How to Prepare Technical Employees for Next-Level Leadership Positions

A client I once worked with told me that when he made the transition from employee to manager “the only preparation I got was, they took away my white hard hat and gave me a blue one.”

We see this all the time in technical fields; preparation for next-level leadership is nonexistent. Typically, what tends to happen is companies promote their best individual contributor, generally the person with the best skill set and who gets the job done. When management decides to promote someone the thought process usually goes something like this:

“We’re going to make somebody a supervisor/manager, so certainly, it’s going to be Joe or Suzie or Ann, whoever is our strongest performer in this technical and functional role.”

Then what often happens with this type of promotion strategy is there’s a skill gap created by the job change. Now, the job is no longer about having good functional and technical skills. While that remains important, the new job is more about the ability to get work done through others. The new manager needs a totally new set of skills to succeed.

Managing Requires a Separate Skill Set

There’s a saying that “what got you here, won’t get you there.” In other words, the skills that made your employee successful in their technical position typically won’t make them successful in a leadership positions.

For some employees, it’s a difficult transition because up until this point they’ve been rewarded for being good functionally and technically, and for getting the job done. The leadership skill gap is where many technical managers get stuck. Then they end up not spending enough time on the people part of their job or fall into the trap of continuing to do the same work they did before.

The source of this problem is failure to prepare employees before we promote them to leadership roles. Preparing technical employees for a supervisory positions requires you to focus on helping them develop a group of leadership competencies, including motivating others, command skills, conflict resolution, creativity, managing and measuring work, planning and gaining perspective on the company as a whole, before they step into their new positions.

If you want your people to be successful as leaders of people and not just projects, you need to help them to develop these competencies early. Start by being aware of your employees’ strengths and weakness. People will be naturally strong in some of these competencies, but experience others as challenge areas.

The best thing you can do to identify employees’ strengths and start to address their weaknesses is make sure you give them opportunities to test and build muscle around these competencies before they actually need them. For example, let emerging leaders head up short-term or special projects where they have to influence others without authority, motivate them and gain buy-in. You can also give them a chance to gain a broader perspective on the company as a whole by having them work with other departments.

Developing new leaders comes down to assessing their leadership competencies, identifying which ones they’ll need in their next-level job and planning how you -- through a combination of development events, exposure, awareness and feedback -- can get them to where they need to be.

Need help developing your emerging leaders next-level competencies? Nurture your top talent with help from The Success Labs Management Incubator.Success Labs is a full-service, strategic organizational and leadership development company located in Baton Rouge, La. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.