FeedMy word, what a furore over John Sergeant resigning from Strictly. I couldn't believe how much press coverage that got, and how passionate people seemed to get about it. I think he was right to resign - he was an awful dancer!
Then I started to think about this from a psychology perspective and the parallels between what went on in a public TV programme and what occurs in organisations. As a psychologist I spend much of my time working with organisations to introduce accurate, fair and valid processes in terms of measuring people performance, so that personal preference, biases or likes and dislikes are removed. Here people are trained to provide accurate assessments of individual's performance. In Strictly, we have a group of expert judges who know and understand dancing. They consistently rated John as a poor dancer, and yet, the public voted for him to stay in. The public however exercised their personal preferences and biases because these were all they had to go by - the majority being incapable of assessing whether or not he was a good dancer. For John this probably created mixed feelings. He had repeatedly heard that he was no good, and yet the public voted to keep him in, until ultimately, he felt that he had to quit. Hopefully now the best person will win.
In business we can often observe similar situations. Individuals may progress in their career because they are popular and not because they are good. Some will eventually quit because they get the message, but many will not. If they are to remain successful, organisations need trained, expert assessors who can make a proper judgment of the people they are selecting or promoting and not gifted amateurs who provide a populist vote.
