The best social worker in your team is not necessarily the right person to lead it. The best team manager is not necessarily the right person to become a head of service. Yet this is often how promotions happen.
The logic feels sound. If someone consistently delivers outstanding results, demonstrates deep expertise and earns the respect of colleagues, surely the next step is leadership?
The problem is that the skills required to excel in a role are often very different from those required to lead others doing it.
What football tells us about promotion
José Mourinho is one of the most successful managers of the modern era despite an unremarkable playing career. Equally, many world-class players have struggled in management. Excellence in one does not guarantee success in the other.
Throughout my career, I have met exceptional professionals who were promoted because they were outstanding practitioners. Some flourished. Others did not.
A career that stays with me
I was reminded of this by a recruiter I worked alongside many years ago.
He consistently delivered some of the strongest results in the business. Clients trusted him, candidates valued his advice and his market knowledge was exceptional. He embodied the idea that success is not built in a day; it's built daily.
Unsurprisingly, he was promoted into management, which later proved to be the wrong move.
Not because he lacked intelligence, commitment or credibility, but because the skills that had made him an exceptional recruiter were not the same skills required to lead and develop a team. More importantly, management was not where his passion lay.
Instead of focusing on clients and candidates, his days became consumed by performance reviews, coaching conversations and team dynamics. His own results suffered and so did his job satisfaction.
Eventually, the business moved him back into a role aligned to his strengths. Almost immediately, both his performance and job satisfaction recovered.
The experience has stayed with me because it illustrates a lesson many organisations still overlook; excellence in a role is not the same as leadership potential.
Too often, leadership is treated as the natural reward for high performance. In doing so, organisations risk falling into what is commonly known as the Peter Principle, the idea that people are promoted until they reach a level at which they are no longer effective.
Research suggests there is truth in the theory. A study of 131 firms found that top individual performers were the most likely to be promoted into management, yet their teams often performed worse afterwards.
A brilliant social worker is not automatically a brilliant team manager. A brilliant team manager is not automatically a brilliant head of service.
Yet many organisations continue to behave as though leadership is simply the next rung on the ladder. Leadership is a distinct profession in its own right. It requires the ability to develop others, build trust, navigate uncertainty and make difficult decisions. That challenge has rarely felt more pressing in local government.
With local government reorganisation under way across England, councils are designing entirely new leadership structures. Officers who have excelled in their current roles are now being considered for very different positions in organisations that do not yet exist.
Between now and 2028, hundreds of senior appointments will be made. The Peter Principle, in other words, may be about to be tested at scale. Too often, succession planning focuses heavily on performance. Yet leadership potential is not the same as current performance.
Asking the right questions
Who develops others? Who builds trust? Who remains calm under pressure? Who thinks strategically? The answers to these questions often tell us more about leadership capability than performance metrics alone.
There is another consideration that organisations sometimes overlook: not everybody wants to be a leader. For years, many workplaces have unintentionally implied that progression means moving into management. Yet some of the most fulfilled and valuable professionals choose to remain specialists, and there should be no stigma attached to that.
An organisation needs exceptional practitioners just as much as it needs exceptional leaders. In many cases, specialists add more value than they would in management.
Leadership should not be viewed as a reward. It is a different role requiring different skills. Some people possess both exceptional technical ability and exceptional leadership capability. They are rare. Others will make their greatest contribution as experts in their field. Neither path is better. Because the goal should never be to make every high performer a leader.
The goal is to ensure every individual is in the role where they can make their greatest contribution. Sometimes that role is leadership. Sometimes it's not.
The wisdom lies in knowing the difference.
Ryan Miller is Associate Partner, Executive Interim at Penna, an LHH brand, leading the firm's adult social care and children's services practice
