Exceeds Expectations and Nothing to Show For It
As I’ve noted before, I am an eldest daughter, Type-A, perfectionist at my core. My report cards over the years were littered with “Exceeds expectations” (and “talks too much in class,” but let’s table that topic for now!). I am an excellent student, a hard worker, an overachiever, an A+ example of how you should do the work.
Unfortunately, as good as all of that sounds, I, like many overachieving and high-performing employees, have found myself in a position in multiple past workplaces where I have become too valuable in my role to promote. Let’s talk about that!
It’s a common story. Someone is hired for an individual contributor (IC) role, and they excel at it. They cheerfully fulfill all of the expectations of the role, they outperform expectations, they become the heartbeat of that department. They know how everything works, they help others on their team, they become more and more valuable as their time with the company extends. Their manager loves them because they make the manager’s life easier and take work off their plate. Everyone is happy in this scenario, except for maybe the employee.
Because in many cases, the employee knows that they are good at their job, and they want additional responsibility, and the title and pay that come with that, because they have proven that they can handle it and they will be good at it, so they deserve the chance to improve their own lives and situations by continuing up the corporate ladder. So they bid on another job in the company: a leadership position, and they interview well, and everyone knows that they would likely be great at the job, and they are definitely a top candidate to get the leadership job. Except they don’t. Because the management team has decided that they are “too valuable” in their current IC role to lose, and if they were promoted, the team and/or company would take a hit by losing that person in their IC role.
This is a familiar story for those who identify as overachievers. They are passed over for a promotion and the leadership role is given to someone less qualified because they have made themselves irreplaceable in their current role, and the company has decided that can’t lose the employee in that role, so they deny the employee the opportunity to advance in their career and keep them where they are professionally. There isn’t usually a path for career or salary advancement outside of promotion to leadership (yet another topic that is frustrating in more than one way), so one of your star employees is now sitting there, pondering their next move.
Let me take this opportunity to give a word of warning to workplaces that do this. Your decision not to promote an employee that exceeds expectations in an IC role may work out for you in the short-term, but it will definitely not work out for you in the long-term, and you will regret making that decision. Hurting someone’s opportunities for advancement to make your own life easier will come back to haunt you. Because you have just clearly told that employee that they will not advance in this company, so they need to immediately start looking elsewhere for opportunities to advance, and they will often choose to leave the company entirely. So now you have two bad decisions that will compound in your business—one hire for leadership that could’ve been better, and one star employee that walked out the door.
The better option for the workplace is choosing to reward and acknowledge the employee and open their path toward advancement and even greater responsibilities in your company by promoting them into the position of leadership that they want. Because it turns out that really good individual contributors that become really good leaders teach other individual contributors how to be better at their jobs, and put everyone on a forward trajectory, including your company’s business growth.
They often say that leadership “makes the big bucks” because they have to be in the room making the hard decisions. And that is the point. It can be uncomfortable to make the better long-term decision over the painful short-term decision. But being a good leader is seeing the big picture and working toward a future of continued growth and success, even if losing someone in a role right now is temporarily painful. Losing them permanently would be more painful. Holding someone back from their potential only tells them that you care more about staying the same and being comfortable in your role and your business than about your employee and their own goals and plans. They don’t owe you anything, and if you don’t treat them well, they should and will leave.
Investing in your employee’s career growth and potential is often the best business move you can make. Seeing someone excel and opening up paths for them to advance in the workplace makes you a good leader, and people like to work for good leaders. Find your stars and let them shine, and your business will be brighter for it.