Singapore – Promoting bright young talent to leadership roles prematurely may backfire and sabotage the company instead.

According to a recent Harvard Business Review study, a fast promotion prevents talented young managers from developing key emotional competencies such as negotiating with peers, regulating negative emotions during crises and building support for change. These skills that come only with time and experience can hurt the company badly.

However, Sheryl Riddle, senior vice president, global consulting and client delivery of DDI, believes that age shouldn’t matter if the high potential has already demonstrated the ability to qualify for the leadership role. She says, “It does not mean that you haven’t shown all those [key emotional competencies], you are not capable of it.”

Yet Riddle says interpersonal skills can be taught with leadership academies that teach leaders softer skills such as dealing with performance challenges, resolving conflict, introducing change in the organisation and overcoming resistance to change.

She says, “These are skills that can absolutely be taught. So if you start early, the talent will acquire the necessary skills unless that individual is totally obtuse.” She adds internal mentoring by senior leaders and conducting case studies of real life situations can also aid the young leaders’ growth.

And organisations that grow leaders from within will result in passionate leaders that embody the company’s values. So the young talent may be better against one who is older and has a lot of management experience, but essentially an outsider. Riddle says, “The only crime is you promote them, but you don’t give support to help them be successful and they totally crash.”