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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)

#111

Post by sverige »

vinceguidry wrote: post #106
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hum…

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.

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

#113

Post by bluejekyll »

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…

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.

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

#114

Post by snarf21 »

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.

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

#115

Post by belorn »

Shubley wrote: post #58
jcranmer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exampl…

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. Pinker discusses this a bit in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw And of course other have noted the…

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?

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

#116

Post by rhizome »

gozur88 wrote: post #90
rhizome wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pursuant to the topic, though, leadership pays more and therefore is populated by sexist men hiring each other. Emergent properties.

>Pursuant to the topic, though, leadership pays more and therefore is populated by sexist men hiring each other. Is there any evidence this is true?

Occam's Razor points to The Iron Law of Oligarchies/Institutions much more than "bad luck."

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

#117

Post by chrisjack »

Shubley wrote: post #58
jcranmer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exampl…

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. Pinker discusses this a bit in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw And of course other have noted the…

What about the picts?

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]

[0]http://www.ancient.eu/picts/

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

#118

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

If that's true, it's a good argument for hiring minorities and women, since you would not be burdened by incompetent leaders.

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

#119

Post by trustfundbaby »

eon1 wrote: post #51
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…

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.

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

#120

Post by sumedh »

sh6678 wrote: post #76
trustfundbaby wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compani…

> Certain people look "presidential"

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.

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