# Workplace Surgery — the brilliant employee who's a terrible manager

- **Episode:** [234](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/234.md) (2025-09-23)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** promotion, management, employee
- **Time:** 39:42–46:50 (start 2382s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/234?t=2382](https://truthliesandwork.com/234?t=2382)

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[39:42] Al Elliott: Absolutely. Okay, so on to question number 3. I promoted a brilliant employee, but she's a terrible manager. Can I keep her? 9 months ago, I promoted one of our strongest performers into a management role. She's hardworking, focused, and excellent at what she does or did. The problem is she's not a natural manager. She's introverted, she struggles to lead, and despite training and support, She doesn't think about the wider team. The role came with a 25% pay rise, and understandably, she's not open to stepping back down. I bet she's not. But I just can't justify— but I can't justify the salary if I'm still the one managing everyone. At least at the same time, I really don't want to lose her from the business. Is there any way to keep a great employee who's been promoted beyond their strengths without making the situation worse for everyone? Lee, that's a tough one
[40:30] Leanne Elliott: I might need to engage in some tough love here, Al
[40:32] Al Elliott: Okay, go
[40:33] Leanne Elliott: To listener. Said with respect, this is tough love. You've made a number of mistakes here that you are now paying for. You promoted a brilliant employee, one of your strongest performers. She wasn't a strongest performance performer in a management role because you said that you're the only person managing everyone if she steps down. This is a fundamental error that we promote high-performing individual contributors, assuming that they'll be able to manage the people that currently do their role that they're in because they're. good at that job. It doesn't work like that. Management has fundamentally a different skill set. So, that's your first mistake
[41:09] Al Elliott: To quote someone we used to know, who was a bit annoying
[41:12] Leanne Elliott: The second thing is, well, you're making some really sweeping assumptions here that are actually nonsense. She's not a natural manager. Few people are. I think if you really want to push the research, you might find 20% of people that might just have the natural attributes. One needs to be a good manager, but even then they need to understand what those attributes are, how to apply them, and have the self-awareness of how to apply them in various management situations. The majority of people can be coached and trained into being a phenomenal manager. And yes, there are a percentage of people who will never be a great manager. It is possible that this person falls into that category, but that's a minority of people. So let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She's introverted. What's that got to do with the price of fish?
[41:51] Al Elliott: Yeah, we've talked about this before, but sorry, you caught me off guard with that. I like that. I like that. Yes, we've talked about that before, haven't we?
[41:57] Leanne Elliott: There is no correlation between introversion, extroversion, and management effectiveness at all. Let it go. The reason that we assume extroverts are better managers is because there are more of them and they're much more vocal about how amazing they are as managers. Um, the only, the only slight nuance in that is that introverts can be better at managing, be more effective at managing people who are much more autonomous in their roles and want to be supported and coached but not handheld through the process. Extroverts can be more effective as managers in situations where people need a lot more handholding, a lot more day-to-day. This might be the case that you have a team that is needing much more day-to-day handholding rather than a team that is independent. You've got an interdependent team. That could be one of the issues that you've got. This person was also promoted internally. That comes with its own challenges in terms of gaining that respect and that buy-in from the team, how that was managed. You say that you're giving them training and support. Given the fundamental misunderstandings of what management is in your question alone, I would question the quality and effectiveness of that training and support. That might need looking at, maybe getting somebody external. who knows about management to train and coach up that manager before you, um, you demote her. As somebody who has been demoted in my career, if you don't know, listen, listen back. Talked about a few times, but I think over the summer was our biggest career disasters or mistakes
[43:27] Al Elliott: Yeah
[43:28] Leanne Elliott: Um, it is really hard. I was retained because I was given, I was given better training and support to do the job that I was, um, promoted to do that I hadn't been given Previously, and it all worked out swimmingly, and I stayed with the organisation for a long time and continued to move up. So, I would say if you don't want to give up on this person just yet, engage an external management trainer coach who can work with this person and you as a manager to make sure that you're supporting that person correctly. And if you really think it is the end of the line, you're just going to have to
[44:06] Al Elliott: Yeah
[44:06] Leanne Elliott: accept, if you can't keep this pay rise, and even if you could, a demotion is brutal to deal with. Even if you're supported in the best possible way through it, they will probably want to leave your business. So, I think the only way to keep this employee is going to be making this, making this role work
[44:24] Al Elliott: Yeah, makes perfect sense. And like Leanne said, it's so, if you don't have a background in HR or workplace or anything that Leanne knows a lot about, Your temptation is to go and find the best performer and go, well, that obviously that they should be the manager. And in most cases, that's a double, like double kick in the— I can't say that word, but double kick in the head because, because one, you promote them and then they're a bad manager, and two, you lose the performance you get from that person. So yeah, it does sound like a tough, a tough situation. Jeff Bezos talks from Amazon. He talks about a two-way door. And he says he, he, he'll implement an idea if he can roll it back. This is something you couldn't roll back. If anyone's listening and thinking about doing this, then perhaps try, do a trial of a managership. Could you, could you trial a manager job, or is that just as bad?
[45:13] Leanne Elliott: I mean, you could. I think fundamentally you need somebody in your business who is gonna help you identify the people that have management potential, can be trained to be great managers, and having this selection process built in rather than you just going, that one. And hoping it's all gonna work out for the best. And the thing is, as well, you need this because if you don't engage in this type of external consultancy to educate you on how to do this, to design a process of how you can identify talent within your business moving forward, this problem is gonna continue to happen. And it is one of the most disruptive things you can do in your business is to promote somebody into a role that they're not capable of doing and just have somebody who is an ineffective manager. It's going to impact performance, morale, retention, everything in ways that you really don't, really don't want it to. So, now is the time to educate yourself and invest in this consultancy to understand what great management looks like in your organisation, how to identify it, how to nurture it, how to develop it. And sadly, this person is paying the price for your incompetence
[46:15] Al Elliott: So, a bit of a downer to end on this one, I think. It was just—
[46:18] Leanne Elliott: It's a bit tough love. It was a bit of tough love, but there's things you can do. But the question, the question in terms of, of kind of, is there anything I can do without making this situation worse for everyone? The thing you can do is not engage some external consultancy to, to educate yourself on, on what management is, because it's gonna make it worse because you're gonna do it again and again and again and again. So, in terms of, yeah, this, this person, it's unfortunate. Maybe there's a way to pull it back through the ways that I said. Um, but yeah, the only thing you can do to make it worse is not learn from this. Yeah