Are You Living by the Peter Principle?

The Peter Principle is a concept which asserts that people will rise to their greatest level of incompetence.

My husband, who was in the military for seven years, has seen this demonstrated often. It is a common occurrence within hierarchical organizations. An employee continues to be promoted because of their success at past jobs. Promotion keeps occurring until, ultimately, they find themselves at a level they just aren’t good at. Once they reach incompetence, the promotions stop, but they are allowed to remain incompetent one level beyond where they would be successful.

An example: I was a high school basketball coach. I coached freshmen. Then I coached junior varsity. Then the head coach left, and I was expected to take the job.

Only I didn’t want it.

Actually, I refused to take it.

This perplexed the people I worked for. In fact, I had to basically talk them out of offering me the job. I wasn’t the person they wanted, and I knew it. I am a great assistant coach. But I knew I would not be a good head coach. I knew I would be incredibly frustrated by my own incompetence. I knew if I took the head coaching job, I would end up living out the Peter Principle.

The ability to say no and avoid the Peter Principle is easier outside of hierarchical organizations. I had power to say no. But what do you do if you are given a promotion that you know is beyond your talent and abilities? Many people in such situations find themselves facing a mountain-sized challenge. But they may also feel forced to accept the position.

Non-working women are rarely forced into those situations. Instead, we force ourselves into them all on our own!

Colossians 3:23-24 says, “Whatever you, do work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (NIV).

And yet, within the church and many social settings we find ourselves in as women, I think we think this Scripture says, “Whatever anyone asks you to do, say yes, not worrying about what the Lord really wants but instead, serving your human masters.”

Kids’ schools. Kids’ organizations. Church. Community. Homeschool. Clubs.

Needs are all around us. And we step in and say yes and find ourselves drowning in something we were never supposed to be doing in in the first place.

Just recently, I watched numerous friends wading into waters they didn’t want to be in and were pretty sure they didn’t belong in.

One friend felt that it was her duty to serve in children’s church. She was already in ministry elsewhere, but it wasn’t a regular need, so she thought she needed to do the next thing.

After teaching children in a public school all week with barely any time left for her own daughter, she was considering volunteering for something she didn’t want to do because she felt she should do it.

But was God calling her to do it?

My daughter’s ballet studio puts on a large performance every winter. One mama, in particular, found herself volunteering for a role that she knew would emotionally and physically clobber her. Because no one else had stepped up, she was preparing to serve outside her calling, even though she knew deep down that God was calling her to something completely different.

Saying no to the wrong thing isn’t easy. We want people to like us. We want to please people. We want to help. We want to serve.

And yes, sometimes serving means doing something you really don’t want to do for the greater good.

But not all the time.

I loved Lysa TerKeurst’s book The Best Yes. In it, she talks of a time when a family friend was in need of somewhere to live. Lysa writes that her family had the space and the finances to say yes. So they almost did. But then she realized that she didn’t have the emotional capacity to take this particular thing on. That was an okay reason to simply say no.

In the end, the young woman was blessed much more by the opportunities she received elsewhere. Lysa initially thought she had to help the young woman, but in the end, it was God who helped her.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

One of my favorite Scriptures to support the idea of working where God called us is 1 Corinthians 12:5-6: “There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.”

Peter also reminds us in 1 Peter 4:10, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

Don’t end up on the bad side of the Peter Principle. Don’t step out of your calling. Don’t keep doing the next thing until you are completely overwhelmed and out of your league.

Listen to the Lord. Listen to his calling.

Wendi Kitsteiner is a former city girl now living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee with her husband and four young children. She is passionate about the causes of infertility, adoption, and keeping it real as a mom. You can follow her at flakymn.blogspot.com or becauseofisaac.org.

Photograph © Jazmin Quaynor, used with permission