You promoted your best salesperson. Now they're your worst leader.

You already know the data, but there is a question no one is asking

The Mexico Workplace Environment Trends 2026 study by Kelly found that poor leadership is the second leading cause of resignation in the country, just 13 points behind salary and above the lack of growth opportunities. Employees especially value empathetic and trustworthy leaders who have assertive communication and the ability to develop their team.

The conclusion almost everyone is repeating is that we need to train more empathetic leaders. That is true, and it is also incomplete. No one is asking how those people reached leadership positions in the first place.

This sounds like the Peter Principle

Most organizations promote someone to a leadership position based on their individual performance. The best salesperson becomes the sales manager. The most technical analyst becomes the department head. The decision makes sense at the time: that person proved to be excellent at what they did. The problem is that being excellent at executing a task and being capable of leading people are two completely different skills, and the first does not guarantee the second.

This has had a name in organizational theory for decades: the Peter Principle, the tendency of organizations to promote someone to their level of incompetence. The "bad leader" that the Kelly study talks about was almost always, at some point, an outstanding individual contributor.

Why this is a design problem, not a personality problem

When poor leadership is interpreted as a personality problem ("we need more empathetic leaders"), the proposed solution is post-promotion training. When it is interpreted as a promotion process design problem, the question changes completely: what are we evaluating before promoting someone—individual performance or the actual ability to lead people?

Most promotion processes evaluate the first variable almost exclusively. They rarely evaluate the second explicitly, and when they do, it is usually after the promotion, not before.

The cost that does not appear in the turnover report

Every poorly evaluated promotion doesn't just place someone unprepared into a critical role. It drives turnover that can be measured across the team under that person, even if the human resources report rarely connects that turnover to the promotion decision that caused it months earlier.

The early signs, before they turn into turnover

There are early signs that a promotion was decided based on individual performance rather than leadership capability. They usually appear months before the turnover becomes visible in any report. This week, in Thursday's carousel, we will break down 5 of those signs in detail.

Does your promotion process evaluate leadership ability, or just individual performance disguised as a promotion?