When an organization is considering an engineer for management, there is usually plenty of information about how that person performs as an individual contributor. Their technical ability, reliability, problem-solving skills, and contributions to the team are already visible.
The harder question is whether that information tells the organization what it needs to know about how the person will perform as a manager.
Research on promotion decisions suggests that performance in a current role and readiness for a future role are not necessarily the same thing. This becomes particularly important when the promotion changes the nature of the work.
Research by Benson, Li, and Shue examined promotion decisions and subsequent managerial performance across 131 firms. The study focused on sales rather than engineering, but the finding is relevant to any promotion that involves a significant change in responsibilities.
High-performing salespeople were more likely to be promoted, even though stronger sales performance did not translate into stronger managerial performance. The researchers found evidence that organizations placed considerable weight on current job performance when making promotion decisions, even when other characteristics were more predictive of performance as a manager.
For technical organizations, the same distinction is worth considering.
An engineer may have demonstrated that they can solve difficult problems, make sound technical decisions, and deliver important work. Those are meaningful accomplishments. But management introduces responsibilities that may not have been required in the engineer's current role.
The person may now need to delegate work they could perform themselves, coordinate people with competing viewpoints, address performance problems, decide when to intervene, and take responsibility for outcomes produced by other people.
Past technical performance does not directly show how someone will respond to those situations.
One solution might seem obvious: ask the candidate's current manager whether the person has management potential.
But research suggests that this is not necessarily enough either.
A 2025 study by Grabner, Künneke, and Moers examined an organization that added an explicit assessment of employee potential to its performance management system. The goal was to provide information about whether employees could succeed in more complex future roles rather than relying only on past performance.
The researchers found that assessing potential was difficult. Supervisors varied in how accurately they evaluated it, and the new potential ratings did not reliably identify employees who would perform better after promotion.
This creates an important distinction.
The promotion decision should not simply move from:
"This person is one of our strongest engineers."
to:
"This person seems like they would be a good manager."
Both judgments can leave important questions unanswered.
A different approach is to look more directly at how someone responds to situations that resemble the work they are being considered for.
Research on situational judgment assessments supports this general approach. A meta-analysis by Christian, Edwards, and Bradley found that situational judgment tests commonly assess areas such as leadership and interpersonal skills. The researchers also found evidence that assessments were more useful when what they measured aligned with the requirements of the job.
For an engineer being considered for management, that means looking beyond what they have already accomplished and considering how they approach situations that will become part of the new role.
For example, another engineer chooses a technically reasonable solution, but it is not the solution the candidate would have chosen. Do they allow that person to maintain ownership, or do they take control?
Someone is struggling with an important problem. When does the candidate intervene?
Two engineers strongly disagree about how to proceed. Does the candidate avoid the conflict, make the decision themselves, or work through the competing perspectives?
An important problem could be solved faster if the candidate simply did the work personally. Do they take it back, or help someone else solve it?
A former peer is not meeting expectations. How willing is the candidate to address the problem directly?
These situations require different behaviors from those that typically demonstrate technical excellence.
Management situations are rarely simple enough to have one correct response.
Sometimes a manager should intervene. Sometimes giving an employee more autonomy is appropriate. Some decisions require consensus, while others require the manager to make a decision and move forward.
The useful information comes from looking at patterns.
Does the candidate consistently take control when uncertainty increases? Do they avoid intervention even when a situation requires it? Are they comfortable allowing other people to make decisions? How do they respond when relationships, deadlines, technical risk, and team needs compete?
Looking at those patterns provides different information from a performance review or a general judgment that someone has leadership potential.
An engineer's performance record should remain part of a promotion decision. It provides valuable evidence about technical capability, judgment, reliability, and contribution.
But most of that evidence describes the role the person has already performed.
Assessing management readiness requires looking at the role ahead.
Organizations considering a technical IC for management can strengthen the promotion decision by examining how the individual approaches situations involving delegation, authority, intervention, disagreement, coordination, and responsibility for other people's work.
The question is not only whether the engineer has performed well enough to earn greater responsibility. It is whether the way they approach the work aligns with the kind of responsibility they will have after the promotion.
Benson, A., Li, D., & Shue, K. - Promotions and the Peter Principle. Quarterly Journal of Economics (2019).
Grabner, I., Künneke, J., & Moers, F. - Promotion Decisions and the Adoption of Explicit Potential Assessment. Management Science (2025).
Christian, M. S., Edwards, B. D., & Bradley, J. C. - Situational Judgment Tests: Constructs Assessed and a Meta-Analysis of Their Criterion-Related Validities. Personnel Psychology (2010).