Your performance as an individual contributor may get you promoted. It does not automatically qualify you to lead people.

Yet organisations make this assumption all the time.

Someone consistently exceeds targets. They are technically brilliant. They solve difficult problems. They are dependable.

So we promote them into leadership and expect them to replicate their individual performance through a team.

Then we are surprised when it doesn’t happen.

The problem isn’t necessarily the individual. Often, we have changed the job without developing the person for the new job.

We give them a team, a title and targets—but little training, coaching or mentorship in how to lead.

And because the pattern has existed for years, few people challenge it.

In favourable market conditions, it may even appear to work. Targets are achieved. Results look good. The leader develops a reputation as a star performer.

Until conditions change.

The economic cycle turns. Competition intensifies. Regulatory requirements constrain the business. Transformation becomes necessary. Difficult trade-offs have to be made.

Suddenly technical competence and individual brilliance aren’t enough.

People disengage. Good employees leave. Performance deteriorates.

Eventually, the organisation restructures to fix what appears to be a performance problem when part of the problem may actually be leadership selection and development.

We spend considerable time assessing culture fit.

Perhaps we should spend more time assessing leadership fit.

And I don’t believe an interview or psychometric assessment alone can tell us everything we need to know.

Talk to people who have actually experienced the candidate’s leadership—former leaders, peers and, importantly, people who reported to them.

Ask:

1. Do people trust them?

Not whether they are popular. Can people trust their judgement, intentions and word?

2. Do they demonstrate integrity?

Are they fundamentally the same person when senior executives leave the room?

The gap between someone’s public and private behaviour can reveal performative leadership.

3. Can they be vulnerable?

Ask about a significant failure.

What happened? What did they personally get wrong? What did they learn?

Then, where appropriate, triangulate that story with people who experienced the same situation.

Leaders who need to appear invincible can struggle to acknowledge mistakes—and therefore struggle with accountability and learning.

4. Would talented people willingly work for them again?

This is an underrated leadership test.

If this person moved to another organisation tomorrow, would good people trust them enough to place part of their careers in their hands again?

It doesn’t mean leaders should fill new teams with former colleagues. That creates its own risks of favouritism and groupthink.

But the calibre of people who want to work with a leader again tells you something that a CV cannot.

Leadership readiness therefore requires more than qualifications and a history of excellent results.

It requires experience, resilience, integrity, self-awareness, the capacity to lead others and the willingness to keep learning.

High performance gets you noticed.

But leadership is not about replicating your own performance through other people.

It is about creating the conditions in which other people can perform at their best.

And that is an entirely different skill.