Stop Promoting Strong ICs Then Leaving Them To Improvise Alone

Most companies still promote managers like this:
Strong individual contributor. Good attitude. Ready for “the next step.”

Congratulations, you’re in charge of people now! 

And then we act surprised when they struggle. But the issue isn’t just who you promote, it’s the gap they step into after the promotion.

You took someone who was great at owning their own work and handed them a completely different job. Now their success depends on getting results through others, all with different strengths, needs, and limits. That’s not a skill people magically figure out in their spare time during an already full week.

If you’re a senior leader, the question isn’t just “Who earned this promotion?” It’s “What are we doing to ensure they succeed in the role we just handed them?”

That means defining exactly what good leadership looks like in your company. It means giving them simple, repeatable tools they can use in a one-on-one, not just abstract theory. It means coaching them through real-world scenarios, like how to make a hard, people-first call that might slow a project down today so the team is actually stronger six months from now.

When you treat management as a skill to be developed rather than a reward for past output, the culture starts to change. You stop spending your own time fixing people problems that should have been handled at the frontline. You build a leadership bench that is actually ready for the next next step. You start trusting your people to make the right decision in every situation.

If you looked at your last few manager promotions, did you truly invest in their growth, or did you just change their title and hope they'd figure it out?