Your best employee today may not be your best employee in the job you're preparing them for tomorrow.
It happens all the time.
Someone is exceptional at their job. They outperform their peers, consistently hit their numbers and become the obvious candidate when a management position opens.
They've earned it.
Six months later, they're miserable.
The organization is confused. The employee is frustrated. Their team may be struggling. And sometimes the person eventually leaves the company altogether.
What happened?
We often assume that career progression means doing a more senior version of the same job.
Behaviorally, it often doesn't.
Sometimes a promotion doesn't simply increase the employee's responsibilities. It fundamentally changes what the job requires from that person every day.
And that creates an important question for organizations using behavioral data:
Should we hire someone for the job they're applying for today—or for the job we think they might progress into tomorrow?
The answer isn't as simple as choosing one or the other.
One of the clearest examples comes from sales.
Organizations have historically promoted successful salespeople into sales management. On the surface, that makes perfect sense. Who better to lead salespeople than the person who has demonstrated that they can sell?
Except selling and managing salespeople aren't the same job.
Harvard Business Review explored this problem in “Think Twice Before Promoting Your Best Salesperson,” observing the paradox that sales leaders commonly recognize that the best salesperson isn't necessarily the best sales manager—yet organizations continue to select managers from among their highest-performing sellers.
Read: Think Twice Before Promoting Your Best Salesperson — Harvard Business Review
Even more compelling evidence comes from researchers Alan Benson, Danielle Li and Kelly Shue.
Their study, “Promotions and the Peter Principle,” analyzed 38,843 salespeople across 131 U.S. companies, including 1,553 employees promoted into management.
They found strong evidence that organizations placed significant weight on previous sales performance when deciding who to promote. But pre-promotion sales performance was negatively correlated with subsequent managerial performance.
Read the original research: Promotions and the Peter Principle — Quarterly Journal of Economics
This is the organizational double hit:
You can take an exceptional performer out of a job where they're thriving and put them into a job where they struggle.
You haven't just potentially created a poor manager.
You've also lost a great salesperson.
A friend of mine—I'll call him Dave—experienced almost exactly this.
Dave was doing well in his role and was offered what looked like the natural next step: management.
More responsibility. More status. Career progression.
Except he hated it.
The work he enjoyed had been replaced by managing other people, dealing with their problems and spending his time doing things that simply weren't what had made him successful or energized him previously.
Within about six months, he asked to transfer out.
There was nothing wrong with Dave.
There wasn't necessarily anything wrong with the management job either.
The problem was the assumption that success in Job A predicted fit for Job B.
From a behavioral-science perspective, those are two entirely separate questions.
This is where The Predictive Index becomes particularly powerful.
PI's Behavioral Assessment measures four primary workplace behavioral drives:
A — Dominance: the drive to exert influence on people or events.
B — Extraversion: the drive for social interaction with others.
C — Patience: the drive for consistency and stability.
D — Formality: the drive to conform to rules and structure.
The purpose isn't to determine whether someone has a “good” or “bad” profile. There is no universally ideal behavioral pattern.
The question is:
What does this particular job require?
PI Hire allows an organization to create a Job Target representing the behavioral and cognitive requirements of a role and then assess candidate alignment against those requirements.
Organizations can establish Behavioral Targets in several ways, including stakeholder input, PI benchmarks and modeling an existing top performer.
At Talent Optimizers, we frequently go further.
Where sufficient data exists, we can look at assessment data alongside actual performance data and ask:
What behavioral characteristics are genuinely associated with success in this organization, doing this particular job?
That can create a much stronger foundation for hiring.
But it introduces another question that organizations rarely consider.
Imagine a successful individual salesperson.
Their role may reward independence, urgency, competitive drive, autonomy, comfort taking risks and an intense focus on personal results.
Now promote that person into management.
Their output is no longer primarily their own sales.
Success may depend upon coaching different personalities, developing struggling employees, holding people accountable, communicating repeatedly, delegating rather than doing, creating consistency, following management processes and achieving results through other people.
Those requirements could create a substantially different Behavioral Target.
PI's own historical Job Target data illustrates why the distinction matters. Its published guidance on sales managers identifies Maverick, Captain and Persuader as three frequently appearing Reference Profiles for sales-management Job Targets.
The important point isn't those particular profiles.
It's that the management role deserves its own Job Target.
People can adapt.
People can learn.
People can absolutely succeed in jobs that don't perfectly align with their natural behavioral drives.
PI shouldn't be used to put people into boxes.
But behavioral stretch has consequences.
Imagine someone naturally high in Dominance (A). They may thrive with independence, challenge and the opportunity to influence outcomes. Put them into an environment requiring constant consensus and limited autonomy and they may have to consciously moderate that natural drive.
Someone with lower Patience (C) may enjoy variety, change and a faster pace. Put them into a highly repetitive, methodical environment and they can perform—but maintaining that behavior may require significantly more conscious effort.
Someone with lower Formality (D) may prefer flexibility and freedom from rules. Put them into a highly regulated position requiring precision, process and strict compliance and, again, they may be able to do it—but the behavioral stretch can be substantial.
PI describes these drives as creating different behavioral needs: higher A seeks independence and challenge; higher B interaction and connection; higher C consistency and steady pace; and higher D clear expectations and freedom from risk or error.
That is why two jobs sitting next to each other on an organizational chart can feel completely different to the same employee.
A promotion changes more than someone's title. It can change the behavioral environment in which they're expected to operate.
The Peter Principle usually focuses on one mistake:
Promoting someone because they're excellent at their current job even though they may not be suited to management.
But behavioral data exposes the opposite problem.
Suppose someone has the behavioral makeup to become an exceptional manager.
Unfortunately, the entry-level job they need to succeed in before being considered for management requires very different behaviors.
They may never become the top performer.
They may be overlooked for promotion precisely because the organization is measuring them against characteristics that matter in their current job rather than their future job.
Think about the implications.
The employee who naturally fits Job A becomes the obvious promotion candidate even though Job B requires different behaviors.
Meanwhile, an employee who could potentially thrive in Job B is never considered because they're not exceptional in Job A.
You can end up systematically promoting people whose behavioral fit decreases as they move upward while overlooking people whose behavioral fit would increase.
That is a succession-planning problem, not merely a hiring problem.
We recently encountered a great example during a PI onboarding engagement.
The organization hires employees into an entry-level customer-service position.
From there, employees can eventually move into several different roles through promotions and lateral moves.
Initially, the hiring question seemed straightforward:
What does success in customer service look like?
We could create a Customer Service Job Target, assess candidates and improve job-fit predictability.
But then we asked a different question:
Where do these people go next?
Suddenly the hiring challenge became much more interesting.
PI's published customer-service data provides a useful illustration. Across approximately 19,000 people who had established customer-service Job Targets at the time PI analyzed its data, three commonly appearing Reference Profiles were:
Operator — Stabilizing
Artisan — Stabilizing
Collaborator — Social
Those patterns make intuitive sense for many customer-service environments. PI describes Operators as patient and cooperative, Artisans as precise and analytical, and Collaborators as people-oriented and patient.
But imagine that customer service is merely the front door.
After two years, employees might progress into:
Team leadership
Billing or financial administration
Technical/problem-solving work
Sales/account management
Now we potentially have four very different behavioral destinations.
Someone who is beautifully aligned with the customer-service Job Target might face substantial behavioral stretch moving into one of them.
Someone else might be a less obvious behavioral fit for the entry role—but potentially exceptional in one of those future positions.
So we need a better model.
Free playbook
The Hiring for Progression Playbook turns the model below into a 7-step process with four ready-to-use worksheets, including a progression route map and a behavioral distance comparison.
Instead of looking at one Job Target in isolation, build Job Targets for both:
The Entry Role → The Likely Progression Role(s)
Then contrast them.
We recommend classifying the relationship between the jobs into three categories.
The Job Targets are very similar.
The factors sit in broadly similar positions and intensities, and the same or closely related Reference Profiles may appear around the targets.
Progression isn't behaviorally identical, but the employee is being asked to operate in a relatively familiar behavioral environment.
Example:
Customer Service Representative → Senior Customer Service Representative.
Hire for the current job.
There is little reason to compromise present-day job fit because the likely progression path doesn't introduce significant behavioral change.
Development can therefore focus primarily on experience, technical capability and increasing responsibility.
The Job Targets aren't identical, but there is meaningful overlap.
Perhaps several Reference Profiles could reasonably align with the entry role, while some of those patterns also sit closer to the future role.
Or both roles may predominantly occupy the same broad PI Reference Profile group—Analytical, Social, Stabilizing or Persistent—while requiring different factor intensities. PI uses these four groups as broad behavioral neighborhoods rather than exact descriptions of a person.
This is where workforce planning becomes interesting.
Hire for the current role first.
The employee still has to perform the job you're actually employing them to do.
However, if your validated Job Target supports multiple behavioral patterns, don't unnecessarily narrow the candidate pool to only the pattern most closely aligned with today's job.
Instead, understand which candidates could also align with likely progression roles.
That creates two populations.
These employees may show somewhat less natural alignment with aspects of the current position but stronger alignment with a future role.
Don't penalize them automatically because their Job Fit isn't the highest in the candidate pool.
Instead, use behavioral interview questions to explore awareness and coping mechanisms around the areas of misalignment.
Then look at the whole person.
PI's Head, Heart, Briefcase framework is especially important here:
Head: behavioral drives and cognitive ability
Heart: values and interests
Briefcase: knowledge, skills and experience.
A candidate is much more than a behavioral match score.
If hired, build an intentional development plan around the behavioral stretch required in their initial position.
And where appropriate, be transparent:
“There are aspects of this role that may require some behavioral stretch for you, but there are also future opportunities in the organization where some of your natural strengths could become particularly valuable.”
That changes the employee experience dramatically.
They're not simply struggling.
They're developing toward something.
Now consider the opposite person.
Their behavioral pattern strongly aligns with the current position.
They may thrive.
But the traditional next step could require considerable behavioral stretch.
They deserve visibility into that too.
Development conversations should help them understand:
What will change?
Which natural strengths will continue to serve them?
Where will the new job require stretch?
Do they actually want that?
What strategies could help them adapt if they choose it?
Career development should help people make better career decisions—not simply push everyone upward through the same organizational funnel.
This is the biggest warning sign.
The entry Job Target and progression Job Target require substantially different behavioral patterns.
They may fall into completely different Reference Profile groups or sit on opposite sides of important PI factors.
For example, imagine an entry position strongly favoring Stabilizing behaviors—steady pace, process, cooperation and structure—while the traditional progression role requires a highly independent, proactive, risk-tolerant leader operating in constant change.
Those aren't simply different seniority levels.
They're different behavioral jobs.
Stop treating the second position as the automatic promotion destination for the first.
Recruit directly into the future role when appropriate.
And, critically, create alternative progression routes for excellent employees in the original position.
This is one of the biggest changes organizations can make.
If an employee is exceptional at their job, why is the organizational reward so often:
“Congratulations. You don't have to do that job anymore.”
Progression could instead mean:
This creates a career lattice rather than a career ladder.
And it allows organizations to reward great people without assuming that everybody eventually needs to manage somebody.
Here's the process we recommend.
Don't begin with the person.
Begin with the work.
Ask what behaviors and cognitive requirements are necessary for success in the job today.
Use stakeholder input, PI benchmark data, top-performer information and, where available, objective performance data to validate the target. PI currently supports creating targets manually, collaboratively, from PI benchmarks or from top performers.
Ask:
Where do successful employees typically go after this role?
Don't assume there's only one answer.
There may be management, specialist and lateral routes.
Treat every progression role as a separate job.
Because it is.
Contrast the current and future Job Targets.
Classify each pathway as:
Behavioral Continuity
Adjacent Stretch
or
Behavioral Pivot
This principle remains critical.
Do not hire somebody primarily because they'll be good at a job they might perform three years from now.
They first need a reasonable path to success in today's job.
But when several candidates can successfully perform the current role, understanding future behavioral alignment becomes valuable workforce-planning data.
Once hired, use the employee's Behavioral Pattern against both Job Targets.
Now development becomes specific.
Instead of:
“You need to work on your leadership skills.”
you can identify where future responsibilities will require behavioral stretch and develop awareness, strategies and coping mechanisms before the promotion happens.
Don't ask only:
“Are they ready for promotion?”
Ask:
“Is the next role actually the right role for them?”
That is a profoundly different talent conversation.
Return to our anonymous customer-service organization.
Instead of building one Customer Service Job Target, we would build:
Customer Service — Entry Target
plus targets for each major progression destination, potentially including:
Customer Service → Team Leader
Customer Service → Billing/Financial Operations
Customer Service → Technical/Specialist Role
Customer Service → Sales/Account Management
We would then overlay those targets.
Imagine the customer-service target most closely aligned with Operator, Artisan and Collaborator-type behavioral patterns—consistent with PI's historical customer-service Job Target data.
Some progression routes may retain similar Stabilizing characteristics.
Behavioral Continuity.
Others may require increased Dominance, reduced Patience, greater social influence or different attitudes toward rules and risk.
Adjacent Stretch.
Others could move the employee into a fundamentally different behavioral neighborhood.
Behavioral Pivot.
Now hiring becomes much more sophisticated.
You're still hiring excellent customer-service people.
But you're also creating visibility into your future talent pipeline.
You might discover that one new employee has strong potential for financial operations.
Another could eventually lead people.
Another could become an exceptional senior customer-service specialist but face significant behavioral stretch in management.
Another might not initially look like the most obvious customer-service candidate but, with appropriate support, could develop into precisely the type of leader the organization struggles to find externally.
That's workforce planning powered by behavioral data.
Perhaps the most important lesson is this:
Performance tells you how successfully someone is doing their current job.
It doesn't automatically tell you whether they're behaviorally aligned with the next one.
Likewise, struggling with aspects of today's job doesn't automatically mean someone lacks potential.
Organizations need to separate:
Current Performance
from
Current Job Fit
from
Future Job Fit
from
Future Potential.
Those aren't the same things.
And when we collapse them into one measure, we create the conditions for the Peter Principle.
When you hire externally, you typically ask:
What does this job require, and which candidate best matches those requirements?
Yet when promoting internally, organizations often reverse the equation:
Who's performing best today? Let's give them the job.
Why wouldn't we apply the same rigor internally that we apply externally?
Build the Job Target.
Understand the person's behavioral drives.
Evaluate their Head, Heart and Briefcase.
Identify areas of alignment.
Identify areas of behavioral stretch.
Explore awareness and coping mechanisms.
Then make the decision.
A promotion is, after all, a hiring decision.
You're hiring an existing employee into a new job.
Organizations invest enormous energy trying to identify high-potential employees.
Behavioral data gives us an opportunity to make that process considerably smarter.
Don't just identify who's performing today.
Understand why they're performing.
Then understand what tomorrow's job will ask them to do differently.
Sometimes the behavioral requirements will barely change.
Sometimes they will stretch.
Sometimes they will pivot completely.
When you can see that difference before making the promotion, you can prepare people for it, provide alternative career paths where appropriate, identify overlooked talent and avoid turning your best performers into unhappy managers.
The goal isn't to use behavioral data to tell employees what they can't become.
It's the opposite.
It's to give employees and organizations enough insight to make deliberate decisions about what comes next.
Hire for today's job. Understand tomorrow's job. Develop for the distance between them.
Free 15-page playbook
The Job Progression Alignment Model, a 7-step process to apply before you recruit, a worked customer-service example, four ready-to-use worksheets and an interview guide.