Promotions: A Critical Obligation as a Manager
As a manager, you should feel morally obligated to get your deserving people promoted.
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Promotions: A Critical Obligation as a Manager
If you’ve ever lost the best person on your team to another company, you know the feeling of panic it typically creates. You wonder if you’ll ever be able to fill that hole and how your team will get along without that person. It’s not a pleasant experience because you know that you’re team is likely going to perform a little worse until someone (or multiple people) can fill that gap.
And since losing these types of people is a painful experience, you try to do everything you can to prevent it from happening. That typically means ensuring that they are happy in their role (how to do that is another post entirely) so that they don’t leave your company for a better offer. But what if that better offer comes from within in the form of a promotion to another team and new role?
Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed and heard about managers standing in the way of these promotions because they selfishly wanted to keep that person on their team. Thankfully, this is rare, but if it’s a common thing in your company, it’s time to make a change. But you’re one of the good guys and wouldn’t stand in the way of someone on your team taking a promotion. However, that’s just the bare minimum expectation.
The thing you ought to be doing is proactively working to get your people promoted. That’s right, you should be going out of your way to ensure your best people have a good chance of leaving your team.
Before explaining why it’s so important that you do this, there is one caveat. You should be focusing getting promotions for those who actually have earned it. It should never be used as a way to get rid of difficult people by pawning them off on another team. You also need to pay attention to ensure that you’re not blinded by biases or short-term “halo effects,” so that the right people are getting a chance.
Now, given how painful it can be to lose great people, why should you be proactively trying to move them along? There are actually a number of reasons all of which will have long-term benefits that greatly exceed any short-term pain.
First off, you have an obligation to the company to move great people onto higher order roles where they can benefit bigger parts of the company. It’s one of the reasons why you try your best in your own role; you have an informal agreement to do what’s best for the company in exchange for what they are paying you. You have this same obligation to these members of your team who have done their best to make you, as their manager, look good.
One other unexpected benefit of losing a superstar is that it allows other people on the team to shine. Sometimes when you have one or two exceptional people on the team, they can steal the spotlight (intentionally or otherwise) from others on the team. As they move along, it allows others to step up and play a bigger role. Along with this comes the inevitable fact that even thought the person you’re losing is great, it doesn’t mean she has all the answers or knows the best way to do things. Allowing some new people to step up may have some unexpected benefits that come with new ways of looking at the same problems.
Perhaps one of the more overlooked benefits of having person after person on your team promoted is that you’ll attract more great people from within your company. That is, you’ll be the beneficiary of another team losing their best person. People are smart and pay attention to which managers take care of their people. Getting people promoted is a great sign of this. So when given an option about what team to join, people are going to pick you. You’ll have no problem filling those open roles with great internal candidates. In addition, savvy external candidates will want to know your track record on this important metric before accepting your offer, so having some good stories about how you help your team is important.
And a reminder about not working proactively to get your people promoted. Holding them back or not doing enough to help them will only result in people underperforming. It’s incredibly demotivating to work with a manager who you feel isn’t going to bat for you when you’ve definitely earned that right. So while there might be a very short term benefit to your team by hoarding great people, it won’t last long.
The final reason for putting some focus against getting your team promoted is all about karma. You never know where your former team members are going to end up. Maybe they are a super, high flyer and run the company someday. You probably want them as an ally in that case. Or maybe they move to another division that you constantly need resources from. They’ll definitely be more inclined to help you when you have great history. They could also eventually move to another company where they might be your next giant customer. You’ll definitely want them to remember how you helped advance their career during those sales pitches.
Beyond the obvious “that’s what good managers do,” I think there are lots of overlooked reasons why managers should focus so intently on helping getting their best people promoted. Have you gotten someone promoted that ended up having a massive positive impact on your team or your company? I’d love to hear the story…just add it in the comments.
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