The Promotion That Exposed a Blind Spot

Someone earned a promotion because they were excellent at their old job.

And what followed was a situation the leader didn't see coming.

That's exactly what happened to Carolyn and why she reached out to me for leadership coaching.

So let me tell you about her situation.

Carolyn runs a nonprofit.

Her projects and events manager, Danny, had been in that role for five years and excelled at everything he did.

During that time, one of his most successful working partnerships within the organization was with Glenda.

And together, they ran the best events the organization had ever hosted.

Danny had the vision and Glenda made sure every detail landed.

Then when Danny left for a new opportunity, Carolyn posted the role internally first.

Glenda applied.

She interviewed really well against the other internal candidates, and no surprise, Carolyn offered her the job.

The first two months, as Carolyn was telling me about this, she said the first two months looked good.

When Glenda met with Carolyn, she'd mentioned how grateful she was that Danny had left such thorough files on every single event.

And Carolyn took that as a sign that Glenda was settling in.

But by month three, cracks were starting to show.

Glenda would nail something on one aspect of a project and freeze on another.

Now, Carolyn said to me, you know, initially she chalked it up to newness.

Glenda was in a new role with new expectations and it was important to give her room to feel her way through.

Then Glenda handed her a project the organization had never run before.

This time there was no file to inherit or established processes to follow.

It landed like a blank page that had a deadline.

Four months later, that project was eating half of Glenda's time and, quite frankly, going nowhere.

For the first time, Glenda was displaying a decline in her confidence and belief in her own abilities, and then other employees, who were impacted by the lack of progress in the project, started quietly sharing their concerns and frustrations with Carolyn.

And in addition to that, the deadline for the completion of the project was approaching and there were commitments that had to be met to satisfy the main funder as well as the board of directors.