Changing line manager after 6 years - yes or no?

[QuizzlyBears]

I’ll start this by saying I love my job - I work in frontline child protection and am hugely privileged to do what I do. I’ve been in the service for 6 years - 2 different roles in that time, but always under the same line manager. He is excellent - lots of containment, great communication, no micro managing, brilliant mentor. I’ve learnt so much from him and genuinely feel very lucky to have such a great line manager. But - I’ve been approached for a promotion. It’s what I’m aiming for career wise, I’ve worked hard for it and it’s my next step so to speak - but the role is in the other half of our service and so it would mean changing line managers. If I’m honest, it’s really putting me off because good management is so important in my role and I can’t see how I could replicate the trust and containment I’ve got now. Am I being ridiculous to pass up the promotion because of this? Happy to be told yes, I’m not talking to anyone in real life about it so some perspective either way is welcomed. Many thanks!

If it is that important to you then is there some way to make contact with this person prior to accepting to get a measure of them, talk over their ways of working etc - will there not be an interview of any format?

I know that you can't get everything you need to know from a brief conversation but the right questions and gut feelings usually go a long way. I would probably give them a call and ask if they have some time to talk over the role, the dept, how they do things and so on before making a decision. That would be quite normal in the industry I work in so not sure if that would apply here but equally I can't see what would be wrong with that and at least you'd have a bit more to work with.

As a general rule though I think it's best not to make your own career decisions based on the people you work with. They can leave at any time and often do so, there is no guarantee whoever would replace them would be as good. Unless there were other factors that made this job significantly more convenient to me (travel/flexibility) I would be inclined to accept, feel fortunate I'd had such a good mentorship opportunity to prepare me for these next steps and push forward.