Promoted From Within And Then What?

Congratulations, you’ve just been promoted “from within”. You’ve worked hard to be recognized for doing your job very well. And you have been successful at it. And now, you begin a journey that will call on you to use your “learned skills and knowledge” AND you’ll have to learn your new “Leader” role as well.

This new journey will include navigating how to best supervise and manage those “peers” you worked alongside before your promotion. And quite often, in all likelihood, you cannot fall back on any prior “training” in how to perform as a “leader” and develop your “human skills”.

Here are a handful of things you as a recently promoted Supervisor, or as the Supervisor of a recently promoted Supervisor might consider in order to make this journey smoother and successful:

· As the newly appointed Supervisor, have a conversation with your Boss in pursuit of his/her expectations of YOU. It’s called “role clarity”.

· Ask for their insights into your staff and existing departmental performance. Find out their assessment of staff strengths and weaknesses.

· Dare to ask for their input and ideas on how to “move forward” successfully to correct deficiencies and build on perceived strengths. Make sure you understand their logic.

· For the Supervisor of the new Supervisor, you might want to convene the staff members to communicate his/her expectations of the department’s staff in their behaviors with the new Supervisor…including what is hoped for AND what will not be tolerated.

· As the Supervisor of the newly promoted Supervisor, you should “selfishly” frequently with the new Supervisor monitoring and watching for what’s going well. And, positively reinforcing those things ASAP. When something is observed that needs redirection, it too should addressed early, before it becomes a bad “habit”.

In short, Newly Promoted Supervisors and the Supervisors of the newly Promoted from within Supervisor increase the likelihood of success in transitioning into the new role when they have a common agenda and implement that agenda for mutually selfish reasons: Success of the new Supervisor.

It’s a Win-Win.