
The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader - apress
https://hbr.org/2018/03/the-most-common-type-of-incompetent-leader
======
tyingq
This article resonated with me. Once, I had a leader that would question parts
of my org, or budgeted projects, why they were needed, etc. Her real question
was "I need to cut X dollars out of the budget". I could have immediately
helped that goal if she asked that exact question. Instead, though, she was
going about it in an oblique way, trying to figure out where I was being
incompetent.

Pretty embarrassed about our current state of leadership skills. In my current
organization, we call this syndrome "bring me a rock". Like, I bring a rock,
and she says "it's too big, or too brown, or whatever". Instead of outright
saying, _" I need a medium, smooth, grey, rock"_. I can deliver if you're
explicit.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Leadership quality feels like it has declined as I’ve gotten older. When I
began my career Stephen Covey was all the rage. Traditional leadership
training was a necessity for middle managers moving up the ranks.

Then something changed. Having a softer touch became more important than
results. This weird sort of litigation-phobic (pardon my inarticulate
explanation) approach to all things took hold. Managers stopped giving clear
feedback. They stopped assigning work, merely suggesting it. It’s completely
bizarre. Especially when you’ve been in the military and seen real
decentralized and self organizing leadership work.

These days as a consultant I go in and basically fill a leadership vacuum at
each of my clients. I tell them this too. They shrug and keep shuffling and
saying things that mean nothing. So weird. I don’t understand the corporate
world.

~~~
3pt14159
I think it has more to do with the average amount of time spent at an
organization.

I consult for the Canadian government from time to time and I see plenty of
great managers there. The main difference? Most people there for more than 2
or 3 years are there for life. They get to see the results of prolonged good
leadership and they get to learn from leaders that they trust.

With tech you have random 27 year olds as C-levels at eight or nine digit
valued companies (that was me some years back) and there's no way that you
have the skill or experience or even respect for the position to do it well.

------
olivermarks
I'm pretty cynical about the endless stream of HBR articles on this
'leadership' topic.

There is no formula and there are endless variables. Most larger organizations
suspend management in a vacuum of lack of knowledge of decision making above
them, which leads to a lack of trust from the people they are 'managing'.

Add in politics and feifdoms, and the safest route to longevity for big corp
mid managers is to camouflage themselves within the organization, not making
any decisions unless and until it's clear which way the wind's blowing.

Bravery around innovation and pushing better practices all too often results
in punishment or worse, with most emphasis being on magically doing more with
less while increasing revenue.

Smaller business entities are far more human and real, and good 'leadership'
in these environments is more sensitive to humans, effective innovation and
growth ...

~~~
maxxxxx
" I'm pretty cynical about the endless stream of HBR articles on this
'leadership' topic."

Their business model is to make people into leaders in exchange for a big sum
money...

~~~
candiodari
You mean make existing bad leaders feel good about themselves. Provide a
trivial thing to "work on" on a weekly basis, so they can "do something".

This article identifies the basic problem again: there is no way to manage
like this without at the very least a good working knowledge of the jobs
you're managing. If you can't simply take over for an employee, you shouldn't
be allowed to manage them. And you can't : you can't tell when you're being
bullshitted, and worse, you can't tell when a psychopath is really fucking
with the organisation (maybe he's right and these other guys, who just happen
to be in competition with him, are really the ones that are bad ?).

A good leader needs to engage and provide feedback on the work done. Well,
yes. A "manager", an MBA from any business school has no ability to do that.
They just can't. That isn't what they trained for, unless you mean keeping
cash registers in a store or perhaps basic logistics (advanced logistics
requires knowing the math behind things like linear programming, so you can
modify it for your exact situation AND being pretty good at writing predictive
models).

This is also the most common problem, and of course why management theory
keeps "believing" that management is a job like others (and therefore doesn't
require knowledge of other jobs). There's no money in telling a manager that
they need actual, real knowledge, something that would take years to acquire.

And you can't change that perception because the people who would have to do
that are the ones who would never measure up.

------
jarjoura
Interesting article, I never really thought about a disengaged manager as
being incompetent.

Anecdotally, at the same company I had one manager who was completely hands
off and free of any actionable feedback or advice. While it felt empowering to
chart my own destiny, I also wouldn't have any insight into where my
weaknesses were or if what I'm feeling about the project at that time was
normal. Are others feeling the same way?

Then when I transferred to a different manager they were very engaging, and
would follow up with me outside of our 1 on 1s whenever there was a reason to
check back in. The very first question I was asked, "how do you like to be
recognized?" It certainly threw me off guard because I never really thought
about it directly before. Also, they would give me hard feedback and help me
course correct from their different vantage point in the moment, not later
during a performance review.

Needless to say, the first manager I consistently got a meets all rating,
which was fine, but it was demotivating and I would have probably left, while
the second, I did way better and fell in love with my job.

------
primitur
I just went through an episode with this kind of 'leader' \- he basically
demonstrated _everything_ described in this article, with the end result being
I no longer am employed at his company.

Unfortunately, leadership is not something that younger (<30) generations of
people are learning to embrace, or even understand. There is such a
narcissistic bent going on in the modern, Western world, that this should be
no surprise - but it is really shocking to be faced with a CTO who absolutely
has no idea how to foment team spirit, how to motivate his juniors, how to get
people to enjoy doing the often-times-mundane-inane, boring, work that has to
be done in modern times.

Perhaps it has always been that way, perhaps I - as a ~50 year old - am
getting very jaded/off-my-lawn type, but I think there were definitely
differences in the generations of managers that went through the hoops in the
80's, compared to all the new-school cargo-cult startup circus hijinks that
pass as 'business' these days.

I truly believe that if you can't do the job of the people below you: you're
not qualified to lead them. If you can't motivate people to work harder to
solve the issues that they're stumbling on: you don't deserve leadership. If
you can't get your team together to coordinate their activities in a way that
makes Russian ballet seem like a circus full of bears - you need to get out of
the way and get someone in who can handle the machine-like precision needed to
coordinate an organization and start making real headway to building the
business.

Alas, a lot of the startup-/venture- cult movements that are currently
enjoying mainstream status don't really focus on this angle. We've become a
selfish, materialistic, narcissistic species - at least in the tech world -
which doesn't really pull much off except individual reward above all else.
The desire to be 'new and not like our parents' is really getting in the way
of civilization-building.

At least, having just suffered immensely at the hands of an absolutely
incompetent, dufus manager, whose company has far too much money to waste on
the build-vs-buy equation of startup building .. I just feel like we're
devolving, yo.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I agree, but it has something to do with very basic differences between
people, how they view business, how they understand its goals.

Basically, in start-ups, the main goal and driving force is the desire to get
rich, and this is how "success" is defined. Whereas for managers in bigger
companies, especially more traditional ones, success is very much related with
people, and especially workforce cuts are considered as a failure - of the
company and of managers, regardless of the financial outcome for the
shareholders.

~~~
digi_owl
I'm tempted to say it started in the 80s, as corporate raiders ran around.

This lead to a shift in focus from continuation of the corporation to a focus
on shareholder dividends.

Then later the raider mentality turned into the VC mentality, in both cases
focusing on a boom-or-bust approach.

~~~
ouid
There is a reason that it stuck around though, it is a successful strategy in
an economy where the prevalence of strategies is highly, if not exclusively,
correlated with their ability to make ROI.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
The main question is: successful for who?

------
thisismyusernam
I'm afraid I have to admit that I am one of the leaders they speak about. I am
the founder of my own company and have Aspergers, finding it difficult (among
other things) to understand, relate to, or work with other people (much less
lead them).

I ended up in this position completely by accident and I don't know what to do
about it.

I hope I can find somebody else to take over from me and actually be a leader
so that I can be less of a drain on my company's growth potential. I'm sure
I'd enjoy my life a lot more if I wasn't in a leadership position at all.

~~~
abtinf
The point of the article is _not_ about whether you relate to or understand
the emotions of the people you have to lead. As a founder, you are very
unlikely to be an absentee manager.

Rather, it is describing managers who don't really have a purpose or view on
anything.

For example, let's say one of your employees completes a project or
assignment. If they ask, "did I do a good job?", would you be able to answer
that - do you have a standard for "good" in your mind, a sense of what the
company is trying to do, and assess how that project fits with that purpose?
If you can do that, you are not an absentee manager. There are good and bad
ways give feedback, but doing it at all means you are not an absentee.

The kind of manager being described by the article is
unable/unwilling/uninterested in the organization's goals and how their team's
efforts fit into the goal. The absentee manager will almost always respond to
a request for feedback with "you are doing great, keep it up", regardless of
the actual output. This is a soul crushing kind of experience.

~~~
thisismyusernam
Thanks for that clarification. I can still identify with that description, but
I believe it's more due to burnout/exhaustion with trying to fill a role that
doesn't suit me (i.e. manager) rather than chronic absenteeism as they are
describing.

------
tabtab
Organizations don't seek enough feedback from underlings about their bosses.
They mostly use top-down feedback. Thus if boss X makes his/her boss happy,
boss Y, boss Y then gives boss X good ratings even if Boss X does not treat
his/her underlings well, which includes helping them be productive.

The idea can be taken too far, but there is a nice balance in there. Feedback
from both directions should affect a boss's performance rating.

~~~
Zeta_Function
People at or near the top often have very different incentives from the rank
and file. They want to stay afloat, or rise, and often that has little to do
with their objective performance. Feedback from below is arguably one of the
few things short of grossly obvious incompetence that can shake them from
their perch.

And then they have to be the ones to support the whole idea of that feedback
in the first place!

~~~
ianmcgowan
And I'll add that at some big traditional companies, there's a surprising (to
me at least) level of disdain for the individual "grunts" in the trenches
actually doing the work. The attitude of some SVP's and up seems to be "why
would I want the opinion of someone making $15/hour?". Forgetting that people
who actually interact with your customers and processes frequently have
insight that is useful, albeit not always very macro...

~~~
maxxxxx
That's something I notice in my company too. The pure management types are
often very dismissive of the people who actually do the work. I think this is
part of the inequality trend. The ruling class disconnects more and more from
the working class.

------
ewjordan
Avoiding this kind of "leadership" is especially crucial for product owners on
interdisciplinary teams, like game teams. There you might have 20-50+ people
across engineering, design, planning, art, QA, analytics, and business
development, all of whom have separate and conflicting goals and incentives.
At bigger companies you'll also have partners and stakeholders outside the
team. Balancing all of these interests means that you _have_ to be saying "no"
most of the time, and you have to be able to do so in a way that doesn't
alienate people. Being wishy washy in those situations leads to an unfocused
product that can't ship on time, and a team that becomes disengaged and
increasingly bitter as conflicts begin happening one-on-one without any
mediation.

Being effective at that level is _really_ difficult, and as easy as it may be
to criticize leaders who are bad at it, it's really a rare leader that excels
across the board. Keep that in mind when judging failures, it's always easy to
point out when people mess up when you don't truly understand the scope of the
problems they're facing. There's a reason good leaders are paid so well.

------
inopinatus
It's a common error to conflate management with leadership.

So you're a manager. You are not a big deal. You are not the talent. Don't
call yourself "Boss". You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. You are there to
manage the affairs of the band. You are there to handle the shit they don't or
can't deal with; there to mediate disputes, advocate for their interests and
make sure, to the extent that you can, that they have the resources they need
to execute on their goals. Your 1:1 meetings are all about enabling the
person, both individually and as a team member. Ultimately your job is to
ensure the integrity and effectiveness of the team as a gestalt, which is why
you are allowed to fire people and manage underperforming individuals. If you
have authority it was allocated to you by the team who you serve, and it is
because you acted on their behalf.

Leadership is not management. Leadership takes many forms and can come from
anyone. Whether you're the CEO or a middlerank or an individual contributor.
The critical difference is that someone with resources at their disposition -
a leader who is also a manager - will have a much easier time of executing on
a vision.

~~~
shanghaiaway
Why do you denigrate the job of management? Without it the organization
doesn't function.

Leadership without management is useless.

~~~
inopinatus
All the places I enjoyed working in the last thirty years enabled individual
contributors to be highly regarded leaders.

------
danieltillett
The worst manager I ever had was one who couldn't fire anyone. We would go
through the game of goal setting, performance review, feedback, etc., but it
was all for nothing since my colleagues all knew he had no power so they just
did what ever they wanted (which was nothing). Productivity ground to zero and
most of my colleagues spent their time on various political games if they
bothered to come in at all.

The sad thing in all this if he could have fired the worst few he would have
been a great leader.

------
tboyd47
So employees are engaging in "rent-seeking behavior" against their companies,
extracting value without contributing. The chickens have come home to roost.

[http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/12/03/labor-unions-
dec...](http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/12/03/labor-unions-decline-
since-the-1980s-has-given-corporate-management-a-free-hand-to-make-massive-
permanent-layoffs/)

[http://evonomics.com/corporate-mergers-strangle-economy-
jord...](http://evonomics.com/corporate-mergers-strangle-economy-jordan-
brennan/)

------
jondubois
If a leader knows how to select the right company and the right people, then
he doesn't need any leadership skills.

You just have to wedge yourself between money and talent.

------
jancsika
In the open source world I feel like this type of leader is a strange kind of
"final boss" which you can only defeat by forking the game.

------
JustSomeNobody
Managers manage and bosses react.

If you're in management, manage.

If you're not, and you have a boss, leave.

------
justherefortart
I'm currently working with the worst manager and IT director of my ~25 year
career. It's remarkable.

I wouldn't hire our Director to be a noob IT guy and the manager doesn't know
how to manage anything, nor does he want to (just wants to program and be left
alone to complain about the shitty BA).

All the while the C suite dbags keep trying to outsource everything to the
tune of millions of dollars a year and it's failed for the last 12+ years
running.

The business world is hilarious sometimes. My wife's state job is even worse
though. Her boss essentially has no boss. Is an alcoholic so doesn't work 2-3
days a week. Constantly is micromanaging the dept but also misses critical
deadlines (federal funding). While her coworkers rarely show up at all.

I don't know what happened to this world, but it's honestly as funny as it is
sad now.

------
feelin_googley
"Almost all of the shares [COB+CEO] controls get ten votes each, but public
shareholders only get one vote per share. That gives [COB+CEO] over 50% of the
voting power even though _he only owns about 16% of the shares_."

Question: In this situation, if the person serving as COB+CEO is "incompetent"
(e.g., "absentee"), what can shareholders do, besides divesting their
holdings?

Source:

Todays Wall Street Journal

Author:

[https://www.skadden.com/professionals/b/barusch-
ronald-c](https://www.skadden.com/professionals/b/barusch-ronald-c)

~~~
golergka
Sell.

