Because talking with confidence will go 90% of the way to convincing people that you know what you're talking about. So often I've worked with assholes who talk with such confidence that most people won't bother filtering the garbage coming from their mouths. They just believe it.
It's almost eerie how effectively talking with confidence works. It's so effective that when you complain about these charlatans, YOU look like an asshole, even when you are completely factual. It's sad but fascinating at the same time.
This behavior is reinforced by current child-rearing and educational practices as well. Think about how much emphasis is placed on blind confidence, self-esteem, extroversion, etc. (at least in the U.S.). So it makes sense that confidence would be rewarded later in life when society defines it as a key metric before then.
I recall reading a book which posited that this shift to confidence over other "interior" characteristics (e.g. virtues) was due to the post-war consumerism boom when salesmanship became a lucrative career. What makes a good salesman? Confidence.
I think that child raising practice is direct consequence: parents own expense is that humble productive people got lower salaries and were less promoted then confident less productive people. Thus they don't want their children to be harmed by that later on.
I wonder if this is all of it though. When we're talking about incompetence, what I think of is people who are incapable of doing something. For people who can't do things, they need to ask others to help them. Initially, when they are not leaders, they become good at asking for help. This becomes a form of training someone to be good at delegation.
Something I see a lot in IC's is that they are very good at doing, but they don't like or know how to delegate. I think this comes from a sense of pride in their own work, and a desire to do it themselves. There are also cases where they aren't good teachers, so prefer to do it rather than take the time to train someone else. I know for me it's always been hard to delegate to others; for various reasons I always want to do it myself.
So I guess the question I ask is, "does incompetence help teach delegation techniques?" That being said, the best managers I've worked with have been great engineers before, and don't BS their way through work, but have learned how to help their employees by passing on good advice based on experience and understanding the strengths of individuals on their team for accomplishing a particular task.
I find that the incompetent managers only really survive in middle-management, where it is easier for them to cover up their lack of knowledge.
"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do." - Andrew Carnegie
I feel you found a good explanation for the incompetence/confidence paradox. You really can get far if you just talk about things you think you can do with confidence and conviction. I actually think everyone who's successful has experienced this. Sometimes you just have to bullshit, but do it confidently.
However, the reason many people fail in regulating this disparity is that they don't know they're incompetent (Dunning-Kruger effect). They can't actually do; only speak. Truly successful people have enough self-efficacy to know when they're not good at something. They have just the right amount of self-doubt. But that's not enough. They must also have the drive and humility to correct their shortcomings.
This goes along with your thinking, because the obvious response (in a workplace) by someone who doesn't know how to do something is to find someone else who can do it. That being said, delegating isn't the key. Recognition of your own incompetence is. Delegating, and edifying yourself, is the proper response though.
Early on in my career, I wanted to do everything myself. And I did. I would do stellar work on a few projects, then eventually I'd take on too much and things would fall on the floor. Some superiors saw this as incompetence.
Now I confidently accept too much work, but I'm not afraid to say "I need help with this." At my current company I've gone from doing solitary projects to having 3 other developers work on my projects under my direction. I'm not a manager, or even a lead. Hell, I don't know half the things I'll need on a particular project I accept, but I know the other developers have that knowledge.
At the risk of being divisive, this will generally only work if you're white, if you're a minority or a woman, there's way more pushback on all those things, even when you're right. Seen it many times.
I don't think its a race issue so much as a physical appearance issue. Height, attractiveness, facial structure, body size. Certain people look "presidential" and they command a lot of automatic respect just based on appearance. There are plenty of minority people that have this quality. There are plenty of white males lacking this quality.
Look-ism is the huge issue that is almost never talked about. In most companies you could probably better judge how successful new hires will be just by how they look in a video of them talking vs a sample of their work or credentials.
What you call normalism is regression to the mean. Lotta guys in tech? Hire a woman. Lotta white folks in the movies? Hire an 'ethnic' looking actor. The pendulum swings to and fro, and all the while we snip the ends off of the bell curve to make everyone feel like they fit in.
Fitting in is not a way to create progress. Adaptability and inclusiveness is. That was the point of diversity training in the first place, not normalization. Cultures function much more efficiently when diversity is introduced into the medium.
The real reason for the stagnation in social order is the fear of being pushed outside the herd if you are too near to the edge. We must become more inclusive, and fight the laziness that manifests itself in regressing to the mean.
I agree, I know a guy who is head of sales of a company and he has that "Presidential look" and my brain automatically thinks that he is a leader every time I see him.
Judging anyone by anything other than what is called for when doing the actual work is inherently superficial and therefore fascist (fascia, on the face). Fairly synergistic connection there regarding the popularity of a certain face-themed webpage.
We can make up labels all day to make it fresh or more precise, but the logos/pathos/ethos of the term 'fascist' is sound in every instance of excluding or including someone based on anything but propensity. It is interesting that we can't acknowledge it, like we are all so wrapped up in finding our niche that when we do, anything that would jeopardize that is immediately regarded as false.
Like, who would you be if you aren't actually as talented as you think you are?
It's hard to say "looking presidential" isn't related to race or gender when ~98% of presidents have been white men (assuming you're talking about the United States president!)
First off, this is false. I've seen plenty of races and women succeed unworthily because they talk with extreme confidence.
Secondly, are you only talking about the US because you're American? Because there are plenty of other countries in this world, and it's true in all of them.
for hundreds of thousands of years having your tribe represented by a confident male (selected from the majority of the tribe) was beneficial (at least we can conclude that now based on the survivor bias principle) We still have those cave man instincts with us to a high degree. The point of civilization development is to reign in cave man instincts inside and among us. Seems that it takes time.
Anthropologists have studied hunter gatherer tribes for a long time and it is not as simple as those with the most confidence becomes leaders. For example, among the San people tribe leadership is shared by the elders. And anyone can become an elder by surviving til old age. In day to day tasks, such as during hunting, who leads the hunt is determined on a rotating schedule so that all men get to lead it from time to time.
Designated leaders probably didn't become the norm until about 4000 bc when early civilizations arose.
Another interesting tidbit noted by many anthropologists is that boasting is strictly forbidden. E.g if a tribesman catches a big prey, he must be humble and can not brag about how good of a hunter he is. It is different from the Western World, in which bragging is expected and necessary for leaders (case in point: Trump).
>Another interesting tidbit noted by many anthropologists is that boasting is strictly forbidden.
Are you saying that this applies to every tribe in the world? Because if so, I don't buy it. It's too far fetched that every tribe in the world except everyone who advanced past the hunter gatherer stage would share this cultural trait. Aside from it being unreasonable that all tribes would share this trait, it would also seem to imply that modest people cannot advance to the modern age, which is also difficult to swallow.
No, I should have clarified that my comment was only about the San people, aka Bushmen. Those people are the closest to how humans lived for thousands of years before they wandered out of Africa.
I don't think other primitive peoples have designated leadership roles either, like we do, but I'm not sure.
The principle of sexual inequality (and male superiority) appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon--arising only around the time of agriculture. Even subsequent to the development of agricultures, plenty of civilizations have practiced matrilineal succession, with no apparent cost to their dealings with neighboring societies (indeed, some even flourished at the expense of others--consider the Iroquois, for example).
I'm sorry but this is pure myth. There has never been a human society where primary political/executive power was vested in women, except some developed and recent examples.
The idea of tribes controlled by women just never happened; not once. It's wishful revisionism motivated by modern politics.
Women in Pictish society were regarded as the equal of men and succession in leadership (later kingship) was matrilineal (through the mother's side), with the reigning chief succeeded by either his brother or perhaps a nephew but not through patrilineal succession of father to son. [0]
You have a small farm community of four houses, a few hundred/thousands years ago. One of the families has a animal die and is in dire need for help. Who do they ask for help?
Some warrior, sitting on a iron throne and passing down judgment from high in one the houses, or is it the old women of the village who carries the memories of who did whom a favor and is responsible for the community threads that binds the families together. Who has the power to make the decision?
>Some warrior, sitting on a iron throne and passing down judgment from high in one the houses, or is it the old women of the village who carries the memories of who did whom a favor and is responsible for the community threads that binds the families together. Who has the power to make the decision?
if recent thousand of years of history is any guidance - the warrior on the throne will be asked to punish the witch[es] (some of those old women) for the curse that caused the animal to die, and the property of those witches would be shared between the warrior and the family of the reporter.
While the waves of witch trial came and decline, that is mostly a 15th and early 16th centuries concept done by the church and not by small farm communities. There is no "thousand of years of history" where farm communities regularly killed the elder women, and its common theme in non-European/Christian history.
Its kind of telling if current view of history is that all elder women was hunted down and killed as witches under a single religion.
Gorilla males are about 50% larger compared to human males being about 20% larger. There is much in our anatomy that implies humans behaved more as polyamorous tribes than solitary male harems.
If you're really interested, look up "Sex at Dawn"
Perhaps a more accurate characterization instead of specifically being white, having an <attribute> of the dominant category of people in a culture (I'm using the word culture broadly, there are cases in which I do not think white males are the dominant nor revered category).
When you have a dominant group of people that share an attribute, I think anchoring and other cognitive biases will always play an influential role.
> Seen it many times.
Not sure if being intentionally humorous here, but I think it's funny regardless!
I have noticed the same phenomenon. Since humans are social creatures I think there is an evolutionary bias to avoid decision paralysis and just follow whoever seems to be the most confident. We are better off in general if we just cooperate and take action instead of deliberating every decision so people seem to be wired to just accept the first thing that appears to be reasonable.
We pretty much still do instinctive, animal politics when it comes to respecting leaders. Style trumps substance.
But I think it's analogous - and possibly related to - the difference between individual decisions made by instinctive, narrative logic and emotions, and decisions made after formal, extended, peer-reviewed reality-based research.
It took a long time for humans to invent science and logic, partly because science and logic use a lot of time, energy, and resources. So you need a certain level of physical security before you can even consider them.
If you research the history of science, many of the post-enlightenment heavy hitters were independently wealthy. They certainly weren't worried about food or having a roof over their heads.
Moving beyond animal alpha politics requires the same leap in collective intelligence - which may require everyone to be independently wealthy.
Democracy isn't enough, because when you have a majority making political choices instinctively, and a resource-rich minority manipulating them for personal greed, there's no room left for rational post-animal post-alpha politics.
Put simply, Trump and Clinton are both inevitable products of a scarcity economy.
Since the alternative would often be a "deer in headlights" situation, I bet that's even the right thing to do. Reacting in group beats reacting by yourself, even if the resulting reactions are less intelligent.
> Because talking with confidence will go 90% of the way to convincing people that you know what you're talking about.
This combines with the fact that the vast majority of people do not want to get into a confrontation. Consequently, everybody thinks that everybody else agrees.
> It's so effective that when you complain about these charlatans, YOU look like an asshole, even when you are completely factual.
You have to get good at zapping these charlatans with humor and sarcasm. You zap them when they say something obviously wrong and make people snicker at them so that when you genuinely need to oppose them you've already laid the groundwork.
I recall an actual study where researchers had participants listen to people who were (a) very confident but turned out to be incorrect or (b) neutral but correct. Then they rated these people on their competence. The confident people were rated as more competent even though they were incorrect more often.
On a tangential note, there's another quality that struck me as (paradoxically) expected and surprising.
In my prior role, I worked as an analyst on a sales desk at a large investment bank -- a group in which "talking with confidence" really was 90% of the job.
The head of the desk had been one of the best salesman in the industry, and had (fairly) received compensation to reward that. However, that didn't quite translate into leadership skills (in my opinion), and I felt our team suffered heavily for that.
It's a split take on "one ends up at the job one is least qualified for", but a result I presume must happen when the culture at an organization such as a large bank promotes a top individual producer to management solely on the basis of his/her individual production.
Absolutely. This is why it's essential for an organization to offer career advancement along both management and individual contributor tracks. Moving a highly effective contributor to a management role exacts two costs: the loss of a high performer and the addition of a bad manager (with the knock-on effects that that has on the people that person manages). Yet most companies only have one tool for recognizing achievement: jobs in management.
"This is consistent with the finding that leaderless groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders"
"It's almost eerie how effectively talking with confidence works."
It may very well be that all other things being equal, a little bit of over confidence is quite a positive indicator of actual success, as opposed to having 'less confidence'.
'Confidence' usually comes along with a bunch of other attributes. If you 'believe you can succeed' - you may be likely to try harder.
A differentiating trait of 'successful people' is that they 'believe they shape the outcomes of their lives' - whereas others don't believe it is so. (Obviously there's a lot just to that).
When you 'believe in yourself' - it's easier to 'have faith' in your own vision - and others take that as a strong signal of authenticity, which is helpful.
Nothing would ever happen were it not for at least a little bit of irrational exuberance.
I mean, I already know this is true but I'm dealing with exactly one of these people right now and this is so reassuring to read. Especially the bit about just how scarily effective and utterly impossible to criticise this behaviour is.
yep ... the funny thing about this is that to actually expose them, the best way is to force them to work through what they're proposing publicly like you want to actually help out (this part is key). If it looks like you're trying to torpedo the idea, it can backfire and people will sympathize with them, especially if you're not proposing something better.
"Oh you want to make the entire process asynchronous? Awesome I've been wanting to do that myself ... Are you thinking of using a queue to do it or were you going to rely on node.js callbacks?"
"Also, how are we going to make that fault tolerant, so that if the async process goes down we'll know? I found its usually pretty tedious to set it up and test it to make sure it works in a recoverable manner, but I bet with your experience you probably have a better way to do it. What do you suggest?"
Just ask a lot of questions. Cheerfully :D
Usually, they'll try and avoid answering things or bs their way through it, but if you take them into enough deep water, it might become apparent to people they don't know what the fuck they're doing, which is what you want.
I agree & sympathies with you all. I also think technology plays a vital role in helping us better understand the content of ones character. A little bit of self promotion but platforms like www.peertal.com can maybe help us better understand people & their relationships with the world. Our next UI release in March should make it more user friendly. Ping me if you're interested in helping or collaboration. We need all the help we can get....
>Because talking with confidence will go 90% of the way to convincing people that you know what you're talking about. So often I've worked with assholes who talk with such confidence that most people won't bother filtering the garbage coming from their mouths. They just believe it.
Yeah, sometimes I wonder if I do as well as I do in my career because I talk like this, not because I really know what I'm doing...
I would say that it's not that incompetent men become leaders. Certainly men are over-represented, but I would wager that woman leaders are no more competent on average.
The truth is almost everyone is incompetent and leaders get more scrutiny.
That's actually a good point. Everyone is incompetent; we just don't have a way of filtering that in our leaders. Possibly because the people selecting those leaders are incompetent too. It's incompetence all the way down.
I find that confidence is really powerful, even among engineers (who you would think are rational).
I noticed that some engineers can come across as extremely smart because they talk fast and can think fast - Also, they are really good at defending their ideas when put on the spot but if you dig deeper afterwards you might often find that while their solution is good, it's not the best one.
It always takes time to come up with optimum engineering solutions - It's not something that just pops into your head in a millisecond whist having a casual technical discussion - No matter how smart you are. The history of software development (with all of its failed projects) is proof that even great engineers have difficult coming up with optimum ideas.
+1 for the fast-talking engineer phenomenon. I think quickness of thought is a fitness that can be exercised, mostly orthogonally to deep thought. We all eventually find someone who thinks and talks faster than ourselves, but indeed we also eventually become that person to another. If you find yourself feeling like you're 10 steps ahead, the best thing to do is give ample room for your conversational foil to express their thoughts. If they disagree, don't immediately assume it's because they haven't considered everything. You should go in with the good faith assumption that they intuitively see a corner case you haven't considered, and then work collaboratively with them to put their objection into words. After all, if there is a problem, it will rear its head eventually, whether or not you can "win" the argument!
The most important thing is being open to the fact that you will be wrong. I've lost track of the number of times I have machine gunned out ideas/solutions only to have parts (or even all of it) picked apart by myself or others.
Your final point is the most important. Ultimately the process should be about solving the problem in the best manner possible, not how person X thinks it should be solved.
I have a confession to make - I'm not a particularly good leader. I don't like managing people, and I'm not terribly interested in learning how to do this. I have seen good managers in action, and have been under a few on occasion; I am not one of these people.
I do, however, have some very solid skills and have deployed them repeatedly at the handful of companies I have worked at in the past.
My main concern is knowing that down the road I'm probably going to get "stuck" in my career when I'm not interested in moving up and running a team. It seems like a trend lately to praise the IC and promise them the moon and stars, but I think this is mostly lip service to keep them around.
It's more likely you will get stuck under incompetent leadership, as your understanding of how to run a team increases, and eventually you'll be so frustrated, you'll agree to be the manager.
I'm fairly sure the idea of a natural leader is a myth. Just about everybody has to learn how to do it. Everyone starts out bad at it and they work and work and work until they're better, then everybody starts crowing about how natural they made it look.
It has to look natural for it to be effective. This requires a lot of art.
I would say I'm a natural leader. I am constantly scanning for order and when I see chaos, I am forced to take charge. Otherwise if I recognize competent decision-making, I am content to observe and go along. I cannot help it, as this is a compulsion, and it has been a part of my personality for as long as I can remember.
I have often been praised for my charisma and my confidence, but therein lies the problem: because I cannot allow dysfunction to perpetuate, I sometimes butt into situations where it is not my business, or I act impulsively because something must be done. But this problem can also be compounded because the people around me who cede leadership for the sake of ensuring action can sometimes get absorbed into my confidence and charisma, believing my conviction to be equivalent to the validity of my decisions, and thus enabling poor decisions that may as well turn out to be worse than no decisions.
I see where these problems with incompetent leaders arise even when they are not intentional. At best, one can hope that these leaders are capable of recognizing and humbly accepting their own limitations.
I would not call this trait of yours leadership, I would simply call it a personality trait. It, by itself won't make you a good leader.
I'm still wrapping my brain around the concept, but I conceive of leadership as a broad collection of social skills oriented around driving an organization of people towards a goal. One needs vision, persuasion, strategy, a certain ability to see and work with the darker side of human nature, emotional maturity, and probably more. All of these need to be identified, worked on, and refined over the course of a lifetime.
There's just so much to being a leader that it can literally be a life's work. It's so fascinating to watch different organizations being led by different people. Anybody can run an organization, effectively leading it is another thing entirely.
You can see the leadership style of Donald Trump just doesn't work very well at all in the Office of the President of the United States, it's essentially causing a mutiny in the rest of the executive branch.
Organizations are products of the people at the top, and develop inertia of their own. Leaders have to manage this inertia, Trump is used to operating very quickly, but the Executive Branch of the US Government is a massive ship to steer. Time will tell if Trump is up to the task of getting the ship in order.
I think it is more than a single personality trait -- it's more like a combination of personality traits. It definitely exists in various forms, and it is not all learned.
The converse is also true. There are some people who lack the personality traits required for leadership, and who probably could not be taught to become leaders, even if they desired to become one.
When people say "so and so is a natural leader," what they mean is that people tend to follow them. That is, after all, the essence of leadership. How well they do at keeping people following them and how efficient they are in producing results are just a couple of the various qualities of leadership, but the essence of it is that people follow them, and want to follow them.
Some people just naturally have that quality without any formal training. You can even see it in some very young children when they're among their peers, if you look.
but i think this is not the relevant observation. The question is whether one enjoys leading and is willing and motivated to learn. The question is not whether one can learn how to do it, but instead who wants to learn how to do it. And high-performers (in my experience) have a higher motivation to learn (they don't have magic superpowers, at least most ;) ), so i would guess they are better at leading because they care more about learning to lead. I think "natural leaders" just enjoy leading and have been practicing it since kindergarten.
I feel like the terms leadership and management are often used interchangeability in business, but they aren't the same thing.
You can provide leadership without being a manager. In your case, it sounds like a team could benefit from your past experiences. You could easily mentor and teach others, and provide guidance for projects. That doesn't necessarily require performing traditional "management" functions.
It would all hinge on what your corporate culture supports and expects from people in charge.
I am a good leader, trained by a father who--I kid you not--had his children up before dawn to listen to the same motivational/management how-to tapes he listened to. Only, perhaps because of this, I have no interest in a management gig, mainly because (money aside) I'd rather be coding/writing/producing, and doing it well, than overseeing the production of others. And I've moved to larger companies as a producer because I also had successful managment experience at smaller orgs. But now I'm topped out--and to not accept the next level is a career DNR. I'm demonstrably good, but am I 3x salary better than a replacement? Good luck making that case. Meet the new boss...
One of the most interesting facts in Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order was that the most primordial form of human social groupings, small bands of hunter gatherers, are organised along egalitarian and democratic lines, without any recognisable leader.
There may be an individual who the other members of the band listen to more than others, but only due to their proven experience and wisdom. And there is no concept of authority, e.g. the ability to enforce a decision upon people against their better judgement.
More complex forms of social organisation and hierarchy are inventions, and relatively recent ones. I suspect that is why they so often display these kinds of dysfunctions. As a species, we haven't yet evolved the skills necessary to behave optimally in situations where we have to engage in constant non-violent negotiations with strangers over issues of power, authority, friendship, employment, sex, etc. Instead, we try to create institutions that enforce an optimum solution, but this produces a circular problem, because these institutions are prey to the same dysfunctions.
Hunter-gatherers generally didn't store meat. Therefore, when the best hunter in the group brought home a large animal, he shared it with all. Likewise, there were few physical possessions or need for such, and so these were shared too.
But egalitarian? Not a chance. Studies show that even modern hunters expend enormous energy and risk their lives hunting over the real prize: access to mates.
That's a very debatable point, and I'm not sure what you're trying to say really. The closest analogs we have are the native groups of the Americas, Africa, and Australia, and nearly all of them pair and form alliances of extended families without more than the occasional competition.
Most primitive life is harsh enough that you don't need to compete too much over mates. People with injury or chronic illnesses get knocked out just from going about their daily existence.
The diversity of cured meats around the world makes this statement suspect. I don't see an agrarian society taking time to discover how to cure meat... why would they, grain stores easier.
Yet every culture has various kinds of preserved meat; Pemmican, European sausages, Kiviak, Hongeohoe, etc.
Anyone interested in organising along these principles might look at anarcho-primitivism or even anarchism. Recommended reading is Bakunin (What is Property?), Kropotkin (The Conquest of Bread) and pretty much anything by Emma Goldman.
This. Too many people are sure of too many things. Too sure of religion, political ideology, techno purity. Too sure of the absence (or presence) of the many -isms that plague us.
HN is a perfect example. At least i think so. I'm not sure.
Reminds me of how when you say you dont know everything about XYZ language/framework to an hr person or recruiter they look at you like incompetent. Meanwhile saying that you knew everything about XYZ language/framework to a technical person would have them thinking you're incompetent.
Research shows a very strong correlation between mere height and who ends up at the very height of corporate leadership. It's an ape thing, not a competence thing.
That is one of those "correlation is not causation" things. You need to dig deeper to find the actual causation. One of the best CEOs I've known was quite short.
For example, it could be that growing up tall gives you more confidence (because you are better at sports all the time), and more confidence makes it easier to rise in corporate leadership. But we don't know for sure until we study it more.
Well, the data set is huge, so it's not coincidence. And it's unlikely that promotions cause people to grow.
I was once at the opening of a Picasso exhibition where most of the people present were CEOs, and at the same place, I also attended the opening of a exhibition of Yousuf Karsh photos, where he was appeared. I'm tall, but I was nearly the shortest person in that large room both times. The only two times that's ever happened to me.
As for causation, it's been experimentally tested and confirmed, with small groups picking leaders. There's a great old book retailing many remarkable such studies called "The Height of Your Life" by Ralph Keyes. It also discussed research showing that a substantial chunk of sex discrimination was actually height discrimination (see Sheryl Sandberg's remarkably high heels - she knows the score.)
You said I should dig deeper - I've given you my bibliography, could you now favor me with yours?
If you watch a high school cafeteria for one hour you know exactly why taller people are promoted to leadership.
The same reason they tend to be whiter, a little better looking, more athletic.
Interesting paradox: for Men, girth is actually good. Carry a few extra pounds, and it's good.
For women - inverse. Skinny women earn more.
Think of this: every single social interaction you have - with the guy at the watercooler, to meetings, to presentations - everyone is 'sizing each other up' subconciously. They are determining where they belong in the pecking order. Usually only from observable traits.
I agree. Unconscious bias is real. I was far shorter than average until about 15, and well taller than average thereafter. So I found out first hand, quite suddenly, just how much different other people's reactions were to me. When human growth hormone first became available, medically-short teens given it grew considerably and almost uniformly suffered from depression. There previous ways of interacting with people just didn't work anymore. (also from Keyes book)
And yet we became humans by being the most competent apes. Perhaps both are true.
I'm not arguing that tall people are better leaders than short people, just that we seem to have such a bias built in and it must exist for some evolutionary reason.
Fistfights. Primates achieve leadership by force - although usually with support from friends. I think that's true of female leadership as well, if memory serves.
Really bad article. Not surprised its coming from HBR. No facts or data to back up what he is saying. How do you measure someone being incompetent? Since when does competence make you a good leader? Author believes CEOs should be selected by having them take a competence and personality test...
Trying to act and plan for an uncertain future as a CEO will make any human (male or female) seem incompetent.
> Really bad article. Not surprised its coming from HBR. No facts or data to back up what he is saying.
HBR is a practitioner's magazine; it's purpose is less to offer the evidence and more keep readers abreast of research and thinking in the field. Did feel the citations in the article were insufficient? There seems to be a number of them for any interested reader to follow up on.
> How do you measure someone being incompetent? Since when does competence make you a good leader?
Maybe there's some angle I haven't considered, but competence at being a good leader is basically the same thing as being a good leader. Unless you actively set out to be a bad one I suppose.
As for measuring, it gets mushy fairly quickly when looking at meta-analysis. You'll want to dig one level deeper to get an understanding of that; I'll pass personally ;)
> Author believes CEOs should be selected by having them take a competence and personality test...
Virtually all publications aimed at practitioners are rife with conflict of interest, and HBR is no different. The author is the CEO of an assessment company.
>> In other words, what it takes to get the job is not just different from, but also the reverse of, what it takes to do the job well
Did it take this long to figure out that most processes in the world don't select the people for the job?
Think about the following:
- SAT score based admissions (numbers matter)
- Tech Job interviews (number of problems solved, mistakes made, time taken to solve matters)
- Data driven Quarterly metrics and performance reviews (stupid metrics matter)
- Running for Presidency (Count of votes matter)
- Winning at WoW (Kills matter)
I can easily see most of these processes as a game. It involves a "System" and "Scoring in that system".
The ones who win the game don't necessary do post-game activities better, unless the system selects for that. I don't know...don't they teach this in MBA classes anymore?
I think the main gender bias is that a lot of the powers that be think women will be less decisive and worry about people's feelings too much. They want someone to drive the success the company needs. But this quickly falls to our natural tendency to trust the common denominator. So they hire and promote people that think, look and act like them because it's easy and (at worst) they feel they'll be able to easily make adjustments with someone so similar. Just look at sports and all the coaches who go around the carousel with minimal consistent success.
One other thing people forget is that a lot of times, promotions are a reward for past behavior, not an endorsement of their abilities. A lot of high performing individuals make horrible managers but it is the only way to acknowledgement past value added. Additionally, these new managers feel like they deserve the promotion and now want to coast a little. Of course, they fall into the same trap as above and usually treat all the subordinates as they see their self and never learn how to manage or lead. As a manager, I see the job as helping your team create maximum business value.
Of course, none of this is easy and why so many companies are so completely screwed up. You look around and you see so few CEOs who make a difference over random chance. Most who are this top 0.001% are extremely confident and decisive (but also manipulative aholes). This is also why there can be so much opportunity for disruption. The incumbents are stuck in a quicksand of their own making and everyone has embraced self preservation over value creation. Promoting more woman won't fix that. You need leaders that have the will and dedication to create a culture of ownership, transparency and autonomy.
As I often see in this kind of theory based articles, it is missing some basic experiments through which we can test and investigate the theory.
So if the issue is the inability to discern between confidence and competence, it should be relative easy to create a experiment through a double blind study where 50% of the participants are trained in behaving confident around their peers. Then we the study observe, first through experimental environment and then through a longer life-time study, and see if the result differ.
A question that arise is also how society treats men with below average confidence. Do they have higher or lower chance to be perceived as leaders compared to women with the same level of confidence? If they have less (a common theme in gender studies), we would again find a distribution where a minority portion of men are at top and have a higher chance than women to be leaders, with the majority of men below with a worse chance. This should also be fairly easy to test in an experimental setting.
Because the skill to become a leader in this world has nothing to do with being competent.
Some of the characteristics you need to become a leader are: be an excellent lyer, have a good pair of elbows, a desire for power and/or money, fit in the world of wealthy people that are in power, etc..
What do you expect from people with these characteristics? Competence?
Thing is when you are dealing with so many uncertainties, you can't speak with certainty.
Dumber people can't grasp all the variables involved in the decision making, so things look more black and white to them.
But smart people do grasp all the nuances and complexity involved. And their eyes can distinguish all 50 shades of gray or whatever, and thus they can't speak with uncertainly.
Best leader would be one who can grasp all of the variables, make a decision, and speak about it while hiding the feeling of uncertainty.
And this is why so many politicians are liars... They are not dumb. But they just get better at hiding and lying about true intentions...
Along the way I have seen way too many BIG men with DEEP voices who are dumber than oxen and are CEO's. My own thought is that both men and women defer on some level to their physical aspect and to their self-confidence. But boy they can be dumb. Sigh. Not saying all.
One reason for incompetent leaders I've heard is the leader's leader chose him specifically for his incompetence. The leader shields himself with less competent direct reports so that it's unlikely that one of them would be able to take over his job.
The Peter principle is a concept in management theory formulated by Laurence J. Peter and published in 1969. It states that the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."
There is an overlap of confidence and competence. For instance I'd rather be in a situation where a leader is projecting confidence because they've encountered a situation before. One way to evaluate this is asking yourself, "have they done this before?". [0] That question breaks down when novel situations arise. This is where relevant experience matters. Sometimes though, you may have to "fake" your way to allow a team to succeed in a difficult situation.
This is why I believe that good leaders will be competent in their area of expertise, recognise when they are not and be open to alternatives. This isn't confidence. This is belief in oneself, team and leadership to succeed. Belief and competence is a better description of leadership.
I've seen incompetent leaders promote other incompetent people to serve them as their ideals are congruent. As in - they don't question the status-quo to make things better and alas their numbers grow stronger. It takes a good concerted effort to take this type of nepotism on.
In general, leaders seem incompetent because their decisions are scrutinized to no end. Often though, they're forced to make a decision in a limited amount of time with imperfect information.
Also, one thing I've found after managing people, running businesses, etc..., is that it's more important to make a decision than it is to make the right decision. If you try something and fail, it's easy enough to pivot to another idea. If you make the right choice in the first place, great. If you consult everyone and take too long to make a decision, you're fucked.
A good artist or technician spends most of his time executing and polishing his craft. A politician spends most of his time executing and polishing his image.
Many executives cultivate this ignorance. When you kill someone accidentally its manslaughter, when it's purposeful it's murder. A person is dead either way, but the punishment for incompetence is lesser than that for malice. By cultivating ignorance and incompetence in key areas, people can dodge the consequences of risky or unethical behavior yet still receive the benefits by nature of being the "leader"
The more I read about this sort of thing (and read comments on these articles), the more I'm told that there are, in fact, innate gender differences, and the PC crowd is censoring important discussions. I'm starting to believe it, and I think that this article is an excellent example of the sort of politically-incorrect research we need to pay attention to.
This article doesn't even begin to posit "innate gender differences"
It shows a correlation in confidence displayed to gender, but social conditioning of either confidence display or confidence interpretation are as good an explanation as any innate differences. It's even supported by some research, so it's actually a stronger hypothesis than yours.
Seems to me you're playing hide the ball a bit here. If it's the case that society conditions men to display confidence, then aren't we left to explain why _that_ might be the case? Why doesn't society condition women to be the more confident? How did we get here? The null hypothesis would probably be that innate gender differences created the current sociological environment, creating a chicken and egg problem.
This reminds me of the argument that women's under-representation in STEM fields begins during childhood when we condition them with toys that don't encourage spatial reasoning. This claim leaves a gigantic dangling question of "Why are toy companies and parents so damn bad at understanding what little girls want to play with?" The literature supports the intuitive truth of the matter: girls and boys find their toy affinities on their own without much input from society.
Incidentally, I think most people are morally taking the wrong tack when it comes to this kind of stuff. If you make a value judgment that having an affinity for leadership or spatial reasoning is Good, then you are no longer free to interpret the actual world without worrying that the data will show men are Better (or Worse). Why can't we accept men and women as they are, and stop pre-supposing equality of all measurements that we might consider desirable? If it turns out that men are naturally suited to taking leadership roles, who cares? It takes all kinds to make a functional society, and in the scheme of things, leaders are a tiny thread in that tapestry. I find the role of leader or mathematician to be equally valuable to artist, baker, carpenter, fashion designer, grocer, mother or father. Each of them is a valuable member of society that should earn a fundamental human dignity. In my view, admonishing women to pursue engineering is equally repugnant to demanding they avoid it! Let's encourage all of the women who find engineering or mathematics irresistible, but avoid fretting about the many who don't!
The article makes it clear that this is a difference that happens across cultures. If men and women are in fact as equal as star-bellied and non-star-bellied sneetches, why do we see the same social conditioning in the same direction in every culture? Shouldn't half the cultures have the social conditioning in the other direction?
Men are stronger. When all is said and done, he can get his way by hitting her. You need quite modern society for women to be able to escape that and subsequently feeding themselves (and children). This alone can cause women being raised for lower self confidence and submissiveness.
Its a political problem. When voting is rigged it happens that those who get benefits vote for those incompetent. And those incompetent promise free benefits to obtain votes. Vicious circle.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Are you saying all voting is rigged? Also not all incompetent managers are micro-managers, I have had problems with managers that are uninvolved as well.
It may be possible for a candidate to gain votes by promising free benefits (or even non-free benefits) to their constituents and then actually grant those benefits. I would not describe that situation as a problem because that's exactly how representative democracy is supposed to work.
I don't see how rigged voting implies incompetence or that incompetence implies rigged voting.
Also, I nave never seen a business setting that had elections, rigged or not. In the cases where I have been faced with incompetent managers their constituents (employees/reports) would have voted them out at the nearest opportunity. Is this the rigged system to which you refer?
There are a lot of facts that need to be explained but I'll try to tell you the ideas in a few paragraphs. I cant summarise a whole stack of books in such a short time.
Representative Democracy:
Do you understand by that a contract between people where those who never paid a cent in tax but receive free benefits have the right to vote ? Maybe that will answer the question about how incompetent managers raise to the top.
Business
Have you not heard about how the leader of Mozilla? or some other company has been voted out because he expressed his ideas about sexuality ?
Or are you not familiar with how a company traded by shares is GOVERNED by a board of directors ? Cisco founder has been fired, thats an example of how elections work in a business.
Maybe you should watch The Office movies to understand how and why incompetent people are given manager positions. Its a comedy and the main actor plays very well the incompetent manager. There are also some serials where voting is involved but the manager does all he can do go his own way.
Can you provide references to the facts in those books? Even the titles would be appreciated.
Taxation is not required for representation but taxation does require representation. This fundamental concept of American democracy is applicable in only one direction. I don't see how you established the connection between managers and politicians.
Corporate governance and national governance are not equivalent. If an employee or founder is fired that is not the same as failing to be (re)elected. Founders are not initially selected by a democratic system.
I do not accept works of entertainment fiction as evidence of any real world phenomenon.
Article does not present and solutions to picking a good leader and avoiding the issues mentioned in the article. Unless the advice is "only elect female leaders" - which also seems broken.
How about avoiding those with personality traits which the article says make incompetent people look competent: psychopaths, narcissists, risk seekers,the over-confident, the arrogant, the manipulative, etc.?
Some women have these traits too, so discriminating by sex isn't the answer.
The only fair solution: The leader of a group should be selected by random. The probability that the least competent will be selected is then inverse proportional to the size of the group.
I think leadership gets tagged with buzzwords like 'vision' and 'synergy' and gets made to look idealistic, but the skill of motivating people to work towards a shared goal is a very tangible concept.
Can you develop on the "feminist agenda" bit? I assumed that you meant that women, envious of the male qualities of truth and honesty, try to push an agenda to undermine these. Am I right?
EDIT: I see that you changed all your comments for ".". I guess that you've already made your point.
Your accusation of the education system being hampered by a "feminist agenda" that doesn't see Donald Trump's foundation of "truth, personal responsibility and perseverence" has collected you enough downvotes that no censorship is necessary.
"Hacker News" is a bit of a misnomer. Submissions need neither be for hackers (in the strict, "person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data" sense) or even current. From the guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Edit to add:
HN also strongly values civil, constructive discourse. Given some of your other comments, I suspect what you're interpreting as censorship is the community reacting to the tone and language of your comments. Also, while there has been plenty of politics on HN recently (for a variety of reasons), HN isn't primarily for ideological discourse: HN members are likely reacting to that, as well.
I get the impression that this isn't your first account on HN. If that's the case, I hope you can find HN to be productive for you as part of the community with this new account.
I'll happily concede the definition :) Particularly as my contention was that the definition isn't important in this case. I grabbed this narrow one from the dictionary.
In a way I find the Dilbert Principle [1] more encouraging because it implies promotion is based on what will improve the overall productivity of the group.
It's almost eerie how effectively talking with confidence works. It's so effective that when you complain about these charlatans, YOU look like an asshole, even when you are completely factual. It's sad but fascinating at the same time.