Do NOT promote your best employees into management positions …

… without seriously considering your best employees’ abilities to perform well in a managerial capacity.

Your best employees are your best employees because they have the technical abilities required to outperform others in the particular work they engage.

Because your best employees have outperformed their peers in similar work, you may surmise that your best can translate their high performance, productivity, and passion to a management position and thereby elevate the performance, productivity, and passion of the employees that your best once outperformed.

But how did your best employees become “the best?” They became the best because their technical ability and persistence outpaced their peers.

Similarly, management requires a particular technical ability that is unique and entirely different than a purely “technical” skill set required for an individual job or task.

The best managers are conceptual thinkers, strategic, and holistic in their planning. They possess high levels of emotional intelligence, communicate effectively, and efficiently allocate their resources, including their human, financial, and social capital.

Can the best employees naturally be the best managers? ABSOLUTELY! Some people possess the technical ability to perform a particular job, as well as the “managerial ability” needed to thrive in a managerial capacity. These people are rare unicorns, but they do exist.

Can the best employees become the best managers, if they receive training and mentorship? Sure, that’s another possibility. However, training and mentorship can only elevate a natural skill set so far. A person with a naturally higher aptitude in a given field will outperform a person with a lower aptitude, even if both people receive the same level of training and mentorship. Therefore, given limited resources, companies may prefer to train and mentor those employees with higher managerial aptitude, as opposed to blankly training and mentoring the best employees who either don’t possess natural managerial ability or simply lack interest in engaging a managerial role. Some of your best employees are perfectly happy with where they are, and don’t want to be managers. It’s up to you to communicate with your employees to understand their abilities and their goals.

What you should really ask yourself is, “which employees possess managerial aptitude, and are they interested in becoming managers?” An employee who is underperforming in his technical field may very well possess the needed managerial skill set to thrive in a managerial setting. 

How can you determine an employee’s managerial aptitude? Sure, I bet you could develop some type of standardized testing that would capture a couple elements of managerial aptitude. However, the best way to determine an employee’s managerial ability is simply to engage and observe your employees. A novel idea? I think not. A business is only as strong as its internal network, comprised of its human capital. The best way to strengthen this internal network is to cultivate it through relationship building, continued interactions, and information sharing.

How do you engage and observe your employees, when it comes to determining managerial aptitude? Remember, the best managers are conceptual thinkers, strategic, and holistic in their planning. You can engage your employees in your decision-making and in the prospects of new business opportunities, which would allow you to examine your employees’ conceptual thinking, strategic knowhow, planning ability, and execution follow-through.

Also remember that the best managers possess high levels of emotional intelligence, communicate effectively, and efficiently allocate their resources, including their human, financial, and social capital. Simply observing your employees, and their interactions, will provide insights into their emotional intelligence and communication. The integration of engaging your employees in new initiatives and observing their behavior in these initiatives will provide you with a landscape of your employees’ managerial abilities. Those who display higher managerial abilities should be considered for managerial roles. And with these considerations, make sure you seek input from these prospects and gauge their genuine interest in management (by directly engaging them in dialogue). Those who do not display higher managerial abilities should remain in their current roles, even if they’re the best in their current roles. 

Regardless of the employees determined as fit or unfit for managerial roles, your continued engagement with your employees will foster higher levels of engagement, communication, and performance that will elevate the entire organization. Your quest in finding managerial talent from your internal network will propel your business endeavors and initiatives. You will discover prime managerial talent, solidify which employees are geared solely towards their current function, and identify when you need to hire externally for managerial talent.

Oh, and you will realize that the best employees do not necessarily make the best managers. And that’s okay. Aptitude, fit, and personal alignment are crucial for any position or function, including management.

Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post, where I provide a couple of personal examples that exemplify the notion that the best employees may not make the cut for management, and that mediocre employees may be the perfect fit for management. 

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Thank you to Dr. Philip Podsakoff for introducing me to the disparity between great employees and great managers.