Managerial Hiring: How to Successfully Promote from Within
Hiring a manager can be one of the most important decisions you make this year. Managers help keep the business floating by influencing employee engagement and the quality of work. The stakes are high if a poor manager is allowed to hold the role before they’re ready. The Niagara Institute found that 79% of people leaders felt they had a good sense of what their employees want, but only 48% of those employees agreed. That’s a big mismatch.
Mismatched Skills - Why You Should Pause
Let’s say it’s time to hire a new manager and you decide to promote within. An advantage here is you’ll already know the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate. When a dedicated, stellar employee is up for a promotion, it could be a slam dunk to promote them to a managerial role, but I’ve seen this story end badly too many times.
An amazing employee does NOT always make an amazing manager.
If you think about it, it really doesn’t make much sense to promote someone based on their technical skill to pivot into a completely different skill set, i.e. managing a team. While it’s possible that this person is capable of managing other people, it should not be assumed. It’s likely they’re being promoted based on their seniority/technical skills instead of clear management acumen. There are theories, like the Peter Principle, about why this happens so often, but today we’ll look at the path that’ll produce the best outcome for your agency!
Dissecting the Role of a Manager
Managers used to be viewed as foreman, merely in charge of technical supervision and keeping employees on task. But those days are long gone—or at least they should be! Our workforce landscape has and is continuing to evolve and so must this important role.
Here are some some of the responsibilities and qualities you can expect from a successful manager today:
Coaching teams to do their best work - This involves providing feedback in regard to performance and making sure their teams are engaged in the work and organization as a whole.
Understanding the business and how to affect the bottom line - They have a clear grasp on how the business makes revenue and profit; so they can guide their teams toward these company financial goals.
Seeing needs in their department and filling the gap - This may look like internal grooming of a team member into a goal role or scouting/recruiting the best outside talent. It also involves making sure teams have the right environment, equipment, and general resources to get the job done right.
Gaining insights from team members to better the organization - Good managers understand that knowledge can be learned from anywhere, especially those closest to the work. They ask for feedback from their team to optimize the company. You can trust that you won’t have to wait until someone’s exit interview to make valuable changes.
They act as a strategist for your agency - If you’re an agency, you understand the importance of a strategist in guiding projects to meet your clients goals. The role of an internal manager has a similar role for your own organization. They are experts in creating high level strategy and then delegating accordingly to meet whatever goals have been set.
Creating Successful Paths from the Start
If the only way to advance at your business is to become a manager, employees might aim for a career path that doesn’t suit their talents. Avoid this mishap by establishing two tracks for career growth within the organization, one focusing on technical expertise and one on people management. Check in regularly with your employees to see which path they are pursuing and how you can support them. This will help guide your conversations in your monthly 1:1 meetings. It’s important to create dynamic paths for each role. Take for example a mid-level designer. They can either:
A) continue on a more technical track to become a lead design expert who is responsible for bringing new design methodologies/technologies to the company, or
B) shift to a management track which is focused on growing the team members in their careers and ensuring company and employee goals are aligned.
Set your team up for success! If people management is the only way to get a promotion, you’ll create unnecessary competition for a role many people will not be equipped for. In the end it will be more costly to train someone who ends up not working out. Letting your employees choose their path will create more secure paths of growth.
Now that you’ve got career paths established that make sense for your business and your teams, it’s also important to understand the real value and expectations of a manager.
Lessons Learned
Why do we care so much about this topic? Because we’ve seen individuals on teams and companies get burned with managers who aren't ready or suited for the role and then wreak havoc. Are these people bad? On the contrary, they usually mean well but they just weren’t equipped or set up for success for these mighty roles that they were given.
Do you see some of these pitfalls in your future? It’s worth it to make changes now to avoid the painful misalignment in the future. You should be confident as you hire a manager! Hopefully this post will help you evaluate how managers can be of extreme value instead of the reason why your most valued employees are leaving.
