Can you tell me about a situation in which you promoted someone within your team, and what steps you took to ensure a smooth transition?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

My philosphy to promote in my team, the team member should consistenly be
performing at the next level already. At Auctane, once I identified the
candidate to be promoted - I ensured that this employee is motivated and
completing the tasks and take on stretch goals. - for e.g this employee was
already doing sprint tasks but also mentoring others on the team.  Once I
gathered enough data, I presented this to my manager and identified this person
as a strong candidate for promotion backed up with the data.
Further, I made sure this team member had chance to show case thier stregths in
org wide presentation etc. At Auctane, we have a leadership meeting where we
discuss the candidate pool and who deserves a promotion - i brought this
candidate name and presented the data - compared with thier peers. This helped
me move this team member to higher level - she got promoted to a Senior SDE.

Anonymous · Answer

As a leader I have had the opportunity to advocate for various promotions for my
team members.
An example could be there was one EM in my team who was managing a business
centric team.
As the team grew the scope and impact of the team also grew. This team was
managing suite of products for conversion, referrals and payments.
Goals - In the 1:1 calls I had with the manager we both had agreed upon that the
manager wants to continue in people management and grow
Culture fitment - This manager’s thought process and leadership style was
aligned with the companies values of empathy, empowerment, customer success and
others.
Impact - Manager drove various initiatives and projects to completion
autonomously with team which contributed to the overall success of the business
and company
Scaling the team and delegation -  Manager is ready to take on additional
responsibilities as right processes were set where other members were already
performing tasks which manager used to do.
Stakeholder management - Manager demonstrated collaboration skills in various
situations which needed careful orchestration among stakeholders like product,
support, design, and other horizontal engineering teams
Feedback - Feedback for this EM was positive from all the stakeholders and peers
Steps -
Expectation setting - Making sure that manager understands the scope of the
role. Quoting the reasons why promotion is given.
Goals - defining goals, milestones, timelines
Development plan - Asked manager to go through a training to manage business
stakeholders to learn the skills of collaborating with someone non technical.
Additional metorship support from me
Team engagement and communication -  I facilitated open and transparent
communication with the rest of the team to announce managers  promotion and
explain the rationale behind the decision.
Continuous Feedback and Evaluation:
established a cadence of regular check-ins and feedback sessions with manager to
monitor  progress, address any challenges or concerns, and provide ongoing
support and guidance.

Can you tell me about a situation in which you promoted someone within your team, and what steps you took to ensure a smooth transition?

Did you come across this question in an interview?

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