Climbing the Ladder…

While some great team members have no interest whatsoever in climbing the company ladder, far more will jump at the chance whether it’s the right move for them or not! In some cases, their technical expertise and tenure give them an edge over every other candidate being considered. Don’t misunderstand my point here, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that - as long as they’re willing to develop the completely different skill set that leading a team of what used to be their peers will require… In other cases, the person moving into a supervisory or management role might have far less experience within the organization but a flashy resume with all sorts of sparkling accolades. However, this can create just as many challenges if they’re more intent on climbing the ladder than they are on building relationships or earning influence with the teams they’re responsible for. Oh, and they’ll need to develop at least some level of competency in the processes they’ll be overseeing - which won’t be a simple task if they don’t make strong connections with their team almost immediately…

In considering the latter, and we’ll look at the former shortly, I learned years ago that the best managers and leaders do not need to be the most talented in their respective departments or companies. I remember hearing my friend Terry once say that every single engineer reporting to him was far better at what they did then he could ever hope to be, but that didn’t stop him from rolling his sleeves up to learn as much as he could about what each of them was engaged in. And just recently while with a friend who bought a business that had a long history in our area, someone said to him, “you must have really enjoyed that as a hobby to buy the business.” He was quick to point out that he went in with almost no understanding of the technical side of the business but he knew the company had good people in place who did know all that so he’s worked really hard at building relationships with them and learning as much as he could in the process. In both of those cases, the teams reporting to each of them delivered outstanding performance AND they loved the individuals leading them.

The opposite can be just as apparent, but it has a far different effect on each member of the team and the overall performance of the organization… I saw two different folks, both with what appeared to be outstanding experience, accept high level roles and start making immediate changes with the intent of improving the bottom line. In each case, there was no attempt to learn the history or the processes they were working to change or any time invested in developing relationships with the people who had been involved in those processes for decades. Both were incredibly intelligent, and neither was shy about saying so. But neither ever earned buy-in from the teams reporting to them and that made a huge impact on the results they achieved!

So how about the folks we promote internally, the ones who have been with us forever and have absolutely mastered their craft? In some cases, the allure of higher pay and a fancy title draw those folks to take that next step. But sometimes we push them into those roles because we don’t have any other viable options. In either case, the results may not be what we had hoped for. Our best do’ers often get extremely frustrated when the team now reporting to them isn’t getting the same kind of results they did when they were doing the job. And all too often, addressing that with another individual was not a skill they had developed along the way. Since this is an issue I’ve heard described by owners and executives in every industry we’ve worked with, I won’t bother listing examples; I have no doubt that you’re already thinking of several that you’ve seen personally! However, I will emphasize that this can play just as big a role in lowering employee engagement, increasing turnover, or exaggerating just about any other profitability killer we’ve worked through as bringing in someone with a great resume who never works to connect with the team.

In either case, this can seem like we’ve promoted the wrong person - and maybe we have - but there are steps we can take to equip the folks in either of these examples. They just need to be willing to develop a new set of skills. We’ll detail those soon. But before that, we’ll take a look at what we can do to make sure we have the best shot possible of moving the appropriate person into a leadership role.