11/05/2026
Six months ago he was the person everyone called when the line went down. Now he is the one nobody calls at all.
If you have watched a strong technician struggle after a promotion, there is a name for the pattern. Laurence J. Peter called it the Peter Principle back in 1969: people get promoted to the point where they stop being good at the job.
What the label never explains is the part that should bother us: plenty of employers work hard to prevent exactly this and it happens anyway. So follow the path somebody actually walks. The trade school. The apprenticeship. The certification body. Whoever paid for all of it. The employer at the end. Each was built around technical competence, and none of them owned the move into leading people.
Nobody decided to skip the leadership step. There was no step there to skip. That is the missing rung, and it is a design problem rather than a character problem.
Three things fix it. Say it plainly to them: nobody taught this part, so being lost here is not failure. Take their best tool away on purpose and give it a deadline, because otherwise they keep fixing instead of leading. And change what you go over with them weekly, from what they repaired to what their crew produced.
Who promoted you without that conversation?
Onward and Upward 🚀
