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Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

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Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#101

Post by grzm »

Lio wrote: post #99
grzm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 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: a…

> Submissions need neither be for hackers (in the strict, "person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data" sense) Well many would argue that this is _not_ the strict sense of the word "hacker". Please see the jargon file:- http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

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.

Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#104

Post by bootload »

"confidence and competence."

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

Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#105

Post by talkingtab »

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.

Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#106

Post by vinceguidry »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #11
vinceguidry wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: becau…

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.

Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#107

Post by bsder »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #8

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…

> 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.

Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#108

Post by bsder »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #18
pfarnsworth wrote: post #8

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…

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.

Dunno. Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seem to be quite good counterexamples to your thesis.

Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#109

Post by tejasmanohar »

Shubley wrote: post #59
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #46

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.

This is a great example of Peter Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle).

  "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."

Re: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013)

#110

Post by dpark »

bjourne wrote: post #100
dpark wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 al…

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.

Ok. I don't have any trouble believing that could be a cultural trait of those peoples. Thanks for clarifying.
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