Promotion Remorse: When You've Promoted Too Soon, And It Shows

If you’ve managed for a decade or more, you’ve probably experienced promotion (or hiring) remorse: when you took a chance on a candidate, and pushed them into a big role they were slightly junior for. You were so hopeful they would succeed, so confident they could rise to your expectations. And so wrong.

Or maybe you inherited one of these situations when you rose to a larger role or were asked to turn around a team. Along with your new desk and a broad slate of responsibilities, you’ve inherited someone who has been failing for 2 years in a role they were promoted into. Lucky you!

It’s even trickier when the person promoted is a different race or gender than you, or otherwise plays into a broader narrative about hiring/promotion mistakes in your organization (the third black woman to leave our org this year; the only man in a department that has historically been all women, our only indigenous staff member, etc.). I hear you. And yet you have ethical obligations - both to the person you hired/promoted and to your organization. So what to do?

Don’t Assume They Know What You Need

The first mistake I see even experienced executives make when their direct reports (usually department directors or managers) are failing is assuming these direct reports understand what is expected from them in their roles. You’d be surprised how often what people think they’ve said, and what others have heard don’t match. 

If someone is failing you in a new role, especially if you put them there, you need to be clear and transparent - not just that you’re displeased, but about:

• What winning looks like in the role (and where they're currently winning or not winning);
• What behaviors are standing in the way of their success and how you need to see those change;
• What results are sub-par, why you think they might be sub-par (if you know) and what they can do to move them;
• What supports they have access to in order to build skill and improve their performance, and what pieces they need to manage on their own;
• What timeline must be met for turning things around.

Don’t say these things casually, say them in a stand-alone meeting or dedicated check in; formalize them in writing (or have them jot notes and send them afterward) and set a clear cadence for checking in against these behaviors. 

Here’s my hard line: With the exception of egregious behavior issues or lapses in judgement that require instant termination, it is generally unethical to fire someone for performance expectations you have not yet made clear. If you have doubts about your clarity, reset expectations with a defined window to improve to remain in good standing on the team (3-6 months).

If You Have Been Clear

Maybe you’re confident in how transparent you’ve been; you see them trying, and they’re just not able to rise to the level you need after months of effort. What then?

Here’s the headline: if you made the call that someone was ready for a larger role and you were wrong, you have some limited responsibility in helping them get up to speed. In my experience, you shouldn’t just fire them without offering support (at least if you want to sleep well at night!)

Check yourself. One of the places that bias shows up in the workplace is in how negatively we assess performance, especially across lines of racial difference. One way to gut-check this is to ask, “If [name] on my team was performing at the same level, what would I do here?” or “Is there anyone at their level on my team making the same mistakes they are, with different consequences?” 

Name the gap. If you feel confident that bias isn’t a driver in your decision, queue up an initial conversation. In a check-in or 1-on-1 conversation, have a direct conversation about what’s not working and hear from them about their experience and what supports they’d like from you. Brainstorm ways to build skills quickly (courses to take, people to shadow, etc) and set an urgent timeline to improve. 

TIP: If I’ve promoted someone before they were ready, I’m often more willing to invest in development resources (courses, coaching, etc) to get them up to speed. As a rule, employee attrition usually costs 15-30% of their salary or more in lost institutional knowledge and time (even for low performers). Spending on a set of courses or other resources is a wise decision if you think there’s a hard skills gap that needs to be filled.

Manage tightly, modeling often (if possible). For a set period, be more directive in your management, give more feedback, offer more modeling and working side-by-side to build their skills. Ensure key projects are on track, pushing in more directly, if that’s what’s needed to move the ball. Monitor progress and look for signs of improvement and growth. If you don't have the capacity to manage them that directly, see if you can partner them with a peer that’s excelling as another way to get mentorship on the work. Along the way, let them know how they’re doing and if they are still not meeting expectations. If your company has a performance improvement process, follow it here.

Have the tough conversation. If things aren’t changing after you’ve tried to develop the person, it’s time to talk about the future. The key here is to know what you want going into the conversation: do you want them to vacate the role as soon as possible? Do you want to coach them out over the next few months, giving you time to hire and train their replacement and find their next role? Work with your HR team to prepare for and have that conversation in as kind and direct a way as is possible. 

Be careful about demotions. While it is fine to move someone back to a role they're great at, if you can do it in a way that's both transparent and supportive to the team member, be careful not to demote staff punitively for a promotion mistake you made. When you do, you often create a morale issue and a non-success spiral that makes the person less engaged and less successful - even in a role they know well. For me, the hard line here is about framing - both to the staff member and to the rest of your team. If you're not able to say directly what you're doing and why, it will likely cause a morale impact on the team similar (and sometimes worse) to having fired the person directly.

Not Repeating the Mistake

If you’re a leader that cares about advancing talent, you’ll likely have opportunities to give people growth opportunities or queue up promotions before staff members are 100% ready. Here are some ways to safe-guard your bet on a rising star:

• Know the non-negotiables. Have a list of non-negotiable traits you need in the candidate for the new position or growth opportunity. Rigorously check their performance against that list; if they’re missing one or more significant must-haves, only hire them for the role if you have a plan to develop those skills.
• Test them on projects. Before handing over a large scope of work, give people the chance to prove their skills on short-term challenging projects. Be direct that you’re eager to see them advance, and that you want to be their chief advocate, but you want to ensure they have a specific must-have (name it) at the level you need and this project is a way to prove that. Make the criteria for success explicit. If they succeed, advocate for them as you’d planned.
• Make it interim. If you think someone may be ready for a role, but you’re not sure, be direct and offer them a 6-month interim appointment to the role to test it out and see if it’s a good fit on both sides. Frame it as a growth opportunity and a temporary assignment in the organization so if they move back to their previous role it’s not a demotion.
• Check for a halo. Most hiring/promotion mistakes happen when we get distracted by our affinity with a person or other decoy criteria - for example, they represent a compelling story or background you want represented on your team. Before you commit to a promotion or a stretch project, ask yourself, “Is there anyone on this team who deserves this opportunity more? Are there others with similar skills or perhaps more readiness for this role? Why did I not consider them?” Another helpful way to check the objectivity of your decision is to look to concrete data like sales numbers, or qualitative information, like feedback from one of your peers that has direct visibility into their work.
• Set a performance development plan upfront. Let the individual know what your expectations are before they start to role so they have the best chance possible to succeed. Also let them know you’ll be having 30, 60, and 90 day check ins on performance so they’ll know right away if things aren’t working and how to improve. Let them know what areas you anticipate they’ll need to grow, and task them for putting a plan together to improve in those areas.

As a manager, it’s your job to make sure that you bring rigor to how you hire and promote people to set them (and your team) up to success. When you make mistakes on this front, there are ways to troubleshoot the mistake that are both supportive to your team member and stalwart about a commitment to results. If you’re in this situation today, there’s no better time to start to fix it, and going forward, there’s no better time to put practices in place to prevent repeating the mistake in future.