4-minute read – worth every second of your cognitive energy
You just promoted your best performer to manager.
They know the work inside out. They’re respected by the team. They deliver results consistently. It was an obvious choice.
Six months later, their team is disengaged, performance is dropping, and your former star is burning out in a role they’re failing at.
This scenario is playing out in organisations everywhere.
Here’s what’s really happening: Technical excellence and management effectiveness require completely different skill sets, but more importantly, your brain gets rewarded by entirely different things when you’re doing technical work versus managing people.
When your new manager was crushing it as an individual contributor, their brain was getting dopamine hits from solving problems, mastering complex tasks, and seeing direct results from their efforts.
But management requires social cognition, emotional regulation, and juggling multiple people’s motivations and development needs. Instead of getting satisfaction from completing work, they need to find fulfilment in other people’s success.
Here’s the brutal truth: Your star performer’s brain is literally craving the work they’re no longer required to do.
The identity crisis is real. They’ve spent years building mastery in technical skills, deriving their professional identity and confidence from being “the expert.” Now they’re suddenly supposed to find fulfilment in people problems, performance conversations, team meetings, and accountability discussions.
This is where it gets expensive.
27% of managers globally are disengaged, costing $438 billion annually. When managers disengage, teams disengage. A chunk of that cost is sitting in your organisation right now.
Your new manager doesn’t know they’re failing. They’re applying the same strategies that made them successful as an individual contributor, but they’re not getting the results they need – for themselves or their team.
Here’s what’s happening in your new manager’s head:
Week 1-4: They keep jumping in to solve technical problems because that’s where their brain gets rewarded
Month 2-3: Team performance drops because they’re bottlenecking decisions instead of developing people
Month 4-6: Best team members leave because they feel micromanaged and undervalued
Month 6+: Manager burns out or quits because they’re underperforming in a role they never learned how to do
The solution isn’t hoping they’ll figure it out. It’s helping their brain find new sources of reward whilst giving them the actual skills they need.
Step 1: Redefine Success Help them understand that their new “technical problem” is people development. Frame team growth as the complex challenge they need to solve.
Step 2: Rewire Their Rewards Celebrate when team members succeed, when they resolve conflicts, when they hold people accountable, when they have breakthrough coaching conversations. Their brain needs to associate these activities with achievement.
Step 3: Preserve Technical Connection Don’t completely cut them off from what energises them. Strategic technical oversight, mentoring, or special projects provide necessary fulfilment while they develop management capabilities.
Step 4: Treat Management Like Any New Skill!!! (This one gets ‘!!!’ because it should be obvious, but unfortunately, it’s not). Give them proper training in coaching, accountability, delegation, self awareness, difficult conversations… Their brain craves mastery – make management something they can genuinely excel at through targeted development.
The companies getting this right understand something crucial: You’re not just changing someone’s job title. You’re asking their brain to work differently with a completely different skill set – it takes intentional support, proper training, and time.
Your best technical performer can become your best manager… but only if you help their brain make the transition and give them the capabilities they actually need.
How many of your “people problems” are actually just high performers trying to manage using the skills that made them successful as individual contributors?
How I help
I integrate management capability building with neuroscience-based performance optimisation to get you exponential improvement that impacts your bottom line.
Ready to turn your technical experts into effective managers without losing them to burnout or disengagement? I have space for just two more organisational performance optimisation engagements this year – contact me right now to book a call and secure your spot before someone else beats you to it.
Not the decision-maker on management development? Forward this to your CEO or Head of People – they need to understand why their best technical performers are struggling in management roles and what to do about it.
