The 6 Personality Types That Never Get Promoted

In an ideal world, performance, participation, and potential should be a few of the many qualities factored in for a promotion. However, some bosses also take into account “personality type” when identifying deserving candidates. That’s why certain personality types receive better work opportunities than others.

Are you struggling to get promoted to an oh-so-desired role and finding no luck? Before saying “I have tried everything but my boss doesn’t notice my effort” make sure you don’t fall into the “six personality types” that often DON’T get promoted. Let’s review the list together.

1: The Chatter Box

Having great communication skills matters but that doesn’t mean you go about gossiping all day. Spreading rumors or distracting your co-workers with long chats are not the qualities of a good communicator. This kind of attitude doesn’t present you as a desirable candidate who can take more responsibility.  

Even your co-workers are likely to avoid you if you are chatty. These are certain roles that don’t suit the chatty personalities at all. IT is one such field.  If a programmer talks all day, he isn’t going to get any work done. That’s why IT staffing agencies test the soft skills of the candidate thoroughly during preliminary interviews to exclude chatty personalities.

2: The Doormat

Doormats are those employees who end up agreeing to more work than they can handle. They fail to speak up whenever they are overwhelmed. Individuals with such personalities never complain or defend themselves when they are treated unfairly.

They always give in to others. Being a people pleaser is acceptable when you have the best intentions, but this could turn you into a bottomless pit. Others could take advantage of you and in the long run, it damages one’s self-esteem.

It’s a general belief that a person having a doormat personality is not an effective decision-maker. Hence employers neglect such personalities when it comes to promotion or choosing them for the role of a team lead.

3: Negative Karen

Do you constantly reject the opinions of your colleagues? Are you always complaining without any intention of improving the situation? If that’s you, you are the Karen of your workplace. Managers never earn high opinions of negative Karens. The negative behavior or attitude of one employee can affect the attitude of other employees in some of these ways:

• Morale: The negative Karen likes adding to the misery. They make their colleagues focus on what’s wrong, affecting the morale of the entire team.
• Resentment: If a leader in the team does nothing about the negativity spread by Karen, the rest of the team might grow to resent the company.
• Productivity: Productivity suffers when there’s a negative person around bringing other’s morale down.

4: The Victim

We call such a person the “Damsel in Distress.” They like to play the role of a victim and blame others for their mistakes. These individuals habitually indulge in self-victimization. There could be different motives behind it: controlling or influencing the thoughts, actions or feelings or others, seeing attention, or just as a way to cope with the situation. Another motive is to avoid taking responsibility for their actions.

Managers admire those candidates who take responsibility for their actions and own their mistakes. Instead of accepting the responsibility of a missed deadline, if you have a list of excuses ready (which involve blaming others), your manager will never trust you. Most of all, you will never come on the list of ideal candidates for promotion.

5: The Hulk

You are the hulk if you let rage take over you and lash out to your coworkers. In that case, forget about getting a promotion. The hulk as the manager who would lose temper time after time will create a culture of fear. This gives birth to a toxic environment without any room for growth and innovation.

6: The Know-It-All

Mister know-it-all is someone who believes they have an answer to every question even if the question hasn’t been asked yet or if they don’t have the right answer. Such a person never listens, doesn’t value other people’s opinions, always corrects others, and is difficult to be around.

Employers prefer candidates who seek out knowledge and value knowledge sharing. A good leader doesn’t just talk, he puts in extra effort to listen to others. If you keep on insisting that your strategies, ideas, and process are more enlightened than anyone else’s, you consider yourself to be the smartest person in the room.

This makes you a not-so-ideal candidate for promotion. And even if you get the promotion, with this attitude, you will only drive your team away from you. This might even increase the employee turnover rate.

Summing Up

A positive attitude paired with awesome qualities puts you on the employer’s deserving candidates list for promotion. These qualities include good listening skills, communication skills, eagerness to learn and help others, self-confidence, and taking responsibility for your actions. All types of organizations, whether it’s engineering staffing agencies, marketing firms, banks, or even retail stores, seek these qualities in candidates while considering them for promotion.