“The Peter Principle” suggests that managers get promoted to their own level of incompetence. I propose an alternative view: that managers are promoted to their own level of insecurity.
Let me explain. Last week, my football team, Preston North End, lost to Sheffield United in the Championship play-off, ending the players’ dreams of promotion to the Premier League.
I had mixed feelings about the defeat. Of course I wanted them to get promoted. But I was secretly relieved that they wouldn’t have to face a season struggling at the bottom of the table.
Many executives operate with a similar attitude to work. They can be highly driven, but have a fear that they simply aren’t good enough and will soon be found out.
As they go higher in the organisation these feelings can intensify.
Their problem is not a lack of competence but a lack of self-confidence. And as BNET’s “Confidence: A Vicious Cycle” points out, experience is no guarantee of confidence — “we sometimes lack confidence when we shouldn’t”.
We need more business leaders who believe, deep down, that they are good enough, and don’t become obsessed with setbacks.
Here are some tactics to add to BNET’s advice on mastering confidence:
- Recognise your successes. Write a daily list of your victories. Many of us are only too aware of our failures, and will put them down to our own inadequacies. Yet, we commonly attribute our successes to luck or others’ efforts. We must recognise our successes as strongly as our failures.
- Focus on what you can control. When Adrian Moorehouse won an Olympic swimming gold he didn’t set himself the goal of winning, because he couldn’t control that outcome. Instead, he focused on achieving a certain time, which was in his control, and which he believed would enable him to win the race.
- Reward yourself. Don’t wait for a company bonus, or for others’ feedback, for recognition. Instead, learn to reward yourself, and give yourself mini rewards for the smaller, daily successes that might otherwise go unacknowledged.
- Play to your strengths. The best way I have found to improve my self-esteem is to focus on my strengths and find other people to take the load where I am weaker. I outsource the management of my accounts — I just don’t enjoy administrative stuff. Yes, it costs me more, but it allows me to focus on those areas where I am stronger and happier.
- Continually renew your skills and capabilities.This is the engine that drives personal success and self-confidence. Stephen Covey calls this ‘sharpening the saw’ and it can cover intellectual, physical, social and spiritual motivations.
What do you think: do promotions make you more uncertain, rather than less? What other ways have you found to boost your confidence?
(Photo: scott.zona, CC2.0)
