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Failing Up
Why Some Climb the Ladder Despite Mediocrity
Zulekha Nathoo • BBC News © 2021
Leadership / Leadership Mistakes
Human Resources / Learning & Development / Leadership Development
Society / Discrimination
Take-Aways
• “Failing upwards” occurs when someone gains promotions and better projects despite lackluster
performance.
• Upward failure is more likely when the employee is overconfident or when it results from “cultural
matching” with management.
• When women and BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) bosses practice cultural matching,
others can perceive it as a threat.
• Failing upwards can create great leaders, but the privilege of failing up should apply more evenly across
the workplace.
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Recommendation
Have you observed a co-worker fail, get another chance, fail again, get another chance, and finally succeed?
In this thoughtful BBC article, reporter Zulekha Nathoo explains that this chain of events isn’t worrisome
unless bosses are accepting failure based on discrimination. Problems arise when managers don’t apply
allowances for failure evenly throughout the workforce. Some employees know they can fail and try again,
due in large part to support from their superiors – often those with whom they are a demographic match.
Others suspect failure will be held against them, and research shows they are right.
Summary
“Failing upwards” occurs when someone gets promotions and better
projects despite lackluster performance.
You’ve probably seen it happen – a charismatic, but otherwise incompetent coworker gets the project
you wanted or another makes partner despite multiple slip-ups. Perhaps this coworker has merits you’re
not aware of, or perhaps he or she is simply “failing up,” gaining more desirable jobs even while proving
fundamentally incapable of doing his or her job. When someone fails up once, it becomes easier for them to
keep doing so.
“Once an individual is promoted, they become more visible to management, recruiters
and other leaders; experience on a résumé begins to hold more value than actual
performance outcome.”
A person who fails upward might keep succeeding because the boss wants to stand by his or her original
assessment of the employee’s potential. Often a boss sees a favored protégé’s performance through rosetinted glasses, taking a softer view of losses and exaggerating wins. Which is fine – many people need to
make mistakes to learn and, in the end, to become better leaders. But why did the boss choose that particular
employee for upward failure while penalizing others for their missteps?
Upward failure is more likely when the employee is overconfident or when it results
from “cultural matching” with management.
Sometimes failing up results from inflated self-confidence. Overconfidence is a trait more commonly seen
in men than women, and multiple studies show hiring managers can mistakenly perceive overconfidence
as leadership potential. Unfortunately, those two traits – overconfidence and leadership ability – are often
incompatible. “Empathy, humility and integrity” are more important characteristics for leaders, and women
more commonly possess those traits.
“We started focusing so much on style, extraversion, assertiveness, lean in, be confident,
brand yourself, make eye contact, body language, that we forgot to focus on substance.”
While confidence is pivotal to hiring and promotion, having a mentor in the workplace is also vital. A mentor
might support favored employees in hard times, champion them in good times, and advocate for their
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raises and promotions. The problem arises when mentors more frequently support employees of their own
ethnicity and gender. When corporate leadership is almost exclusively white and male, mentors tend to
maintain the status quo. Women and BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) employees know that
without a sponsor in management, they face more harsh penalties for even minor failures. With those fears
looming, they’re less likely to take the risks that might lead to innovation and success.
When women and BIPOC bosses practice cultural matching, others often see it as a
threat.
When a woman or BIPOC person attains a leadership position, some people already in power perceive their
presence on the upper rungs of management as a threat. In 2020, Utah State University conducted research
that found that many in the workforce regard female or BIPOC leaders as outsiders despite their high rank
in the company.
“Outsiders’ presence is experienced as a disruption, even a threat, and they are often
confronted with a burden of doubt regarding their competence, suspicion regarding
their trustworthiness, infantilization of their roles and hyper-surveillance of their work
performance.”
When a so-called outsider in a leadership position practices cultural matching by promoting someone of the
same gender or race, that is often seen as threatening the status quo. Research shows that punishment can
arrive in the form of poor performance reviews for the promoted person. These factors work against changes
in the leadership pipeline.
Failing upwards can create great leaders, but the privilege of failing up should apply
more evenly across the workplace.
Change begins with conversations and continues with tracking which type of employees tend to move up
the ladder and which remained stymied on the bottom rungs. Companies can benefit from embracing and
celebrating the learning opportunities that come with failure.
“Normalizing failure can encourage people to take more risks and think outside the box,
which can level the playing field and allow talent to rise based on innovation and ideas
rather than who’s most visible.”
Innovation requires risk-taking, which can lead to failure as a pivotal aspect of professional development.
All employees need to know they can take risks without facing penalties – this kind of change in corporate
culture can create true meritocracy in the workforce.
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About the Author
Zulekha Nathoo is a multimedia reporter for the BBC in Atlanta.
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