Before We Promote a High Performer: What Should We Assess for Managerial Readiness?
High performers are often the first people considered for managerial roles. They deliver results, demonstrate expertise, and earn the confidence of their organisations. Promoting them can seem like a natural next step.
But being good at a job and being good at managing people are not necessarily the same thing.
An excellent engineer may not automatically become an effective engineering manager. A successful salesperson may not have the skills required to lead a sales team. A highly capable technical specialist may be more valuable in a specialist role than in a people-management position.
This raises an important question: Are organisations assessing employees for the responsibilities they will take on, or primarily rewarding them for responsibilities they have already performed well?
Internal Promotion Is Also a Hiring Decision
When organisations recruit an external candidate for a managerial position, they generally evaluate the person's experience, competencies, behavioural suitability, and ability to perform the role.
An internal promotion deserves comparable attention.
The difference is that the candidate already works within the organisation. Their performance history, professional relationships, and workplace behaviour may be more visible.
That familiarity is valuable, but it should not replace an objective assessment of managerial readiness.
A person may have performed exceptionally well in an individual role without demonstrating the ability or willingness to lead others.
Internal promotion is not simply a reward for past performance. It is a selection decision for a different set of responsibilities.
Research reinforces this concern.
A 2019 study by Alan Benson, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue, published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, examined sales employees across 131 firms. The researchers found evidence consistent with the Peter Principle: organisations placed substantial weight on individual sales performance when promoting employees, even though other observable characteristics better predicted managerial effectiveness.
The findings highlight a fundamental problem with relying too heavily on individual performance when identifying future managers.
Human Values Deserve a Place in Managerial Assessments
Managerial readiness is often discussed in terms of communication, delegation, decision-making, strategic thinking, and leadership competencies.
These capabilities matter. But what about basic human values?
Does the person willingly help colleagues? Do they share knowledge? Do they genuinely care about others? Do they demonstrate integrity, empathy, humility, and a sense of collective responsibility?
These qualities should not be overlooked merely because they are less visible in conventional performance metrics.
Consider two employees who consistently meet their targets.
One delivers excellent individual results but rarely supports colleagues or contributes beyond assigned responsibilities.
The other delivers strong results while also helping team members, sharing knowledge, accepting responsibility, and contributing to collective outcomes.
Both may be valuable employees. But their demonstrated behaviours provide different evidence about their potential to manage others.
A manager's influence extends beyond personal productivity. Their behaviour affects how other people work, collaborate, develop, and respond to challenges.
This makes qualities such as the following particularly relevant:
- Work ethic and accountability: Taking ownership, being dependable, and following through on commitments.
- Empathy and care: Understanding others' perspectives and showing genuine concern for their well-being and development.
- Willingness to contribute: Helping colleagues, sharing knowledge, and supporting collective success.
- Integrity and fairness: Making responsible decisions and treating people consistently and respectfully.
- Humility and openness: Accepting feedback, acknowledging mistakes, and recognising the contributions of others.
- Emotional maturity: Handling pressure, disagreement, criticism, and difficult conversations constructively.
These qualities are not substitutes for managerial competence. They are important aspects of how that competence is exercised.
An empathetic manager must still address poor performance. A supportive manager must still make difficult decisions. A hardworking manager must know when to delegate rather than personally completing every task.
The objective is not simply to identify good intentions. It is to understand how values translate into behaviour at work.
Why Human Values May Become Greater Differentiators in the AI Era
Artificial intelligence is changing how work gets done.
Activities involving information processing, reporting, analysis, content generation, and elements of decision support are increasingly being assisted by AI systems.
This does not mean technical expertise is becoming irrelevant. Organisations will continue to need people with strong domain knowledge, specialised capabilities, and sound professional judgment.
However, as access to certain technical capabilities becomes more widespread, those capabilities alone may offer less differentiation in some roles.
Human qualities could become increasingly important in distinguishing how effectively individuals and teams perform.
Two managers may have access to similar AI tools. Both may be able to generate reports, analyse information, and automate routine activities.
But will they exercise the same judgment? Will they treat colleagues fairly? Will they support employees through uncertainty? Will they take responsibility when decisions go wrong? Will they create an environment where people are willing to collaborate and contribute?
Technology can assist with tasks and decisions. It does not automatically create trust, integrity, empathy, or a genuine willingness to help others succeed.
As technical capabilities become more accessible, human values may become meaningful differentiators in organisational performance.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies leadership and social influence, empathy and active listening, talent management, and other interpersonal capabilities among the core skills valued by surveyed employers.
The report also highlights the growing importance of technological skills, reinforcing the need for organisations to develop both human and technical capabilities.
The implication is not that human values will replace technical competence. Rather, managerial effectiveness may increasingly depend on the ability to combine technological capability with responsible judgment and effective human leadership.
What Should Organisations Assess Before Promoting Someone?
A managerial-readiness assessment should go beyond reviewing performance ratings, technical achievements, and years of experience.
Organisations need to examine several dimensions.
1. Human Values and Workplace Behaviour
How does the employee treat colleagues? Do they demonstrate fairness, integrity, empathy, and accountability? Are they willing to help others succeed?
These questions should be examined through observable behaviour rather than general impressions of personality.
2. Ability to Lead Through Others
Can the individual delegate responsibilities, provide constructive feedback, support development, and enable team members to work independently?
Strong individual contributors sometimes struggle to move from doing the work themselves to helping others perform it effectively.
3. Judgment and Decision-Making
Managers regularly balance competing priorities, incomplete information, business requirements, and the needs of people.
The ability to make reasoned, responsible decisions is therefore essential.
4. Emotional Maturity and Interpersonal Effectiveness
How does the person respond to disagreement, setbacks, criticism, or pressure?
Can they handle difficult conversations without unnecessarily damaging professional relationships?
5. Motivation and Willingness to Manage
Does the employee genuinely want to take responsibility for people, or is management simply the most visible route to career progression?
Not every high performer wants to become a manager, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.
6. Adaptability and Future Readiness
Can the individual learn, adapt to changing responsibilities, and use emerging technologies responsibly?
As AI becomes integrated into workplace processes, managers may increasingly need to coordinate people, technology, and automated workflows while remaining accountable for outcomes.
These dimensions also explain why managerial assessments can play an important role in identifying and developing future leaders.
The Role of Evidence-Based Assessments
Identifying managerial potential requires more than intuition, familiarity, or a conventional performance review.
Organisations can draw on structured behavioural interviews, role-relevant simulations, situational judgment exercises, documented workplace behaviour, and feedback from relevant colleagues.
Scientifically developed psychometric assessments can also contribute useful information about work-related behavioural tendencies and competencies when they are validated for the intended purpose.
For example, a Managerial Skills Profiler can help examine competencies such as decision-making, communication, stress management, conflict management, people management, and delegation.
A broader assessment approach, such as Manager BluePrint, combines managerial competency assessment with workplace personality profiling to provide additional insights into leadership potential and development needs.
However, no single assessment should determine whether an employee is suitable for management.
A psychometric score cannot, by itself, establish someone's integrity, predict every leadership decision, or demonstrate how the individual will behave in every workplace situation.
Assessments are most useful when they complement other credible evidence and are interpreted within the context of the role.
The US Office of Personnel Management's guidance on employee selection emphasises job analysis, structured interviews, and other job-relevant assessment methods. The underlying principle is important: selection decisions should evaluate the capabilities required for the position, not rely solely on general impressions.
For internal promotions, organisations have an additional advantage. They may already possess substantial evidence of how employees behave, collaborate, manage responsibilities, and respond to workplace challenges.
That evidence should be considered systematically, rather than allowing familiarity or personal preferences to dominate the decision.
Not Every High Performer Needs to Become a Manager
There is another aspect of promotion decisions that deserves attention.
Organisations sometimes treat managerial positions as the primary route to greater compensation, status, and professional advancement.
This can create pressure for talented specialists to move into management even when their strengths, interests, and ambitions lie elsewhere.
An excellent researcher, engineer, analyst, or technical expert may continue creating exceptional value without taking responsibility for a team.
Providing credible specialist career paths allows organisations to recognise expertise without making people management the default reward for success.
A decision not to promote someone into management need not be a judgment on their professional worth. It may simply reflect a better alignment between their capabilities and another role.
A Better Question Before the Next Promotion
High performance deserves recognition. It demonstrates competence, commitment, and the ability to deliver results.
But a managerial appointment introduces responsibilities that individual performance alone cannot establish.
The organisation must consider whether the candidate can support others, exercise sound judgment, act with integrity, manage difficult situations, and create an environment in which people can perform effectively.
As AI changes the nature of work, these human capabilities may become even more meaningful differentiators.
That makes strong, values-driven, evidence-based managerial-readiness assessments increasingly relevant.
Before promoting a high performer, organisations should ask not only, "What has this person achieved?" but also, "What can this person help others achieve?"
The answer may reveal far more about their readiness to manage.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Why doesn't being a high performer guarantee managerial success?
Individual performance and managerial effectiveness require overlapping but different capabilities. A high performer may excel at technical work or independent responsibilities but may not yet possess the skills needed to delegate, guide employees, manage conflict, and develop a team. Past performance is useful evidence, but it is not sufficient on its own to establish managerial readiness.
2. What are the most important qualities to assess before promoting an employee to manager?
Organisations should assess a combination of managerial competencies, workplace behaviour, motivation, and human values. Important areas include integrity, accountability, empathy, collaboration, decision-making, communication, delegation, emotional maturity, and willingness to support others. The relative importance of each depends on the responsibilities of the managerial role.
3. Why should human values matter in managerial assessments?
Managers influence more than task completion. Their actions affect team relationships, employee development, trust, and collaboration. Values such as fairness, empathy, integrity, and willingness to contribute can influence how managers exercise authority and support collective performance. These qualities should be evaluated through relevant workplace behaviours rather than self-reported claims alone.
4. How is AI changing the skills required of future managers?
AI is increasingly assisting with analytical, administrative, and operational activities. Managers may therefore need to place greater emphasis on judgment, accountability, adaptability, collaboration, and responsible use of technology. Human qualities remain important because managing people involves interpersonal and ethical responsibilities that cannot be reduced to task automation.
5. How can psychometric assessments help identify managerial potential?
Appropriate psychometric assessments can provide structured information about personality characteristics, behavioural tendencies, and managerial competencies. They may help organisations identify strengths, development needs, and areas requiring further evaluation. However, results should be considered alongside structured interviews, observed behaviour, relevant experience, and other job-related evidence.
6. Should internal candidates undergo managerial assessments before promotion?
Internal candidates should be evaluated against the requirements of the managerial role, just as external applicants are. A structured assessment process can help organisations distinguish past performance from future role readiness. The process need not be identical to external recruitment, because internal candidates may already have documented workplace performance and behavioural evidence.
References
- Benson, A., Li, D., & Shue, K. (2019). Promotions and the Peter Principle. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4), 2085–2134. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz022
- World Economic Forum. (2025). The Future of Jobs Report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Assessment and Selection. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/assessment-and-selection/
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Structured Interviews. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/assessment-and-selection/structured-interviews/
