5 ways to support someone newly promoted to senior

Your report was promoted to senior which comes with new responsibilities. Check out what to communicate and how to coach them.

1. Help them find and develop their specialty

Early on in their career, your direct report should have been focused on building up their skills and experience to navigate all facets of their role. Now in a senior role, they have become a well-developed, multi-skilled professional who’s next step is to hone a specialty. 

This doesn’t mean they’ll be stuck in a particular specialty or specialties forever. But giving them the opportunity to take ownership of a skill area can pay off for them and your team. Here are some ways you can help your direct report find and develop their specialty:

• Encourage them to explore a range of skill areas to find the best specialty for them.
• Help them identify skill and interest areas that give them energy.
• Support them in identifying knowledge areas that would be useful to the team.
• Assign them projects in the identified skill, interest and/or knowledge area(s).
• Encourage them to learn and take risks so that they can further develop a specific specialty.
• Show interest in their specialization journey by asking about their experiences and learnings.

2. Help them learn to hold others accountable

Successful senior employees play an important role in team accountability and can help push their team to the next level. They must develop the confidence to hold others accountable and encourage the rest of the team to share in this collective responsibility. 

You can provide them with these guidelines to addressing  a team quality issue: 

• First, ensure you don’t call out a colleague; instead, call out the process and the missed quality standard.  
• Second, always be objective. Offering your personal interpretation of an issue will likely cause defensiveness. Instead, ensure you stick to observable facts. 
• Lastly, don’t just call out the problem, ensure you offer a solution (or part of a solution). 

3. Connect them with opportunities to mentor junior team members

Get your newly promoted direct report involved with helping others (especially more junior team members) grow and develop. Here are a few ideas:

• Encourage them to proactively share what they’re working on so that their colleagues will feel comfortable sharing work updates with them too.
• They can offer help by saying, “I’d be happy to help you if you ever run into an issue.”
• Give them the green light to offer colleagues advice that will support them in advancing in their roles.
• Endorse a culture of feedback and growth by encouraging them to offer to review others’ work.

4. Ask them to present on a complex topic that is relevant to your team

As a senior member of the team, your direct report will need to solve more complex problems. Part of their success will depend on how they communicate these complex issues to others. 

To support them in preparing for these kinds of presentations, encourage them to:

• Be aware of complex issues that are currently impacting the team’s work or environment.
• Pick a complex issue and break it down into smaller, more understandable parts. Repeat this process as problems arise.
• Find opportunities to share what they’ve learned about issues with other team members at least once a quarter.

5. Praise their initiative as well as their humility

Encourage your direct report to actively participate in planning, retrospectives and other meetings by regularly sharing their thoughts and experiences. As you see them taking initiative to solve problems, praise them for their efforts so that they are motivated to keep up the good work. 

But initiative isn’t the only thing you should be praising—you also need to celebrate when your direct report displays humility. Teach your direct report that it’s ok to say when they don’t know something - this act of transparency can have profound effects across the entire team. Saying “I don’t know” can build trust and safety in addition to fostering a culture of learning. If your direct report admits to not knowing something, others will feel less judged when they are in a similar position. This honest sharing process allows teams to identify problems quicker and get to solutions faster.