Have you ever wondered why the world is full of so many people who are incredibly incompetent at the very thing they are paid to do? If so, an educationalist called Laurence J. Peter may have the answer.
In Peter’s view, most people were promoted based on their current performance, with no real consideration of their ability to take on greater responsibility. Eventually, “every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence”, as he wrote. This is the law he termed the“Peter Principle”.
The strongest evidence for the theory comes from a recent study of 131 companies that all used the same performance management software. As you might expect, the team found that the best salesmen or saleswomen were the ones who tended to be promoted. And the study found that managers who used to be very high-performing sales workers tended not to bring significant assistance to their colleagues.
There are lots of potential reasons why this might occur. The personal drive-even aggression-that is needed to promote your own individual sales doesn’t necessarily transform into the interpersonal skills necessary to motivate others, for instance.
In the meantime, knowledge of the “Peter Principle” might be useful for each of us personally. If you frequently find yourself disappointed with your own boss or with your subordinates (下属), it’s worth considering the possibility that you’ve already reached your “level of incompetence”.
That’s not always easy to recognize. As Peter put it, “competence, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder”, but a modest awareness may just encourage you to correct your weaknesses, or to find a new position where your unique talents are of greater value.
【小题1】Which of the following may Peter be in favour of?| A．An able employee may not be in the right place. |
| B．Employees with higher pay tend to perform better. |
| C．Whoever performs well in a firm deserves to be promoted. |
| D．There is no fixed criterion for assessing an employee’s ability. |
| A．The “Peter Principle” makes sense both in companies and schools. |
| B．The best sales workers have got promoted due to their teamwork spirit. |
| C．The companies are in need of employees with good communicative skills. |
| D．Managers, once with good sales performance, may contribute little to others’progress. |
| A．It makes us qualified for a higher position. |
| B．It reminds us of the importance of learning from others. |
| C．It inspires us to fulfill ourselves in a suitable position. |
| D．It provides guidance on how to improve our competence. |
| A．General Rules in a Company | B．Reasons for Getting Promoted |
| C．Knowledge of the “Peter Principle” | D．The Development of a Famous Theory |
