In a study of over 38,000 salespeople, economists found that the most successful salespeople were more likely to be promoted to manager. But sales skills aren’t the same as managerial skills—the candidates who were better at closing deals were worse at managing people. It turned out that the managers who elevated a team’s performance weren’t the biggest rainmakers, but the most prosocial members—as indicated by how often they’d made collaborative sales with their colleagues. This is an example of a phenomenon known as the Peter Principle. It’s the idea that people at work tend to get promoted
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