Promoting Your Best Performer Isn’t a Leadership Plan

Why your best individual performer isn’t automatically your next great manager, with insights from HR strategist Sionainn Hayes and leadership consultant Jim Plunkett.

An audience member at Hub Australia’s WorkWell Week panel asked a question familiar to anyone who has built a team. How do businesses weigh someone’s expertise against their ability to lead people and manage relationships? And does anyone actually agree on the right mix?
Two of the panellists, HR strategist Sionainn Hayes of She HR Consulting and leadership consultant Jim Plunkett of Telos Performance Partners, had a lot to say.

The promotion problem

Jim has watched it happen many times. Someone becomes an expert in their field. They hit their sales targets or deliver their part of the strategy, and they keep getting promoted. Then one day they are responsible for 15 people.

“They haven’t got the skill set to do it, and they’ve just sort of morphed into that role,” he said. Usually it isn’t their fault, but the team pays the price, and so does the new leader. The change is especially hard when someone is promoted above their peers. A person who sat beside you as a colleague is suddenly your manager, and that conversation needs careful handling.

Sionainn sees the same pattern in almost every workplace she joins, whether as an employee or as an adviser. “Just because you’re good at that thing does not mean that you are good at showing or leading or teaching other people to do that thing,” she said. A skilled lawyer is not automatically a good leader of lawyers.

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Leading people is its own job

At the heart of Sionainn’s argument is a distinction many organisations miss. Individual contribution, people management and people leadership are different skill sets. Problems arise when someone is expected to do all three without support.

“If you’ve been a people leader, you know that it takes so much emotional labour and energy to do it really well,” she said. “And it’s treated like an add-on to somebody’s job.”

The effects show up in productivity and in culture. “Promoting the high performer does not necessarily guarantee more results across the team,” she said. Expect someone to swim when no one has taught them how, and the whole team slows down.

Character and competence

Jim uses a simple frame: character and competence. Both matter, but they don’t count equally.

“If I’ve got two people with similar competence, even lower competence, but higher character, I know which one I’m going with every day of the week,” he said. His AFL comparison: a 100-goal kicker who is a problem off the field can do real damage to a team’s culture.

The balance works in both directions. An organisation can have a world-class strategy, but if its culture is toxic it will struggle. A strong culture with no strategy delivers nothing either. People are the same. A great character in the wrong role is as much a problem as a high performer who works against the team. “It’s understanding your people,” Jim said. “What’s the best fit for them? How do we maximise their strengths? That’s a job in itself.”

How to spot a future leader

Asked for markers of a strong people leader, Sionainn pointed to character over technical skill. “Hard technical skills are learnable, but I think somebody’s character is something that’s intrinsic to them,” she said. She looks for integrity, genuine care for colleagues, and a habit of thinking about the team rather than personal advancement.

Jim’s test is more instinctive. “Gut feel,” he said. You get a sense of someone quickly, and more often than not it’s right.

Questions for your next promotion

Before you move a high performer into a leadership role, ask:

• Do they want to lead people, or is this the only way up that we offer?
• What training and support will they get in their first six months?
• Is leading people part of their role and their time, or an add-on to a full workload?
• Have they shown they care how their colleagues are doing, not only their own results?

Get an outside view

Sionainn has offered a free HR health check to one Hub member business. Enter the draw here.

If your team is growing, Flexi Teams gives you space to bring people together without committing to a long lease. Explore Flexi Teams here.

From Rethinking High Performance, Hub Australia’s WorkWell Week panel with In Good Company. Watch the full conversation on the WorkWell page of the Hub Member Portal.