UpTrajectory Review
Marcel Schwantes, writing in Inc., identifies a pattern that quietly damages small businesses: owners promote their best individual contributors into leadership roles without teaching them how to lead. The piece catalogs four common failures—poor communication, failure to delegate, lack of emotional intelligence, and neglecting team development. Schwantes argues that these are not personality defects but predictable outcomes of promoting people for technical skill rather than leadership potential.
For a small-business operator, this hits close to home. Most small firms lack a dedicated HR function or formal management training. When you promote your top salesperson or your most reliable technician, you create two problems: you lose your best individual contributor and gain a manager who may lack the skills to succeed. The cost shows up in turnover, disengagement, and stalled growth. Schwantes' framing—that companies create their own problems—shifts responsibility from the individual to the system that promoted them unprepared.
The four failures Schwantes names are not new. Leadership literature has covered them for decades. What deserves attention is his insistence that these failures are systemic, not personal. Too many owners treat a bad manager as a hiring mistake rather than a training gap. Schwantes pushes back on that. He suggests that small businesses often assume leadership skills are innate or will develop through trial and error. That assumption costs real money in lost productivity and employee churn.
The under-reported angle is the opportunity cost. When an owner spends time firefighting management problems, they stop working on strategy, sales, or product. Schwantes does not quantify this, but any operator who has mediated a conflict between a new manager and their team knows the drain. The second-order effect falls on the employees who report to unprepared managers. They leave, and the business absorbs the cost of rehiring and retraining. Schwantes implies that prevention is cheaper than correction, but he stops short of showing how.
Schwantes' piece is a useful diagnostic. It names the problem clearly. Where we want more is in the remedy. He gestures toward coaching and feedback but does not give operators a concrete path. Small-business owners need practical steps: how to assess leadership potential before promoting, how to train a new manager without a formal program, how to coach someone who is struggling. Those specifics likely require more space than a single article allows.
What to do next: audit your last three promotions. Did you select for technical skill or leadership potential? Did you provide training or coaching after the promotion? If the answer to either question is no, you have a gap to close. Watch for signs of the four failures in your current managers. Address them early with targeted coaching. If you plan to promote in the next six months, build a simple onboarding plan for the new manager before you announce the decision. Schwantes gives you the warning. The follow-through is yours.
“Companies create many of their own leadership problems by promoting capable people without preparing them to lead.” — Inc. Magazine
Takeaway: Audit your last three promotions: did you train the person for leadership, or just hand them the title?
Excerpt from the original — Inc. Magazine
Companies create many of their own leadership problems by promoting capable people without preparing them to lead.