Downside of promoting employees too soon

What happens when you pluck an unripe fruit to devour? The fruit despite its appearance similar to a ripened fruit, lacks the taste & flavour and thus you don’t get the desired satiation. Likewise, in any organisation, an unskilled or ill-equipped employee is like an unripe fruit. More real-life examples can be cited from the lives of child celebrities (Britney Spears, Nick Carter) who were unable to handle fame, success or failure. There were high expectations from them and they were not able to process or assimilate attention as they were immature to handle so much attention & pressure of their roles on their young shoulders. 

Another famous English idiom “Bite off more than you can chew” holds much relevance to be quoted here. The employee is expected to deliver as per the goals allocated to him/her for which he/she is chosen. Employee’s preparedness for the new role hasn’t been validated or ascertained. Employee is given lots of responsibility to shoulder and the employee doesn’t resist as he/she wants to have the biggest share of pie to impress others or out of sheer ambition but is ill-skilled to handle the role. 

The employee is not ready for the new role due to various reasons: 

1)   The employees are promoted too soon due to high potential but aren’t really a HiPo (High Performance and High Potential). The promotion could be due to the fact that their boss usually views them favourably because they make life easier by helping their divisions. And the new role is assigned more as a reward and with an expectation of keeping the employee motivated. As I have said, people who make their bosses lives easy often do very well in an organisation. Those candidates are favoured with backgrounds, experiences, characteristics similar to their bosses. Sometimes, promising candidates are overlooked and for the organisation it may not be essentially beneficial.

2)   The employee was High performance and High potential, however, hasn’t been gauged or trained on the higher competency expected from new role. The evaluation processes at many organisations do not produce such complete and accurate information, leading to various pitfalls when assessing candidates. Candidates are often promoted to key positions because they possess one remarkable characteristic but lack several others. This often leads to a downward spiral rather than progress. It's like serving a half-baked pie.

3)   Also, one of the most fundamental mistakes is that tendency to overvalue certain characteristics, attributes and skills. Wrong people are identified because there is incorrect or incomplete information that leads to chosen person being overvalued with certain capabilities and qualities. Typically, while choosing, management reviews tend to focus on the performance of certain tasks, relying on a check list of certain competencies, and fail to investigate the behavioural characteristics of an individual. Employee lacks integrity, competence or the wisdom to handle the role but is oblivious to his/her short-comings or incompetence and thus, falls in the superiority trap. A person’s raw ambition can be overstated where as personal humility is usually lacking in this case. You can often implicitly or explicitly hear from such employees, “I know it all” 

4)   The employee is not interested in the role but has been chosen by consensus. Often called the leadership trap. The employee feels too shy or too egoistic to seek help and desperately tries to cover up for his/her shortcomings with blame games, politics, sycophancy or dependencies or often asserts, 'I have done this before in my previous company/role'. Although good foot soldiers are an asset to any company, they often don’t make effective leaders or justify the positions if they are promoted too soon.  

5)   The employee has been asked to manage a team but completely lacks the experience or the will to lead a team. Such employees are usually not team players; they feel little need to work in a group. When push comes to shove, they do not have any compelling need to listen to people’s ideas fully before moving on. Great public speakers are often over valued during selection process for a lead. It’s how these employees comport themselves in front of others. Such employees are often overvalued over those who are good implementers and problem solvers.  

How to ensure that the above reasons can be countered? 

1.    People who manage by consensus are usually good at leading teams and are more successful. This is one competency that should be nurtured and gauged.

2.    To assess a candidate properly, full range of soft skills and characteristics such as personal integrity, maturity should be judged.

3.    Five components of emotional intelligence – Self-awareness, Self-Regulation, Motivation, Empathy and social skill are necessary to assess when promoting anyone for leading a team

4.    Personal interest should be measured and accessed before considering anyone for a role

5.    A comprehensive evaluation process should be established that yields a full balanced and accurate picture.

6.    Furthermore, decisions should be based on the integrated view of the candidate drawn from various perspectives held by people who have managed and worked with individual throughout his or her career and thus removing personal bias of the manager

7.    Raw ambition of the employee should be tamed, and the promotion process should cater to both who overtly wear ambition on their sleeve as well as those who are not seemingly ambitious but have the skill 

8.    Employees with less experience should be first trained to handle the role by letting them shadow experienced resources, assigned a mentor & coach to observe & learn to take things in stride, appropriate behavioural skill training should be imparted

9.    Any dysfunctional behaviour like boasting, belittling, sycophancy and know it all attitude should be discouraged and corrected, whenever observed. They should also be told that their promotion is subject to clearing development centre and gaining proficiency on competencies including behavioural in the competency development program. 

10. Fast track programs should be adequately defined, timed and explained to all employees. The program should certainly have an assessment & development center as well as competency development program & timeline to prepare the employee for the new role 

11. Last but not the least, following questions may be considered before promoting an employee or nominating an employee for a role:      

a)    Is he/she logical? How does he/she demonstrate sound judgement?

b)   When confronted with an ambiguous or complex situation, does he/she procrastinate?

c)    Does he/she has demonstrated that he/she can move to a new business area?

d)   Is he/she threatened by people who are more experienced, smarter or technically better?

e)   How well does he/she work with people who have different styles and skills?

f)     If he/she were to fail, what would you predict might be the most likely reason or reasons?  

The above measures will surely yield effective fast track programs as well as a fair assessment system and thus, lead to a productive, motivating work environment and equipped resources in the right roles at the right time.