High Performers = Better Leaders? Probing the Validity of Performance-based Promotion to Fill Leader Positions

Promoting high-performing employees to leadership positions is a pervasive practice and has high face validity. However, little is known about the actual link between employee and subsequent leader performance, as prior results are inconclusive. Given the prevalence of this performance-based promotion strategy, we conducted a study to address this inconsistency. To account for prior diverging results, we (a) competitively tested predictions from different theoretical perspectives (i.e., the performance requirements perspective, the follower-centric perspective, and the Theory of Expert Leadership), (b) considered possible changes in the predictive validity of this strategy over time, and (c) included job complexity as potential moderator of the link between employee and subsequent leader performance. In a high stakes context (i.e., the first German soccer division), we tested the predictive validity of employee performance for leader performance. Our results suggest a low validity of performance-based promotion, as we could not find evidence for a link between employee performance and later leader performance—neither initially following the promotion nor over time, which is consistent with the performance requirements perspective. We, thus, caution against the (sole) application of performance-based promotion principles.