The fact that individual job performance and management are two entirely different sets of competencies too often gets ignored. Before you know it, you have someone in the position that doesn’t know the first thing about managing a group of people.

Dr Laurence Peter, in his popular book “The Peter Principle” he states, “in a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence.” The principle is based on the observation that in such an organization new employees typically start in the lower ranks, but when they prove to be competent in the task to which they are assigned, they get promoted to a higher rank. And usually the higher rank can only be achieved in a managerial position. This process of climbing up the ladder can go on indefinitely until the employee reaches a position where he or she is no longer competent. At that moment, when it is too late, the failure of the promotion process is finally recognized.

What seemed like such a great idea is now a nightmare. Where do you go from here? Having the wrong person in management could actually destroy a department or even an entire company. But what can you do now? One option is to hope that the new manager becomes so frustrated and fed up being in a position they know they are struggling with that he or she will quit. Another option is that the manager bides his or her time until they accumulate enough “evidence” to withstand a lawsuit and then terminate the person. A third option is the offering of a mutually agreeable severance package to expedite the entire process. In this case it would be wise to have this person sign a waiver that no future lawsuits would be filed.

In any of the above scenarios the end result is that you have lost a person whom you considered a top performer at one time because you promoted them to a role for which they were not suited. Many companies have recognized this dilemma by creating two career paths: One path is for managerial growth; the other is for an individual contributor. Both offer similar pay grades and salaries, therefore, it is not necessary for them to become a manager to advance within the company.

But how can you do a better job of preventing the “Peter Principle Syndrome” from happening to you when you have a manager opening and you want to promote from within?

1. First you should analyze the individual’s personality. It has been proven that good managers have certain personality traits that help them to be more successful in delegating, communicating, multi-tasking, follow-through, etc. Not all people naturally have these personality traits. In order to find out a person’s strengths and weaknesses for the position, conduct a personality profile analysis of the individual you are considering promoting prior to offering them the job. If they do not appear to have all the qualities you are looking for, at least you will be aware of the weaknesses and know where you will need to do additional training and coaching. For more information on the DISC System that I recommend, go to: www.tgassociates.com/products/products.asp#profiles.

2. Next you should find out if the person you are considering promoting has the mental ability to take on additional responsibility. To find this out, I recommend using the Wonderlic Personnel Test. There are established minimum acceptable scores for a manager’s position. You would want to use these benchmarks to compare your current person against. Many times a company spends a lot of time and money training someone to take on more work and/or responsibility and it never quite works out because they didn’t have the mental ability to actually do the job. On the other hand, you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that you have a person who is very smart and definitely worth the investment of time and money. The Wonderlic test that I recommend consists of 50 questions, takes 12-minutes to complete, and is a very accurate measure of a person’s general intelligence. For more information go to www.tgassociates.com/products/products.asp#wonderlic.

If the Personality Profile and the Wonderlic Personnel Tests give you positive responses, then you can feel more comfortable moving ahead. Below are some questions to think about to be completely sure the candidates are management ready:

Are they ready to:

1. Act more like a coach than a player?
2. Step out of the limelight and let their employees get the glory?
3. Handle paperwork and details?
4. Organize themselves and their employees?
5. Be self-motivated and be able to motivate their employees?
6. Spend most of their time planning and analyzing others’ tasks rather than doing?
7. Listen to complaints and resolve their employee’s problems?
8. Handle personnel issues and possibly fire someone?

Although every organization should continually work to reward top performers, promoting them to management is not always the right answer. Organizations will be better served to come up with more creative ways to reward top performers, while keeping the management positions for those who exemplify the attributes in the testing and in the checklist above.

This information was originally published in my newsletter TG Notes. If you would like to subscribe to TG Notes, click here.

Cell phone rudeness is all around us, from the dolts on the plane who refuse to power off when told to do so to the parents at the park who play Angry Birds while their children run amok. My personal pet peeve with cell phone users is being dismissed and subsequently ignored when a person with whom I was conversing gets a call or a text. Dammit, if I’m that unimportant to you, then why were you talking to me in the first place?

It turns out that rude cell behavior also irks folks who are on dates. According to a survey by the online dating service Zoosk, the three top irritants among the dating class are having a date who constantly glances at his or her cell phone, sends text messages while with a date, or takes a call during a date. I’ve seen all three of these examples of rudeness many times and have often wondered why the person who was being subjected to the discourtesy didn’t just up and leave. People who are that self-centered seldom make good companions.

Don’t get me wrong, my smartphone lets me do business and keep up with things without being tied to an office or a PC. However, as smart as a phone might be, it can’t prevent its user from doing rude and annoying things. I wish there was an app for that.

The world may truly be coming to an end, although I won’t go so far as to predict a date. The sign that tipped me off was when Bob and I finally caved in and got smartphones. We put it off for a long time, but even in West Virginia you have to move with the prevailing technology sooner or later.

I was reluctant to make the change because I was quite fond of my stupidphone. It did what I needed it to do and never made me use bad language – at least not until a few months ago when it began randomly turning itself off for no apparent reason. I had even managed to upload some of my music, and would sometimes embarrass Bob by talking too loudly in airports because U2 was wailing in my ears.

The new smartphones allow us to go online, check email, post to Facebook and Twitter, take photos, read QR codes, watch videos, and a hundred other things that, frankly, I’ll probably never really use. (I prefer to disconnect from the great electronic maze as often as possible.) We had been playing with our new toys for about an hour when it suddenly dawned on me that I had no idea how to make a phone call on the darn thing. Since when do you have to read an instruction manual to learn how to make a phone call on a telephone? And I think that’s really what bothers me about it. I’m afraid the smartphone might be smarter than I am.

So I got a real kick out of it when the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog arrived in Saturday’s mail. That nicely printed resource for marginally useful and seriously overpriced merchandise offers a device that made me laugh out loud. Intended to allow you to use your handheld gadget “more comfortably”, it is a streamlined version of an old fashioned telephone handset and cradle that you can plug into your smartphone. When connected, the smartphone goes in the spot where you would find the dial on an old desk phone. I appreciate the irony that at the same time we bought smartphones, someone had brought the technology full circle and found a way to turn them back into pseudo landlines again. Maybe I should order one.

We like the car. It’s sporty, handles well, and gets good gas mileage with its four-cylinders and five-speed gearbox. We also like the fact that it is paid for. The idea of not having monthly car payments is appealing. The problem is that the cost of rental cars is starting to add up. I know that eventually we are going to have to bite the bullet and get a new car. I’m just not sure if we have reached that tipping point yet.

All things mechanical are all subject to the law of diminishing returns. Sure, that old AB Dick still prints, but the downtime and outdated technology are taking a toll on productivity. Maybe you can limp along on your paid-for 12 ppm color copier, but service calls are adding up and production limitations are becoming more and more critical.

Sooner or later we all have to decide if the headaches and drawbacks of old equipment outweigh the fear of taking on new monthly payments for new updated equipment. That doesn’t mean you have to dump your old AB Dick. You probably couldn’t sell it even if you wanted to. Just move it to the back of the shop where it can hang out with that Compugraphic boat anchor and Heidelberg Windmill. You can still visit from time to time.

I know we couldn’t get much, if anything, on a trade-in for my old Avenger so we would probably keep it as a back up and park it in the other half of our two-car garage. Then we would have one reliable car and one retired car, which I could sit in and reminisce about the good old days.