WTF Wednesday.

WTF Wednesday. Where’s the Focus?

Have you ever promoted someone you knew in your gut might not be ready — but you rolled the dice anyway?

I have.

Years ago, I promoted someone with great skills.

Smart. Driven. Results-oriented. The kind of person you want on your team when things are on fire.

And things were often on fire, as is the norm in healthcare.

I knew they didn’t have experience leading people.

But I convinced myself their personality — coupled with their ability to do excellent work — would translate into strong management.

On paper, the promotion made perfect sense.

In reality?

It slowly unraveled a team.

Not because they were cruel.

Not because they didn’t care.

But because leading humans is fundamentally different than executing tasks.

They were rewarded for productivity.

Now they needed patience.

They were rewarded for solving everything themselves.

Now they needed to develop others.

They were rewarded for pushing through.

Now they needed emotional regulation and trust-building.

No one asked whether they were ready for that shift.

No one assessed the skills required for it.

And we didn’t prepare them.

A recent piece in Harvard Business Review validated something I’ve seen repeatedly in healthcare and beyond:

We treat promotion like a prize.

It’s not.

It’s a capability transition.

When we move someone into leadership without assessing readiness to manage people — not projects — we create title-ready, not people-ready leaders.

And managers who are only title-ready, often create exhausted teams.

The hard truth?

Most new leaders don’t fail because they lack intelligence.

They struggle because no one teaches them how to:

• give feedback without triggering fear

• hold accountability without becoming punitive

• manage former peers

• regulate themselves under stress

• shift from “doer” to “developer”

We promote.

We celebrate.

We hand over a new title.

And then we cross our fingers.

Hope is not a leadership strategy.

If your organization prioritizes promoting from within, ask yourself:

What actually changes for someone the day after they get the title?

And what support changes with it?

If the answer is “not much,” that’s the problem.

Because promoting from within has to mean more than handing someone a new name badge.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to better support leaders in those first 90 days — because that window determines more than most people realize.

More on that soon.

~ Steph

✨ Executive leadership coaching & consulting forged in the chair, not the sidelines.