Breaking Past the Peter Plateau

In the 1960s, Dr. Laurence Peter defined a theory known as the Peter Principle. This theory states that people in an organization are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. This usually happens when someone is promoted from a position that requires one set of skills to a new position that relies on completely different skills that the person is not equipped with. While they may be quite competent at their previous position, in their new position, they don't have the competency required to be successful and their career stalls.

The story typically goes like this. You start your career and begin learning the skills you need to be successful in your field. As you become more competent, you'll progress from junior roles to more senior roles where you have larger responsibilities but are still leveraging the same skill set. Eventually, the next rung on the ladder will rely on different skills. As you progress through the ranks, the available training diminishes and as an experienced team member, you're expected to just figure it out.

It's at this point in the story where you face two different paths. The first path is to continue to struggle and face the fact that you have reached the Peter Plateau. The other path is find ways to break past the plateau to put your career back on track.

The most common reason for reaching this plateau is when the role transitions from using hard skills -- those more quantifiable in nature -- to soft skills -- which usually involve interactions with other people. Hard skills are easier to teach because they can be shown as right or wrong. When it comes to soft skills, success is a lot more fuzzy and results involve a lot of "it depends". Because soft skills involve people, what works with one person may not be effective with another person. When you reach a position that relies on soft skills, training resources become more difficult to find and you will need to find other methods for building these skills.

If you've been following this podcast for any length of time, you'll know that I'm a big proponent of creating your Individual Development Plan or IDP. If you need a refresher on building your IDP, review Episodes 036 through 040 (https://www.managingacareer.com/36). Those episodes walk you through a description of the sections of the IDP and the process of integrating it into your discussions with your leader. If you need a free copy of my IDP template, reach out via the Contact form on the ManagingACareer.com website (Contact | Managing A Career).

If you have your IDP created, your Assessment section should detail what skills you need to work on in order to reach the next level. If you find that you have reached a career plateau, review the items here to determine which skill or skills are holding you back. This would be an ideal time to speak with your coaches, mentors, and leaders to do an honest assessment of your current progress on building these skills.

Review the items in your Action Plan to make sure that they are addressing the skill gaps that are holding you back. Work with your leader to find assignments that can help you focus on those specific skills. If you can pair up with someone strong in that skill -- especially in the context of what is successful within your organization -- it can help you grow faster.

For example, if you struggle with executive communication, start by pairing up with someone who excels at that skill so that, together, you prepare a presentation. As your skill grows, take more of a lead of creating those presentations, but review it with your co-worker. Eventually, when you have gained skill and confidence, create and deliver the presentation on your own.

This pairing will ensure that you have clear examples of what constitutes "good" within your company and the direct hands-on approach can help identify specifics that you need to work on.

A career coach can help you create strategies to close skill gaps and break through the Peter Plateau. If you need a career coach, reach out to me via the Contact Form at ManagingACareer.com (https://www.managingacareer.com/contact/). I'll schedule an introductory session where we can talk about your career goals and determine if we would be a good fit for coaching. If we are, we can arrange regular sessions to help you put your career on the fast track to advancement.

Are you looking for a career coach? If you reach out to me via the contact form, I will arrange an introductory session where we can talk about your career goals and how I can help. If we're a good fit, we can schedule regular coaching sessions.