Christine Carrillo: Are You Promoting Bottlenecks, Not Leaders?

In a recent LinkedIn post, Christine Carrillo discusses a common pitfall for founders and business leaders: promoting high-performing individuals who, despite their dedication, lack the foundational skills for true leadership, thereby inadvertently cloning the very bottlenecks they aim to eliminate.

Carrillo challenges the conventional wisdom that promoting the hardest worker or the most loyal executor is the path to effective team scaling. She argues that this approach often leads to promoting individuals who are excellent at following instructions but incapable of independent decision-making, a critical issue when a business needs to grow.

“You promote people who need you, not people who can replace you.”

According to Christine Carrillo, the criteria founders often use for promotion—performance, hard work, and unquestioning execution—may actually be indicators that the promoted individual is not ready for leadership. This creates a situation where the leader remains indispensable, as the promoted individual cannot make decisions independently.

The Flaw in Traditional Promotion Criteria

Carrillo highlights that founders frequently state they promote based on performance. However, she contends that the very definition of ‘performance’ often favored is that of an exceptional executor, not a nascent leader. This individual might be the hardest worker, the one who never pushes back, and the one who flawlessly executes given instructions.

While loyalty and execution are valuable traits, Carrillo asserts they do not equate to leadership capacity. She points out that great executors are adept at following a plan, whereas leaders are needed to chart the course when no plan exists.

“Great executors rarely make great leaders. Execution is following the plan. Leadership is deciding when there is no plan.”

This distinction is crucial for scaling. Carrillo suggests that promoting individuals who solely excel at execution, without the ability to think critically or make decisions autonomously, simply replicates the founder’s own bottleneck, hindering the business’s ability to grow beyond a certain point.

Shifting the Focus to True Leadership Qualities

Christine Carrillo proposes a re-evaluation of promotion criteria to foster genuine leadership. Instead of rewarding loyalty or long hours, she advocates for promoting individuals who demonstrate the potential to lead and make decisions independently.

Key Leadership Indicators According to Carrillo:

• Teaching others to think, not just do: Leaders empower their teams by fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Making good calls without you: The ability to independently assess situations and make sound decisions is paramount.
• Disagreements with you: Constructive disagreement, when based on reason and aimed at finding the best path forward, is a sign of independent thought and commitment to the business’s success, not insubordination.

Carrillo emphasizes that the goal should be to build a team capable of replacing key personnel and driving the business forward, rather than creating extensions of the existing bottleneck. She concludes by urging leaders to shift their focus from rewarding mere loyalty to actively cultivating and rewarding leadership potential.

“If you want to scale, stop promoting based on: → Who agrees with you most → Who works the longest hours → Who executes without questions Start promoting based on: → Who teaches others to think, not just do → Who makes good calls without you → Who disagrees with you”

Carrillo’s insights provide a framework for leaders looking to build a scalable business by identifying and nurturing true leadership qualities within their organizations.