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Is your promotion really necessary? Many workers focus their hopes on climbing the scale of their organizations. The prospect of higher pay helps explain their ambition,but so does the greater status that comes with each successive(连续的) title.
This climb can often end in disappointment. The Peter Principle, developed by Laurence Peter for a book published in 1969, states that workers get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. It makes perfect sense. If you are good at your job, you rise up the career ladder. Eventually, there will be a job you are not good at and at that point your career will stop.
There is another problem with chasing the promotion fantasy. Many companies have a strong tendency to promote the best sales people. Convincing others to buy goods and services is a useful skill, requiring charm and persistence. But, as the authors point out, these are not the same capabilities as the strategic planning and administrative competence needed to lead a sales team.
The research then looked at what happened after these super-salespeople were promoted Their previous sales performance was actually a negative indicator of managerial success.The sales growth of workers assigned to the star sellers was 7.5 percentage points lower than for those whose managers were previously weaker performers.
The trick to avoiding this curse is to stick to what you like doing. If you enjoy teaching, don't be a headmaster or college principal. If you like writing articles and columns, editing other people's work may not give the same degree of satisfaction.
Another problem with pursuing frequent promotions is that it turns you into a supplicant, endlessly in search of favourable feedback from the higher-ups. This can lead you to lose control of your work-life balance. In Charles Handy's new book, 21 Letters On Life And Its Challenges, the experienced management theorist recalls an insight when working for Royal Dutch Shell,an oil giant. "In exchange for the promise of financial security and guaranteed work, I had sold my time to complete strangers with my permission for them to use that time for their own purpose," he writes.
The higher up the ladder you go, the greater the demands are likely to be on your time.The chief executive will expect you to be available at weekends: after all, that is why you get paid the big bucks.
So that shiny promotion may not be for everyone. Beware the curse of overwork an/dissatisfaction. Some people like to devote their whole lives to their job and be at the centre of events. It is best to let them get on with it.