I Was Promoted to My Level of Incompetence and Had to Find a Way Through

The Dunning-Kruger effect has a professional analogue that management researchers call the Peter Principle - the idea that people are promoted until they reach a role that exceeds their competence and then stay there.

I was not thinking about this concept at 26 when I was promoted to a senior business analyst position at a fintech firm in Patna. I was thinking about how to manage a team of four and handle a stakeholder portfolio and contribute to strategic conversations in ways that my previous role as an individual contributor had not required.

The mismatch between what the role required and what I had developed was not total - I was competent in the analytical dimensions that the role shared with the previous one. It was specific and significant in the interpersonal and strategic dimensions that the seniority added.

I did not have the specific skill of managing up effectively - of communicating with senior stakeholders in the register and with the influence orientation that they expected. I had not developed the ability to hold ambiguous strategic questions without the discomfort pushing me toward premature analytical conclusions.

I did not know how to manage a team member whose performance was insufficient in a way that was fair and clear and that did not produce the conflict I was avoiding.

For the first year I managed these gaps through overcompensation - working harder in the dimensions I was strong in to cover the dimensions I was weak in.

This is an exhausting strategy with diminishing returns because the dimensions you are strong in do not actually substitute for the ones you are weak in; they just allow you to produce outputs that obscure the weakness temporarily.

At 28, with the active support of a manager who was honest enough to name what he was observing, I addressed the specific gaps rather than the general busyness. I took a course in stakeholder influence. I found a mentor who was excellent at the interpersonal dimensions I was struggling with.

I practised the conversations I had been avoiding. By year two in the role I was performing the full job rather than the technical half of it.