Is a promotion really worth all the stress?
, an online portal, the records of almost 40,000 salespeople across 131 firms were studied by Alan Benson, Danielle Li and Kelly Shue. They found that companies have a strong tendency to promote the best sales people. Convincing others to buy goods and services is a useful skill, requiring charisma and persistence. But, as the authors point out, these are not the same capabilities as the strategic planning and administrative competence needed to lead a sales team.
Scott Adams, the cartoonist, described this problem in his book, “The Dilbert Principle”. In his world, the least competent people get promoted because these are the people you don’t want to do the actual work. It is foolish to promote the best salesperson or computer programmer to a management role, since the company will then be deprived of unique skills. That is how the workers in the Dilbert cartoon strip end up being managed by the clueless “pointy-haired boss”.
The trick to avoiding this curse is to stick to what you like doing. If you enjoy teaching, don’t be a headmaster or college principal. If you like writing articles and columns, editing other people’s work may not give you the same degree of satisfaction.