The promotion paradox

Why the best professional does not automatically become the best manager

We promote people for what they did yesterday, then wonder why they get stuck tomorrow.

The best salesperson becomes sales manager.
The best specialist becomes head of department.
The most experienced professional “gets a team thrown in”.

Logical? Perhaps.
Sensible? Not always.

Because a professional is valued for their craftsmanship.
A manager is judged on something else: making other people perform better.

That is not the next rung on the same ladder.
It is a different profession.

And that is where the promotion paradox arises.

We reward people for their success in one profession, and then expect them to be successful automatically in another.

The best professional often sees the step to manager as recognition. As growth. As an attractive challenge.

But when the new role calls for behaviour that does not match their drivers, leading people does not become a source of energy. It becomes a daily correction of what someone does by nature.

And that costs energy. For the manager. And for the team.

Everyone brings their own mix of drivers into the leadership role. Under pressure, helpful behaviour can tip over into obstructive behaviour.

Red decisiveness can turn into pushing through regardless.
Blue conscientiousness can turn into checking.
Yellow vision can turn into letting go without direction.

The very behaviour that was a quality in the old role can suddenly become a pitfall in the new one.

Research by Benson, Li and Shue in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, based on data from almost 40,000 sales employees at 131 companies, shows precisely this: the best salespeople were promoted more often, but did not automatically turn out to be the best managers.

Yet the story is not as simple as: “so do not promote the best professional.”

Because the reverse is true as well.

A manager who does not understand the profession gets stuck too. Someone who has never sold anything themselves often has insufficient grasp of the pressure, the customer, the resistance and the reality of the work. A team feels that immediately.

There is evidence for that too. Artz, Goodall and Oswald examined data from around 35,000 employees and found that the boss's technical expertise is one of the strongest predictors of job satisfaction.

That is precisely why organisations often promote the best professional. It is understandable.

But it does not solve the problem. It shifts the problem.

The solution lies in the combination.

A good manager does not have to be the best professional. They have to understand enough of the profession to be credible, and be willing to take the new profession of leading people seriously enough to learn it.

That starts with three questions:

What behaviour does this role ask of me?
What behaviour do I display by nature?
And what behaviour do I have to develop consciously?

Good leadership therefore does not start with a job title.

It starts with insight into the match between role, behaviour and drivers.

The step from professional to manager is not a reward for yesterday.

It is a choice for tomorrow.

And so the question is not: who deserves promotion?

The question is: who fits the new role best?