Promoted Too Soon with Mary Beth Meadows & Katie Saliba

Most companies do not have a people problem. They have a manager problem. The two look similar on the surface. Communication breaks down, good employees start going quiet, turnover creeps up, and senior leaders keep getting pulled back into situations they thought were resolved. The easy explanation is the team. The real one is usually the person running it. 

In this episode of People-ing with Purpose, Mary Beth Meadows and Katie Saliba take on one of the most normalized problems in business: the accidental manager. The person who was great at the job, dependable, a high performer, and got promoted because of it. Nobody asked whether they knew how to coach someone through a bad quarter, hold a peer accountable without blowing up the relationship, or let another person take the credit. Those things were just assumed. The hope was that they would figure it out. 

They usually do not. What this episode does is make the cost of that assumption visible, give leaders a useful lens for evaluating readiness before the promotion happens, and lay out what new managers actually need in their first weeks and months to have a real shot at leading well. The closing question is one that stings: are we building managers, or are we just naming them? 

What You'll Learn: 

Mary Beth and Katie discuss: 

1. What an accidental manager actually looks like and why promotions based on performance alone are a setup for failure 
2. The early warning signs that someone was promoted before they were ready: communication chaos, micromanagement, inconsistent standards, and rising client complaints 
3. Why the most competitive high performers can be the worst managers, and what mission shift the role actually requires 
4. What bad management costs a business in real terms: turnover, disengagement, litigation risk, and leadership time that never should have been spent there 
5. What to evaluate before promoting someone beyond how well they do the job 
6. What new managers need in their first weeks: real onboarding, clear expectations, HR basics, and a sounding board they can actually use 
7. What senior leaders should be watching for in the first ninety days after a promotion 
8. Two questions every leader should be asking about their organization right now 
9. How to fix an accidental manager situation, and what to do when the team is large enough that the problem is bigger than one person 

If this episode brought a specific manager or team to mind, that probably tells you something worth paying attention to. Share it with a business owner, HR lead, or senior leader in your network who is dealing with a management problem they have not fully named yet. And if your organization is at the point where you need outside support building the kind of people infrastructure that keeps these problems from compounding, visit PREmployerInc.com or PartnerWithExperts.com. 

Connect with PRemployer

• Visit our website 
• Subscribe to our blog
• Connect with our hosts on LinkedIn: 
  • Katie Saliba 
  • Mary Beth Meadows 

Transcript

Introduction 

Mary Beth Meadows  (00:00) 

Welcome to Peopling with Purpose, a podcast dedicated to helping companies manage staffing and HR. Each week, we'll offer insights to simplify your HR processes and discuss challenges people face to help you find, retain, and engage the best talent. We're your host from PR Companies. I'm Mary Beth Meadows. 

Katie Saliba  (00:21) 

And I'm Katie Saliba. PR Companies is a family of companies headquartered in Southeast Alabama. We're dedicated to helping businesses maximize their success through leveraging their human capital. Join us as we share our favorite staffing and HR strategies and help you drive business growth through your most valuable asset, your people. 

Katie Saliba  (00:43) 

Welcome back to Peopling with Purpose. Today we're talking about a problem that shows up in more organizations than people realize: accidental managers. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (00:52) 

You know the story. Someone is great at their job, gets promoted, and suddenly they're responsible for leading people with little to no training on how to actually manage. 

Katie Saliba  (01:01) 

The result? Communication breaks down, good employees disengage, turnover increases, and leaders find themselves spending more time on people problems than they should. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (01:10) 

In this episode, we're exploring why strong individual contributors don't automatically become strong managers, what poor management really costs a business, and how companies can better prepare leaders for success. 

Katie Saliba  (01:22) 

If you've ever wondered whether you have a people problem or a management problem, this conversation is for you. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (01:28) 

Let's tune into the episode with Mary Beth and Katie. 

What an Accidental Manager Looks Like 

Katie Saliba  (01:37) 

All right. And here we are back again to talk about the manager problem. But really let's shift it to the manager solution. We're here to talk about solutions. But we're gonna start out talking about what an accidental manager is, or what we call an accidental manager, and what that looks like in real life. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (01:55) 

It's a common phenomenon. 

Katie Saliba  (01:57) 

Just like stumble into it, right? And what we see a lot — and it's not uncommon and it's not unfixable either — but you take somebody on a team that is a high performer. Not only are they a high performer and they're really good, but like you can depend on them. They're there on time. They are like a great employee. They know the work, they have great ideas. So they are like, of course we're gonna promote them to manager of this department. But they've never been taught how to coach people, how to delegate things, how to lead. Perhaps the most important part is how to hold people accountable. So you've just promoted them and they check all these boxes, but they don't really know how to lead people effectively. It's all good intentions, right? You promote these people because they're your A players. But you're kind of just hoping they figure it out. Like surely they'll just be natural at it because they're good at all these other things. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (02:55) 

Flawed logic. So several problems with it. Sometimes — this is probably the worst case scenario — there are some really, really high performing employees by nature who are so naturally competitive that it's not in their DNA to let other people win. And that's the worst kind of accidental manager. Because the whole point of when you become a manager, the mission changes. Completely different mission. It's not about what I can do. It's about what my people can do. And so if you are inherently such a superstar and so driven and so competitive, it may be hard for them to let other people shine. And then the flip side is they've never had to have corrective conversations with people. Maybe they're too soft, maybe they're too hard. Maybe they're a bull in the China shop: do it again, I'm gonna fire you. Or the opposite end of the spectrum is they don't ever want to tell people that they're doing something wrong. And all of that is disastrous. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (04:21) 

So if you're thinking, how do I know some of the signs that you may have promoted too soon or promoted somebody that wasn't ready? Communication starts getting messy. The paddles are in the water, the boat's going in circles. Abort, abort, abort. Also, hesitation. There's a term that Katie and I talked about a couple of seasons ago called psychological trust. If people don't feel like there's the comfort to say what they mean and mean what they say, to express concern, to push issues forward, to ask for help, to question directives — that's another sign. Standards will get inconsistent. Clients will start complaining. Conflict either gets avoided or is mishandled. 

Katie Saliba  (05:05) 

And that makes people mad. Whether it's that she's been late thirty times or made this huge mistake and no one has mentioned anything. No one's talked to her. No one is holding anyone to a standard. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (05:20) 

It's a motivation killer when people see that they're trying to hold the standard, but the manager isn't. And then here's another telltale sign: everything still has to go through the manager. They're micromanaging. There's no autonomy. And listen, there's a time and a place — one of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is to inspect what you expect. So we're not saying blind direction and go behind people, but it's a dance. And if you are having to micromanage every single thing that people are doing, that is a sign that the person you've promoted needs some help. They need some direction. They need some development. They need to be poured into. 

What Bad Management Actually Costs 

Katie Saliba  (06:00) 

The cost of bad management is insane. People don't leave jobs, they leave people. People usually leave bad managers. That is like a frequently cited reason of leaving in an exit interview. Retraining, turnover, all of those things is what really costs. And there's other things. Your really good employees disengage. They don't feel like other people are being held to the same standard. They're doing great over here, but they feel like there's something going on over here and no one is seeing about it. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (06:37) 

And your mediocre people, they get on cruise control. Nobody's gonna say anything to me. I can roll in late. I can leave early. 

Katie Saliba  (06:47) 

People will just quietly leave. Standards almost feel personal. I'm held to this standard, but homeboy over here gets to do what he wants. His bar is lower than mine. That is what it feels like to employees when you're not managing behavior. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (07:06) 

And when people feel like bad management manifests itself in what feels to employees like a lack of fairness, litigation's on the rise. You've got to get HR involved. You're spending a lot of time problem solving and trying to work things out. None of that is good. 

Katie Saliba  (07:27) 

And honestly, I'm not even saying this person is meaning for this to happen. But this could all be that they don't like having difficult conversations. So they keep pushing it off and sweeping it under the rug or putting it at the bottom of their to-do list. If days go by without an issue being seen about, the good people notice and it affects the culture. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (07:48) 

And it affects hiring. It is most certainly going to create more hiring work for you because your good people will leave. So now you've got an opening. I think another thing that really happens is trust goes away. Even if individual employees are not directly involved — let's say you've got a staff of fifty and there's three involved in the drama — everybody else's standards go down. I'm not gonna push anything forward because if I push something forward, I might get caught up in the drama. It basically just blows up all the good things that you're trying to accomplish in your business. 

Katie Saliba  (08:05) 

It contributes to your bottom line. You're involving owners, top management, when this manager is not doing what they need to be doing. Now all of a sudden everybody is sucked into an issue with people that is really not driving your business at all. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (08:21) 

No, it's taking time away from the things that you want to do to drive your business. You're having to redeploy copious amounts of time to solve all these interpersonal issues when really it's a leadership issue. 

What to Do Before You Promote Someone 

Mary Beth Meadows  (08:55) 

So Kay, what do we think that our listeners ought to do before they promote somebody? How can we solve this? 

Katie Saliba  (09:14) 

So we're also saying these people are good performers, right? 

Mary Beth Meadows  (09:18) 

So you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Katie Saliba  (09:20) 

It's really about taking a look at, separate from their performance, their readiness to have conversations like this. Their readiness to coach people, their judgment. Their ability to hold people accountable, which is frequently uncomfortable but is a large part of the job. Willing to let other people shine. You have to be a cheerleader to be a manager. You have to be genuinely happy for other people that are doing well. These are evaluations you need to be doing on somebody before you promote. But those are hard things to determine. If you know somebody's incredibly competitive, there's the good kind of competitive and there's the kind that is: I wanna win, I wanna be on top all the time. And you have to know your people well enough to determine that. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (10:14) 

That's difficult. Particularly when it comes to decision making, there's not just a test you can give people. There are personality profiles and tools out there that would help. But one of the things I think is important is what does the rest of their life look like? People that make great judgment at work frequently make good judgment at home. So if their home life is a cluster, that's probably not your person. 

Katie Saliba  (10:58) 

Home life spills into work. Not always, but frequently. And I will say — let's say you decide to promote the high performer and you think they have all this potential. What do they need when they first start? 

What New Managers Actually Need 

Mary Beth Meadows  (11:23) 

They really need real onboarding into the role. Not just: hey, good luck, buddy. Welcome to management. Call me. Or better yet, don't call me. They need clear expectations. What are the goals they're responsible for? They need feedback. And they might need training. If they're a first-time manager, there are whole categories of information they may not have any idea about. Let's talk about HR for a second. Because if you're promoting somebody into leadership, they're now responsible for managing people. As the business leader, you're liable for their actions. If they don't know, that's not a defense. So some basic HR training, training on how to set goals, how to conduct feedback meetings, how to onboard a new hire — those things matter. 

Katie Saliba  (12:37) 

There are internal things too. When I first started managing people, I didn't know my pecking order: when do I tell someone I'm ready to make an offer? What forms do I need? You can't just expect people to know all the internal stuff. They need tools. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (12:57) 

And there are gonna be things that come up out of the norm. One-offs you can't predict. So having a great sounding board is essential. Because as a new leader, one of the things that changes is they can't share all their fears and frustrations with the people they lead. There has to be a line of demarcation. They can build rapport with their employees — that's how you build loyalty on teams — but you can't be in their ears saying, 'If we don't hit this goal, I'm gonna have to fire somebody.' But they can say that to whoever their mentor is in the company. 

What Senior Leaders Should Watch For in the First 90 Days 

Katie Saliba  (13:59) 

You lay the groundwork and do your very best to prepare these new managers. But there are things as senior leaders you should watch for in the first couple months. If they are constantly frustrated — I think it's normal to be frustrated taking on new responsibility, but visibly not enjoying the position is different. Probably the largest indicator is if the team is not performing well. That can mean a lot of different things: not clear direction, the manager's not communicating goals well, people don't know what direction the boat's going in. And the mood — if the leader's miserable, I think the rest of the team's pretty miserable too. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (14:50) 

Do people look like they are hating coming to work? 

Katie Saliba  (14:55) 

That doesn't necessarily mean you promoted wrong. But it might mean they weren't ready. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (15:05) 

Or they need more development. So here are two simple questions that Katie and I feel that if you're a leader, you should be asking yourselves right now. Number one: who do you have on your team that's leading people with no preparation? Who are your first-time leaders that don't know what they don't know? Particularly think about HR, because that's kind of easy to fix. Training somebody on how to not get in trouble with HR is much easier than some of these other things. But who on your team has been promoted with no leadership preparation? And then: in your organization, might you be tolerating management problems because the person is just so good at their job? We can't get anybody else, so we're gonna tolerate somebody with a bad attitude that treats people poorly because this person is just these A's. And then this one stings a lot: are we building managers? Or are we just naming them? 

Katie Saliba  (16:12) 

Congrats, it's your turn. 

How to Fix It 

Mary Beth Meadows  (16:14) 

And there are so many tools. An effective management building program is not hard to do. It's not fancy. Really isn't. There's books, there's YouTube, there's ChatGPT, there's just good old-fashioned conversations. 

Katie Saliba  (16:50) 

It depends on how many people you have in this situation. Hopefully not your whole organization. But if you think of one or two — man, we've really led them astray, they could use some retraining — you can have boot camps of sorts to help train these people. They'll probably be grateful for it, honestly. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (17:41) 

If you're in a season where you've had a lot of people retire and you have more new managers than is normal, devise a solution to get you through that season. Do a boot camp. Have a quarterly session. Whatever feels like the right size solution. And if you're not sure where to start, create a list. Do you know how to conduct an effective interview? How much do you know on a scale of one to ten about employment law? Survey your people and say: tell me what you need from me. Imagine you're that new manager. You don't want to fail, and you haven't been given these tools. What a gift it would be to have your mentor come back and say, you're doing great, and here's more we can do to help you be even more successful. 

Katie Saliba  (18:53) 

But it's fixable, y'all. For the most part. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (18:55) 

For the most part. It all boils down to the person. If you've hired somebody that doesn't like people, then that piece of it may not be fixable. Because managing people — you can't remove the people part from being a leader. You just can't. I don't care how much AI you use. Leadership is personal. So you have to be able to get into people-y things and have the hard talks, have the conversations, make the encouragement. And if you can't, if this feels too big, you can hire an expert. Katie and I know some. 

Katie Saliba  (19:29) 

Dare I say people that people on purpose, you know? 

Closing 

Mary Beth Meadows  (19:34) 

So I think that's it. We hope that we have shared with you some information that'll help you. Check us out on Peopling with Purpose. 

Katie Saliba  (19:45) 

Thank you for tuning in to Peopling with Purpose, a PR Companies podcast. You can always get more information at PREmployerInc.com and PartnerWithExperts.com. 

Mary Beth Meadows  (19:56) 

Be sure to like and follow us on social media, and you can find us everywhere you listen to podcasts. Until next time, happy peopling.