It’s common to promote staff from a front line position to a line manager position because of their excellent technical work or skills. It’s also common that such promotions often don’t work out well. These new managers don’t work out as was expected, for several reasons.
Primarily, the promotion of technically competent staff fails because the competencies are different. Even at a relatively low management level, such as a team leader, technical skills won’t keep a manager afloat. They need more extensive interpersonal skills, enhanced analysis skills and great planning abilities. These traits were probably not present in their front line role, at least to the same extent. This creates a skill gap, which means your staff member needs immediate development, to even come close to suiting the role.
Secondly, a large number of technical front line staff aren’t interested in managerial work. Often the promotion comes because its the only (or easiest)Â way to reward top front line performers. In many organisations there just isn’t provision to financially reward staff any other way. Promoting for such a reason does your organisation an injustice. You may end up with one happy employee, but at what price. AÂ poor performing employee is worse than no employee at all.
It’s really something that needs to be included in a reward strategy. Fixed, heirarchical pay grades aren’t flexible enough, and the result is ineffective rewards that slowly but surely damage your organisation.