In brief
- Most development is aimed at the job someone already has. The bigger gap is the job they’ll have next.
- Each level asks for different behaviors. Some, like leading people or setting direction, don’t show up until someone is promoted into them.
- The time to build those behaviors is before the promotion, not after.
Here’s how it usually goes. Someone is great at their job, so they get promoted. Then they’re expected to lead people, make bigger calls or set direction, things they were never asked to do before. They struggle, and everyone wonders what happened.
Nothing happened. They were developed for the job they had, then handed a job that asked for something else. I wrote about what this looks like in Your Best Performer Became Your Worst Leader. Why?
Here’s how to develop people for where they’re going.
Step 1: Know what the next level actually asks for
Every level of a company asks for different behaviors. An individual contributor is judged on their own work. A supervisor is judged on how the team works. A manager is responsible for developing other people. A senior leader has to set direction across teams.
Some of those behaviors don’t exist at the level below. Managing other people’s performance, developing talent and setting strategic direction usually don’t switch on until someone reaches that level. Which means no one has had a chance to practice them.
So start by describing what each level needs, in behaviors. If you haven’t done that yet, start with how to turn your values into behaviors, and describe each one at every level.
Step 2: Compare them to the next level, not the current one
Most development plans compare someone to their current job description. That tells you whether they’re good at what they do now. It doesn’t tell you whether they’re ready for what’s next.
Put the next level’s behaviors next to how the person works today. The gap between the two is the development plan.
Step 3: Give them real work at the next level
People don’t learn to lead by reading about leadership. They learn by doing pieces of it, with support, before it’s their full-time job.
Let a future supervisor run the team meeting. Have a future manager coach a new hire through their first month. Ask a future senior leader to own a decision that crosses two teams. Then talk about how it went.
Step 4: Teach the shift, not just the skill
The hardest part of moving up isn’t learning something new. It’s letting go of what made you successful at the level below.
A great individual contributor has to stop doing the work and start getting it done through others. A great manager has to stop solving every problem and start building people who can. Early in my career, I went through a management training program that covered delegation and situational leadership, the move from doing the work to leading the people who do it. Most people never get that before they’re promoted. They get it, if at all, after they’ve already struggled.
Step 5: Make the manager part of it
A class can introduce a behavior. It takes a manager to make it stick, by watching for it, coaching it in the moment and talking about it in one-on-ones. That’s why training alone rarely changes behavior.
Give managers the next-level behaviors for the people they’re developing, and make developing them part of how the manager is measured.
Step 6: Promote on readiness, not reward
When the time comes, look at whether the person has already shown the next level’s behaviors, not only whether they’ve earned it in their current job. Here’s how to tell if someone is ready for a promotion.
When you develop people this way, a promotion stops being a leap. It’s the next step in something they’ve already started doing.
Read next: Your Best Performer Became Your Worst Leader. Why?
Start here
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