When you promote someone, don't just congratulate them and walk away. Act as a shotgun—a proactive coach who runs alongside them, offering guidance before they stumble. Anticipate the flailing that comes with new responsibilities and deliberately provide support to accelerate their growth.
Don't wait for your people to stumble to offer help. I find that a lot of people will promote and say congratulations on the new job and/or, you know, the new responsibility, whatever it is, and then they are left to succeed. So you just call me if you got any problems. And of course, that means please don't call me, because I assume that if you call me, there's going to be something wrong going on. But you just gave them a new job, you just gave them new responsibility. If you do those two things, you should expect that there's going to be a certain amount of flailing going on. And you as a person to put them in that position, you usually have more experience. You're usually in a position where you can help. So what you want to do is put them in a position to succeed by having more help, by having more of you as shotgun, of you as assistant, of you as coach to help make them into the new kind of more senior professional that you know they are capable of being. Don't wait for them to stumble, sprint alongside them.
