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Dear Reader,
Have you ever heard of the "Peter's Principle" formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter? It says: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of incompetence.
The underlying idea is that in a hierarchical organization, people get continuously promoted as long as they are competent in their job. Once they reach the level of incompetence, then they remain stuck at that level.
Today's article focuses on a different angle: what about people who are very talented and competent and yet don't get promoted. Why does it happen and what can be done?
I hope you'll enjoy the article. Feel free to share your thoughts by responding to this email.
Let's keep progressing!
Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor
“Walk the Talk” or “Talk the Walk”?
By Charlie Lang
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Tim is a department head at the Hong Kong sourcing office of a large European retailer. His boss recommended for Tim to be coached because he felt that coaching would help him to get ready to take over a more senior position.
During our first coaching session, I asked Tim if he agreed with the assessment of his boss that he’s not ready yet for the next level. Tim responded: “Charlie, to be honest, I don’t think my boss really knows me. I think I do an excellent job and if I look at one of my former colleagues who got promoted – without wanting to sound arrogant – I think I’m much more ready than he was at that time.”
This scenario is quite common in coaching. HR or the line manager would think that something is “wrong” with a certain manager and therefore should have coaching. But the manager to be coached would think that they are wrong.
What can a coach do in such a situation?
Experienced coaches know that this is merely a question of perception and that their role here is to help the coachee in changing the perception of his boss. Perceptions get created through the visible behavior and communication of the coachee.
Consequently, I had to help Tim better understand how the current perception came about and how he would need to change his behavior to achieve the desired change in perception of his boss.
I asked Tim to describe some key differences between himself and his recently promoted colleague. It seemed I pushed a button with this question. Tim got rather agitated and complained that his former colleague seemed to waste a lot of time chatting by the watercooler or in the corridor with all sorts of people while Tim was focusing on getting his tasks done.
Tim, in fact, found it unfair that his colleague got promoted instead of him because he felt that he was creating equally good results but he was more hard working than his colleague. So he felt that he is actually more deserving of a promotion.
When I asked Tim what he thought is the reason his colleague was the one who got the promotion, he paused for a while. Then he said: “Well, it seems people like him more than me.” And quickly added, “But that shouldn’t be a determining factor, right?”
I agreed with Tim that this “shouldn’t be” a determining factor but apparently it was. I shared with him that it is actually quite common in most companies, that if given a choice, people promote people they like rather than those who they don’t like as much – provided that their performances are more or less similar.
Also, I asked Tim how it could be that his colleague’s performance was similar to his own even though he was considerably less hard working? Tim responded, “Thinking about it, other people in the company supported him more than they supported me, so I had to make it up with hard work.”
Tim realized that he had a choice on how to achieve results: through hard work alone, through better support from others or a combination of both which probably would help him achieve even better results.
Then I asked him about people’s perception of his previous colleague’s and his own performance. How was each rated by the senior management? Tim admitted that his colleague’s performance was rated considerably higher than his own even though the actual results were similar.
When asked for the reason, he realized that through the many informal conversations, other people in the organization knew much better his peer’s progress and success stories. Also, his former colleague would send out emails after each successful initiative to all those involved to thank them and would cc the senior management on such emails.
It became apparent to Tim that it’s not only important to “walk the talk”, but also to “talk the walk,” i.e. to do good things and talk about them. Tim’s former colleague did exactly that in a rather smart way: he used informal conversations and sent thank you notes to those who helped him achieve major successes and copy furnished the senior management - an elegant way to communicate success without bragging.
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