Promise gets you excited. Preparedness is what you actually do next.
In part one, I wrote about four things that feel like good reasons to hire or promote someone, and three of them often aren’t. Proximity, personality, promise, preparedness. Three are information. Only one is something you can actually make a decision on. There’s a fifth element too… pain, that makes you more willing to accept one of the other three when you’re worn down enough to just want the vacancy gone.
Preparedness isn’t certainty. That’s where I left it, and it’s worth sitting with before going further. Hiring always involves risk. You never really know how someone will perform in a bigger role until they’re in it. None of this is about eliminating that risk. It’s about the difference between an informed risk and a convenient assumption mistaken for one.
So how do you actually tell the difference? I don’t have a formula. If I did, I think I’d find myself in a much different tax bracket, very quickly.
A few of these questions come from people who’ve done this longer than I have. I’ve gotten more than one of them wrong myself.
Helpful Questions
Has this person demonstrated the actual capabilities the next role needs, not just capability in general?
Have I seen them show sound judgment when the answer wasn’t obvious, not just when it was?
Have they handled something that resembles what the new role will actually ask of them?
When I’ve given them feedback or a stretch assignment, did they grow, or did they stay the same?
Do I have the time it will actually take to bring them across the canyon, not just the gap?
The one I get wrong most often: are the gaps I’m seeing reasonable development opportunities, or fundamental requirements of the job I’m hoping they’ll pick up along the way? The first is a stretch worth taking. The second sets someone up to fail, and it doesn’t stop with them, it reaches the people around them too. Every candidate has gaps. The question is which kind.
Permanent Record
Someone isn’t permanently a “proximity person” or a “promise person.” Those labels describe a decision at a particular moment, not the person. But it’s worth asking whose moment that decision was actually about.
I might decide someone will never be ready for something because of whatever lens I happened to be looking through that day, tired, distracted, comparing them to someone else entirely. And once that opinion forms, it has a way of following them, like some junior high vice principal slipped it into their permanent record.
If I’m not willing to stay open, flexible, teachable about them, I might miss a great candidate. Not because they never changed. Because I never let myself notice that they had.
If someone has promise but not yet preparedness, the answer isn’t necessarily to pass on them and move on. It should be to develop them before the promotion instead of hoping the promotion does the developing for you. A stretch assignment. A project they lead before they’re asked to lead the team. Exposure to the decisions they’ll actually face. Feedback, and room to act on it.
Development should come before the role, not because of it.
Sometimes I’ve seen promise in someone and gotten emotionally invested in my own prediction. I’ve told them I believed in them. I’ve told other leaders they were the next one. Changing that assessment later starts to feel like admitting I was wrong about them.
But believing in someone, and believing this particular role is right for them right now, are two different beliefs.
Someone can be talented, trustworthy, hardworking, and still not be prepared for a specific job. That’s not failure.
And promoting them anyway isn’t the act of belief it feels like in the moment. Sometimes the more honest thing, the more supportive thing… the kind thing, is telling them clearly what’s still between where they are and where they want to be.
I’ve made hiring decisions based on all four Ps at one point or another. I’ve also been hired and promoted because of them, more than once. It runs both directions.
I still catch myself reaching for proximity before I reach for preparedness, especially when a vacancy has been open too long.
Take the chance on people. Just don’t confuse taking a chance with ignoring what the job actually requires.
Your Turn
Think of someone you’ve told, “I believe in you.” Have you told them just as clearly what’s standing between where they are and where they want to go? If not, now’s a good time to start their development plan.
Be Encouraged.
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