Bernadette BoasExecutive Leadership Coach, Trainer and Speaker, Ball of Fire Coaching · Become the Leader Everyone Wants to Follow and No One Can Overlook.

5 Steps for Successful Leader Transitions

25 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:06

When promoting individual contributors to management, use formal readiness assessments and honest conversations to test whether they can shift from doing the work to developing people. Ask about any prior leadership experience, even informal, and be brutally transparent about what the role actually demands.

Chapters

If you've identified an individual for advancement into a people management role from an individual contributor role, then there's 5 things that you could be doing to make sure that you're successful. The first one being redefine how you promote. Ensure that there are some readiness assessments. Ensure that there are some conversations, let alone tools that could be used to really gauge the readiness of an individual to move from being tactical to being strategic, move from being a doer to a leader, and assess the capacity that they have for strong communication. If you just simply ask them up front, what are their experiences in managing people, whether that's a softball team or their family, Paint the picture very honestly, brutally transparent, so they understand the complexities of going from just doing tasks to developing and growing individuals.