The most expensive reward in a company is a premature promotion.
When someone has been doing their job excellently for years, it's natural to want to reward them. The problem arises when you don't reward their contribution with greater recognition, better conditions, or more freedom, but with a position they aren't yet ready for.
This turns a top expert into an average manager overnight. Not because they've lost their expertise, but because the new position requires skills that the previous one didn't develop.
Leading people is not the same as being the best among them. Expertise delivers results through your own work. Leadership requires the ability to achieve results through other people.
This involves making unpopular decisions, setting boundaries, resolving conflicts, developing people, and taking responsibility for things that are no longer solely within your control.
Many have never had the opportunity to develop these skills. Yet, the organization promotes them to a higher role and expects the position itself to teach them how to handle it.
It won't.
The consequences are hard to notice at first. First, the person you promoted loses their confidence. Then, the trust of the team that looks to them for leadership. In the end, the organization loses a good professional and doesn't gain a good manager.
The best organizations don't promote people just because they are the best at their job. They promote them only after they have shown they can handle the responsibility that the new role requires.
Sometimes the greatest recognition is to leave a person where they create the most value and allow them to grow in that position.
Not every promotion is development.
Some promotions are just a nicely wrapped beginning of someone's professional downfall.
Reshid Dervishi