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Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#291

Post by zormino »

sagebird wrote: post #265

There is a simpler explanation. It is the Peter principle. A person is promoted until failure. All else being equal, if two people are leaders, leader A will be on average as good as leader B. If one were significantly better, they would be promoted to the next level - eg a retired philanthropist billionaire or enlightened monk or what have you. If P and Q are qualities correlated with leadership, if P and Q are inde…

If P and Q are independently randomly distributed, you can't tell anything about Q from the value of P.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#292

Post by carlmr »

floriferous wrote: post #289
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's um... neither how stats nor reasoning works :(

Can you elaborate on what’s wrong with his comment? The Peter principle looks like it has some legs (after a couple minutes of searching), and the analogy sounds reasonable to me.

On the second part I can kind of follow your argument. But what has this got to do with the Peter Principle? I didn't see the argument being tied back to people being promoted until incompetence, which is not even what the article suggests. But the P and Q argument does make sense. IQ is helpful, charisma is helpful. If you have a lot of charisma you need less IQ to get there.

I find that part of the argument statistically sound.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#293

Post by carlmr »

elihu wrote: post #218

It's possible that people have an innate tendency to be resentful of leaders who are smarter than them, but there may be other explanations. Perhaps high IQ test results correlate with some negative trait that wasn't captured. Perhaps it's unusually difficult for some reason to simultaneously be successful in business, well liked by employees, and really smart. Perhaps the population of business leaders contains an a…

Yeah, the article is quite shallow. I was thinking especially of your last point. I'm working in software engineering. We have a lot of the smart and driven software developers that you would want in management positions. However they are smart and driven developers because they enjoy toying with technical problems. They enjoy being developers. They mostly hate meetings where we're talking about fluff. They don't WANT to go into management.

There's a strong self-selection going on, at least in my company.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#294

Post by ssivark »

zormino wrote: post #291
sagebird wrote: post #265

There is a simpler explanation. It is the Peter principle. A person is promoted until failure. All else being equal, if two people are leaders, leader A will be on average as good as leader B. If one were significantly better, they would be promoted to the next level - eg a retired philanthropist billionaire or enlightened monk or what have you. If P and Q are qualities correlated with leadership, if P and Q are inde…

If P and Q are independently randomly distributed, you can't tell anything about Q from the value of P.

... unless the sample being examined was selected for being above average in at least one of P or Q. In such a sample, P and Q will be anti-correlated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson's_paradox

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#295

Post by carlmr »

logfromblammo wrote: post #50
Isamu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words." Yeah, I had similar experiences. I read a lot of books and absorbed their vocabulary, and sometimes it would slip out. I would just say what's on my mind, and that's what other people do, right? Then I would get into trouble also by pausing to weigh my words, people read too much into your pause before answering them. Or I just wouldn't say much, b…

Whenever I paused to consider my next words, someone would start talking into my silence and then accuse me of interrupting them when I tried to continue. I eventually realized that I wasn't bad at speaking; I just had a different style. Some people are more agile in conversation, because they do not think about what they want to say before activating their mouth-parts to make the noises. They jump right in, by using…

>Whenever I paused to consider my next words, someone would start talking into my silence and then accuse me of interrupting them when I tried to continue.

I've made the same experiece, but then some introspection lead me to find that I do the same thing. Sometimes what somebody tells you is just so boring. There's no point to their story, no suspense, no drame, no humor. Then your thoughts trail off, boom, you get something interesting in your head. They make a lengthy pause, and you think "finally it's over", and then you interrupt them. They're like "I need to finish my story", they interrupt you back.

What I've learned, but still not completely internalized, is that you sometimes need to let go of your story. Your story isn't as interesting as you thought it would be. Maybe you're presenting it to the wrong audience. Whatever it is you need to let go of that story and continue with that conversation, instead of dwelling on the thought of getting your point across. Nobody cares.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#296

Post by ksec »

I think there is "Smart", and there is "Wise". I have been thinking "Smart", as intellectually, is little over rated.

Wise, I dont quite know how to describe it yet, but is a combination of many many things.

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#297

Post by ACow_Adonis »

floriferous wrote: post #289
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's um... neither how stats nor reasoning works :(

Can you elaborate on what’s wrong with his comment? The Peter principle looks like it has some legs (after a couple minutes of searching), and the analogy sounds reasonable to me.

Sure. Just heads up, I won't comment on the Peter principal, as I view both the definition of leadership and the complexities surrounding it far too complex to sum up in a simple parable, though I'm sure anyone with real world experience thinks it has some legs.

Paragraph 2, about the person being promoted until failure, I can't gleam any explanatory content from, myself. Then there's this sentence:

"If P and Q are qualities correlated with leadership, if P and Q are independently randomly distributed, then a leader with higher P is expected to have a lower Q."

This is false. You don't have variables that are simultaneously independent and let you say something about one based on the other. Its like saying "there is and is not a relationship between P and Q". Leaving aside the additional gymnastics and problems of having both correlate with leadership...

I could go into a discussion about expected values, averages, etc, but I can't tell what farmer banana P's and Q's have to do with the price of fish or peter's principal, so I don't think the language in the original is well specified enough for there to be much benefit to doing so...

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#298

Post by danmaz74 »

mrslave wrote: post #290
Fricken wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory is that Israel punches above it's weight class in the tech/startup sector at least in part because most everybody there has at least some military training.

Interesting. I would speculate the high average IQ is a more significant factor.

Any source for "high average IQ"?

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#299

Post by qznc »

mlevental wrote: post #71
rb808 wrote: post #40

Related: 'George W. Bush is smarter than you'. Elite leaders often make themselves look dumber than they really are. https://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

this is a crock. it was a crock when it was written and it's still a crock now. the idea that someone can for 8 years in the spotlight disguise themselves so much so that appear wholly opposite is ludicrous. it takes months for professional actors to produce 90 minutes of performance - the guy was on camera for literally weeks. he's not "smarter than you" this kind of revisionist nonsense is politically motivated - p…

> people were saying the same exact thing about Trump before he took office and we are now all very sure it's not the case.

Here is one guy who was "saying the same exact thing about Trump before he took office" and is still very sure it is the case: http://blog.dilbert.com/2018/01/18/fake-news-awards-persuasi...

Re: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

#300

Post by qznc »

jacquesm wrote: post #248
booleandilemma wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t become president of the United States by accident.

No, it is not an accident. It is mostly a matter of money applied with some precision. Brand recognition helps.

So who was responsible for applying the precision and maintaining brand value?
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