By Raymond Stebler
(Ezine articles - www.ezinearticles.com)

How many times have you seen this happen?

Somebody is excellent at what she does. She is an excellent salesperson, an ingenious engineer or a highly experienced pilot. But what happens next? The person is promoted into a supervisory/management role. What commonly results from such promotions? The person who was a great contributor becomes a mediocre or, worse, bad, manager.

At the risk of insulting you with the painfully obvious:

Contributor Performance DOES NOT EQUAL Manager Performance

Companies still promote based on performance, instead of potential. Especially during an employee's first transition from individual contributor to manager, companies make this mistake more often than not. But why? We believe the reason stems from the following issues, which plague most organizations on a daily basis:

Erroneous Career Assumptions

We assume, especially as leaders, that everybody will be thrilled to be considered for a management role, and that all everybody wants is to ascend the "career ladder" as high as possible. But that assumption is far from the truth. Especially in areas where expertise is highly regarded, making the transition to a management (i.e., "administrative") role is undesirable to many; so we cannot assume that the brilliant software developer, the successful salesperson or the experienced pilot wants to become a manager. Many people are content in their role as an expert. Leaders need to identify who they are and learn to respect their choices. 

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