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From my experience, guys with the highest IQs are the worst leaders and they inexplicably, usually lack vision and courage.

• throwaway5752 10y ago
  Hey, just a clarification. Could you ballpark, roughly, the ballpark that you're talking about for "highest IQs" and the IQs of the better leaders you've worked with? Because I think in software development, we fail to appreciate that 100 - by definition - is the median IQ and that half of people are below 100. I'd say the bulk of highly effective leaders in software I've worked with were substantially over 100. Before software, I have worked with different populations with greater variance. Unintelligent people usually make poor leaders. Anyway, people have written and research a lot about this (MBTI, EQ, etc) and IQ is just a component and IQ itself is a very coarse grained metric that has many subcomponents. High IQ certainly doesn't hurt in general.
  • myf01d 10y ago
    I meant real high IQ like most engineers & scientists, maybe IQ > 125 or 130. I guess there may be some relation between higher IQs and poor communication skills, less courage and other traits. But that's just a personal view with no scientific evidence.
    • throwaway5752 10y ago
      That's what I guessed. I have seen some very smart individuals lack empathy for people that weren't as smart or otherwise capable, or undercommunicate because they thought more things were tacitly understood than really were. I have no idea if there's a negative correlation there.