Why Stop?
Stephen P. Kelner, Jr., President, Ascent Leadership Networks
When we interview people as part of an assessment, near the end we like to ask: What do you want to be when you grow up?
This unexpected question startles (and amuses) top executives of a certain age, and prevents pre-programmed answers about their futures such as: “even more successful than today,” or “in a larger role,” or “in a larger organization,” or some such. We know you are ambitious – unambitious people don’t get to executive positions except by accident or influence by others (e.g., being family of the founder). We’re trying to get you away from the expected answers, and get closer to what you want for yourself.
“But I want to be a CEO,” you may say. Perhaps you do. But with a free choice and no restrictions on your life or your time, would you choose something else?
One executive I asked this question promptly said, “A children’s soccer coach.” This highly successful executive at a Fortune 500 company enjoyed his lucrative job, but he knew exactly what he really wanted and why: “I like coaching kids, and helping them get better.”
By contrast, I’ve seen too many people take jobs because “it seemed like a good idea at the time,” or it was the next step up – and you can’t turn that down, can you? People brought up in a business culture tend to assume up is the only way to go. But is it? What if you find your best self by moving sideways? Or maintain your best self by simply staying where you are?
Executive roles count among the most intellectually challenging and complex jobs of the many I have assessed. The average executive typically scores 85th percentile in general mental ability, and one study put large-company CEOs as high as the 99th percentile[1]. Furthermore, being intellectually smart isn’t enough; ideally, you should be emotionally intelligent, socially intelligent, and good at learning, because you must engage with a wide array of people and the world keeps changing. It’s not reasonable to expect everyone to get to the top levels of major organizations. It’s fine that they don’t, because there are many other gifts than executive abilities, and many other roles we need to fill!
But not everyone acknowledges this reality in themselves or in others. In 1969, Lawrence J. Peter and Raymond Hull published The Peter Principle, based on Peter’s research. Since people get promoted for competence, they wrote, people often keep getting promoted until eventually they get to a level where they are no longer competent—but typically remain in that job; they just don’t get promoted any more. Their formulation: “In a [fixed] hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Worse, Peter’s corollary states: “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.”
A classic example of this, still occurring frequently, is promoting great salespeople into being mediocre or bad sales managers. You need more than sales ability to manage salespeople – you need to communicate to others and develop them to sell, which are entirely different capabilities. Furthermore, the emotional drives of a successful salesperson and a successful leader differ, meaning that you can have someone go from energized salesperson to burnt-out manager, even if they manage to do the job well. But I’ve worked with organizations that assessed people and, in one memorable case, flipped a regional sales manager with a regional sales leader, making both productive and happier.
The insurance industry knows this: some insurance salespeople make more money than the CEO – and this is accepted, because they generate the revenue. Some technology companies have executive technical or scientific roles which don’t manage large groups, but which draw on the abilities of specialist, deeply expert professionals. Such organizations can avoid the Peter Principle and optimize their talent.
But how do you know who should stop – or move – and who should not?
1. Motivation. Implicit motivation – your emotional drives – links to what kind of work energizes you. Not just whether you are motivated, but in what way.
2. Capabilities. What abilities you bring matter, especially when shifting to a different size or scope of role.
3. Potential. Do you have the raw traits that can be developed into the capabilities of the next role? Or do you have a different set, better suited to a current or different role?
4. The nature of the next role. You can have motivation, capabilities, and potential – but you need to know if all three align with the next role!
We assess all of these things in depth at Ascent, and have helped organizations think about how to structure themselves to take advantage of them, and helped individuals gain insight into themselves to make a thoughtful step forward in their careers.
But for people who don’t want to invest the time and money (yet), there is another option for individuals.
In my forthcoming book, Where You Can Lead: The Pentad of Great Leadership, you can find all of these characteristics described, set in a framework to help you (or anyone else) understand what kind of role comes next and what it requires, as well as providing insight into your own motivation.
We know the issues that come with different sizes and scopes of organizations; and when you cut that by different kinds of leaders (energized by different motives), you can get a broad survey of the world of leaders – everything from day one in business to multinational executive, in roles ranging from entrepreneurs to change leaders.
The objective of this book is not to help people blindly move up, but to find their proper, individual destiny where they can be not just productive, but happy and energized. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself or your organization is to find a place to stop.
You can find and pre-order the book here or here.
[1] Adams, Renée; Keloharju, Matti; Knüpfer, Samuli (2014): Match Made at Birth? What Traits of a Million Swedes Tell Us about CEOs, IFN Working Paper, No. 1024, Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm.