Ever wonder why some of your best individual contributors (ICs) struggle when they make the jump to management? While it’s tempting to tap them for leadership roles, being a stellar IC doesn’t automatically mean they have the right skills to excel as a manager. Without those different skills, they may encounter significant challenges that trigger a cascade of negative effects throughout their new team. Even worse, they might burn out or decide management isn’t for them and jump ship. That’s a triple whammy: losing a high performer, their institutional knowledge, and creating further team instability while you search for a new manager!

So, as a leader, what should you actually be looking for and cultivating in your future managers to prepare them for success?

Being a Force Multiplier Instead of A Force

While the traits that make ICs shine—individual goal setting, initiative, consistency, problem solving, technical expertise, driving results, and collaboration—are invaluable, they’re just one piece of the leadership puzzle. Except for collaboration, these traits optimize for individual success, but transitioning to leadership means trading the instant gratification of personal achievement for the long, indirect game of team growth and productivity.

Management demands an additional, and sometimes different, set of team-focused skills that many ICs haven’t yet developed. The good news is that you can equip your ICs for success by fostering the team leadership-focused skills listed below. In each case, offer positive and constructive feedback and developmental coaching, empowering them to experiment and refine their approach with confidence.

1. Communication Skills: Effective communication includes not only conveying information clearly but also active listening, providing feedback, and fostering open dialogue within the team. Provide opportunities for ICs to lead team meetings or present project updates, helping them understand the audience and context necessary to convey their message successfully. Request that start practicing delivering both positive constructive feedback to you about others, eventually having them providing that feedback directly to others once they are skilled enough that it results in positive outcomes.
2. Emotional Intelligence: Encourage ICs to take an emotional intelligence assessment to gain insight about their strengths and areas for improvement. Provide coaching to help them recognize and manage their own emotions, as well as training to learn how to identify and navigate the emotions of others. Share frameworks and practices that build self-awareness as well as how to read verbal and non-verbal queues.
3. Empathy and Inclusivity: Encourage ICs to foster a culture of inclusivity within their teams by actively listening to and acting on diverse perspectives while promoting a sense of belonging for all team members. Provide resources on making space for others, understanding internal stories we tell ourselves, intersectionality, finding common ground, and identifying and mitigating individual and systemic biases.
4. Conflict Resolution: Create opportunities for ICs to practice conflict resolution skills by role-playing scenarios or participating in facilitated discussions. Share frameworks about the different models and tools for conflict resolution and when each is most effective.
5. Strategic Thinking: Solicit input from ICs on long-term goals and objectives during the team planning processes. Encourage them to think critically about how the team’s work aligns with the organization’s overall strategy and what dependencies exist between teams. Invite them to join higher-level strategy meetings with senior leaders to experience how others think about different business functions.
6. Decision Making: Seek input and opinions from ICs on specific projects or initiatives, and encourage them to take ownership of decisions within their areas of responsibility. Provide guidance, such as evaluating options and weighing risks and consequences, that enable them to make tough decisions under pressure.
7. Time Management and Prioritization: Provide resources and frameworks for effectively evaluating importance and urgency of tasks. Emphasize exerting an appropriate level of effort, and the value of focusing on high-impact activities over busy work. Also share resources about the impact of context switching and advocate for chunking up their calendar to optimize flow state for deeper thinking.
8. Delegation Skills: Give ICs leadership roles on cross-functional projects or initiatives and encouraging them to identify opportunities for delegation within the scope of their work. Provide resources and frameworks to help them understand what effective delegation looks like in practice.
9. Change Management: Provide resources on the psychology of individual and group change and share frameworks that help break down the steps of leading successful change. Encourage ICs to apply their learning to real-world examples like championing the adoption of a new technology, improving a process, or changing some aspect of the team culture.
10. Coaching and Mentoring: Explain the differences between training, coaching, mentorship, and sponsorship and provide each to ICs to help them learn by example. Have them practice providing those services to one or more peers (or less experienced colleagues) and monitor the resulting changes in performance of the mentee.
11. Adaptability and Flexibility: Encourage ICs to maintain a growth mindset while providing opportunities with increasing complexity and ambiguity. Share resources that focus on the psychology of learning, calculated risk taking, and avoiding cognitive distortions.

While this list of leadership skills is not exclusive, it includes many that are most common to all front-line management roles. Add any additional skills that are helpful in your organization or team to the professional development package you assemble for your prospective managers.

When Should You Start Developing Leaders?

So if the transition from top performer to top manager isn’t guaranteed, when is the right time to start nurturing your potential leaders? The short answer: right now.

Progressive organizations recognize the seeds of great leadership early and invest in developing these skills well before putting an IC in a management role. Starting now is a win-win because leadership skills, once developed, make ICs better at virtually every aspect of their current role, too. They’ll communicate better, collaborate more effectively, help others on the team level up, and make decisions that lead to better business outcomes.

So, don’t wait until someone is transferred to the management track to start developing their leadership skills. The investment you make in your people’s growth today will pay off in spades, ensuring that your stars continue to shine brightly, no matter what their role.