So far, we've talked about the trap of promoting your best individual contributor (IC) just because they're great at the craft. And earlier, we covered hiring a manager externally (and if you've missed those, check out our other posts). But there's a third path that sits right in the middle: what if you don't want to bring in an outsider, but you also don't want to promote on raw talent alone?

That's where internal promotion to leadership gets interesting, and where most agencies get it wrong.

In our blog on internal promotion, we covered how to know when a team member is ready to move up: define the destination, make them demonstrate the next role before they get the title, and don’t promote as a reward for past performance. That framework works really well for IC-to-IC growth because the trajectory is the same and the job is still fundamentally the same as well. You're just asking them to do it better, at a higher level, with more complexity.

But promoting someone into leadership? That's a different assessment entirely.

Leadership Isn't a Bigger Version of the Same Job

When someone moves from Senior Designer to Creative Director, or from Senior Strategist to Head of Strategy, the job description changes in a way that a title alone can't capture. They're no longer just responsible for the quality of their own work. They're now responsible for the quality of everyone else’s, and for the environment in which that work gets made.

That means the bar is no longer just “are they excellent at the craft?” It's actually:

• Are they a culture fit, or are they a culture example? 

• Do they execute the work well, or do they create the conditions where great work gets made? 

• Do they follow the direction of the agency, or do they help shape it?

• Do people come to them to get answers, or do people leave the conversation better equipped to find answers themselves?

• And lastly, is their value in what they personally produce, or in what they can make possible for others?

If the first half of those questions describes them better than the second, they're not ready yet. Those are the marks of a great IC. But good, impactful leadership that uplifts others requires the second half.

So What Are You Actually Assessing?

Unlike IC-to-IC promotion, where you're asking “have they closed the gap between their current level and the next?”, promoting someone into leadership requires you to assess a completely different set of signals. Here's what to look for:

1. They already lead without the title.

The best internal leadership candidates aren’t waiting for permission. They're already mentoring their peers, advocating for the team, flagging process problems before they become client problems. If you have to think hard about whether they're showing these behaviors, they're probably not ready yet.

2. They think about the agency, not just their work.

An IC's job is to execute excellently within their scope. A leader's job is to zoom out. These are genuinely different modes of thinking, and not everyone shifts between them naturally, which is why it's such a useful signal to know when someone is ready for that next step.

Watch for the person who asks questions about why a decision was made, not just how they're supposed to act on it. The one who notices when the team is stretched too thin before it becomes a crisis. The one who thinks about how a project is affecting morale, not just whether it's hitting the deadline. The one who comes to you with “I've been thinking about how we could do this better” rather than waiting to be asked.

3. They handle conflict and ambiguity with maturity.

Being a leader is uncomfortable. A lot of it is navigating situations where there's no clean answer: a client who's being obviously unreasonable, a team member who's struggling with external life events unrelated to work, or a direction that the agency needs to take that not everyone will like. The person you promote into leadership needs to be able to sit in that discomfort; that steadiness is what the team depends on when things get complicated

4. People trust them, including people they don't manage yet.

This one is hard to manufacture, and honestly, it's hard to even put into words. But you know it when you see it. 

It's the person you never feel the urge to check in on because you genuinely aren’t worried about them. You know the work is getting done. You know it’s going to be good. You know if something goes sideways, they’ll tell you before you have to ask.

And their peers feel it too. People want to be on their projects. They're excited to collaborate with them; working with this person makes them better, and they know it. There's a kind of calm confidence they bring to a room, a quiet reliability that other people naturally orient toward. When this person speaks, people listen because they’ve earned that trust through how they show up every single day.

Before you promote your IC into a leadership role, ask yourself: does this person already have informal authority on this team? If the answer is no, a title isn't going to create it.

The Preparation Is Different Too

With IC promotions, the preparation is mostly about scope: give them harder problems, more ownership, more complexity, and see if they rise to it. With leadership promotion, the preparation has to be deliberate and human-focused. That means:

• Giving them low-stakes opportunities to lead: running a meeting, onboarding a new team member, owning a client relationship

• Having honest conversations about what leadership actually looks like at your agency, including the hard parts, and seeing if they’re up for this next chapter

• Introducing them to the operational and strategic side of the business so the promotion doesn’t come as a shock

• Making sure they actually want it. Some of your best ICs would rather stay excellent contributors than take on the weight of managing people, and that's a completely valid choice that will save both of you a huge headache

There's No Universal Right Answer, Only the Right Answer for Your Agency

At the end of the day, there's no universally correct answer - and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know your agency the way you do. Hiring externally means betting on someone who can lead, but that person may not know your people, your clients, or your processes the way an internal team member would.

You know your team best: what they respond to, who they trust, and what the culture can absorb right now. The right decision for your agency isn’t always the safest or the most convenient one. It's the one made with intention and deliberation, with your people at the center.

Ready to build a leadership pipeline that actually works? Let's talk about how to develop your team from the inside out.