Whats preferable in promoting an upcoming leader

[digitaltemujin]

If you had to choose between 2 people to promote to manager, what do you guys think is the more important aspect,
A person who is experianced, skilled and knowledgable about the job but has not demonstrated very effective leadership at all or;
A person who has proven leadership qualities but maybe not as experianced with the job?

[mynewunit]

The rule is "There are no bad teams, only bad leaders". First, who was being groomed to be the leader. I am guessing neither.
There are 2 different issues. The Peter principal is keep promoting people until they are no longer good at their job. Putting the most senior person into a leadership position is a cultural decision. This is common for keeping things going. In a lot of industries, this is fine. Fine being not inciting death, but not spurning growth.

Promoting the younger leader is a strain on the "corporate" culture. It will involve the new leader having to gain trust. He will also have to learn the things he didn't know about leading. A good mentor (Think NCO, or LPO), can help direct action while the leader provides vision and identifying weaknesses and areas of success.

[digitaltemujin]

Is that partly why the military have enlisted and no enlisted members? To train leaders to lead (enlisted) and to train operator to operate?

[mynewunit]

The military structure is based on class structure that predates our country. The intent is train for different priorities. You train the enlisted for battle, you train the officers for war. The enlisted learn weapons, maneuvers, reconnaissance, logistics. Officers are taught to think on larger scale. Don't win the day and loose the year. The last podcast (54) has a ton of officer (leader) training and thought process. The 2 levels are to have operational success and system wide success.

There is something to keeping the 2 groups divided. You want to keep the 2 groups divided to allow people to progress their entire career. Some good understanding about the difference between officers and enlisted would be to listen to the differences between officers (Leif and Andrew Paul) and guys like JP (46), Tony Eafrati (41), and Roger Hayden (37). Leif and Andrew have a way of seeing how the operation effects the group and play well with others. Jocko did play both sides, enlisted and officer, which he called a Mustang Officer on the most recent podcast.

[johnnydoc]

Dec 20, 2016 11:58:29 GMT -8 digitaltemujin said:

If you had to choose between 2 people to promote to manager, what do you guys think is the more important aspect,
A person who is experianced, skilled and knowledgable about the job but has not demonstrated very effective leadership at all or;
A person who has proven leadership qualities but maybe not as experianced with the job?

A little context could help here, but in principle, the better leader will achieve better results over the long haul.  There may be a few scenarios where the inability of the leader to hold their own with the team could result in a steep climb that may not be realistic for most people, but that is rare in my experience.  If the new inexperienced person is humble enough to learn from their teammates while demonstrating their leadership strengths, they'll build significant trust within their team.  Nothing goes farther than trust. 

[digitaltemujin]

Thanks Johnny. The context I was thinking of was a business setting in the oilfield. It's a strong opinion of the guys on the floor that any new manager is not worth a darn if they haven't done the grunt work, and he/she ought to be the one most experianced in the job to be promoted. Listening to Jocko got me thinking and I brought up the perspective that perhaps someone trained specifically as a manager/leader with maybe some working knowledge of the job that he is over seeing might be more effective. 

[mynewunit]

Here is Richard for Gas Monkey talking about how to own the business but deal with the workers.
Especially being an Outsider. So while he doesn't wrench or weld, he had a bit of street cred and built on it.
He also had an ally "on the floor" and empowers him.  An interview to explain their working relationship.