Written By Cari Borden

History is full of athletes who never dominated the field but became legendary coaches. Why? Because being good at the game is not the same as being good at leading people who play it. Yet in most organizations, we keep handing the whistle to the star player and acting surprised when the team stalls out.

The Default Bias: Promoting Performers, Not Leaders

High performers are easy to spot. They hit targets, crush deadlines, and look amazing on dashboards. So when a leadership spot opens up, they’re the obvious pick, until they’re not.

• Individual excellence isn’t the same as collective elevation.
• Execution shines in doing; leadership shines in enabling others to do.
• We confuse momentum with management and call it a strategy.

The Subjectivity Trap: Leadership Is the Most Biased Promotion in the Building

“High performance” often feels objective (wins, revenue, NPS). Leadership potential? Far murkier, and ripe for bias.

• We reward people who look or sound like leaders.
• We equate charisma with capability and confidence with competence.
• We select mirrors of ourselves and call it “fit,” sidelining the builders, the teachers, the patient strategists.

The Case for Mid- and Lower-Performers as Hidden Leaders

Controversial, and true: leadership potential can live far from the top of the leaderboard.

• Mid-performers often balance results with relationships; they earn trust, coach peers, and steady the room.
• Lower performers (in a current role) may have sharper coaching instincts: pattern recognition, empathy, and systems thinking over raw speed.
• Like sports, the best coaches aren’t always the flashiest players, they’re the ones who can see the whole field and elevate everyone on it.

What Goes Wrong When We Promote Stars to Lead

• Burnout & disengagement: We remove star players from the zone where they thrive and dump them into politics and people ops.
• Pressure culture: “Do what I do” leadership becomes the norm, and psychological safety erodes.
• Missed talent: Quiet leaders-in-waiting stop raising their hands or leave.

What Organizations Should Do Instead

1. Separate tracks: Create expert and leader pathways with equal status and pay trajectory. Don’t make leadership the only way up.
2. Assess leadership distinctly: Use structured criteria for coaching skill, emotional intelligence, conflict navigation, influence without authority, and systems thinking, not just past output.
3. Weight team outcomes: Reward people who build capability (onboarding effectiveness, peer growth, cross-team collaboration), not only personal throughput.
4. Audit bias in selection: Diversify panels; require evidence for “fit”; review language that codes for style over substance.
5. Trial leadership safely: Pilot “acting lead” rotations and measure outcomes: team engagement, churn, throughput, and cross-functional feedback, not just speed.

A Better Promotion Question

Instead of “Who’s the best player?” ask:

• Who makes everyone around them better?
• Who can translate strategy into clarity?
• Who builds safety and standards at the same time?
• Who coaches, not just corrects?

Close the Loop

Not every great player becomes a great coach, and not every great coach was a star player. If you want a winning organization, stop confusing performance with leadership and start promoting the people who can build players, not just be one.

Stop confusing performance with leadership. If you’re ready to build real coaches—not just star players—let’s talk. Connect with me on Fiverr or follow my blog at LeadBoldly1.blog for leadership strategies that actually work.