This is great. I think there is a tendency to apply the Peter Principle to others (ie the boss), but it applies just as well to ourselves. How long until we are all promoted into incompetence, and how sure are we that it hasn't already happened?
The litmus I use to determine if I've been promoted to incompetence is whether my presence improves situations or not. There have been cases where I joined projects and didn't improve things or — unfortunately — made things worse.
All you can do is address the problem openly, find strategies to improve the situation, and try to find ways to remedy it.
If you can't, well, you've got to regress a bit and restore a role you're competent in. I think a common strategy is to try and shift blame or manipulate situations so it isn't obviously your incompetence that caused the problem. Many people might even do this without realizing it. I certainly did earlier in my career, but I never intended to lie or trick people. It was mostly the conflation of insecurities and imposter syndrome, along with my inability to ascertain my actual skill level. In self-defence I'd try to protect myself from the reality that I was doing a bad job.
The only way to get promoted without eventually reaching incompetence is to rinse and repeat that process, as far as I can tell.
I was once in a position that I was sure was above my competency. It was certainly above anything I had ever done before in terms of responsibility. It ended up working out well, I think because I knew I didn't know what I was doing so I asked for a lot of input from others and tried to do what seemed the most sensible after considering that.
The funny thing is, it was for a volunteer organization, not a paid job. I would not do it again, because (for me at least) it ended up being way more work than I thought it would be. But it was a valuable experience.
Unfortunately every promotion that isn't a retroactive recognition that you've already been doing the new role for a while is going to be temporarily a promotion into incompetence. Each time you get promoted there should be new things you need to learn to be good at the new role, so you can't really be sure that a promotion won't work out until you've been struggling at it for a while.
steve_adams_86|1 year ago
All you can do is address the problem openly, find strategies to improve the situation, and try to find ways to remedy it.
If you can't, well, you've got to regress a bit and restore a role you're competent in. I think a common strategy is to try and shift blame or manipulate situations so it isn't obviously your incompetence that caused the problem. Many people might even do this without realizing it. I certainly did earlier in my career, but I never intended to lie or trick people. It was mostly the conflation of insecurities and imposter syndrome, along with my inability to ascertain my actual skill level. In self-defence I'd try to protect myself from the reality that I was doing a bad job.
The only way to get promoted without eventually reaching incompetence is to rinse and repeat that process, as far as I can tell.
SoftTalker|1 year ago
The funny thing is, it was for a volunteer organization, not a paid job. I would not do it again, because (for me at least) it ended up being way more work than I thought it would be. But it was a valuable experience.
Eddy_Viscosity2|1 year ago
plorkyeran|1 year ago
marcosdumay|1 year ago