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 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.
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 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.
> 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.
"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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] pfarnsworth|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Clanan|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bluejekyll|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] trustfundbaby|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mulmen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsder|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] plg|9 years ago|reply
It's depressing as hell.
[+] [-] GenWintergreen|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] edblarney|9 years ago|reply
"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.
Not that this justifies blow-hardism.
[+] [-] eon1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] armini|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arizhel|9 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] cylinder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javiramos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
See "Assholes, a Theory" (2014). Despite the title, this is a serious book and well worth reading.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/080417...
[+] [-] ltbarcly3|9 years ago|reply
The truth is almost everyone is incompetent and leaders get more scrutiny.
[+] [-] Shubley|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjornsing|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondubois|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sebastos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharkweek|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ktRolster|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinceguidry|9 years ago|reply
It has to look natural for it to be effective. This requires a lot of art.
[+] [-] xjwm|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Bulkington|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|9 years ago|reply
I'm not sure the concept of a career track exists outside management.
[+] [-] stupidcar|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] omalleyt|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ue_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eachro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gentleteblor|9 years ago|reply
HN is a perfect example. At least i think so. I'm not sure.
[+] [-] donovanm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nomentatus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktRolster|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mulmen|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] TommyXin|9 years ago|reply
Trying to act and plan for an uncertain future as a CEO will make any human (male or female) seem incompetent.
[+] [-] jldugger|9 years ago|reply
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.
For example: http://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2009/PSB_516/6390561/w5.pdf
> 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.
[+] [-] NTDF9|9 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] snarf21|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] belorn|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] uranian|9 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] k__|9 years ago|reply
So the dumber you are, the easier it is to make a decision, which are needed in leadership.
[+] [-] dba7dba|9 years ago|reply
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...
We just can't win...
[+] [-] talkingtab|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmarsy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trentnix|9 years ago|reply
From the link:
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."
[+] [-] bootload|9 years ago|reply
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.
Reference
[0] "The curse of confidence" ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620745
[+] [-] tempVariable|9 years ago|reply