How to Avoid Promoting People Who Will Fail
Why do we continue to assume that a person's success in one area will have any relevance to their likelihood to succeed with promotion to a higher level? Because we've made no distinction between skills, knowledge or talent we say things like, "James has shown that he is very reliable and an excellent sales person as a result he should make a very good sales manager.
" We know that talent exists when people are excellent in a job but we also know that talent is very difficult to train.
Skills and knowledge are easy in comparison.
We know that the talents to sell and the talents to manage are different.
If you excel at one that doesn't mean that you will excel at the other.
Before you promote anybody, look closely at the talents required to be excellent in the role and then compare them with the talents that they are currently applying in their job.
This assumption of transferable success from one job to another creates a situation where we have so many people at management and leadership levels who lack the necessary talent to be successful.
This is one of the biggest contributors to staff turnover because people do not leave businesses, they leave managers and supervisors.
But it is also these managers and supervisors that put a brake on the business because they are struggling to perform in their positions.
One of the solutions to this dilemma, is to look hard at the leadership or managerial position to discover the ideal qualities that would be required to be successful in the job.
Note these ideal qualities under headings such as, the ability to learn, leadership, personality, consistency, standard-setting, sense of humor, sense of fairness and so on.
When you've done this, share your list of ideal qualities with someone who knows the job extremely well and ask them to add or subtract items.
When you've done this carry out the same exercise two or three times with other people.
At the end of the exercise you will have a template of qualities that you may be able to recruit for so that person will be successful in the new position.
Let's have a reality check here.
You have a list of what would be the qualities of the dream candidate.
It will be unlikely that somebody who meets all your specifications will apply.
Therefore, your judgment will be called into play whether or not you can train somebody in the areas where they don't come up to scratch.
Just remember, it's almost impossible to train people to change their personality and nature.
" We know that talent exists when people are excellent in a job but we also know that talent is very difficult to train.
Skills and knowledge are easy in comparison.
We know that the talents to sell and the talents to manage are different.
If you excel at one that doesn't mean that you will excel at the other.
Before you promote anybody, look closely at the talents required to be excellent in the role and then compare them with the talents that they are currently applying in their job.
This assumption of transferable success from one job to another creates a situation where we have so many people at management and leadership levels who lack the necessary talent to be successful.
This is one of the biggest contributors to staff turnover because people do not leave businesses, they leave managers and supervisors.
But it is also these managers and supervisors that put a brake on the business because they are struggling to perform in their positions.
One of the solutions to this dilemma, is to look hard at the leadership or managerial position to discover the ideal qualities that would be required to be successful in the job.
Note these ideal qualities under headings such as, the ability to learn, leadership, personality, consistency, standard-setting, sense of humor, sense of fairness and so on.
When you've done this, share your list of ideal qualities with someone who knows the job extremely well and ask them to add or subtract items.
When you've done this carry out the same exercise two or three times with other people.
At the end of the exercise you will have a template of qualities that you may be able to recruit for so that person will be successful in the new position.
Let's have a reality check here.
You have a list of what would be the qualities of the dream candidate.
It will be unlikely that somebody who meets all your specifications will apply.
Therefore, your judgment will be called into play whether or not you can train somebody in the areas where they don't come up to scratch.
Just remember, it's almost impossible to train people to change their personality and nature.
