
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (2013) - bootload
https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men
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hackuser
This is based on my experience and has no other basis; I hope it's worthwhile:

Many people overlook obvious incompetence in men. We let men off the hook too
easily when they demonstrate poor judgment, ignorance, irresponsibility, or
disrespect and a lack of understanding of others. It's ok as long as they do
it in a hyper-masculine way, aggressively or boisterously; it's even enouraged
in many situations as a byproduct and demonstration of strength. Think of
Donald Trump, for example.

I think it's a result of lowered expectations: People think that it's the way
men inevitably will behave; boys will be boys. Also I think people are
intimidated, both by the aggression and by knowing that socially, such
behavior is generally acceptable and criticizing it likely will be a losing
battle and will make the critic look 'soft' for not appreciating 'strength'.

EDIT: Some of the angry rants in this thread so far in a way support my idea:
Many are ignorant, poorly reasoned, and providing little value to readers. So
why is that behavior acceptable? Why do we let it pass or even take it
seriously?

As a counterpoint to my own question: I generally associate that behavior with
men, based also on my experiences, but I don't know the gender of the
commenters (though HN is likely mostly male) and I don't know that women
behave differently online.

~~~
vacri
I think it's more gender-biased, in that incompetence is overlooked in areas
where we expect one gender to have better skills. If a man fucks up changing a
nappy, "well, he's just a man". If a woman fucks up changing a tyre, "well,
she's just a woman".

When it comes to leadership, we haven't allowed women to be visible leaders
for very long; there is still cultural baggage suggesting it as a male area.

~~~
hackuser
> incompetence is overlooked in areas where we expect one gender to have
> better skills.

I agree and that's a good point. However, 1) if leadership is a male field
then men should face higher standards, not lower ones; and 2) the consequences
for high-level leaders can be much more serious than tires or nappies, too
serious to dismiss with casual gender stereotypes.

~~~
scott_karana
> However, 1) if leadership is a male field then men should face higher
> standards, not lower ones

I suspect that anthropologists and sociologists would say that the OPPOSITE is
true: that people inside peer-groups are often subject to less criticism than
those _out_ of the groups. ;-)

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Mz
A mostly not well written piece that is likely to do poorly on HN, but this
one bit is good food for thought:

 _So it struck me as a little odd that so much of the recent debate over
getting women to “lean in” has focused on getting them to adopt more of these
dysfunctional leadership traits. Yes, these are the people we often choose as
our leaders — but should they be?_

A lot of advice given to women with ambition boils down to "behave more like
men." From what I have seen, that tends to not work well for women.

~~~
hackuser
Perhaps men also should be learning leadership traits from women. If you're
male and competitive, consider that the male leadership traits are easily
found in your peers; the female ones could give you a big advantage - if you
dare.

(I'm greatly simplifying by categorizing some traits as 'male' or 'female'. To
the extent there is a difference, I expect much of it is socialized. In many
ways I suspect the difference is due to the expectations of the beholder.)

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mikeryan
I'm firm believer in the "Peter Principle" whereby "managers rise to the level
of their incompetence."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)

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anigbrowl
Are they incompetent, or do they just have different success criteria? In
theory, managers are supposed to be dedicated to advancing the interests of
the shareholders, and a board of directors supervises their managerial
activity. But an individual manager may be much more interested in maximizing
his own wealth, and may occupy a job only for as long as he can make a lot of
money without getting into trouble, moving on to another firm as soon as he
sees that his tenure is unsustainable (but before everyone else has worked out
that he's a liability). I mean, why work hard at managing a widget factory if
you can more profitably devote your time to learning about doohickeys and
playing golf with the owners of the doohickey factory across town?

While I agree with the author's contention that businesses are bad at hiring
managers and so reward pathological candidates, I disagree with his assumption
that they're merely incompetent as opposed to self-serving. There's also the
question of whether corporate boards are always aligned with the interests of
shareholders. I know of one small-cap firm that brought in a new CEO who began
alienating everyone in sight almost immediately, and whose previous
appointments had generated a small forest of red flags, which would have been
very obvious to the board. Not long after the new broom arrived the share
price fell, the firm was de-listed...and the former founder-CEO sold his
shares at a loss, lost his seat on the board, and the firm's IP and book of
business were transferred for a song to another firm owned by other directors.
(Writing it this way it sounds wildly illegal but my impression was that the
activity fell into the unethical-but-legal grey area. Of course I am leaving
out a lot of ancillary details, not least to avoid slandering anyone.)

~~~
hackuser
> While I agree with the author's contention that businesses are bad at hiring
> managers and so reward pathological candidates, I disagree with his
> assumption that they're merely incompetent as opposed to self-serving ...

The author contends that businesses hire "self-centered, overconfident and
narcissistic" managers. Whether that covers for incomptentence or for
intentionally harming the business seems an orthogonal question.

I generally think your points are good, but I'm not sure they address this
article.

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vacri
There's a lot of begging the question fallacies in this article, the most
prominent being that confidence has nothing to do with leadership. Which is
nonsense - confidence is a fundamental part of leadership. Leadership is
definitely more than confidence (as the second-last paragraph of the article
suggests), but this article makes it sound like they're orthogonal traits.

It also moves the goalposts: First up, it says that the best leaders are
humble. Then it says that the best leaders, since they don't show this
humility (eg Jobs), are not representative of the _average_ manager... so now
we're talking about middle managers, not 'best leaders'.

Curiously, the article makes no mention of the Peter Principle - people can be
competant, and keep getting promoted until they reach a level where they can
no longer perform well. While that doesn't explain the gender difference, it
does somewhat answer the article title - something the article doesn't
actually do.

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bootload
_" we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a
sign of competence... This is consistent with the finding that leaderless
groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and
narcissistic individuals as leaders"_

I've seen this happen over and over again. How do you think you can limit the
damage done?

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PaulHoule
It is interesting to compare this to the conjectured "Glass Cliff"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff)

The claim is that women CEOs are likely to get hired at failing companies.
Personally I bought Lucent stock and had it go down $1000 in value the next
day because of an earnings statement under Carly Fioria and then later things
went badly at HP under her shift.

Oddly enough, Meg Whitman presided over ebay's long decline, and then took
Carly's old job. It's so amazing how small the talent pool seems to be in the
U.S.

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iopq
If women are such good leaders, how come there aren't companies that have
exclusively female leadership?

I mean, if the owner thought that this would give him the highest returns, why
would he care about the gender of his employees?

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bane
Better question: why do so many incompetent _people_ become leaders. I've had
the mispleasure of working under some fabulously incompetent men _and_ women
in my time (and I've worked under some brilliant people of both genders as
well).

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mdekkers
Because of the Peter Principle

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jcslzr
check out "the gervais principle"

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striking
So to recap:

> women outperform men on emotional intelligence

> a quantitative review of gender differences in personality involving more
> than 23,000 participants in 26 cultures indicated that women are more
> sensitive, considerate, and humble than men

Nothing wrong with these. The (helpfully linked!) science backs them up.

> Unsurprisingly, the mythical image of a “leader” embodies many of the
> characteristics commonly found in personality disorders, such as narcissism
> (Steve Jobs or Vladimir Putin) , [...]

Hold on. Okay, the listed people may not be perfect, but why do so many people
feel it is appropriate to diagnose others with some kind of mental disorder,
especially without having examined them in person? Shameful, clickbait-tier
stuff.

Oh, and why are those mentioned in an article that brings up gender
differences? Are those supposed to claim that women lack disorders? Even if
those people did actually have those disorders, is it a good idea to claim
that women are better just because one or two men have disorders?

> In fact, most leaders — whether in politics or business — fail.

Doesn't answer the question, because it leaves out _men_ , which the title
raised specifically.

> There is now compelling scientific evidence for the notion that women are
> more likely to adopt more effective leadership strategies than do men.

Great! I'm really happy to hear that! But what does it have to do with men and
their incompetence? Surely just because men are slightly less efficient, you
wouldn't discard all male leaders? Where are the "incompetent men" here?

> In sum, there is no denying that women’s path to leadership positions is
> paved with many barriers including a very thick glass ceiling. But a much
> bigger problem is the lack of career obstacles for incompetent men

So there is a societal problem with women becoming leaders which I'll accept
without argument. But why is the "the lack of career obstacles for incompetent
men" relevant? Why should we, as a society, make it harder for men or for
incompetent people to get jobs?

I don't believe an authoritarian approach to job granting will actually
benefit anyone. Why would you try to stop certain people from getting jobs?
Why not make it easier for other kinds of people to get jobs instead? And I
have to raise the argument (as mine would not be complete without it), why not
just allow people to act on their own merit and decide who is the best leader
based on what they do?

The article stirs up a controversy (or whatever) but doesn't leave the reader
with any actionable suggestions. Perhaps reevaluating managers more seriously
for more accurate metrics could be a good idea! The author implies that we
should learn to counter "our inability to discern between confidence and
competence"... and I agree with that! It was simply not stated directly.

But it has nothing to do with men or women. It should be about making things
more fair. Which actually has nothing to do with gender, in this case.
Learning how to tell good leadership from a good show really doesn't have to
do with gender.

I appreciate replies or direct emails. Fire away.

