Should I promote my best tech to foreman?
Being excellent at the work and being able to run people are different skills, and promoting for the first while hoping for the second is how businesses lose a great tradesperson and gain a struggling supervisor. Ask whether they want it, and whether anyone has ever shown them how.
The trap is treating promotion as a reward
A raise rewards good work. A supervisory role is a different job, and giving it as a prize sets someone up to fail at something they never asked to do — then to feel they let you down when it goes badly.
Ask them, properly
Some of the best tradespeople have no interest in managing anyone and will say so if the question is genuinely open. Make it possible to decline without it costing them anything, or you will get a yes you cannot rely on.
Nobody is born knowing how
Running a crew means giving unwelcome instructions, having awkward conversations, and planning other people's days. If nobody has shown them, "they are not a natural leader" usually means "we promoted them and left them to it".
Make the standard explicit
What decisions are theirs, what needs a call to you, what does the job look like when it is done right. A new foreman without those either asks about everything or guesses, and both look like the wrong person.
Also asked
- What if they turn it down?
- Then you have kept a great tradesperson and learned something. Pay them well for what they are actually good at — a senior technician who never wants to supervise is not a failure.
- Should I promote from outside instead?
- Sometimes. An experienced foreman brings skills you cannot teach quickly, but starts with no credibility on your crew. Both routes have a cost.
- How do I know if it is working?
- Whether things happen when you are not there, and whether the crew go to them or straight past them to you. The second is the honest signal.
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Written for your trade
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