The last couple of weeks I’ve written about hiring inside organisations, and having hired the internal candidate how can we make the internal hire a success?
We’ve all had a great employee, who does good work, and has told you that they are ready for more responsibility. Three months after promoting them to manager you regret the decision.
Thinking back, the hardest period in my working life was the first three months after moving to a new company to manage a team. I was a great individual worker (blush), but how could I become a great manager too, it looked so easy?
In your business, remember its not the individuals fault they were promoted; you promoted them. You must take responsibility for their initial success, no more throwing them in the deep end to see if they swim, attitude. Promoting the wrong person is expensive and time consuming, learn here how to do it right.
I support “promote from within,” but i believe its irresponsible to promote without preparation. In some cases, you may not have the resources available to train your next leaders, and when that happens come and see acumen.sg.
If you’re going to commit to advancing the careers of your best workers, and one of those opportunities moves them into a leadership position for the first time, always do the following:
1. Give them a mentor for a period of time. Have someone outside of the team who is a successful manager work with the new manager, to provide objective and non threatening support. People perform better if they have someone to check with on policies, processes, the way things are done, Try to match people effectively using their personality/behaviours to ensure a good fit. (a DISC profile of all your team)
2. Invest in either internal or external training. You know what a person needs to know and do to become a great manager- take the time to assess how the candidate fits the profile. And invest some time and or money to ensure they have the knowledge and skills to make a success of the promotion. Here we have the TEAM profile to enable you to assess what role in the team the promoted manager prefers, and when this is done for the whole team, it enables you and the new manager to ensure all necessary team roles are filled.
3. Guide them in how to be an example to others. The greatest failing of new managers is they can talk a good game, but struggle to walk-the-talk. Make sure you provide both a good model in your management, and give positive honest feedback on their management behaviour.
4. Teach the difference between management and leadership. Don’t just give them a policy manual- guide them how to apply it in the best way possible navigating through your organisation. At the most basic a manager does things right; a leader does the right thing, so when should they ignore the manual?
5. Check-in often to help them with new issues they’ll deal with. Establish a clear communication channel that they can use without threatening their career development should they come with problems. Set up a six-month honeymoon period where they can ask what may be stupid equations, but be clear that this period is limited and they need to quickly come to grips with new responsibilities. Set aside time for you to visit them and ask about how they are coping.
6. Make sure they enjoy the new role. With the support set out above a new manager should be able to enjoy the role and if not then help them find a face saving way for them to remain in the organisation.
Remember middle managers or supervisors have tremendous influence, and you can’t underestimate the importance of their roles. Equip and empower the team members you promote, and it will pay big dividends in your future success.
Why not share an example of how you coped with being promoted and what you really needed to learn.