You Promoted Them. But Did You Prepare Them

It happens all the time.

The best PT becomes the gym manager. The brilliant Pilates instructor suddenly finds themselves running the studio.

It makes sense. They're reliable. They're great at what they do. They know the business. Members love them. They get results.

So we promote them.

But we don't necessarily teach them leadership. And we don't necessarily teach them business.

Then we wonder why they're not as good at managing other people or making business decisions as they were at doing the job themselves.

But why would they be?

Being brilliant at your job, leading people and managing a business are three very different skill sets.

And a new title doesn't magically teach you any of them.

You gave them a new title. Did you give them the skills to go with it?

Leadership isn't just knowing how the business works.

It's Influence. Communication. Building trust. Setting expectations. Developing people. Managing performance. Managing time. Having difficult conversations.

And often, managing up the way as well as down.

Those skills have to be taught, practised, supported and developed.

So perhaps when a new manager isn't performing the way we'd hoped, the first question shouldn't be:

“What's wrong with them?”

Maybe it should be:

“How well did we prepare them?”

What was their team member-to-manager development plan?

Think about what happened between:

“You're doing a brilliant job.”

and

“Congratulations, you're now responsible for everybody else doing a brilliant job too.”

Was there a development plan?

Did you teach them how to give feedback? Set expectations? Hold somebody accountable without damaging the relationship?

How to have the difficult conversation they've been avoiding because they don't know what to say?

How to manage someone who used to be their peer on Friday and became their direct report on Monday?

Because that's a pretty huge transition.

And a new job title isn't a development plan.

Leadership is about people. And people can be complicated.

Managing yourself is one thing.

Managing a team of different personalities, strengths, motivations and communication styles is something else entirely.

One person needs lots of feedback. Another wants you to trust them and leave them alone. One needs confidence. Another needs challenging. One tells you exactly what's wrong. Another says “I'm fine” when they're very clearly anything but fine.

Great leaders learn to understand the person in front of them and adapt how they communicate and support them.

That takes self-awareness, curiosity and lots of practice.

And then there are the numbers.

You don't need your manager to be an accountant.

But if they're responsible for helping run your business, they need to understand the numbers that drive it.

Membership growth. Sales and conversion. Retention and attrition. Payroll. Revenue. Expenses. Profitability.

Do they understand what those numbers mean, why they matter and what they can influence?

Because reading a report is one thing.

Knowing what to do with the information is something entirely different.

If sales are down, where's the gap? If membership is growing but revenue isn't, why? If payroll is increasing faster than revenue, what needs to change?

You want your manager to be able to look at the numbers, understand what's happening and make educated decisions that improve performance and profitability.

But again:

Who taught them how?

If you've never shown them how the business makes money, what good performance looks like or how their day-to-day decisions affect the bottom line, you can't expect them to instinctively know.

They don't need to know everything you know.

But they do need enough commercial understanding to think like a manager, not just carry the title of one.

Did you delegate or did you abdicate?

This one might sting a little. But I've seen it a few hundred times.

You promoted them. Handed over the keys. Maybe gave them a to do list and some KPIs.

And then?

You semi-retired.

Suddenly they're recruiting, managing performance, running meetings, doing rosters, managing sales, handling member complaints, coaching the team, reporting numbers and making decisions you spent years learning how to make.

Did you delegate responsibility while continuing to coach and support them?

Or did you hand over responsibility and quietly disappear?

Because they are not the same thing.

Delegation still requires leadership.

Abdication is handing someone responsibility without giving them the support, knowledge or authority they need to succeed.

“Can you recruit someone for us?”

Okay.

Have they ever recruited anyone before? Conducted an interview? Been taught what qualities actually matter for the role?

Can they ask the next question and get beyond polished, surface-level answers?

Recruiting is a skill.

So is coaching. Performance management. Having a difficult conversation. Leading a meeting.

We can't hand somebody a responsibility they've never had before and then be disappointed that they don't instinctively know how to do it.

How much of what you know is still stuck in your head?

You might have spent years learning how to run your business.

You've made mistakes. Hired the wrong people. Had difficult conversations. Worked out which numbers matter. Learnt what good performance looks like.

But your new manager wasn't there for any of that.

So how much have you actually shared with them?

Have you explained why you make certain decisions, rather than just telling them what to do?

Have you shown them how you think? Let them sit beside you for the difficult conversations? Shown them how you turn the numbers into action?

Have you given them tools, frameworks and processes they can use when you're not there?

Or are you expecting them to somehow magically know what it's taken you years to learn?

What feels like common sense to you might simply be experience they haven't had yet.

Did you want to mentor somebody or did you want to pass the buck?

That's the question.

Because developing a manager takes time, patience and money.

It means giving feedback. Having conversations. Checking in. Teaching. Letting go without disappearing.

It means letting them make some decisions you might have made differently and sometimes allowing them to get something slightly wrong so they can learn how to get it right.

The best coaching creates confidence, not dependence

Your goal isn't to create a manager who needs to ask you what to do every five minutes.

And it isn't to throw them in the deep end and hope they learn to swim either.

It's to gradually give them the skills, confidence, tools, commercial understanding and authority to think, decide and lead without you.

Eventually, they can make the call when they should and know when they genuinely need to bring you in.

That's development.

And that's when delegation actually starts giving you your time back.

Before you question your manager, question the development plan

If your manager isn't quite where you need them to be, ask yourself:

Did I explain what success looks like?

Did I teach them how to manage people, not just tasks?

Did I give them the tools to have difficult conversations?

Did I teach them the numbers and how their decisions affect the business?

Did I share enough of what I've learnt?

Did I give them enough authority to actually do the job?

Did I invest enough time and money in developing them?

Did I delegate?

Or did I abdicate?

And perhaps the biggest question:

Did I really set them up to succeed?

If you want better managers, build better managers.

Give them the tools. Teach them the business. Develop their leadership. Share what you know. Then give them the confidence and authority to use it.

Because when you develop better leaders, they develop better people.

And when you get the people right, the performance and profit will follow.

Better people build better businesses.