Are most bosses incompetent? The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle suggests: people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

[DukeShanks]

Yes i’m that who feedback harshly on the voice overlapping while commenting on videos. But great respect for the openmind, great content and improvement!!! Hope this channel gets more views that it deserves!!

[NinJa-qrsp]

I was under an incompetent "leader" for 3 years whose only skillset in his toolbox is to PR to bosses and blindly delegate everything downwards. Career suicide experience.

[scbchong]

The flip side is that if you have any experience in hiring training and managing work teams, you will know that those who complain, point finger and blame others alot are the mediocre workers with bad attitude. Working adults usually overestimate their level of skills, abilities and competence. Plus few working singaporeans acknowledge that Nature/God distributes talents unfairly.

[Missy_Ai]

I was offered for promotion twice but declined. I knew I won’t be happy with managerial position. The next thing I was labelled as no drive, negative, stupid and no courage to take up challenges 😅

Seriously I don’t understand. Working extra hard, sacrifice your personal time for work means good worker? I percieve it slave to the job because I preferred balanced lifestyle and besides, we are all replaceable at workplace.

[Spadroliken]

I think the Peter Principle is true, only for individuals who may not be able to manage failure well, and thus choose to give up & cruise at that altitude

Of course, considering other factors e.g life priorities, then there is some truth to individuals who choose to cruise at a certain level once they’ve reached - but I wouldn’t say it’s due to incompetence too

I think incompetent is more in terms of what you suppose to do then what is others thinking of you. For example, I have a manager who just pass the job from customer to employee and ask us to do, wouldn't is her job to manage on customer expectations and project resources?

[postecogniac]

hey guys, great podcast. just a suggestion for set up, why not get the mics off camera, or do lapel mics, and set up with two comfortable arm chairs so it looks more like a chat setting than a studio one? I think that'd be visually more appealing as well. even a dark room (evening) with off camera lighting (lamps). Give that a try sometime.

[vickytude]

Many bosses are really incompetent. They just rise to upper levels due to that 'special talent'

[fedexperimental]

One assumption in the Peter Principle is that the employee does not rise through the ranks further because of his or her incompetence at the current level. This may not hold true as there could be other factors such as the lack of promotion opportunities due to a full house at the higher leadership positions (i.e., saturation) or perhaps due to a non-necessity for higher positions as the organization is small or not expanding. Another factor is obviously the competition between employees for the promotion. There are limited number of higher positions and it is not possible to promote everyone to a higher position. Hence, there are bound to be comparisons and competition amongst employees. Even if one is competent (defined as good at the core work skill), there are others who might be more competent.

Furthermore, I do not think competence (defined as the core work skill) is the only metric for promotion to a higher position. There are a range of attributes that employers look for in an employee such as communication skills, ability to gel the team together, and so on. So, the Peter Principle is a simplistic way of breaking down the complexities in an organization.

[LonganLee]

Singapore is one of the most expensive country. Yet, it is crippled without depending on the cheapest construction workers in the world unlike first worlds lile australia, Japan, Skorea, the west. Sg is known to be low in productivity. Are policies formed helping businessmen who are so dependent on the cheapest ? So first world depending on not citizens or those who are higher skilled construction workers from other countries but from the cheapest workers? Are these employers unable to survive without using the cheapest?

[MsCorydorus]

don't say those last death statement. Sibei suay ...