From the course: Managing Your Manager

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Working with a less competent manager

Working with a less competent manager

From the course: Managing Your Manager

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Working with a less competent manager

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You would think that your boss would be more experienced and skilled than you are, right? Well, most of the time that's true, but systems are imperfect. And once in a while, you'll be paired with a boss you deem as somehow lacking in competence. Believe it or not, this can happen a few different ways. The first is the Peter Principle. That's the idea that companies promote people into management positions based on their skill in their current role instead of promoting them based on the possession of skills that are clearly needed at the next level. Thus, they rise to their level of incompetence. It's also true sometimes that the best explanation is simply that the person was a political appointee or is good friends with someone in power. Thus, they're benefitting from favoritism or some other form of non-meritorious behavior. Finally, one of the other fairly common explanations is that you're working in a low performance culture. That's a workplace defined by low accountability, which…

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