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?

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.