Promoted Without Being Taught to Lead

Promoted Without Being Taught to Lead

Most leaders were never actually taught how to lead.

They were promoted because they were good at their job.

They were reliable.

They were efficient.

They knew how to execute.

So they moved up.

But here’s the problem:

Execution and leadership are completely different skillsets.

Being great at doing the work doesn’t automatically translate to:

developing people

delegating effectively

managing high performers

sharing ownership of outcomes

So when someone joins their team and exceeds expectations, they don’t have a framework for what to do next.

They haven’t been trained to leverage that talent.

So they default to what they know:

Control. Oversight. Tight management.

Research from Gallup has consistently shown that a majority of managers receive little to no formal leadership training—and that poor management is one of the leading drivers of disengagement and turnover.

Marcus Buckingham has also emphasized that people don’t leave jobs—they leave managers who don’t know how to lead them.

So we end up with a misdiagnosis:

We think we have a talent problem.

But in reality—we have a leadership development gap.

Until we address that, high performers will continue to feel like problems instead of assets.

Question:

Are we intentionally developing leaders—or just promoting performers and hoping they figure it out?

References:

Gallup. State of the American Manager. 2015.

Buckingham M, Coffman C. First, Break All the Rules. 1999.