my career I worked on a really good team. A smart, driven leader. Capable, motivated team members. An interesting mandate.

There was one guy on the team who was particularly smart and knowledgeable in our subject area. He knew the technical ins and outs of our business better than anyone on the team or even in the organization. His opinion was gospel and his advice was nuanced and often quoted.

I learned a lot from this colleague. Okay, I learned most of what I know in my field from this colleague. As a newbie, he was my trusted source on everything important. I saw his genius, respected it, and tried to imitate it.

And then it all went down the tubes when the organization promoted him.

Organizations do this all the time. They take a brilliant technical expert and make them manager of that specialty. You were the top sales person? Now you’re sales manager. You were most efficient project manager? Now you’re running the PMO. You exceeded your targets? Now help other people exceed theirs.

It makes sense on the surface: in a gaggle of independent contributors one shines brightest so we notice them, reward them, and make them manager.

So what?

The trouble with my colleague was, although technically brilliant, he had…em…not very good…er…not the best…ah…HORRENDOUS…people skills.

He was mean, defensive, and hoarded information and projects. And when he was suddenly our boss, we reacted with:

1. open hostility…from about a third of the team


2. masked hostility and a reduction in quality of work…from about two thirds of the team


3. over the top defense of his conduct…from the director who promoted him (she lost credibility in the process)


4. and total meltdown of the team…100% turnover within a year

Was he great? Yeah. Did he deserve to be acknowledged and celebrated for his greatness. Double yeah. Did his promotion cause the complete breakdown of the highest performing team I’ve ever been on? Triple yeah.

This happens in my organization too. What can I do about it?

Ideally, organizations build teams of individual contributors that have a mix of personality traits. For example, on a team with six individual contributors, you might want four who are solid individual contributors and will stay individual contributors their whole careers, and two who might be decent individual contributors but who are wired for leadership. Those two might not be the brightest technical specialists on your team. However, if they have natural leadership traits (the ability to take risk, to deal with ambiguity, to motivate others) and they learn enough of the technical stuff, they will make your best leaders in future.

Psychometric assessments are very useful for identifying leadership traits separate from technical excellence, which is one of the many reasons we use them and rely on them for hiring and management. Someone with low assertiveness (some who hates taking risk) is not going to make a great leader, no matter how technically brilliant she is or becomes, and we can tell that before we hire her. Very useful.

A second consideration is how to reward brilliant individual contributors so that they don’t feel that the only validation they can receive in their career is to become a manager. A lot of people feel like becoming a manager should be their goal (and maybe their only way to earn more money); and yet many of those same people hate managing other people. What they really want, I think, is validation that their knowledge, skills, attributes – that they themselves – are valuable and important.

And they are valuable and important. I think back to my brilliant colleague who taught me everything I know.

What if instead of promoting him to management the organization had made signs that he was the most senior, most trusted, most knowledgeable of individual contributors?

What if the organization had asked him to teach the more junior people, in the same way that he taught me?

What if they gave him more money, more access to executives, more training, more perks, and more prestige?

Then there would be dozens of people like me who could have absorbed his wisdom and brilliance, without being subjected to his disdain for leading others. He’d have little disciples everywhere, knocking on his door for help with this policy or that project. And the organization would retain a formidable knowledge bank.

Instead, by promoting our best individual contributor, we sunk the team.

Have you experienced this problem in your organization? Have you had creative ways to deal with it? Leave me your comments.

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