A wrong hire will not be corrected by training.

Neither will a wrong promotion.

I see companies try to fix both the same way: more coaching, more onboarding, more support. It rarely works. Here's why, and what to do instead.

INSIGHT

Training can help people improve. It cannot fix a bad selection decision.

If someone was the wrong choice for the role from the start, no amount of development can close that gap. You're not training a skill deficit. You're trying to train around a fundamental mismatch between the person and what the role actually requires.

And the cost of getting this wrong is higher than most companies realize. Targets get missed. Clients get disappointed. Teammates get frustrated watching a struggling leader flounder. And executives end up spending months correcting, reminding, and following up on time that should have gone toward growing the business.

That cost compounds every week the wrong person stays in the seat.

TIP

Most bad hiring and promotion decisions come from the same root cause: gut feel standing in for criteria.

"He looks okay." "She's been here a long time." "He has potential."

None of that is evidence. It's comfort dressed up as judgment.

Before your next hire or promotion, get specific about what you're actually looking for:

• What competencies does this role require, not generally, but specifically for the next 12 months?

• What behaviors have you seen from this person under pressure, not just in good times?

• What evidence do you have of readiness, beyond tenure or familiarity?

If you can't answer those questions with specifics, you're not ready to decide. You're ready to guess.

STORY

A client once promoted a strong individual contributor into a leadership role.

He'd been there nine years. Everyone liked him. The reasoning was simple: "He's earned it."

Eight months later, his team was disengaged, two people had quietly started looking elsewhere, and the client called me, not for a new hire, but to ask what went wrong.

What went wrong was simple. They promoted tenure, not readiness. He'd never managed conflict, never had to hold someone accountable, never been tested on the actual competencies the leadership role required.

They tried training him. Coaching. Mentorship. None of it stuck, because the issue wasn't a skill gap. It was a selection gap.

He's since moved back into an individual contributor role, where he's thriving again. The company is now using actual criteria, not tenure, not gut feel, before the next promotion decision.

Choosing the right person is a skill. Most companies have never built it.

That's it for this week.

If you're facing a promotion decision or a search and want a second opinion on whether you're looking at the right criteria, I'm happy to talk it through.