Leadership: Competence and Cooperation

I just read this article about why so many incompetent men become leaders. The author's thesis is that we, as a society, are rotten at distinguishing between arrogance and competence; that men frequently think they're smarter than they actually are; and that female styles of consensus-building tend to be very effective.

(You mean lots of men strut around, making extravagant claims to impress in the moment, but then never delivering in the long term? *Gasp!*)

I am partially convinced. Yes, we tend to assume that people will be able to deliver what they promise--at least until we've been disappointed a few times.Yes, the set of skills needed to get someone elected as President of the United States is very different from the set of skills needed to govern.

On the other hand, he omitted some important ideas. If women tend to build effective coalitions, why haven't they risen into more executive positions? He didn't address the relationship between the glass ceiling and complicated reproductive choices women face. Neither did he mention the "Peter Principle" in which people "rise to the level of their incompetence," getting promoted until they stop succeeding and start stagnating.

His description of women leading through cooperation and consensus is not a new revelation. I've watched the Mormon Relief Society do amazing things for decades, partly through Divine Aid, and partly because our shared beliefs give us a shared vision of what needs to be done, not who should get credit for doing it.

(For more about the Relief Society's awesomeness, try this article by a woman--who is not LDS--about why the organization should run for President.)

Now, some personal reactions:

In my limited experience, men do get better as they age. The phenomenon seems most pronounced with adolescent males, and is still troublesome during college. After that, the behavior seems to wane somewhat. The problem is that some guys never outgrow it, and those are the guys who, according to this article, turn into the Pointy Haired Boss.

I got in a few scrapes in my youth by believing claims of exaggerated competence, only to discover the young man in question couldn't actually drive/speak Spanish/sing/perform acupressure as well as he boasted.

Eventually I wised up.

When I was 17, and a senior in high school, one boy said, condescendingly, "Well, no offense, Gail, but I'm better at math than you are." Had he simply claimed to be a math genius, I would have ignored him politely. But picking a fight by trying to put me down--I decided not to put up with it.

I pointed out that I was in Calculus, while he was taking Algebra II. He began the standard "I'm so incredibly smart that I tune out in class, and never do my homework because it's too easy, and our system measures the wrong things" excuse.

"That excuse only impresses me," I said, "If you ace the tests and still manage to get at least a B in the class." (Note: my husband, Jon, did precisely that. He slept through Calculus and then set the curve. Mercifully he doesn't brag obnoxiously about how good he is at math; he just IS good at math.)

"Well, but I have better math aptitude," he argued. "My brain is just wired differently than yours." I asked for his SAT math score. I had beaten him by 120 points.

At that point he either shut up or I walked away.

(I'm not bragging obnoxiously, either. I am reasonably good at math, but I know my limits. If you were surrounded by math geniuses, as I am, you would be really humble, too.)

I want to believe that most people also wise up and begin looking at actual performance, not the bluster surrounding it. I further want to believe that most people don't find extreme egotism attractive; one would have to be very smart to succeed in being simultaneously narcissistic and charming. Bill Clinton apparently carries it off fairly well, at least in person, but that's because he's clever at feigning interest in others. After he leaves people start to remember why they're mad at him.

It seems like there are three main paths to manager: the engineer who gets promoted on technical merit but then lacks interpersonal and communication skills; the MBA who gets promoted on ambition and organizational skills, but then lacks the technical competence to evaluate his underlings' work; and the rare successful entrepreneur.

The MBA would be much more likely to go for Dogbert's better-written proposal, or for the sparkly product, than to listen to Dilbert's very honest report about feasibility.

For years, I've assumed it's just incredibly difficult to find people with a wide range of skills, people who are technical but also social, firm but kind, and politically astute but also honest and communicative. They tend to be opposing traits, and it's difficult to find people in which they are balanced. Seriously, how many extroverted engineers do you know?

Forgive my gender stereotyping, but maybe what we need are more Mom'n'Pop stores, where the guy handles the technical side of things and the woman interfaces with the rest of humanity. Maybe we need to re-introduce private secretaries into the business wilds, or at least yoke opposites together.

The other option is to invest in people. Train them to overcome their weaknesses. My prediction? It will prove much easier to teach an engineer how to communicate than to teach an autocratic narcissist to self-regulate.

Obviously, incompetent people become managers. This article gives a plausible explanation for it, but I suspect it's only one aspect of a multicausal problem.