Susie is crushing it. Three years of flawless execution, clients love her, and every project she touches turns to gold. Obviously, it’s the right time for promotion.
Johnny’s the same. Consistent performer, reliable, always gets it done. Naturally, it’s time to move him up.
And so, we promote them: new titles, new salaries, new business cards. We celebrate at the team meeting. Everyone claps.
Six months later, we’re having the “performance conversation.” A year later, we’re managing them out.
And here’s the part that really upsets me: as senior leaders, we blame them.
We say things like, “they couldn’t handle the next level.” We say they “weren’t leadership material.” We say they “didn’t have what it takes.”
But the actual truth is uglier than that.
We failed them. And then we separate ways with them for our failure, but wish them the best in all their future endeavors.
The Promotion We Give Without Thinking
Here’s how it typically goes in many organizations. Someone’s been a strong individual contributor for a few years. They hit their numbers, they’re dependable, they’re well-liked. And in most organizations, there’s really only one path forward: promotion.
And, so we give it to them.
We change their title from Associate to Manager. From Junior to Senior. From Consultant to Senior Consultant. We bump their comp, congratulate them, and move on to the next task on our list.
But did you hear what we don’t do just now? What we don’t do is actually prepare them for what that new role requires.
We don’t sit them down and have the simple, plain English conversation about what’s actually expected of them now.
We don’t tell them about the blood, sweat, tears, grit, and resilience it’s going to take.
We don’t give them the framework for what success actually looks like in this new role.
We just promote them and assume they’ll figure it out.
The Unspoken Shift Nobody Explains
Now I want to talk with you about the shift that kills careers when promoting team members: the utilization-to-origination problem.
For years, someone has been measured on execution. They do the work, do it well, bill the hours, and make the client happy. That’s utilization. That’s being excellent at billing by the hour for whatever task they’re supposed to do and meeting or exceeding their billed hourly goal for the year.
But then we promote them and suddenly expect them to bring in the work, not just do it. That’s called origination. That’s sales. That’s business development. That’s an entirely different skill set that has nothing to do with what made them successful in the first place.
But here’s the problem: we don’t tell them that.
We slap an origination goal on their performance plan and say, “Good luck!”
We don’t teach them how to network. We don’t show them how to have a sales conversation. We don’t give them the tools to build a pipeline. We don’t warn them about the rejection, the long sales cycles, or the deals that fall through at the last minute.
We just expect them to start bringing in business because their title has changed.
And when they don’t, we act surprised.
The Manager Trap: Different Job, Same Expectations
The same thing happens when we promote individual contributors to people managers.
Someone’s been exceptional at their own work. They produce great results. They’re organized, detail-oriented, and technically excellent. So, naturally, we make them a manager.
Now they’re responsible for other people’s results, not just their own.
That requires coaching, not just doing. Delegation, not just execution. Difficult conversations about performance. Conflict resolution. Motivation. Development. Hiring. Firing.
These are completely different muscles.
But we don’t prepare them for this. We don’t train them. We don’t give them a framework for how to have a performance conversation, or how to give feedback that actually lands, or how to handle the team member who’s struggling.
We just hand them a team and say, “Good luck. You’re a manager now!”
Then we wonder why they’re still doing all the work themselves instead of developing their people. We wonder why their team is underperforming. We wonder why they’re burned out.
We set them up to fail by promoting them into a role they weren’t prepared for, then we blame them for not succeeding.
What Actual Preparation Looks Like
If we cared about setting people up for success, here’s what we’d do differently.
Before the promotion, we’d have the honest conversation.
Not the “congratulations, you’re getting promoted” conversation. The real conversation.
For instance: “Here’s what this new role actually requires. Here’s what you’ll be measured on. Here’s what a typical day looks like. Here’s what will be hard about it. Here’s what will be different from what you’re doing now. Here’s the support you’ll get. Here’s what you need to start learning today.”
That conversation needs to happen before they accept the role, not after they’re already in it.
We’d give them the framework, not just the title.
If they’re moving into business development, we teach them how to do business development. We pair them with someone who’s good at it. We give them scripts, templates, and processes. We send them to real training. We roleplay difficult conversations. We set realistic expectations about timelines and conversion rates.
If they’re moving into management, we teach them how to manage. We don’t just assume they’ll figure it out. We give them coaching on how to delegate, how to give feedback, how to develop people, and how to handle conflict.
We actually invest in their success instead of just hoping they figure it out.
We’d create a transition period, not a cliff.
The promotion shouldn’t be a light switch. It should be a dimmer.
You don’t go from 100% utilization to 100% origination overnight. You gradually shift the mix. You give them smaller business development goals at first while they’re still executing. You let them build confidence and skills before you expect them to carry a full origination number.
You don’t hand someone a team of ten people on day one of being a manager. You give them one direct report, then two, then more as they demonstrate capability.
You create a path, not a cliff.
We’d check in during the transition, not just at annual review time.
The first 90 days after a promotion are critical. That’s when people need the most support. That’s when they’re trying to figure out the new role while still doing parts of the old one. That’s when bad habits get formed or good ones get established.
We should be checking in weekly. “What’s working? What’s hard? What do you need? What questions do you have?”
Instead, we promote them in January and don’t talk to them about it again until their performance review in December, when we tell them they’re not hitting their numbers.
The Real Cost of Getting This Wrong
When we promote people without preparing them, we don’t just hurt them; we hurt the organization. We hurt everyone.
We lose a great individual contributor and gain a struggling manager. The team suffers because its leader doesn’t know how to lead. The clients suffer because the person who used to serve them brilliantly is now distracted and overwhelmed.
And then, when it doesn’t work out, we let them go or we manage them out. Or we move them to a different role where they never quite recover their confidence.
As leaders, we are literally destroying careers because we were too lazy or too busy to do the work of actually developing people.
And here’s the most infuriating part to me: we blame them.
We say they “weren’t ready.” We say they “couldn’t make the transition.” We say they “didn’t have leadership potential.”
But they didn’t fail. We failed them.
The Standard You Walk Past
I’ve watched this happen over and over in my career. People who were set up to fail are then blamed for failing.
And every time it happens, I think about the senior leaders who made the decision to promote without preparing. The ones who knew what the new role required and didn’t share that information. The ones who saw the person struggling and didn’t intervene. The ones who waited until it was too late and then pulled the plug.
Those leaders failed their people.
And instead of owning that failure, they added insult to injury by blaming the employee.
If You’re About to Promote Someone
Before you move forward, ask yourself these questions:
Have I clearly explained what this new role actually requires?
Have I had an honest conversation about what will be different and what will be hard?
Have I given them the tools, training, and framework they need to succeed?
Have I created a transition plan instead of expecting them to flip a switch overnight?
Am I prepared to invest in their development during the transition?
If you can’t answer yes to all of those questions, you’re not ready to promote them.
And if you do promote them anyway, their failure won’t be their fault. It will be yours.
Moving Forward
Promotion should be an opportunity, not a trap.
When we promote people, we’re saying “we believe in your potential to grow into this next role.” But belief without support is just empty words.
If we’re going to promote people, we have an obligation to set them up for success. That means honest conversations, real preparation, ongoing support, and accountability on our part as leaders to actually develop the people we promote.
Anything less is just setting them up to fail so that we can blame them later.
And that is not leadership.
Reflection Questions:
Who did you promote without adequately preparing? What could you have done differently?
If you’re about to promote someone, have you had the honest conversation about what success actually requires?
Where are you blaming someone for struggling in a role you didn’t prepare them for?
This Week’s Challenge: If you have someone who was recently promoted and is struggling, schedule time this week to give them the framework and support you should have given them on day one. It’s not too late.
