
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? - AndrewDucker
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/08/why_do_so_many_incompetent_men.html
======
bhauer
I am not a conservative, but the first paragraph really turned me off to
reading the remainder of this article by asserting that "conservatives and
chauvinists" tend to endorse the notion that there is an under-representation
of women in management because "they are not capable."

Speaking as a non-conservative, I find the implication that conservatives
believe women to be incapable of management offensive. I believe conservatives
would say that there is no single and simple answer to the question but that
it has do with the differing career and life goals between men and women--the
priorities and decisions that men and women use to guide their decision-
making. This is how conservatives explain the wage gap, and the same logic
would be applied to the management gender gap. As a non-conservative,
dismissing their argument about the wage gap (which boils down to, "You're
telling me I could pay $0.72 on the dollar for equal skill? Why in the world
would I ever hire men?") out of hand is isolating yourself from a genuine
criticism. I believe this introductory paragraph attempts to isolate its
argument from genuine criticism by similarly dismissing viable counter-
arguments as unworthy before it even begins.

I also find the article's juxtaposition of "conservative" alongside
"chauvinists" a particularly underhanded and obvious attempt to imply that
there is a great deal of overlap between these two groups.

If you actually believe conservatives think this way, you'll never actually
convince them of anything because you're speaking at them as if they are
children. You're not giving their point of view any legitimacy.

~~~
mblack68
I am a woman, 45 years old, building websites for a living.

After 13 years, I still prefer to sit down and disappear into the screen and
build things. I have natural leadership ability, I have a big personality when
required, but I just don't feel motivated by money or rewards to take on the
responsibility of leading a team.

I watch my colleagues get promoted, all male. And then I watch them try to
balance wife, kids, and life. Without their wives, they tend to do poorly at
life maintenance. They get fat, or pot-bellies at least, their hair falls out
(probably just genetic but still) and after a few years the stress has broken
them. The factors of leading means your reward depends on others whom you are
unable to really control. So they spend time playing head games with people
and taking work home that others can't or won't complete.

The handful of women I know in leadership positions also have a stigma
attached. Their ego leads just like the males, but the women are considered
"too aggressive" and get labeled as such.

So with minimal reward (I require double my income to ruin my life),
management/leadership is just not an option for me, regardless of my
abilities. I suppose living up to my capabilities should be reward enough, but
it isn't.

Until I get a wife and/or make enough money to pay for the easy leisure and
lack of worry I have now, I don't care about the prestige of leadership.

Chauvinistic or not, I truly believe if the reward were there, our society
would have more women in leadership positions.

My personal life has a higher "fee" than men for living and breathing my job.
Pay me that fee, I will make a go of it.

~~~
bhauer
I'm not sure precisely how to interpret your comment. It sounds like your
personal observations but does not offer a conclusion. (And we're so
conditioned to assume people only share stories in order to make a point!)

When you say...

> _Chauvinistic or not, I truly believe if the reward were there, our society
> would have more women in leadership positions._

Specifically, what is the reward you are describing and how does it differ
from the reward available for men? Are you saying you believe the reward to
incent women to management would need to be greater (putting aside the
uncertainty about how to define "greater") than the rewards that sufficiently
incent men?

~~~
mblack68
Legitimate question. But it is a trap. I'm under a new user name here, but I
used to post here years ago. Every answer I give will get me closer to hell-
banning. :)

I will think about it. If I can find a way to present my position more clearly
without social Hacker News repercussions, I will.

edit: funny, how I do the same in real life, with my career, etc. I withhold
strong positions, and give watered down expressions, to survive. Kinda sad.
Lack of real anonymity means I also have to moderate expressions. Any future
employer finding me here will hold everything I say here against me.

~~~
bhauer
I understand. I was merely curious, and I don't ask you to put yourself in a
position where your professional or personal integrity is in jeopardy! If
there is more to share anonymously elsewhere, just let me know. :)

------
freyr
> _In fact, most leaders — whether in politics or business — fail._

There's a sentiment here that leading a complex organization (or even a team
of complex humans) would be _easy_ , if only all leaders were competent.

In my experience, there just aren't _that_ many people who stand out in high-
stakes leadership roles. People at the top make mistakes. But I rarely look
around at the people below and think, "man, if only _they_ were in charge."
The people leading often represent the best options on hand.

Are aggressive, over-confident males overrepresented in leadership roles?
Probably, but it's not a man vs. woman issue. It's an overconfident person vs.
everybody else issue. It's as much a problem for non-overconfident men as it
is for non-overconfident women.

~~~
pdonis
_The people leading often represent the best options on hand._

Only if you first assume that there has to be a "leader"\--that a single
person at the top has to "run things". In fact, it makes no sense at all for
the allocation of huge amounts of resources to be dependent on a single
person's decision--or the decision of an extremely small percentage of the
people affected, for that matter. Do people just not understand the concept of
a single point of failure?

~~~
RougeFemme
Unfortunately, if the organization is succeeding, people see a single point of
_success_ , not a single point of _failure_. And if the leader is actually a
poor leader, people don't recognize that the organization is succeeding _in
spite of_ of the leader. . .and probably because of some "heroes" further down
in the organization.

------
nairteashop
Having worked at a couple of large companies where, unfortunately, incompetent
managers were the norm, I'd wondered quite a bit as well how incompetent
people get into positions of power.

I think one explanation is that the ability to rise within an organization
(political skill) is orthogonal to the ability to be competent at your job
role (technical skill). So you see a lot of VPs of engineering who have
absolutely no clue how to build a product, and have never built anything of
value, who rose through the ranks and got there because they know how to "work
the system". Great VPs need to good at _two_ very different things: politics,
and their actual job, and for this reason they are rare.

This is of course no different from the reason why politicians are generally
so terrible at their job. (Why Todd Akin, of "Legitimate Rape" fame, is on the
House Committee for Science, Space and Technology, for example.)

~~~
rglovejoy
Akin is on the Science, Space and Technology committee because it is not a
very good committee to be on. It doesn't oversee much funding, so it gets
filled with hacks placed there by the House leadership. Any representative
with ambition and talent is going to want to be on the good committees, such
as Armed Services or Ways and Means, which have huge responsibilities and the
attention of lobbyists.

~~~
nairteashop
Unfortunately Akin was on the House Budget and Armed Services committees as
well (a subcommittee on the latter, but still). I just picked Science because
it was the most ridiculous assignment of the three, but I would be very
surprised if he was actually really good at the other two.

------
bane
There are many paths to leadership:

a) Suppose I want to startup a company because I like coding and spending
40hours in a cubicle sucks. Out of dumb luck my company strikes it big and the
planets align for a little while so I can execute and in 3 years I'm the
leader of a $250m/yr company. I was able to execute when opportunity presented
itself, but I have no idea how to generate opportunity, or find it.

b) Same story as above, except this time it's me and four of my beer buddies,
except I'm loud and domineering in business decisions and they're all
introverts. One guy quits because he doesn't like how things went, the rest
make me de facto leader and when corporate paperwork comes around I put myself
as CEO. The others are quiet about which I spin into a kind of legitimacy.
From there on out I try and bounce around CEO and President positions. I have
no other qualifications than being domineering and subversive.

c) I worked my tootsie off and made it through a Harvard MBA program. Boom,
I'm immediately picked up as a Jr. VP in a large and powerful, but old and
crusty megacorp. I stick it out for 4 years while all my of senior leadership
retires, next thing you know I'm a Senior Executive VP at Big&Crusty MegaCorp
Inc. I can't seem to figure out how to navigate the politics to make it
higher, so after 5 years at Big&Crusty MegaCorp I strike out. I find an
executive recruiter who finds me some CEO positions to shoot for with some
medium sized $50-100m/yr copmanies. I interview, and one of them has the right
mix of board members to think that a young and energetic "shooting star" is
just what they want to kick their revenue in the rear. Regardless of how the
company does, I now have a resume that shows all kinds of good bullet points:
Harvard MBA, upwardly mobile as a executive, CEO experience. I can now bounce
around CEO and President positions for a while...spending a year or two at
each place, strike enough good compensation deals to make me rich and
eventually buy myself into a few choice board positions. Note I barely have
any actual work experience at this point, I've only shown boundless ambition
and a willingness to wait for senior people to retire so I can take their
position. The only thing I know how to do after 15 years is navigate the upper
echelons of the corporate hierarchy.

d) I start in the mailroom and work my way up through a mix of competency and
and ambition. A few times my competency damns me and I end up stuck in my
progression, but I follow a strict up or out policy. Over the years I notice
that I've forgotten many of the skills I used to have in the lower levels, I
have to locally optimize my brain I tell myself. I'm working 40-60hr weeks
trying to be competent in my current job, I simply don't have time to remember
what I did 5 years and 2 jobs ago -- but it bothers me that I'm now
functionally incompetent for a job that I used to be among the best at.
Eventually, I work my way into a Senior Exec VP at a growing company. I'm
really good at the job I'm in, but I rapidly lose qualifications for jobs I
used to be in. At the Senior Exec VP level I've simply forgotten what it's
like to be in the trenches, I try to be sympathetic, but it's so hard to
relate...just as hard for me to relate to the Senior Exec VP when _I_ was in
the trenches. Am I a competent leader?

e) etc.

I'm specifically not addressing gender in these scenarios (as the article is
discussing) because what I'm trying to say is that regardless of gender any of
these scenarios might put somebody into position as an "incompetent" leader.
The path to leadership (incompetent or otherwise) in my mind is distinct from
the social and psychological issues related to gender arriving in those
leadership positions. In scenario a and b), there is nothing in gender that
prevents women from starting up their own companies. You see it all the time,
there are tons of businesses started and run by intelligent and driven women.
c & d might still be tougher, there's lots of entrenched power structures that
still make it difficult for women to arrive into the top jobs. In d) the
person _also_ had enough opportunity to _not_ be guided into a progressing,
but dead-end career path.

Anecdotally, I think it's very hard for women to be accepted into leadership
positions. If she's too tough she's marked as an "angry bitch" and will get
rejected, if she's not perfectly competent in areas far outside of her job
function, she'll be marked as "stupid" and get rejected, etc. etc. Cultivating
authority, for a woman, requires a degree of careful presentation and balance
that is very hard to do and most men don't have to deal with. I've worked for
some very good women bosses and a women CEO and I admired their ability to
find that balance and presentation style that gave them command without them
appearing as an "angry bitch" or "stupid".

I've also worked with some women that couldn't find that balance, they weren't
really doing anything a reasonably competent man wouldn't do, but were marked
with gendered epithets and eventually driven from their job. Afterwards, I
spoke to some of them personally, they felt unbelievably rejected and
worthless -- one suffered from depression and dropped out of work for a year.
Their job models didn't do anything different, but their models were all men
-- so they couldn't figure out what happened and what got them rejected...but
the truth is they were simply playing by different rules and weren't able to
navigate the environment well enough to figure out what those rules were.

~~~
rbanffy
> Over the years I notice that I've forgotten many of the skills I used to
> have in the lower levels

I manage a team of incredibly talented programmers and I have to work hard to
keep up technically in order to make informed decisions when needed. Even with
all this effort, I have no illusion I could be as competent a programmer as
they are without _a lot_ of work.

edit: I was tempted for a moment to say "I lead" but they need less my
leadership than my management. One leads from within and I write very little
code these days. I offer some technical advice derived from my experience
(mostly the "don't do that, because that will be hard to maintain" kind of
advice). What I do, hopefully well, is shield them from external interference
so they have a developer-friendly environment where they can better contribute
with their skills. It's devilishly hard.

~~~
enraged_camel
I apologize in advance for the digression.

>>What I do, hopefully well, is shield them from external interference so they
have a developer-friendly environment where they can better contribute with
their skills.

I'm not a programmer, but I work closely with them. I'm responsible for
demonstrating and supporting the products they build, as well as finding new
areas in which those products can be used.

What I noticed is that the teams that are the most shielded produce the
highest quality _code_ , but - and this is a huge BUT - the product itself
ends up being the most short-sighted and limited in terms of good user
experience. The reason is that "shielding developers from external
interference" inevitably equates to shielding them from a real understanding
of how the end-users actually use it.

I don't mean that as a derogatory comment. But, as someone who is on the
"business" side of things, when I work with products developed by shielded
teams, often times I find myself wondering, "Holy shit... what the hell were
they thinking??" The features and functions work, and they work well - but
they are not terribly relevant to what the customer actually wanted.

~~~
rbanffy
You're right.

This shielding has to be limited in scope. Perhaps the most difficult part is
distinguishing between what's good input that will improve the product and
what's noise and teaching our product team how to do it by themselves.

That and dealing with power grabs ;-)

------
jakarta
[http://www.icahnreport.com/report/2008/06/about-
ceos.html](http://www.icahnreport.com/report/2008/06/about-ceos.html) Icahn on
CEOs:

"The way CEOs become CEOs in America is a travesty. This is one of our major
problems. I use the anti - Darwinian metaphor. The survival of the unfittest.

If you remember if you were in college the fraternity president was always
there for you. When you had nothing to do or when you were a little depressed.
Feeling down. You go to the club and the fraternity president would always be
there. You wondered when he had time to study which he probably didn’t do very
much of in school. He was there to sympathize with you if your girlfriend
didn’t show up or didn’t call you back and you obviously sort of liked the guy
because the fraternity president was usually a likeable guy.

When the elections came up you would always vote for him. He had a couple
qualities - the fraternity president. Politically, he was a survivor and he
never made many waves. He did not promote controversy. Therefore when he went
out into corporate America he was able to move up the ladder fairly quickly.
Remember he survived, he didn’t make waves, and he wasn’t a threat. He kept
moving up and up.

Eventually he becomes the assistant to the CEO. The CEO had the same
qualities. He’s a survivor. He’d never employ anyone underneath him who might
be a threat. The boards like these guys… this type of CEO. The boards
generally don’t own any stock (another problem with our system). The boards
don’t really care to hold CEOs accountable. Remember it’s a symbiotic
relationship. These guys pay the boards very well – they give the boards
perks. The boards don’t care to hold them accountable because that might
endanger the perks they love so much.

When the CEO retires the assistant becomes the CEO. And remember what I told
you. He’s a survivor. He would never have anyone underneath him as his
assistant that’s brighter than he is because that might constitute a threat.
So therefore, with many exceptions, we have CEOs becoming dumber and dumber
and dumber. We can all see where this is going. It would almost be funny if it
wasn’t such a threat to our ability to compete and to our economy in general."

~~~
Toenex
_The survival of the unfittest._

A similar proposition is the Peter Principle
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle)]
which basically states that because it is often easier to promote less able
staff out of the way, people are said to rise to the level of their
incompetence. Seems to fit the data all too often.

~~~
enraged_camel
Actually, the Gervais Principle explains it much better.
[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
principle-o...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
the-office-according-to-the-office/)

------
s_baby
The implication being typical women leaders aren't incompetent? By all
accounts female bosses are just as incompetent as their male counterparts if
not more-so. In polls, employees prefer having a male boss over a female one.
This effect is particularly pronounced when the polls ask female workers.[1]

1.[https://www.google.com/search?q=women+prefer+male+bosses](https://www.google.com/search?q=women+prefer+male+bosses)

------
parennoob
IMHO, The first step towards getting competent people (of any gender) into
positions of power would be to stop this blatant, generalizing sexism while
doing the analysis. Imagine an article that said something like of "Why Do So
Many Incompetent Women Become Fashion Designers?" That would be considered
massively sexist.

So is this. Justifying it by saying "But it is meant to help women" doesn't
help _anyone_ , really. Most men reading this will bridle, seeing yet another
"incompetent men" article on the Internet, and sexism will grow yet more
entrenched.

------
SeanLuke
I want to hijack this discussion to bring up a personal gripe I have about
this all being called "leadership". It is a very PHB term.

With the exception of a few outlying examples, no job being discussed in this
article is a leader. A leader has _followers_ , and he can convince them to
follow him through his sheer force of will and inspirational ability. Examples
of leaders: Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Charles Manson, Jaime Escalante,
Joseph Smith, Napoleon, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mao Zedong.

The people and job titles being discussed here are not leaders. They are
managers. The difference is that people don't do what a manager says because
he has inspired them to do so. People do what he says because they are paid to
do so. That is, managers don't have followers. They have underlings.

Managers are of course needed. To work in groups effectively, a roughly fixed-
arity hierarchy has many advantages, and in a hierarchy someone has to be a
non-leaf node. The goal of a manager is to manage his underlings in such a way
as to meet or optimize certain organizational goals. In general this is a very
different set of skills than those found in the best leaders.

This isn't to say that certain leadership skills aren't helpful for
management: obviously it's helpful if a manager can apply some powers of
persuasion to his immediate underlings. But leadership skills are not
necessary to management: there are plenty of reasonable managers with few or
no apparent persuasive skills whatsoever (I'll be kind and not name names).

Persuasion is also not restricted to management: it's helpful in practically
any job involving human relationships. This includes teachers, salespeople,
hostage negotiators, lawyers, and magicians.

But few other career paths imagine themselves as "leaders". Teachers don't go
to leadership seminars or buy ridiculous low-rigor books on leadership. This
seems to be a cult special to the management community. Why do so many
managers imagine themselves to be something they are not? I think it's for two
reasons. First, they have power, and leaders have power, and so they have
mistaken one for the other. Second, and more importantly, I think management
is an awful and thankless life choice. Managers don't make anything or really
contribute anything tangible to society. The Dilbert Principle is very valid
here. And so managers try to imagine that their jobs ("leadership!") are more
important than they really are, simply out of ego boosting.

I think that leadership is so valuable a skill, and so rare and powerful a
force, that we should actively fight to prevent the management community from
co-opting the term to describe the daily task of collating TPS reports.

~~~
smacktoward
HN: the only place on Earth where Elon Musk would appear on the same list as
Napoleon and Mao Zedong.

------
dnautics
I think this article is very dangerous. By and large, the reason why women
don't become leaders is because _they don 't ask to_. 1) It's not a feasible
social model for everyone sitting around being humble, expecting to become a
leader "because they have the right personality profile for it". 2) to be
effective, realistically leaders need to have a level of expertise to
critically judge the project - leaving it to advisors to make the lion's share
of those decisions can lead to serious derailment (which is why the MBA
culture is seriously flawed).

"Lean in" may be a bit extreme, but we DO have a problem where for whatever
reason women don't ASK to be leaders, and when they do they don't NEGOTIATE
for more power or pay. For whatever sociocultural reason, we seem to be in the
business of shielding women from the emotional risk of failure. This is deeply
ingrained in our culture: although both are changing, on the centuries-old
social dance floor men ask women for dances, men ask women for dates. The head
of the institute where I work famously owns a Tesla Model S, and this high
school intern is somewhat obsessive about the Teslas, and I told her, "go ask
him for a ride around the block", and all I got were nine months of excuses
not to.

To be sure, it takes a modicum of narcissism to ask for a position of
leadership, just as it takes some narcissism to ask for a dance on the dance
floor (I deserve to dance with this person) or ask for a date (I deserve to go
on a date). Labelling narcissism in and of itself as a bad is dangerous, what
is dangerous is excessive narcissism to the exclusion of humility and reason.

Anecdotally, I don't think it's hard for women to accepted as leaders. When I
worked for one, it was not a problem, I seriously had a lot of respect for
her. Ok. So maybe I did once think of her as "crazy" \- but it was only on the
day when she hyperbolically threatened to kill the grad students if they used
the wrong pipette, and they sort of deserved to hear it, their performance and
lack of intellectual introspection was unacceptably low. However, I do work in
academic science where positions of leadership are more often than normal (but
I would not say a majority of the time) earned through directly relevant
achievement. In the "normal" case, it might be easier to shrug off an
incompetent or perceived incompetent leader. I do sometimes wonder, though, if
whether or not I and others respected her, if she wasn't still self-conscious
about it.

------
nawitus
This article would be considered sexist if the genders were reversed. In
today's political correct discussion it's okay to glorify women and make
negative blanket statements about men.

Negative stereotypes are supposedly okay if they're directed at men, but not
women.

The real reason so few women become men is that a) women are less interested
and b) there are more men at the both ends of the Bell Curve in all kinds of
abilities.

~~~
meangeme
Read this please: [http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/laurie-penny/men-
sexism](http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/laurie-penny/men-sexism)

~~~
tbrownaw
Then to see where that leads, read this:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1kszxu/my_22f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/1kszxu/my_22f_boyfriend_25m_got_called_a_pedophile_at/)

------
mathattack
Overconfidence bias is very real.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect)

Try asking people to guess a bunch of #s with 90% confidence intervals and see
how often they are wrong. (Examples: Population of the US, Circumference of
the Earth...)

What does this mean for leadership?

The very thing we are looking for (confidence) undermines good decisions.

So how should less confidence people inspire? That's the tough question. Some
of the best professors I've had (in terms of both research production and
teaching quality) have been amongst the most humble. Corporate leaders -
perhaps less so. Though when you do follow a leader with humility, the
strength that they project comes from a deeper place.

------
koshatnik
"It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are,
ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting
themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." \-
Douglas Adams

------
goodcanadian
I would like to offer a counter point. In military officer training (I haven't
done it, but I have friends who have), you are taught that the wrong decision
NOW is better than the right decision LATER. The reason for this is because
hesitation leads to people dying.

Now think about evolutionary timescales, a leader was primarily needed for
dangerous situations such as hunting dangerous prey and warfare. The same
logic applies; hesitation results in death. Blind confidence is a necessary
trait to make such quick decisions, to not hesitate, and to not second guess
yourself. This may be why we are wired to prefer the "confident" over the
"competent."

Now, obviously, this is less appropriate in corporate leaders where the stakes
are not so immediately life and death, where there is time to research and to
examine alternatives. But, we are creatures of our evolution, so it is perhaps
not so surprising that is the sort of person we prefer to be our leaders. I
think it is important to recognize and remain aware of our biases because that
is the only way we have of fighting against them when appropriate.

------
pgopalan
A more useful article would be to drop the gender and ask Why Do So Many
Incompetent People Become Leaders?

~~~
jerf
I kind of agree. I completely agree that confidence/arrogance is a male-
associated trait and so we see more male incompetent managers, but it isn't a
"woman" problem that they are incompetent and bad, it's an everbody-but-the-
arrogant-ones problem. I'm not convinced you can solve it "for woman"; solve
it in general and the gender problem will resolve itself.

------
cafard
Cheer up! There are plenty of confident, incompetent women too, and they're
starting to get their chances. One relative works for one, another did.

------
6d0debc071
_Women Don 't Ask_ by Linda Babcock is well worth reading if you're interested
in this sort of thing. One particularly striking result was that MBA graduates
differences in pay between men and women was around $4,000 in favour of men -
which, IIRC, she claimed could be accounted for by the fact that 57% of men
chose to negotiate as compared to 7% of women. Those who negotiated,
regardless of gender, tended to receive around $4,000 more than those who did
not.

I think it very plausible that a lot of this sort of thing comes down to
wanting to be fair, not wanting to be pushy - that sort of thing. Which
generally works well with other women, but not necessarily so well if your
boss is a man and prefers to communicate in a different style. Especially when
your access to that style is limited by there being few gender-relevant role
models; a man's aggressive he's a go-getter, a woman's aggressive she's an
irrational bitch.

------
ojbyrne
The first thought I had was "because of Harvard Business School." Irony.

------
lutusp
Easy question to answer -- narcissism. Fortunately, the article addresses this
issue.

------
ap22213
In my experience, the types of people who generally become leaders are those
who seek out to be leaders. And those are types tend to have overly optimistic
views of themselves (and some desire to control others).

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Or they just want more money than everybody else (ie it's not good enough to
earn 200k when everyone else is earning 200k as well..) and they will stop at
nothing to get another rung up on that latter...

------
aj700
also because people, not just men, who become leaders are psychopaths, so any
damage they do is just a fun bonus, not something they'll sweat, a nice
addition to the money, sex and power they get. And yes, sex too - power turns
women on and powerful women turn men on too. e.g. I don't really consider JFK
a rapist - he just never had to ask... any of his hundreds of conquests.

Homer Simpson : ...before the weight of the world broke my spirit.

Seems to have happened to me too. If it were possible to disable my conscience
I would probably opt for it. Where's Dick Fuld now, eh?? Employed.

~~~
detcader
But are you seriously referring to sexual intercourse that men initiate as
"conquests" or was that non-serious?

~~~
aj700
What's wrong with that word. Women I know use it all the time. They don't mind
being the subject of a transitive verb instead of the actor. One conquers them
because they have huge ... tracts of land.

~~~
detcader
Thanks, you answered my question

------
btilly
There are two questions here. One is why are the men who become leaders
incompetent. I think it has nailed that one. The other is why men become
leaders and women don't. I think it found one contributing factor, but not a
cause.

Read [http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/ceo-
archetyp...](http://consultingadultblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/ceo-
archetypes-7-joan-of-arc.html) for insight into other factors that contribute
to men having a significant advantage in the hierarchy over men.

------
jevin
I've met A LOT of incompetent leaders. So, I asked myself this question a
million times. And I think I have found a logic answer...

The secret here is "incompetent". Being incompetent means these people have a
hard time holding on to a job. Because they get no raise, no promotion and no
special treatment. Heck, they don't even feel part of the team. Cause they're
just the guy who does an OK job. Naturally, these people are often out of a
job. And since every job quickly gets complicated for them, they tend to start
their own little startup.

Contrast that to competent people. Chances are, they'll get hired to do
something they love and be offered a comfortable salary. Therefore mitigating
(in most cases) the need to create a startup.

Now the fun part, here are some examples of incompetent leaders I've known: \-
A web agency owner, who was the initial web developer for years, but writes
HORRIBLE, INCREDIBLY VULNERABLE code. \- A head sales representative who can't
write properly in his maternal language. \- A web agency owned and run by
someone who doesn't know anything about technology. He calls jQuery "iPhone
compatible technology". \- The best, a boss who couldn't even speak in front
of his mere dozen employees. I wonder how he negotiates his contracts.

------
gjenkin
While the author makes a good case that 'confidence' and 'ability to impress'
are key drivers of the tendancy to promote incompetent individuals to
leadership roles, another dynamic may be that some leaders who fear exposure
of their own incompetence tend to surround themselves with 'yes' men/women who
themselves aren't particularly competent or skilled in anything other than
making the master feel superior.

In such a situation, when the incompetent leader exits, all those who are next
in line are these incompetent 'yes' people, increasing their chances of being
considered for and granted promotion.

This dynamic exists in some institutions in contrast to the 'surround yourself
with people smarter/better/more competent than you' philosophy of leadership.
Jim Collins talked about these approaches in Good To Great, comparing Bank of
America's 'weak general' promotion culture with Wells Fargo's approach of
getting the most talented people into the highest organizational positions
possible. You could argue selection bias, but it's interesting to compare the
financial performance of the two banks over the last 10 years or so.

------
anologwintermut
Leadership requires people to have confidence in your abilities and be willing
to follow you. And the semi-sexist bullshit the article has about scientific
evidence that women have "more effective leadership strategies" is moot if, as
the article contends, they do not appear confident.

Even if the article is correct, it's fundamentally conflating leadership with
management and the two are not the same.

------
shameless_1
The Peter Principle

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle)

------
jokoon
Because human social competence does not fit as something evolution and
natural selection can deal with.

We still don't live in a world where society comes first, which is something
which is more happening in Asia.

I don't think the quote "evil prevails where good men fail to act" is always
true, but there is no formula for success, there is only domination. You don't
become a leader because you know how to make the world a better place, you
become a leader because people trust you how to lead, and leading is about
making choices and decisions.

Leaders did not invent technologies, but they were important into making them
viable in business terms, which is as much important.

But nobody should forget true inventors are not as much valued as good
leaders. A good leaders will be a leader who has a minimal technological
knowledge, but also understand its compromise.

For example, Tesla would not be viable without introducing the high end tesla
roadster, which is a classical business model inventors will have a hard time
dealing with.

------
WalterBright
I've worked in many organizations. The managed are always of the universal
opinion that the leaders are incompetent. "How can he be so stupid?" is
commonly heard.

When those become leaders in turn, they make just as bad if not worse
managers. I remember one canonical example who, in a voice dripping with
contempt, told me how I was an unbelievable screwup in how I ran my business.
Some years later, she left the corporate life and invested her life savings in
her own startup, and lost everything.

Being a good leader is a much, much harder job than it looks like. (No, I'm
not going to pretend I'm very good at it, either.)

I suppose it's like democracy - it's the worst possible system, except for all
the others.

------
makerops
"In my view, the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our
inability to discern between confidence and competence. That is, because we
(people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of
competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than
women."

While this view may hold true for the majority, I think the complete opposite
is true. The people I have learned the most from, and who are the most
competent (some of them in CEO positions, most in leadership), take the exact
opposite approach. Always willing to admit fault, and imperfections, and
always "looking for a better way to do X".

------
nraynaud
I'm not really competent but not really confident either, I guess I'm
screwed...

------
niuzeta
I clicked on the link, expecting a discussion on why do so many _incompetent_
men become leaders, only to find a discussion on why do so many incompetent
_men_ become leaders.

I was disappointed.

------
herbig
Was interested, but I stopped reading at "Freud argued."

------
njharman
Law of averages, there are lots of incompetent people. Our social structures
(and humans themselves) are atrocious selectors for competence.

We also notice/remember/celebrate (and attribute to competence rather than
happenstance) the people at right place, right time and people at wrong place,
wrong time. While ignoring the vast numbers of actually mildly competent and
mildly incompetent people in the middle of the bell curve.

------
marcuspovey
Two separate questions conflated together:

1) Why aren't there more women in positions of authority? 2) Why are the
majority of people in authority incompetent?

The answer to the second is probably that people get promoted exactly one
level above their ability. The answer to the former is the real problem, and I
suspect that if you solve that you'd still have a world run by a bunch of
idiots, it's just that 50% of them would be female.

~~~
tbrownaw
They're not being conflated, the claim is that they share a common cause (men
are good at faking competence).

------
joeldidit
It's simple. They are rotten to the core and showed there was no limit to how
low they'd go to rise to the top. They also kissed a lot of ass, and played on
the stupidity of those around them.

Remember to do your part to stem the tide of this phenomenon by not hiring or
promoting these idiots. Not just the people you dislike, but people who are
genuinely like this. If you stop promoting them, then they'll go away.

The power is yours.

------
api
It's 1950. You want to go to the moon. Find ten competent aerospace experts
and line them up. Ask them what the moon is made of.

Nine of them answer ditheringly: "I'm not sure," or "we don't really know
yet," etc.

The tenth confidently steps up, displays "alpha male" body language, and says:
"it's made of green cheese."

That person is now in charge of the space program.

The entire world works that way.

~~~
nsxwolf
But the alphas did get us to the moon, right?

------
avelis
Leadership carries importance for organizational goals as mentioned in this
thread. Those who lead can inspire and aspire others to follow an idea or
cause. It has been through my experience of empowering through knowledge that
I have lead many peers to acheive great things on their own. Anyone can lead
by being inspirational to others. My proposal to this thread: What work
inspires you?

------
kyledrake
I enjoy that this hit Hacker News the same time Microsoft announces Steve
Ballmer's retirement, and I wonder if it is not a coincidence.

------
djent
This sounds exactly like the main point of many Dilbert comics and books (a
dozen or so of which I own). Scott Adams explains it as nature's way of moving
incompetent people out of the way of the competent people. Having an
incompetent person on your team is most likely way more obstructive than
having an incompetent manager.

~~~
hnal943
I'm not sure that's the point of Dilbert, although it is a recurring joke. PHB
causes way more misery and obstruction than Wally. Your manager can steer your
whole team/organization onto the rocks.

------
Killah911
To me the problem is within the system. If there were a VP promoting a manager
to hiring one, they'd make sure that the manager didn't outshine them. I've
seen this at play many times. Incompetent people like to hire & promote other
incompetent people so they don't look bad in contrast.

------
mmsimanga
The Press should also take some of the blame. I would wager narcissists make
far more outrageous claims about their ability and their companies ability.
This gives these leaders the "rock star" status thus propagating all that is
wrong with leadership as described in the post.

------
BetterLateThan
Because intelligence is detrimental to survival:
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16297-intelligent-
sold...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16297-intelligent-soldiers-
most-likely-to-die-in-battle.html)

------
codex
The thesis here is that some men who are confident but not competent become
leaders. But, while there are incompetent people who are confident, isn't
confidence always a requirement for good leadership?

------
jheriko
this isn't complicated. people who hunger for power push for leadership -
stupid people don't understand how involved that is and so will go for it
before they are ready. to top it off we have a culture of upwards failing and
poor interviews.

it is so 'un-pc' to criticise or fire anyone that after being pushed out for
screwing everything up you get a nice mark on your CV saying you had a job as
X even though you effectively failed as hard as possible.

it is so easy to blag an interview by ticking the standard boxes as well...

------
meangeme
This would have been a decent article if Freud wasn't sourced.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_Kruger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_Kruger)

------
EGreg
The Peter Principle?

------
marincounty
Because they kiss the right asses! I've seen this in large organizations. In
small companies, or companies started with friends, the leaders are usually
the most "well rounded" person in the room. A small business needs a person
who can get the most out of everyone, in an innate way. They are usually the
first born, and male.

