October 17, 2025 Why Talent Does Not Equal Leadership in Manufacturing

Technical skills don’t always translate to leadership success. Learn how to train your top contributors into the best manufacturing managers.

By Charlotte Anderson, SPHR, GPHR

The Competency Gap

Every organization, particularly those in high-skill sectors like manufacturing and engineering, faces a common dilemma: What do you do with your top technical experts? The standard answer is to promote them to management. The resulting reality, however, is that this decision often turns a stellar individual contributor into a subpar manager.

This mistake stems from a fundamental failure to differentiate between the two completely separate skill sets of technical competence and managerial capability. A high-output employee is rewarded for self-sufficiency, deep technical proficiency, and ownership of tasks. A successful manager, by contrast, is rewarded for influence, delegation, emotional intelligence, people and process thinking, and achievement through collaboration.

When an expert who is used to solving problems personally is suddenly tasked with leading a team, their instinct may be to jump in and solve the problem themselves. The skills they mastered, the very skills that earned them the promotion, become liabilities in their new role. This mismatch can often stunt team growth, and ultimately harm the organization’s structure if not addressed. To build a robust, scalable leadership pipeline, the key is to know what skills your organization needs and create the structure to propagate those capabilities.

Breaking Down The Managerial Myth

This cycle may continue because organizations rely on this model for promotions. They assume that if someone is the best at a technical job, they are best suited to teach and supervise others doing that job.

Consider a natural gas company with a talented and experienced land representative who possesses all the best traits for negotiating challenging arrangements with landowners: task independence, high conflict tolerance, discipline for controlled withholding of information, and a preference for objective, as compared to situation-dependent decision-making. These traits made them a standout employee in the role.

The result was a frustrating mistake. The new role of manager required very different skills for success including collaboration, effective conflict resolution, information and knowledge sharing, relationship building, and more nuanced decision-making. While the outcome wasn’t a failure of their work ethic, it was a clear indication that the organization removed a high-performer from a place of adding great value to a position that under-utilized their strengths.

When organizations fail to invest in a dedicated process for identifying and training leaders, they create a single, narrow ladder where promotion is the only path to reward. This system compels talented people into roles they are neither suited for nor desire, setting both the individual and the organization up for challenges down the road.

Creating a Sustainable Leadership Pipeline

Breaking down this cycle requires leaders to change how they identify common pitfalls, train their teams, and reward career progression.

Failing to Build Your Bench

Many businesses fail to build strong leadership benches by making easily avoidable mistakes. A major issue is the lack of clear standards for performance and required abilities across roles, often worsened by relying on ineffective, “check the box” performance check ins. A frequent pitfall is also promoting for the wrong reasons, such as defaulting to technical expertise or tenure instead of the necessary people-management skills. Additionally, offering only a single growth track forces talented individual contributors into unsuitable leadership positions.

Finally, underestimating leadership training is costly. Organizations must invest in quality preparation programs and specialized certifications like the Reliability and Asset Management Leaders (RxM) to equip future leaders with the knowledge needed for long-term success.

Bake Coaching Into the Career Path

Organizations must shift from viewing leadership training as a one-time event after a promotion to building continuous development into the daily workflow. Leadership is a skill cultivated long before a title is granted. To prepare future leaders, offer structured informal mentoring, job shadowing with high-performing managers, and stretch projects that require coordination. This approach allows both the company and the employee to vet interest and capability before a permanent change is made.

Alongside this, focus leadership resources on supporting high performers to maximize their contribution. Measure non-supervisory skills like cooperation and team-orientation, and value discretionary effort, the how of performance, as much as work outputs. Finally, ensure a strong leadership culture by planting employees where they can access guidance, even if it requires building trust and shared goals with labor representation.

Set Yourself Up For Success

To cultivate a successful leadership-development culture, start with actionable steps. Bring your stakeholders together to talk openly about current managerial practices, redefine leadership success, and build leadership development into your day-to-day culture. Finally, keep rewards rewarding; a promotion should offer wider influence, not just more undesirable work. Start the conversation now to plan for future success.

Ultimately, the first step toward building strong leadership is to start thinking differently about your workforce. The best products come from high quality materials, intentional processes, and the right environment. It’s time to start viewing your talent management through the same lens.

About the Author:
Charlotte Anderson is a senior instructional designer with more than 20 passion-filled years of professional experience in the for-profit, non-profit, consulting, and public sectors assisting clients to achieve performance and productivity goals (such as leadership development, employee performance, and process improvement). At the intersection of critical thinking and creativity, she serves a learning and development technical expert specializing in organizational diagnostics, effectiveness, and change management.

Contact: https://www.lce.com/contact/

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