Comment by munchbunny
1 month ago
My personal experience with this from the manager's perspective: I aim to promote someone as soon as they are ready, but no sooner. If I promote someone who will not succeed against the expectations of the higher leveled title, I'm just setting them up to get fired or "managed out" when they were otherwise perfectly competent in the level they're at. That's ignoring the natural fuzziness and storytelling element of defining and measuring competence, of course, but that's the general idea of where I put the threshold.
"Readiness" means that I believe that after their promotion they will be able to execute at the higher level at least most of the time. That doesn't necessarily mean they need to be already doing the higher leveled job, but in practice they do need to show that they can sustain some approximation of it.
I think the only possible flaw with this idea is you might not know.
I find that my organizational and leadership skills demonstrated in my role suffer when I am working on individual contributor work that requires deep focus and perhaps even isolation.
At the same time, I’ve handled other roles at other companies that required more leadership and team mentorship, where you’d look at my actions and feel more like I was management material. But in my current role with my current responsibilities it’s hard for myself let alone someone else to imagine that I would make an effective leader, since my job basically dictates that I don’t do that on a daily basis.
The day to day needs and responsibilities of the business often get in the way of the person actually demonstrating that they will excel when they do something else.
I don’t have any kind of direct solution for this specific dilemma. I think in my situation my manager should make more opportunities available but hasn’t been doing so due to the daily routine of putting out fires.
I’ve had great success “leading” in one business and difficulties in another. I learned what kind of orgs I can be effective at. They’re wildly different imo.
Being promoted into obsolescence or into under performing is a death sentence. Some people are perfectly suited for their work and would find their bosses work to be numbing, too complex or too simple for them. Not getting a promotion is not a bad thing (do not mistake raises for a promotion). If the company cannot or will not allocate more to your position then that is a problem as a business, not something you can control. The best case scenario is to find another company who can pay your worth for the skill set presented.