When you promote someone, or they accept a new internal position, you may need to manage a handoff of your direct report to another manager. In last week’s post, I wrote about promoting someone on my team. This week I’ll walk you through the process of how we managed the handoff of this person to another manager.

Letting them know

In a 1:1, you should let the person on your team know that with their new title, they’ll be reporting to a different manager. In our case, I walked the person through the reasoning and how the new manager would be better equipped to coach them through developing into the new title. My team member had been meeting informally with their new manger for months now to get tips on their career development, so the shift felt pretty natural to all of us. As part of the handoff, the new manager and your former team member should each put together a User Guide to Me for a later meeting.

As their former manager, you need to put together a backgrounder document to introduce them to the new manager, and schedule a 1:1:1 meeting to complete your portion of the handoff.

The Backgrounder

The backgrounder is a quick 1 page document that gives a quick overview of who the team member is, their experience at the company, their contributions, areas for growth, any feedback you’ve provided recently, their goals, and anything else that needs followup.

I’ve made a couple of these documents, but this is a pretty general template.

Handoff Backgrounder – [Person’s name]

[date]

Start date: [employee start date]

Role: [current title]

Team: [team or department, whichever is more relevant]

Background

[name] started at [company] as a [title] on [date]. Include any promotions, their titles, and dates. Discuss whether they’ve been exceeding expectations, what their current career goals are, and how long they’ve been on that path.

Current Role

Describe how long they’ve been in this role at the company, what their bread and butter tasks are, where they’ve excelled, and what improvements they’ve made to their role or the team.

In another paragraph I’ll talk about their professional goals, how long they’ve been interested in this path, and what changes we made to their tasks based on Career Conversation 3. I’ll include some details of where we started for professional development activities, where we’re at now, and what we had planned for the future. The new manager will use this context to adapt the professional development plan with their new direct report.

Professional goals, growth areas, and opportunities

In this section, highlight what they’ve done as part of their role, and what they’ve been doing to grow into the role they’re moving into.

I’ll mention things we’re in the middle of working on for professional development, to highlight to the new manager this may be an area where they can support their new team member.

These meetings should be a joyful experience for everyone. Make sure to round out the document with some nice things about your team member, thank them for all their hard work, and wish them well.

Shared documents and links

• This document
• Career conversations 2 and 3
• Their LinkedIn profile if they have one
• Any other documentation that may be relevant to the new manager

1:1:1

The 1:1:1 is where you, the team member, and the new manager can complete the handoff transparently so that everyone knows what’s happening and what’s been said. You’ll pass over all the documents you have, except for 1:1 notes (those remain private between you and the team member). Use this meeting to make sure that no professional development goals get dropped during the transition, and that any work in progress can be complete or reallocated to someone else.

Next, you share the backgrounder. Walk everyone through what you’ve written, but take a lot of pauses so that the team member can clarify any points of confusion, or add more context. Add these notes to the bottom of the document.

When you’ve finished with the backgrounder, take a final call for questions/comments/concerns/feedback. After that, you can discuss next steps and any administrative details that need to be worked out.

Then you can hand it over to the new manager and team member to lead the rest of the conversation.

The first 1:1 with the new manager

After the 1:1:1, you’ve officially handed off your former team mate. Everything else is up to the new manager. In their first 1:1, they will both go over their User Guide To Me to get a good sense of how to communicate and work together.

Wrapping Up

A proper manager handoff involves letting the team member know of the change in your 1:1, getting the team member and manager to prepare a User Guide To Me each, preparing a backgrounder on the team member, a 1:1:1, and appropriate follow up.

Just because you’ve officially handed off your team member to a new manager, make sure to check in with them every now and then. See how they’re doing and how they’re settling into their new role. Ask if there’s anything you can do to help them get comfortable in the new role, or if they have any feedback for you.