He hit every target.
He doubled revenue in two quarters.
He was the golden boy…
Until half the team resigned.
This is what happens when leadership readiness is ignored.
It was one of Nigeria’s top-tier financial institutions—reputable, respected, and aggressively pursuing expansion across new market segments. Within the Commercial and SME Banking unit, one name had started to dominate the performance dashboards. The Regional Business Manager for the South-West axis had not only exceeded his sales targets, but he also doubled them. Twice. In under a year.
He was the kind of performer every MD wants in their corner: tireless, numbers-driven, unrelenting. He secured the largest structured credit deal in the region’s history, brought in two multinational clients, and had the lowest delinquency ratio in the bank. It wasn’t long before senior leadership took notice. His name came up in EXCO conversations. There was buzz about “potential successor pipelines.” When the Divisional Head retired unexpectedly, it felt almost poetic.
He was promoted almost immediately. No questions. No assessment. No behavioural profiling. Just the hard numbers and the belief that numbers don’t lie.
But what they didn’t realise is that numbers also don’t cry. People do.
Within his first three months in the new role, the cracks began to surface. The culture in the Commercial Banking Division, once vibrant and entrepreneurial, turned cold and mechanical. Branch heads stopped contributing during strategy meetings. Senior Relationship Managers who had been with the bank for years began requesting transfers. Some quit altogether, citing “stress” and “mental fatigue.” One rising team lead took a leave of absence and never returned.
The formal complaints started piling up. Comments about being “spoken down to,” micromanaged, and berated in front of peers. The once-loyal team described feeling as though they were being “driven like cattle.” Engagement scores dropped from 78% to 44% in two quarters. Three high-value client relationships were lost due to delays and internal misalignment. For the first time in nearly a decade, the division missed its growth target.
And yet, no one was truly surprised.
The Root Cause: No Leadership Readiness Assessment Before Promotion
Except perhaps for the MD, who had been the primary advocate for the promotion. “But he was our top performer,” she said during one of our early review meetings. “He always delivered. He outworked everyone.” And yes, he did. But leadership isn’t about how hard you can push yourself. It’s about how well you can carry others.
He was never assessed for that.
No one had stopped to ask: Does he know how to lead people? Has he ever received feedback on his interpersonal skills? Does he empower others, or overshadow them? How does he respond to dissent? Does he listen, or merely wait for others to stop talking?
What became painfully clear was that while he had the competence to lead a business line, he lacked the behavioural capability to lead humans. He didn’t build trust; he demanded obedience. He didn’t coach; he commanded. He didn’t inspire; he instilled fear. His entire style was rooted in performance by pressure. That had worked for him as an individual contributor. It broke the team when he became a leader.
This wasn’t the first time we had seen this happen—and unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last.
In our years of consulting across Africa’s financial institutions, we have seen this pattern repeat itself with startling predictability: an outstanding technical performer gets rewarded with leadership… and the team suffers for it. Not because the individual is malicious. Not because they don’t care. But because they were never assessed for leadership readiness.
And therein lies the institutional flaw.
In financial services, arguably the most performance-intensive sector in the economy, leaders are too often selected solely based on their numbers. Not their self-awareness. Not their ability to manage conflict. Not their influence style, emotional regulation, or capacity to develop others.
Just their dashboards.
We’ve worked with banks, pension firms, fintech startups, and investment houses across Nigeria and beyond. And the truth is always the same: the real cost of promoting top performers is not seen in the immediate P&L. It is seen in attrition, culture erosion, client dissatisfaction, and eventually, reputational damage.
And yet, it’s preventable.
Embedding Leadership Readiness Assessment into Talent Strategy: A Turnaround Story
We were eventually brought in by the CHRO, who had grown increasingly concerned about the division’s slide. Our first step was to conduct a behavioural audit—anonymised 360-degree feedback, structured leadership simulations, emotional intelligence profiling, and values alignment assessments. The results were unambiguous: the newly promoted Divisional Head had multiple blind spots. He lacked empathy. He deflected feedback. His stress responses skewed authoritarian. His trust-building style was rated among the lowest in the division.
Most shocking of all, these patterns had always been there. His previous team had simply “managed” him because his performance shielded everything else. But now that he held institutional power, the behaviours were amplified and deeply damaging.
The CHRO, a forward-thinking leader, used this as a case study to build a more robust promotion framework. From that point on, no promotion into senior leadership roles; VP level and above, would proceed without a leadership readiness assessment. This included:
- Structured 360-degree feedback from peers, subordinates, and supervisors
- Psychometric personality profiling
- Simulated leadership case studies and in-basket exercises
- Conflict resolution and people development capability assessments
- Structured interviews anchored on behavioural competencies
It changed everything.
The next promotion cycle was slower but sharper. The bank uncovered hidden gems—individuals who were strong collaborators, emotionally intelligent, and quietly influential who would have otherwise been overlooked. Some promotions were held back, not as punishment, but as a developmental opportunity. Tailored coaching plans were introduced. The pipeline became healthier. Culture scores began to recover. Within a year, attrition stabilised, and internal promotion regret dropped to its lowest in six years.
Meanwhile, the former golden boy? He wasn’t demoted, nor disgraced. Instead, he was transitioned into a strategic advisory role, one where his market knowledge and analytical depth could be harnessed without the strain of people leadership. He’s thriving. And so is the team he once left in disarray.
This isn’t a story of failure. It’s a story of misalignment; and the price organisations pay when they fail to assess leaders before they lead.
Leadership is too important to leave to chance. If you’re in the business of people like every bank, insurance firm, or asset manager ultimately is, you cannot afford to promote leaders based only on revenue targets or task execution. You must ask harder questions:
- Are they emotionally ready to lead?
- Do they build others, or just deliver?
- How are they experienced by their peers?
- Can they regulate themselves in high-pressure moments?
- Are they trusted? Respected? Followed?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you’re not making a leadership decision; you’re making a gamble.
And in the current climate—economic volatility, increased regulation, shrinking margins, talent mobility—the cost of a poor leadership decision is one most organisations can no longer afford.
Today, some of the most successful institutions we work with have embedded leadership readiness assessment as a strategic imperative and not just an HR exercise. They deploy 360 assessments for leadership, use global and localised assessment tools for leadership development, and integrate leadership readiness evaluations into all key talent processes.
It’s not a silver bullet. But it’s a safeguard.
Because in leadership, the true metric isn’t just performance. It’s legacy. And if we’re not assessing for that, then we’re not really leading.
Are you Ready to Future-Proof Your Leadership Pipeline?
If your organisation is rethinking how it identifies, evaluates, and promotes future leaders—act before the cracks start to show.
Too many businesses realise the cost of poor leadership decisions only after culture suffers, teams disengage, and top talent walks out the door. Don’t wait for performance to slip before assessing leadership readiness.
At Workforce Group, we help organisations build resilient leadership pipelines through evidence-based assessments, behavioural diagnostics, and targeted development interventions.
Send an email to learning@workforcegroup.com to schedule a free discovery session with our leadership strategy team.
Let’s move from reactive to strategic.
Let’s stop gambling with leadership and start building it right.
