The uncomfortable pattern hiding inside almost every organisation — and what actually fixes it.
By Sonia McDonald, CEO & Founder, LeadershipHQ
leadershiphq.com.au | soniamcdonald.com
Let me say the quiet part loud.
Somewhere in your organisation right now, there is a leader who is technically excellent, deeply knowledgeable, and genuinely well-intentioned — who is also slowly, quietly, making their team miserable. Not because they’re a bad person. Because nobody ever taught them how to lead people, and nobody stopped to ask if they actually should.
We just promoted them. Because they were brilliant at the job. And we assumed the rest would follow.
It didn’t. It never does. And the cost — to the people on their team, to the organisation, and often to the leader themselves — is enormous.
This is the promotion problem nobody wants to talk about. And after 30 years working with leaders and organisations across the globe, I’m done staying polite about it.
“The talents that make a person brilliant in their role are almost never the same ones that will make them effective as a leader.”
THE PATTERN
We’ve Been Doing This for Over 50 Years
In 1969, Laurence Peter observed something that should have changed everything: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.” We called it the Peter Principle. We laughed. And then we kept doing exactly what he described.
Fifty years later, a landmark study of nearly 40,000 sales workers across 131 firms confirmed the pattern hasn’t budged. Organisations systematically promote their best performers — even when those people end up making worse managers, and even when there are better predictors of leadership quality sitting right in front of them.
Gallup’s research is even more direct. They found that 82% of the time, organisations choose the wrong person for leadership roles — almost always because the decision was based on technical skill rather than the ability to lead people. Only 1 in 10 people placed into manager roles have a genuine natural talent for it.
Let that sit for a moment. 82% of the time.
Research finds that between 50% and 70% of leaders fail within the first 18 months of their new role. Hired from outside or promoted from within — it doesn’t matter. The failure rate is staggering. Yet we keep running the same playbook and wondering why we keep getting the same result.
THE NUMBERS
82% of promotions are made based on technical skill alone (Gallup)
70% of team engagement is determined solely by the manager (Gallup)
75% of employees who quit cite their manager as a primary reason
$8.8T lost globally every year to poor leadership (Gallup 2024)
THE SKILL GAP
Leadership Is an Entirely Different Job
Here’s what we never say clearly enough: the moment you become responsible for people, your entire job description changes. Not slightly. Completely.
Before the promotion, success looked like output, expertise, hitting targets, being the most capable person in the room. Those skills got them noticed. Those skills earned the reward.
But after the promotion? Success looks like this:
→ Emotional regulation — staying steady when everything is on fire
→ Psychological safety — creating a space where people dare to speak up
→ Courageous conversations — saying the hard thing with care, not avoidance
→ Trust — building it slowly, losing it instantly
→ Presence under pressure — showing up as a leader when the stakes are highest
→ Self-awareness — knowing how you land on others, not just how you feel inside
→ Listening — actually listening, not just waiting to talk
→ Feedback — giving it, receiving it, and not making it personal either way
None of these skills are in the performance review that got them promoted. Most weren’t taught in their degrees. Many have never been discussed, let alone developed.
And then we hand them a team and expect magic.
We don’t just promote the wrong people. We promote them, abandon them, and then act surprised when it goes wrong.
THE NEUROSCIENCE
Why Good People Become Difficult Leaders
Here’s something I want every organisation to understand — because it changes how we see leadership failure entirely.
When a leader is under stress, pressure, uncertainty, or threat, their brain doesn’t stay rational. It defaults to survival. Neuroscientists call it the amygdala hijack. The brain’s threat-detection system fires faster than the prefrontal cortex — the part responsible for rational thinking and emotional regulation — can respond. Research shows chronic stress can suppress prefrontal cortex activity by up to 50%.
The result? A leader who becomes reactive. Defensive. Controlling. Avoidant. Who stops listening. Who shuts down rather than opens up. Who, in the moments that matter most to their team, is neurologically operating in self-protection mode.
Not because they’re evil. Because they’re dysregulated. Because no one ever taught them to recognise what’s happening in their own nervous system — let alone how to interrupt it.
“Leadership doesn’t fail in the strategy session. It fails in the Monday morning meeting. In the silence after someone speaks up. In the email that never gets answered.”
THE REAL COST
One Unsafe Leader Poisons Everything
I want to be very clear about something organisations consistently underestimate: a poor promotion doesn’t just affect one person.
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson spent decades researching what separates high-performing teams from the rest. Her answer? Psychological safety — the belief that it’s safe to speak up, take risks, and admit mistakes without fear. Google’s Project Aristotle confirmed it: psychological safety was by far the most important factor in team effectiveness. More than talent. More than strategy. More than resources.
And here’s the brutal truth: one emotionally unsafe leader can destroy that environment completely.
The financial picture is devastating. Disengaged employees cost an estimated 18% of their annual salary in lost productivity. Replacing someone who leaves costs between 33% and 150% of their salary. Globally, low engagement costs the world economy $8.8 trillion a year — 9% of global GDP. The CIPD found that poor managers contribute directly to mental health deterioration in half their team members. 56% higher mental health claims in workplaces with toxic bosses.
This is not a soft problem. This is a financial and human emergency.
→ Team trust erodes — slowly, silently, until it’s gone
→ High performers leave first — they always have the most options
→ Innovation dies — no one risks an idea in an unsafe room
→ Culture calcifies — around fear, politics, or learned helplessness
→ Customer experience suffers — disengaged teams don’t go the extra mile
→ The leader burns out — carrying a role they were never equipped for
THE INDUSTRY PROBLEM
We Wait Too Long. Every Single Time.
Here is what the leadership industry gets profoundly wrong: we treat leadership development as a response to crisis, not a foundation for growth.
We promote someone. We leave them to figure it out. And then, only after the complaints start, the turnover rises, the engagement scores drop, and the culture cracks – we send them to a leadership program.
That’s not development. That’s damage control.
The most courageous thing an organisation can do is decide that leadership capability is non-negotiable before the promotion — not after. Because leadership isn’t a reward for past performance. It’s a responsibility to future people.
THE FIX
What Actually Great Organisations Do
The best organisations I work with have made a fundamental shift. They’ve stopped treating leadership as the natural next step after strong individual performance. They treat it as a distinct capability — one that needs to be assessed, developed, and supported deliberately.
They don’t just ask, ‘Are they brilliant at the job? They ask:
→ Do they have the emotional intelligence to lead under pressure?
→ Can they hold a courageous conversation without collapsing or crushing?
→ Do they create safety — or do they create fear?
→ Are they self-aware enough to know how they’re landing on others?
→ Can they regulate themselves when everything is hard?
→ Do they build trust, or do they demand compliance?
→ Are they willing to grow — or do they already think they’ve arrived?
Leadership is not a title. It never was. It’s how you show up for people. Every day. Under pressure. When it’s hard. When nobody’s watching.
Ready to Stop Promoting Dysfunction?
Sonia McDonald is a global keynote speaker, executive coach, and CEO of LeadershipHQ, with over three decades of experience building leaders who actually lead. Real talk. No fluff. Backed by neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and the courage to have the conversations organisations keep avoiding.
30+ Years Experience | Top 250 Women Globally | 100,000+ Leaders Reached
🎤 Keynote Speaking – High-energy talks on leadership, neuroscience, courage and culture that move rooms to action.
🧭 Executive Coaching – One-on-one coaching for leaders who are ready to go from capable to genuinely transformational.
🏛️ Leadership Programs – Tailored programs for emerging leaders, women in leadership, and executive teams.
📖 Bestselling Books – First Comes Courage · Just Rock It! · Leadership Attitude
