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.<p>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.
Summary: "We commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence".<p>See "Assholes, a Theory" (2014). Despite the title, this is a serious book and well worth reading.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/0804171351" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/080417...</a>
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.<p>The truth is almost everyone is incompetent and leaders get more scrutiny.
I find that confidence is really powerful, even among engineers (who you would think are rational).<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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...<p>Trying to act and plan for an uncertain future as a CEO will make any human (male or female) seem incompetent.
>> 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<p>Did it take this long to figure out that most processes in the world don't select the people for the job?<p>Think about the following:
- SAT score based admissions (numbers matter)<p>- Tech Job interviews (number of problems solved, mistakes made, time taken to solve matters)<p>- Data driven Quarterly metrics and performance reviews (stupid metrics matter)<p>- Running for Presidency (Count of votes matter)<p>- Winning at WoW (Kills matter)<p>I can easily see most of these processes as a game. It involves a "System" and "Scoring in that system".<p>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.<p>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 <i>deserve</i> 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.<p>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 a<i></i>holes). 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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..<p>What do you expect from people with these characteristics? Competence?
Also, decision making often works good if you don't know or care about the implications of your decisions.<p>So the dumber you are, the easier it is to make a decision, which are needed in leadership.
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.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle</a><p>From the link:<p>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."
<i>"confidence and competence."</i><p>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, <i>"have they done this before?"</i>. [0] That question breaks down when novel situations arise. This is where relevant experience matters. Sometimes though, you may have to <i>"fake"</i> your way to allow a team to succeed in a difficult situation.<p>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.<p>Reference<p>[0] "The curse of confidence" ~ <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620745" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620745</a>
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.<p>Also, one thing I've found after managing people, running businesses, etc..., is that it's more important to make <i></i>a<i></i> decision than it is to make the <i></i>right<i></i> 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.<p>Given this, guess who would climb higher faster ?
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.
They become micromanagers not leaders.<p>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.
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.
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.
It's because of the "Peter principle" - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle</a><p>"employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively"... that's at the "Leader" level for so many.