Know Your Limitations: The brutal truth on when or why you should avoid the Promotion Ladder!

In my previous post, we discussed the Peter Principal. While the principle speaks to how you must always gain new skills and experience to get ahead, isn't it equally important to understand what your limitations are and whether a promotion is, in fact, more of a hindrance than a help to your career?

In Procurement and across the corporate world, we lean towards rewarding and promoting the most productive worker who performs well; however, past performance isn't an accurate indicator of future performance. I'm sure we have all worked in a business, reporting to a CPO at a level where they are over-matched by the job demands - in other words, "out of their league or comfort zone."

Before you continue climbing the corporate ladder, you must have greater self-awareness which will be more of an asset than a liability—especially knowing when and where your limitations are.

Of course, it takes much work to understand your weaknesses. However, let's start with being honest, peel back that Venere and self-reflect on how you perform at work and your relationship with colleagues, teams, and management. Have you ever received feedback? What was it? What specific areas are holding you back?

Are there deadlines you've missed? Why did you think this happened? When you self-reflect, you can more readily identify situations, deadlines or triggers. Afterwards, you can delve deeper and investigate further, not as a weakness or shortcoming, but as an opportunity to improve. In short, you must avoid focusing solely on your positives and embrace the areas you struggle with because, if you're honest with yourself, you'll be honest with others; honesty is always the best policy.

Don't Be Scared to show vulnerability and Name Your Weaknesses

Get specific and name your weakness; this can help clarify where you need to focus your self-improvement efforts and how you've recognised it. It demonstrates your confidence in your ability to self-critique and your acknowledgement that excellence is not a one-time destination but a progressive journey throughout your life and career.

For example, if you forget to follow up on tasks. In that case, you might have communication, time management, or organisation areas that you can work on to improve. Remember, you can't fix a problem that you don't acknowledge.

Tell a Story to Share How You're Actively Improving on Your Weakness

Especially when talking about weaknesses, go one step further. No interviewer wants to hear a laundry list of disadvantages followed by an innocent shrug.

Instead, they want to hear about your dedication to working on this weakness. And how you share your shortcomings is almost more important than your exact weaknesses—interviewers need you to tell and show them.

And just like with your strengths, use the job description as a guide when prepping your story. Of course, you will want to steer clear of highlighting weaknesses without sharing how you overcame them to succeed. Acknowledgement without action is not an attribute. However, admitting to challenges and making mistakes humanises you while telling what you did to fix them demonstrates your ability to recognise and adapt to an increasingly volatile world.

A Final Thought

When it comes to promotions, research shows that men are more likely to take a promotion even if they know they are lacking in key areas as they are confident that they can learn it on the fly.

Conversely, women will only take a promotion if they believe they have the necessary skills. If not, they will seek to acquire the needed skills before stepping up that corporate ladder.

The question is, which approach would you choose and why?

#careerdevelopment #procurement #careeradvancement