So, It Looks Like You’ve Promoted The Wrong Person.

11 min readDec 27, 2023

Now What?

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What Happens

When we promote from within, we select people we believe have the foundational knowledge and skills and the potential to learn to successfully perform the new role in the near term. It’s a gamble we take, based on what we know about the employee and the new role.

It’s also where we make the most hiring mistakes. While 74% of managers report having hired the wrong person, 82% of managers report they’ve promoted the wrong person.

When you’ve selected the wrong person for promotion you’ll start to see consequences.

Your team’s morale, and very possibly, their performance, will go down
Your good people will start to disengage and prepare to leave
Customer satisfaction will be negatively impacted

If you watch discreetly, you may see gossip, conflict, and detachment breaking the cohesion, and a loss of happiness among your good people. These are indicators of disengagement that can lead to employee departures.

You don’t have a lot of time to address the situation.

3 Key Aspects of Performance

There are three aspects of performance where misalignments in skills and/or behavior most often occur when the wrong person is promoted. These include:

Gaps in Knowledge and Skills (The person fails to grow Into the role)
Fit Issues Due To Behavior, Interpersonal Skills, and Attitudes (You may have overestimated their interpersonal approach and skills)
Inadequate coaching by the manager

The purpose of this article is to provide information about each of these aspects of employee performance and to help you identify adjustments you can make to your internal selection process for promoting employees, to significantly improve decisions and avoid mistakes in the future.

A Deep Dive Into the 3 Key Aspects of Performance

Gaps in Knowledge and Skills

Most promoted employees progressed to where they are because of excellent performance in their current roles. But, the skills and knowledge that made the employee successful in the past are often different than those required for success in the new job. Promotions usually require an employee to learn and apply new knowledge and develop additional skills and strengths. One common indication that an employee isn’t growing into the role is failure to complete tasks completely and on time.

This is especially true when moving up from an individual contributor role to a position leading or coaching other people. This type of promotion requires not only new knowledge and skills; it necessitates a larger change, one that requires an individual to shift from focusing on one’s own specific job tasks to focusing on forging a different work relationship with colleagues, to positively impact the engagement and performance of other people.

What managers know about employees is based on observations made while the employee has held a different role within the current organization. Managers use that information to make the best decision they can, knowing there is some element of the unknown and consequently, some risk of failure.

To reduce the risk of promoting the wrong person, some organizations offer promotions to employees under the condition that there will be a trial period in the new position before the promotion becomes official. In this situation, the employee is assigned the responsibilities of the new role for a pre-determined period of time (which may include training), at the end of which the manager decides whether the employee’s performance meets expectations. The pay increase is withheld until the new role is deemed a fit.

Let’s consider the ways this scenario can play out.

This proposition itself tends to upset employees. Some interpret it as the manager’s way of saving money. Most view it as unfair to be expected to do the job without being paid what the job is worth. Some infer the manager doubts their ability to succeed in the new position.

Conditional promotions demotivate employees and can erase any joy felt about receiving the opportunity.

When the employee accepts the job under these conditions it may appear initially that it is a fit. However, about 43% of the time, the manager begins to see indications the employee is underperforming.

How does a manager determine a newly promoted employee is underperforming? Shortfalls in performance become apparent as the manager observes the employee’s performance and results. While a manager usually recognizes it takes time to master new responsibilities, suspicions about the fit begin to occur when weeks or even months pass without the necessary improvement. Subpar performance may continue in one or several job requirements (and, most often, in the 3 key aspects of performance).

Once performance gaps are observed, it’s time for the manager to give feedback in a one-on-one meeting outside the general work area. The manager must provide clear, constructive coaching. The objective of the discussion is to share your specific observations and, together, identify the root causes. This will provide the information you need to effectively define and agree on steps, support, and timeframes for the employee to achieve the necessary improvement. Compassion is essential to maintain the employee’s self-esteem, self-confidence, and morale. Frequent, pre-scheduled progress updates should be set up and documented.

A common mistake managers make is to continue to grant extensions to the agreed-upon timeframes. At some point, the decision must be made as to the fit of the employee to the new role. The longer the manager waits to determine the employee’s success or failure, the more the situation will generate undesired consequences. The employee can suffer anxiety and dread of an undesirable outcome. Coworkers can become frustrated about picking up slack or enduring an undesirable work relationship, and team performance can decrease.

By acting promptly, the manager and employee have more available options that maintain the employee’s dignity; acting quickly enough may enable the employee to return to the former position. Acting later can eliminate other alternatives, leaving termination of employment as the only option.

Fit Issues Due To Behavior, Interpersonal Skills and Attitudes

Fit issues due to behavior, interpersonal skills, and attitudes can arise due to lack of sufficient training or due to the employee’s preferred behavior, deliberately chosen. In either situation, the impact on relationships and other people is often significant and can affect the business. When behavior, interpersonal skills, and attitudes that are not aligned with the company’s culture and values are repeatedly directed toward colleagues or customers, the employee is not a fit.

To accurately evaluate an employee’s behavior, interpersonal skills and attitudes requires frequent, discreet observation by the manager. It’s key to see and hear it first-hand, to be certain of what the behavior is and when (in what situations) it occurs.

It is not constructive to tell the employee about complaints coworkers may have made. There is virtually no likelihood of a positive outcome to mentioning coworkers, whether or not names are provided. Corrective feedback must be given based on the manager’s observations. Equipped with first-hand observations, the manager has no need to mention coworkers comments or complaints during a feedback discussion.

Once the manager witnesses instances of behavior s/he can prepare the details for a private feedback conversation with the employee to fully understand what’s happening.

Feedback discussions between the manager and the employee should clearly reveal the cause of the behavior to be either a need for training or personal choice. Then, it’s time for the manager to decide whether the next steps include training or removal from the position.

Behavior, interpersonal skills and attitudes chosen by the promoted employee, with awareness of adverse impact on customers or colleagues, contributes to creating a toxic work environment.

Toxic Behavior

Toxic behavior includes bullying and/or manipulating others to meet one’s objectives. It’s rooted in an employee’s desire to gain something that will be in his/her self-interest. It’s emotional abuse. Bullies are looking for attention. Being noticed makes them feel important or powerful. Sometimes the bully is jealous of, or resents, a work colleague. Often the bully wants to be in charge and to be viewed as superior. It’s a strategy to obtain what they want at someone else’s expense.

Gaslighting is another toxic behavior, with similar aims as bullying. It too, is emotional abuse, and creates a false narrative that others believe. It involves lying and distracting. Following are examples of gaslighting:

Blame shifting
Denying wrongdoing
Using compassionate words as weapons, such as making a pretense of concern about a colleague while discrediting him/her and harming his/her reputation
Rewriting history
Covertly sabotaging someone

Inadequate Coaching By The Manager

Because promotions occur when employees excel at their jobs, their strengths are those that they’ve applied to a different role than the promotional role. It’s natural for newly promoted people to discover that the skills and knowledge they’ve relied on in the past will not be enough.

Newly promoted people, especially those promoted from individual contributor roles to leadership roles, need support from their manager to learn and master a new set of skills and knowledge to succeed at the new role. They often believe they need to figure things out themselves, don’t know what they don’t know, and don’t ask for help. In essence, they may be sabotaging themselves by trying to go it alone. 40% of newly promoted employees fail within the first 18 months.

5 Steps To Coach A Newly Promoted Employee

By the first day on the job, ask the employee to work with you on developing up to 3 priority goals using the SMART method: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound. For more information on Smart Goalsetting, click https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/how-to-write-smart-goals
Schedule meetings to discuss how the new job is progressing, in advance, at a frequency that is comfortable for both of you. These one-on-ones are usually held weekly.
In each meeting, include a discussion about overall progress in the new role as well as about progress on the SMART goals. Ask the employee for input on the next steps to achieve them; offer suggestions as needed.
Include the following talking points:

Praise the employee’s achievements and highlight their strengths
Ask the employee for his/her perspective on how the new role is going. This is an opportunity for the employee to describe accomplishments, ask for help, identify learning needs, raise problems or challenges and review aspects of the new role they wish to discuss. Remember to include updates on the SMART goals.
Jointly identify obstacles to performance or improvement and ways they can be overcome.
Constructively, assure the employee your intention is to help them master the role, obtain insight about obstacles the employee is encountering, and provide feedback about needs for performance improvement, based on your first-hand observations. This is essential to reach agreement on actions you’ll each take to support the employee’s success in the new role.
Explain how their continued improvement will help the team and the business. Confirm your next progress meeting day and time. Let the employee know you’ll be available before them and welcome him/her to see you with any questions or concerns in the meantime.

5. Thank the employee.

Next Steps to Address Performance Issues

When performance continues to fail to meet job expectations or otherwise remains unaligned with the company culture and values, the manager must decide whether s/he has provided enough actionable feedback, coaching, and time. If so, the next steps reasonably include either providing additional coaching, reassignment to the prior or another role, or termination of employment.

How To Avoid Promoting The Wrong Person

To select the right employee requires the hiring manager to build a fuller awareness of his/her employee’s work styles and behavior prior to promotion. This involves using a multi-faceted approach. An employee’s interactions with you and/or in your presence are not reliable indicators of how they work with colleagues when you’re not around. Nor can the comments made by the employee’s colleagues provide an accurate, unbiased view of an employee’s on-the-job behavior and relationships. The manager’s observations are essential. We suggest partnering with your organization’s Human Resources Manager for confidential support and assistance.

Making regular, discreet observations that remain unnoticed by employees is a challenge. You need to be there, part of the background, yet close enough to see and hear while appearing not to.

Following are 5 tips to help you with making useful observations:

Make a list of the performance behaviors you need to assess to gain first-hand knowledge of specific aspects of job-related requirements. This may include expectations aligned with the current role as well as a new role you’re considering for promotion purposes. Watch for both green flags and red flags: examples of strong performance as well as areas for development
Plan to observe objectively; for instance, assess timeliness of tasks in relation to job requirements and behavior in relation to company culture and values.

For example, what are the employee’s team skills? Does s/he offer help before giving it?
Does the employee treat coworkers with respect, a clear desire to help others, and friendliness?
Does s/he take over another colleague’s task when not asked for help?
Does s/he gossip about other colleagues or customers?
If assigned to train a new hire does s/he teach the employee the standard company procedures or his/her methods and shortcuts?

3. Observe more than one performance factor at the same time; for instance, you may be able to watch safety habits while also noticing the employee’s demeanor with customers or coworkers.

4. Observe systemic obstacles the employee needs to overcome to complete tasks, such as burdensome or malfunctioning computer tools and processes. You can help address these at a later time.

5. Review customers’ and coworkers’ communications about your employee’s performance and watch for occasions of similar situations.

How else can managers equip themselves to better predict employee success in doing a new job that requires different strengths than those that exist in the current role? Following are suggestions:

As a general practice, provide opportunities for employees to learn and broaden skill sets. Develop a list of tasks or projects that you need done periodically that individuals or pairs of employees could do on a rotating basis.

Rotating certain responsibilities enables an employee to demonstrate ability to learn and apply additional knowledge and skills that aren’t outside the scope of the current role.

This provides the manager with the opportunity to observe the employee’s capacity to learn and apply knowledge and skills that will underpin promotions in the future.

2. These opportunities should not be responsibilities that exist in other roles, promotional or lateral. Nor should they be responsibilities they will add to their roles for a long-term basis. They will be temporary and rotated between employees regularly.

3. Offer your best performers opportunities to earn industry certifications related to the business and their jobs, but not required for promotions. Some certifications provide pay increases while others do not. Your organization should pay for the certification. The employee would study on their own time.

4. Rotate certain tasks that are not part of job descriptions but that need to be done. This may include small inventory-taking projects, record-keeping assignments, or product-related tasks that need to be done daily that aren’t specified in others’ job descriptions.

5. Teach employees how to effectively train new hires in one task they’re good at doing in their current role.

Taking these actions will benefit the organization. Your good performers will have a variety of learning opportunities that keep them growing and motivated. You will have continuous opportunities for observation that will reveal people’s abilities and fits for future roles, and the organization’s culture will be one of learning and growth. This helps to keep people engaged and performing their best, as well as reducing turnover of good people.

Conclusion

Most managers promote the wrong person at some point in time. Staffing mistakes occur more often with internal selections than with external hires. Fortunately, valuable learning can result from both hires done well and hiring mistakes.

Promoting the wrong person will continue to happen until managers improve the selection process and internal candidates learn to build greater self-awareness as well as learning how to better manage themselves, so that they can effectively choose and prepare for career paths that are well suited to their strengths and preferred skills.

We appreciate your taking the time to read our article! We welcome your comments and options.