

How Leaders Emerge - edwincheese
http://pandadesk.com/blog/2011/08/3-surprising-facts-about-how-leaders-emerge/

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nextparadigms
I've often seen that people who tend to talk first and more often start
getting followed around by the group, and they more easily accept what he or
she is proposing as the next action. It helps to have a strong personality,
too.

People seem to be more willing to follow a _strong_ direction even if it's
wrong, than a weak one, even if it's the right one. That's because our brains
associate confidence in something as being right. It's like a default for us:
when in doubt, go with the most confident one. And we're most of the time in
doubt.

But we usually go with it even if our gut instinct tells us otherwise, so it
seems confidence overpowers gut instinct (which is just a way for your
subconscious to calculate the _decision_ in a split second, based on knowledge
present in our brains and on our past experiences).

If we think of that person as an authority in a certain field, we also tend to
think they are right more, even outside their own field of expertise.

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forgottenpaswrd
The most surprising thing about How Leaders Emerge is one:

1)CITATION NEEDED

So you say, leaders are so and so and "a study says that" and you need to
provide references to those "facts" and studies.

Just asserting something with Athene's God confidence does not make them
right.

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royuen
i can find the citation in the bottom of the post?

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codeup
There appears to be an obsession with leaders and leadership in American
corporate/political culture. I would like to understand it better. Can someone
explain it to me?

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Alex3917
America has enormous disparities in terms of wealth and power. If you're not a
leader then there's a good chance that you won't be able to get good
healthcare, you won't be able to afford enough food or at least enough
nutritious food, your kids won't get a good education, no one will respect
you, you're much more likely to end up in prison, and you're very likely to
have a shorter and less happy life in general. Thus there are a lot of people
who are obsessed with trying to figure it how to become leaders, because the
stakes are pretty high.

In short, if you're not management then most likely this is a fairly accurate
description of your life: <http://bit.ly/qVqbOb>. Imagine being 50 and not
being allowed to use the bathroom without asking, not being trusted to use the
cash register, being watched by video cameras constantly, etc. That's what the
life of the average American is like.

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cookiecaper
I think that's a bit on the dramatic side of things. Most people with a desk
job can afford all of the things you mentioned (which doesn't necessarily mean
they're going to buy them, like nutritious food). You don't _have_ to be
management to be able to use the restroom at your convenience -- I've never
been in management, but I've never had a desk job where I explicitly had to
ask before I got up to use the bathroom. I just went to the bathroom.

You are exaggerating quite a lot here. There is some distinction between peons
and management but in general it's mostly a status/mental thing, not a
necessities-of-life thing. In the office, advancement and accomplishment is
made by politics and promotion. It's not like a construction worker who can
survey his work site and visibly see the progress he made; in an office-
centric culture, people want to get into management because management equates
with much-needed validation that you're actually doing something valuable. If
you are made a manager, it means _your_ managers think you're cool enough to
join the manager club. And, again, in an office-centric environment, politics
play a heavier role than they reasonably should.

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bambax
> _A study shows that when leaders are randomly chosen, group performance
> actually improves_

Interesting, if true. Where can one find this study?

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wccrawford
Some thoughts on that, not proven by anything that I know of:

People who desperately want to be a leader are rarely suited for it. They tend
to hunger for power, rather than feel the need to help the group. It's
possible they are competent, but more likely that they will use the group to
suit their own ends, rather than working for the group.

People get jealous easily. If someone asks to be leader and gets it, others
may feel jealous. If the leader is chosen randomly, it's harder to be jealous,
since it was obviously fairly done.

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amirmc
_> ...it's harder to be jealous, since it was obviously fairly done._

I assuming by 'fairly done' you mean 'completely random'. If you meant it in
the sense of 'just', then I'm not sure I agree.

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wccrawford
I didn't say it was done the best way. I said it was done fairly. As in,
nobody had any advantage.

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StavrosK
That looks like one fact to me...

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lambersley
My $0.02 - Leaders are born and their skills are hewn over time through
experience. Its more 'natural selction' then random selection as the author
suggests that brings leaders into their natural position.

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n_simplex
Confirms my thoughts about every episode I saw of The Apprentice (UK version).

