By / July 23, 2026 / Leadership, Uncategorized

What Gets You Promoted Isn’t What Make You Effective as a Leader

What often gets someone promoted into a leadership position is not the same as what makes them effective as a leader.  

And that’s a problem.

In fact, that’s a big reason why we still have so many bad leaders in organization today.  People are hired and promoted for the wrong reasons.

And what makes it worse is that these two aspects are often conflated (treated as if they mean the same thing)  in academic and popular leadership writing. It’s assumed that just because someone has a position of leadership or were able to be promoted into that position (such as a CEO position), then they must also be effective as leaders (see  Hogan Assessments).

And most of us know that’s not true just from experience. But more than that, research shows that as well.

Let’s take a deeper look at this gap, the research about it, the behaviors and qualities that get someone promoted vs being effective, and what we can do as individuals, as organizations, and society as a whole to overcome this gap.

TL;DR

  • Leadership emergence (getting the promotion) is different than leadership effectiveness (leading a team well)
  • Common traits leaders are promoted or hired for: charisma, extroversion and personality, confidence, political skills – these don’t make someone effective as a leader.
  • This is an issue because of the importance of leadership, and the poor leadership shows itself in worldwide low employee engagement rates as well as managerial failure rates (both in hiring and activity).
  • This keeps happening because of the false hero-leader image society often portrays, the assumption that someone being in a position means they know how to lead, the confusion surrounding leadership itself (with Dunning Kruger effect), and that it’s a vicious cycle – poor managers are raised and they keep promoting other poor managers for the same reasons.
  • To combat this, we need to stop seeing leaders as the charismatic hero types; hire for motive, teachability, and effectiveness indicators; stop equating someone being in a position with ability/knowledge of leadership; realize we may not know as much about leadership as we think we do; and we need to start killing the politics game when we are in a position to do so.

Leadership emergence vs. effectiveness

Researchers actually have names for these two things and knowing them will help make sense of everything below.

This gap is often labeled leadership emergence vs. leadership effectiveness.  

Leadership emergence is getting into the position, whether through a promotion or hiring, and part of it is being perceived as “leader-like”.

Leadership effectiveness is actually building high-performing, satisfied, committed teams that get results.

Why this is important

This is important because it is having real impact on our organizations. Leadership is the #1 cause for failure or success, because, ultimately, everything traces back to the leader.

The way a manger behaves or acts affects other people’s careers, stress, and more.

Their actions cause an organization to succeed… or to crumble and fall.

They are ultimately in charge of the culture and engagement of their employees.

And the stats show this gap is an issue.

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 found that in 2025, only 20% of employees were engaged worldwide (United States at 31%).

Gallup elsewhere also stated that “companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time.”

Hogan Assessments, looking at 12 different published estimates of managerial failure, stated that they range from 30%-67%, averaging at about 50%.

We can also look at the Great Resignation, the distrust of leaders and corporations and more, and we can see there is an issue.

And a big part of the cause is this gap between leadership emergence vs. effectiveness.

The qualities and traits that get people promoted

When it comes to the media and to society and culture, what do people often think makes someone a good leader?

Many think of the heroic type of leader who commands attention and is a single source for direction, decisions, and making things happen.

Here are some common traits that get people hired and promoted:

  • Confidence (or projected confidence)
  • Charisma
  • Extraversion
  • Personality
  • Political skill, networking, self-promotion, visibility
  • Narcissism
  • Talking more in meetings (babble hypothesis)
  • Technical ability

Let’s look at some of these more indepth.

Confidence

Frequently people think that someone showing confidence makes them a leader, that leaders should have confidence.

And it’s true that if you show no confidence, people likely won’t follow you.

But confidence, or projecting confidence (whether you really have confidence or not), doesn’t make you effective.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, in his article “The Dark Side of Having Confidence” on Psychology Today discusses a study that shows around a 9% overlap between confidence (how good you think you are) and competence (how good you actually are).  

Overconfidence is a danger, and it can blind you.

And, as the study showed, just because someone is confident in their ability doesn’t mean they are good at something.

In fact, you will find that many leaders who see themselves as effective are seen differently than those who are under them.  360 Feedback surveys can often come as a shock to leaders who are confident that they are doing well.

Adam Grant in Think Again, discusses the importance of humble confidence, the belief that you can and will succeed but the humility to recognize you don’t know everything.

He says, “You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present.”

Charisma

 Charisma is often seen as a needed quality for leaders. But, in reality, it’s not.

There can actually be a lot of dangers with charisma: ego and protection of one’s image, dependency on the leader, etc.

Jim Collins in his case-study research for Good to Great found that the majority of the most effective leaders he found were not charismatic.

Charisma isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not what makes a leader effective.

(Note: Sometimes people may think charisma is needed to inspire and motivate. But if you are relying on your charisma to do that, there are issues with your culture and other aspects of your organization.

You don’t need charisma to inspire and motive: a clear vision and purpose; providing connectedness, autonomy and mastery; and maintaining a healthy culture with psychological safety beats a charismatic leader any day.)

Extraversion and personality

More than likely, you know someone who is extroverted, who may talk easily with other people, but who is also ineffective in their job.

As a leaders, it generally is important to be able to build relationships with people, but that doesn’t rely on being extroverted.

And personality as a whole has a low predictor for leadership effectiveness. An article on the Hogan Assessments site discusses an internal study they’ve done to that effect. Hogan Assessments’ chief science officer Ryne Sherman described an internal analysis of thousands of leaders — rated by their own supervisors, peers, and subordinates — finding personality only weakly predicts who’s actually effective, even though it strongly predicts who gets seen as leader material.

There are other studies that show similar, but what mattered most is adaptability and versatility of leaders and their behaviors, not just having a certain personality trait.

Narcissism

Studies have shown that people who are narcissistic are more likely to get promoted into leadership positions because they are more self-promoting, know how to play the game, how to present themselves in interviews, and are sociable and extroverted, among other traits.

However, as Grijalva, Harms, Newman, Gaddis, and Fraley found in their study “Narcissism And Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of Linear and Nonlinear Relationships”, “narcissism displays a positive relationship with leadership emergence, but no relationship with leadership effectiveness.”

In fact, they found that, similar to what was discussed above, narcissistic leaders rate themselves highly while their subordinates do the opposite.

Talking a lot (Babble Hypothesis)

Being the person who talks the most can also make someone seem “leader-like”.

One study of  college students  published in Leadership Quarterly found that those who had more speaking time were more likely to be nominated as the leader, even after accounting for other factors.

Playing the politic game

And of course, there are those who know how to play the game well. They suck up to the boss, make themselves look good, and know how to work the system in their favor.

At the same time, they may be ineffective with their team. People can and do act one way with their boss and another way with their subordinates.

In fact, researchers even call it the Kiss-Up-Kick-Down phenomenon.

And it’s harmful in many ways. When your focus is on self-promotion, your focus isn’t on what is good for your team, organization, and goals.

Technical ability

One common reason people get moved up into a management position in the first place is that they were good at their job, so they get put into a position to manage people doing similar jobs.

They are promoted for technical ability.

The problem is, leading and managing are different skills than the technical job. Managing a group of engineers or salespeople or graphic designers is different than doing the engineering work or selling or designing.

In their study “Promotions and the Peter Principle”, Benson, Li, and Shue found that for those they studied, strong sales performance predicted getting promoted while at the same time being associated with worse managerial performance afterward.

Fred Luthan’s study

One research study that stands out is the study by Fred Luthans in 1988. One of the aspects that stand out about the study is the methodology he used.

Much of the leadership research done today is through cross-sectional surveys. These are surveys that are a one-time survey done at one point of time. When you do that, you can’t see cause and effect, just possible correlation.

There are different issues that can come with that, and there is some pushback against the large use of those in research.   

What makes Luthan’s study stand out is that his research was observational. Researchers shadowed  about 450 managers and coded their actual day-to-day behaviors into four categories:

  • Networking: socializing/politicking with outsiders
  • Communication: routine info exchange, paperwork
  • Human Resource Management: motivating, training, conflict, staffing
  • Traditional Management: planning, decision-making, controlling

He found that managers who were successful at getting promoted the fastest did the following:

  • 48% networking
  • 28% communication
  • 13% traditional management
  • 11% HR management

Managers with the best team results and satisfaction focused differently:

  • 44% communication
  • 26% HR management
  • 19% traditional management
  • 11% networking

Those who were promoted the fastest were those who spent most of their time socializing and politicking and only 11% managing and developing their team.

Those who were effective only spent 11% networking. Instead, they spent 26% of their time managing and developing their team and 44% of their time communicating — 16 points more than the fast-promoted group.

In fact, he found that only 10% of managers studied were both successful (in being promoted) and effective.

What makes an effective leader

What then makes someone an effective leader?

When we look at Luthans’s study, what made people more effective in the areas he studies was when they focused more on communication and working with and developing their team.

But in a more broader sense, including that, what makes a leader effective?

Here are some of the key behaviors that effective leaders generally do:

  • Point a direction: Whether it’s one they created or taken on, they point a direction for their team. They are taking them somewhere.
  • Communicate: They communicate often and thoroughly. They make sure everyone knows what they need to know in order to do their job. They communicate clear expectations. The more transparent the better.
  • Listening: The higher up you go, the more detached you get. Leaders listen well to input.
  • Handle conflict effectively: They encourage the right kind of conflict but also handle any negative conflict promptly. They don’t let things fester.
  • Have hard conversations: They don’t avoid the hard conversations with people. They make them happen.
  • Delegate and follow up: They don’t try to do it all themselves, and they also don’t go “hands-off”. They delegate effectively and then follow up as needed.
  • Mange decision making: They make the decisions when they need to, but they also pass on decision making where it makes sense to. They aren’t a bottleneck.
  • Grow their team: This can be done through more formal coaching or by coaching them through mistakes, decisions, and problems or providing resources and challenges for growth.
  • Adapt: They aren’t stuck being one “style” or just focus on their personality or strength. They adjust and adapt as needed. Their focus is on doing what’s needed and what’s effective, not what’s comfortable.
  • Support: Their focus is supporting and helping their team reach the goal, not self-promoting.

Why this keeps happening

Why does this keep happening? Why do we keep  promoting and hiring the wrong people for the wrong reasons? There are few factors for this.

The portrayed image of a “leader”

One is the image often portrayed as leaders. Even though there is research that shows the opposite, society and culture often sees leaders as the charismatic, extroverted, hero-type leaders. We see confidence and it’s easy to assume competence based off that, even if it’s not true.

Our media and society helps push this mentality, along with other marketing, such as apps that promote things like “talk like a leader” or “act like a leader” when all it’s talking about is image management and the confident, charismatic archetype.

The conflation between emergence and effectiveness

The conflation between emergence and effectiveness is also a big factor. People assume that just because someone is in a position that they must know how to lead. And that’s false.

(That’s also why you have to be careful following leadership advice from CEOs etc. because many made that position not because of leadership ability, but for the other reasons listed above).

Confusion of what leadership is and the Dunning Kruger effect

Another reason is that there is still so much confusion about leadership, how to even define it, what makes a leader successful, and even how important it is.

Many have a misunderstood view of it and promote, hire, and act based on that misconstrued view.

Part of it is the Dunning Kruger Effect – the less you know about something the more confident you are about what you think you know. This infects leaders A LOT. Especially when someone gets in a position, they can believe they know more than they do.

It’s a vicious, negative cycle

It’s also repeated because it’s a vicious cycle. Taking in some of what we mentioned above, people get raised up for the wrong reasons. Because they’re not effective leaders themselves, they don’t recognize what effectiveness looks like.

 Then they start hiring and promoting, so they promote for the same reasons, and the cycle continues.

Meanwhile people doing the real work of leadership get passed over. It’s a self-reinforcing / compounding problem across an organization over time.

The motive factor

Another aspect that’s often ignored in this topic is one’s motive. Patrick Lencioni in his book The Motive explains it well.

He says there are two main motives: a selfish and the service one. Many people get into leadership positions and pursue them because of the selfish reason. They do it because of the rewards, the perks, the respect and money they can get, or for their career. Whatever the reason, the entire reason they’re doing it is for them.

The service motive is different. Those with the service motive are in leadership because they’re focused on serving the team and serving the goal of helping the team accomplish the goal.

Motive matters drastically.

When you have the selfish motive, you do the activities that help you in your personal goals (whether it helps the team and its goal or not) and/or the tasks that you’re comfortable with or that you enjoy.

For example, you may avoid hard conversations because you don’t want to do them. They’re uncomfortable.

The service motive is different because, with a service motive, your focus is on helping the team, moving the goals forward, over your self-advancement.

You’re about having the hard conversations and doing what’s needed for the team and for the goal, whether it’s comfortable or not, because you are about serving and doing what’s needed.

The whole motive mentality is frequently ignored in literature when it comes to leadership, but it’s one of the most impactful aspects of what makes someone effective versus helping them emerge.

What this means for us as a whole

So what does this mean for us as a culture, as a society, as leaders and business people? How can we fix this issue?

There are few things we can do.

First, we need to stop equating the “heroic leader” image (confident, extroverted, charismatic) with actual leadership.

And we need to hire/promote based on effectiveness indicators, not image. Look for people with the right motive, who aren’t just confident but humble, who are teachable and show the indicators of effectiveness.

And we should be cautious about who you take leadership advice from. Just because someone has a title (CEO, VP) doesn’t mean they are competent as a leader. It just confirms they reached a position. It doesn’t mean their advice is good.

I had good friend recommend me to interview CEOs for my podcast. Even though my friend had the best heart and was trying to be helpful, I was against that for the same reason we’ve been discussing: just because they are CEO doesn’t mean they know how to lead well.

What this means for us as individual leaders

If you’re already in a leadership position, recognize you may have gotten there via emergence factors, not because you’re actually great at it yet. Be careful of the ego trap and the “assumed knowledge” that can come with a position.

Do be confident that you can succeed, but realize you may not know everything yet or that others may have input that can help you.

Being a “bad” leader doesn’t mean you are bad person, and it’s not a character flaw. Leadership is a skill, and it just means you need to grow more.

 (You wouldn’t say someone is a bad person for being bad at the skill of crocheting – it’s the same with leadership).

It’s actually a scale, not good or bad, and you just look at the scale where you are at and work on getting better.

And be careful of the Dunning-Kruger effect: confidence in your own leadership ability isn’t evidence of competence.

Dealing with politics

If you’re rising or want to rise in higher leadership positions, there may be a political environment you have to manage. It’s unfortunate, and it’s real.

If that’s the case, then play the game ethically and morally while still being effective. Aim to be the rare 10% that Luthans mentioned.

However, once you get to the higher position, kill the game beneath you. Build a great culture, hire and promote for the right reasons, and remove the politics for the people under you the best you can.

Let’s work to get rid of the gap between leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness. The sooner we do that, the sooner we will start to have better leaders in our organizations.  

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