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Whether it’s your organization that’s growing or just the skill level of key team members, if you’re looking to promote employees, managers, or executives, here are six ways to set them up for success and ensure they are not only promoted, but prepared for their new role.
Have Them Record and Evaluate Their Expectations
Invite your “promotables” to physically write down their expectations. Three to five is sufficient. Have them consider the styles and types of their new team members to make sure these expectations are in line with the team’s capabilities or potential. Then have them create a memorable phrase or acronym out of them that can serve as a mnemonic device for increased retention and recall.
Have Them Learn Who They Are
Share a personality profile with those you wish to promote as a way of helping them better understand what they do and why, how they get in their own way, what their stress triggers are, and what might they might do to work with challenges on their future team. To be a great leader, one must first be able to be themselves and then lead themselves well before they can lead others.
Allow Them to Evaluate the Team They’ll Lead
Use the same personality profile information or tool to allow this future leader to assess the styles and tendencies of their own team members. The more they know about those they lead, the more they can help them grow and consequently grow the bottom line with the team’s effort.
Close Their Learning Gaps
Consider conducting an evaluation of their needs and skill gaps. Even top performers have areas where additional skills would be helpful. For many this is an ongoing process, but if little feedback occurs in your company, now is a critical time to share what you see, provide resources, training or business coaching to help them close those gaps, and also gather input from them on what they’d like to work on.
Work on Their Plan
Once they’ve evaluated the team and begin working on their own gaps, planning for future success is important. Leadership plans often include a SWOT analysis, these same six steps carried out with each of their own team members, or a comprehensive strategic assessment of job fit, competition, internal strengths, prior year results, future trends and more.
Schedule Touch Bases
In some ways this process could be set up as a case study or structured learning event in which you meet with the potential promotion candidate weekly or monthly. If that level of structure is too much for your schedule, at a minimum, schedule regular meetings or calls with the person you are helping to prepare. You will want to build on their feedback, learning and input to keep up the momentum.
I’m Monica Wofford, and that’s your Monday Moment. Have a great Monday, an even better week and of course, stay contagious!
