The Harmful Myth About “Failing Up”
Every industry has its secrets. There are unspoken rules that breed resentment and confusion among employees; rules that typically elicit a sigh and passive-aggressive response, Of course, this is what always happens. In tech, our dirty little secret is “failing up”, or getting promoted when you didn’t earn your new title through hard work and proven merit, but rather because you’re friends with the right people or in the company’s “in crowd.”
In the past year, the discussion around diversity in the workplace has reached a larger audience, one that largely took an oath to “listen and learn” this past June when they posted their black square in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
And in that time of reflection, we’ve witnessed a wide spectrum of responses and outputs. Many companies have hired their first Diversity & Inclusion Executive, countless employees now have access to employee and affinity resource groups, and for the first time, many professionals are confronting the privilege that has afforded them success and access to career-building resources.
In between the epiphanies, mandated diversity trainings, and group discussions on how to progress, I believe we still have crucial examining of past behavior to do. We should be applying critical thought to the tools and advice we’ve earnestly offered to all of our employees because not all advice is created equal.
One of the most harmful ideologies I’ve seen in my career is the idea of “failing up.” It’s a prevailing concept that is at its best, rewards lackluster performance, and at its worst, perpetuates favoritism and highlights the gap of opportunity between those with and without privilege.
What is “Failing Up” and is it Common in the Workplace?
Failing up is advancing in a field or at a job despite showing signs of incompetencies or lack of passion. And we’ve all seen it. The coworker who got the promotion because they have proximity to leadership but don’t have a consistent track record of success. Or, to use an example outside of the workplace, a Hollywood actor who continues to covet box-office-gold roles, but has yet to give a convincing performance worthy of their status. So why them? What’s their secret path to success? It’s the phenomenon of failing up.
It’s not a phrase I personally coined; it’s a frustration felt by many, especially in Silicon Valley. When reading The Atlantic’s article by Derek Thompson on the topic, I was introduced to Marko Terviö. Author of Superstars and Mediocrities: Market Failure in the Discovery of Talent, explains, “When talent is industry-specific, can only be revealed on the job, and once learned becomes public information, firms tend to bid excessively for the pool of incumbent workers at the expense of trying out new talent,” Terviö writes.
In other words, it pays to be seen.
In my experience, too often, I’ve seen the loudest person and not the wisest person in a room garner the most attention. They are seen as having the most “potential”, even though they lack results. If we’re all playing a game of office politics, it’s the figure who campaigns the strongest that secures the vote. No matter if their “policies” or project ideas add much value to the company’s mission, bottom line, or culture. The person who fails up uses their proximity to status to bolster up their career. They focus less on overdelivering on projects but are hard at work to stay in the workplace in-crowd and eat at the right tables.
You may be thinking, “But Donald, isn’t this just having emotional intelligence? What’s the matter with that? Having charisma or emotional intelligence isn’t the issue — not tempering that EQ with execution is the problem. A promoted employee or rising leader should have the track record to match the accolades that they have received. But as it stands, the only way up is by being “in.”
But is this a status quo we need to accept? I certainly don’t think so.
Who is Hurt by “Failing Up?”
One of the few silver linings of 2020 is the shared responsibility to reexamine tolerated beliefs and behaviors and reset updated expectations. The employee resource groups and revamped employee handbooks will be in vain if we’re not addressing microaggressions and bad behavior.
If we reward those undeserving, we are only pushing the harmful narrative that earnest enthusiasm, relentless hard work, and operating from a system of ethics and principles is unrewarding and the wrong way to succeed. It hurts other employees, the company, and the one who is failing up.
An overlooked part of “failing up” is its underlying privilege. The opportunity to overpromise and underdeliver is not something all employees can do. Those who are working hard to compensate for the additional hurdles that their skin color, gender, orientation, or disability place in front of them can’t afford to screw up. There is almost no opportunity to fail upward. If an employee of color or a trans employee loses a client, they are penalized and branded with a scarlet letter; they’ll have to work twice as hard or wait twice as long to bounce back from their loss.
When team members witness their peer failing up, a couple of different messages are sent. First, hard work isn’t a key asset to professional advancement in the company. Second, their work is not as valued, appreciated, or essential. Third, the same people will always land on top. When an employee internalizes these messages, you’ll often see a decline in performance, a stall in innovation, and a contagious apathy toward the work and mission of the company. These small-seeming measurements of work add up to an inefficient, uninspired, and even oppressed team.
And the person who benefits from the “fail-up” isn’t winning in the long-term. They may experience an increase in pay and prestige, and though those things are valuable in some sense, this employee is going to have blindspots to learning and achieving real excellence — and be full of hot air. They’re being groomed to be a hack, not a leader.
Finally, the company hurts when it allows failing up. Its leaders are essentially trusting mediocre talent to do extraordinary work, which is confusing, sure, but just as equally inefficient and risky. Drawing up criteria for success and rewarding talent on merit and results, not popularity or charisma, shouldn’t be a novel idea. It’s going to be the very philosophy that helps a company stand resilient during challenging times, no different than the climate we’re in today.
What We Should Be Promoting Instead
As much as I wish it was easy enough to tell people to live and work by the golden rule, I know all too well how naive that would be. Instead, there are programs, policies, and practices leaders and managers can implement to ensure they are cultivating a culture of excellence.
Low hanging fruit would include adopting an intentional and mentorship management style. When hosting your 1:1s with teams, ensure that you do not just have a drawn-out status update. Have the precision to know when your team member harps on their wins and big flashes and glosses over their failures or underperformance. Dig deep into their projects, understand their bottlenecks and how they are, or aren’t, actively solving their problems. Identify behavioral patterns — do they consistently bring up the same changing colleagues? Are they being objective in thought and solution? Or could they be protecting the ones they favor, or shielding some of their team but not all of their team? Give your direct reports the resources and opportunities to be better; coach them to where you need them to be before their next promotion. Shifting to a more intentional management style causes the smoke and mirrors to dissipate and focuses on an employee’s work scope.
Next, practice objectivity in performance management. You can like a coworker as much as you wish, but you are ultimately hurting them, the company, and likely yourself, if you choose to turn a blind eye to poor performance or bad behavior. For example, when it comes to promoting a team member, it should be based on objectivity; it should not be a popularity contest. Hold yourself accountable and remain militant on performance feedback. Advancement and progression, both in business and character, can only come through self-awareness, self-improvement, and self-sacrificing.
It’s not to say that emotional intelligence is a lesser skill or that being a social butterfly deserves punishment. Quite the opposite; incredible leaders can do both. They can engage a room, influence stakeholders, and hold court as well as submit thoughtful work, exceed expectations, and hit their metrics with consistency. If we are not coaching our teams to be leaders, we are doing them a disservice. If we are only promoting the “room workers” or “watercooler kids”, we are doing the company and its talent a disservice.
Additionally, hosting 360-degree reviews will prove effective when determining the value of someone’s work. Often, our experience with a person can be atypical, especially if they are looking to impress certain organization members. Meanwhile, other teams are finding this employee difficult to work with and undependable. The work is sloppy, the metrics aren’t being hit, and they’re causing more tension among teams. By implementing 360-degree reviews, you will have a more dynamic look into how this team member performs, and you can compare your perception to others’ reality.
Finally, developing more business and leadership-training employee programming will be incredible for the company. Often, the overlooked talent has strength in focus or analytics but struggles to command a room, communicate effectively, or simply hasn’t been invited to sit at the table. Leadership training programs such as a mentorship program or Company X University will be the common ground between a busy executive looking for the next all-star and a mid-level employee looking for their next incredible opportunity. Similarly, it gives two professionals space to learn more about each other, work together on a project, and lend insight into what they can truly bring to the table.
For most of us, the experience of seeing someone accept the offer we felt was best suited for ourselves or someone else on the team is a right of passage. Even the most earnest and intensive promotion cycle will produce surprise picks. But to truly have a workplace of inclusivity and equity, failing up has to be a thing of the past.
