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Rutendo Gwatidzo-Changing Perspectives
“The skills that earn you a promotion are not always the skills that help you succeed after the promotion.”
When the Board announced the appointment of the company’s new operations manager, the decision was met with applause. For 15 years, Simon had been the organisation’s star engineer. He was brilliant.
He solved complex technical problems that no one else could solve. Clients specifically requested him, and younger engineers admired his expertise. To many people, promoting him seemed like the obvious decision.
Six months later, the excitement had disappeared. The department had missed deadlines, employee turnover had increased and morale had dropped. Simon was working longer hours than ever before, but his team was becoming less productive. Instead of coaching his staff, he redid their work himself because he believed nobody could do it as well as he could. Meetings became one-way conversations, and employees gradually stopped sharing ideas because they felt unheard.
When the chief executive called him into the office, Simon admitted something that many leaders are afraid to say: “I thought being the best engineer automatically meant I would become the best manager. I now realise those are two completely different jobs.”
Sadly, Simon’s scenario is repeated in organisations across the world every now and then.
The best performer is
not always the best leader
Many organisations unknowingly fall into what I call the promotion trap. When a vacancy arises, they naturally promote the highest-performing employee. It seems logical. After all, if someone is excellent at their job, surely they will excel in managing others.
Unfortunately, leadership does not work that way. A great accountant is trained to analyse numbers. A great salesperson focuses on closing deals. A brilliant software developer writes excellent code. A skilled doctor diagnoses and treats patients. These technical abilities are valuable, but management demands something different.
It requires emotional intelligence, communication, coaching, delegation, conflict resolution and the ability to inspire people with different personalities and strengths. Leadership is not about doing the work yourself. It is about creating an environment where others can do their best work.
The nurse everyone respected
A private hospital promoted its most experienced nurse to become the nursing manager. She had served patients with excellence for over twenty years and possessed exceptional clinical knowledge. No one questioned her competence. However, managing nurses proved far more challenging than caring for patients.
She quickly discovered that the role required handling conflict, motivating exhausted teams, conducting difficult performance conversations, managing budgets and balancing the expectations of doctors, patients and administrators.
Her greatest challenge was no longer medicine, it was people. Fortunately, the hospital recognised the gap early. Instead of criticising her, they invested in leadership coaching, management training and mentoring. Within a year, she had become not only an excellent nurse, but also a respected leader who developed future nursing leaders.
Leadership requires letting go
One of the hardest adjustments for newly promoted managers is accepting that success is no longer measured by what they accomplish, but by what their team accomplishes.
Many new managers struggle to delegate because they fear standards will decline.
They continue solving every problem, approving every decision and correcting every piece of work. Instead of multiplying results, they become the bottleneck.
John C. Maxwell writes in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” Great leaders understand that developing people is more valuable than proving how capable they are.
The salesman who lost his stamina
A national retail company promoted its highest-performing salesperson to regional sales manager after he consistently exceeded every sales target. Management expected outstanding results. Instead, sales declined. His former colleagues, who had once admired him, now felt micromanaged. Every missed target resulted in criticism.
Every meeting focused on numbers instead of people. He believed the pressure that had motivated him would motivate everyone else.
One afternoon, an older mentor invited him for coffee and asked a simple question.
“When you were a salesperson, what made you successful?” He replied, “My manager believed in me even when I doubted myself.” The mentor smiled.
“Then stop trying to be the best salesperson in the room. Become the manager who makes other people believe they can become the best.” That advice transformed his leadership. Within months, employee engagement improved, turnover declined and sales began rising again. He finally understood that leadership is not about producing stars. It is about helping others become stars.
Stop promoting and start preparing
Promotion should never be the beginning of leadership development. It should be the result of leadership development. Organisations that consistently succeed invest in succession planning. They identify future leaders early, provide coaching, assign stretch projects, offer mentoring and expose employees to management responsibilities before promotion. When people are prepared before they are promoted, both the individual and the organisation are more likely to succeed.
As leadership expert Marshall Goldsmith wisely observed in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, “The habits that made you successful in one role can become barriers in the next.”
Food For Thought!
Organisations need technical experts. They also need great leaders. The mistake is assuming they are always the same person. Before promoting your next high performer, ask a different question like, “Who has demonstrated the ability to develop others, communicate effectively, build trust and inspire people?” Technical excellence may earn someone a seat in management, but leadership determines whether they remain there.
The greatest managers are not remembered because they were the smartest people in the room. They are remembered because they helped ordinary people achieve extraordinary things.
Rutendo Gwatidzo is a Human Capital Executive and Managing Consultant at The HUB HR Consultancy. She is a Multi-Award Winning Leader, Transformational Speaker and Coach. She is also an Author of Born to Fight and Breaking the Silence books. Contact detail – 0714575805/ [email protected] / Rutendo Gwatidzo_Official fb public page.
