It’s a big deal when you grant managerial responsibilities to one of your key employees. You’re entrusting this person to be a steward of people, processes, and profits. From the employee’s perspective, it can be an important rite of passage.
Unfortunately, executives often tend to promote their best people into managerial roles without consideration for whether they actually possess managerial talent. If you promote someone without evaluating whether he is actually primed to be a good manager, it can be a set up for failure.
The best way to evaluate these skills is to use an objective assessment process. The results will reflect their strengths and weaknesses. But there’s another piece to this: you need to identify the specific managerial competencies that are aligned with the actual job. Your employee may have some great skills, but if her strengths don’t match those that the job requires, her success will be hampered.
After determining the skills that the new manager should cultivate, create a plan for skill development. Make sure that your program has a combination of theory and on-the-job experience.
The plan is important because if you don’t create it, it will be another well intended thought that drags on and doesn’t get implemented. The possible outcome? The new manager struggles unnecessarily.
Your guidance in onboarding a new manager can make a huge difference. Whether you work directly with her or assign a mentor or hire a coach, your intended outcome is the same. You want the person to succeed. Yes, this can happen organically. But why not create the environment and provide the resources to make it happen more intentionally and effectively?
If you’re promoting a new manager, please feel free to reach out and we’ll set up a call to discuss. It would be my pleasure to help!
Have a great week!
