Hot Take: The best employees don’t always make the best managers.
I’ve seen it happen so many times—a top performer crushes their individual role, gets promoted into management, and suddenly, they’re struggling. The skills that made them great don’t always translate to leading a team. Some thrive, but others burn out or become micromanagers because they miss being hands-on. Yet companies keep doing it, then blame the individual when it doesn’t work out. Should we rethink how we choose managers? Or do you believe the right training can help anyone make the leap?
Half the bad managers I’ve worked with were top performers thrown into leadership with zero support—so yeah, I blame companies for this. But also… some people just aren’t cut out for it. If you can’t coach, communicate, and make tough calls, no amount of training will save you. Being good at something doesn’t mean you can teach it. We need to stop treating management as a default promotion.
Many of my peers suffer from “mgmt. imposter syndrome” and feel they were not really trained (not that there is training per se) and just try to do the best they can and hope things eventually get better. Growth mindset, listening /communication skills, empathy, and wiliness to fail are important skills to develop.
No, we need to be better about considering soft skills over metrics.
I fully agree that some of the strongest individual contributors really struggle when they become managers. Something I've witnessed is that the more they struggle, the more they try to lean into what has allowed them to be successful in the past. If in the past completely owning everything made them successful, they'll try to do that as managers. But you can't do that as a manager. Being a manager requires collaboration. Unfortunately, the more they struggle, the more they try to wrestle control from everyone else and it gets worse and worse.
So, often the best way to prepare individuals to be managers is to get them comfortable with collaboration as individual contributors so they understand the role others can play in their success. That way they take that same mindset into the leadership position.
Mostly I think we should make sure prospective managers get insight into what the role requires before they make the jump, though job shadowing or something similar. Also we need to provide ways for individuals to progress to greater responsibility and compensation without becoming people managers. If there's no other way to grow, people will take it even if it's not an ideal match. I tend to think the right training can help anyone make the leap, but it'll be easier and more fulfilling for people who have a group facilitation mindset and looking out for those people for promotion might help.
There was a very popular book decades ago called The Peter Principle, and it detailed how people tend to be promoted until they reach the point at which they're incompetent. It's almost an inescapable fact of business. Being good at something doesn't mean you'll be good at managing other people. In fairness, a lot of people will get tossed into the deep end and they'll learn to swim. But people rising to the level of their incompetence is a persistent problem.