5 ms·
> 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 human
by freyr 13y ago
> 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lazyjones 13y agoYou can minimize the risk of failing by not risking much. Do such people make the best leaders? They will probably not even manage to become leaders, except if they are appointed by others based on their skills, not their actions. That happens neither in politics, nor (typically) in business.
- sp332 13y agoAre aggressive, over-confident males overrepresented in leadership roles? Yes, and so are cautious men, and nice guys, and pretty much every other kind of guy.
- lmg643 13y ago1) my favorite quote on leadership is from ben horowitz: "Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong. [...] If CEOs were graded on a curve, the mean on the test would be 22 out of a 100. This kind of mean can be psychologically challenging for a straight A student. It is particularly challenging, because nobody tells you that the mean is 22." 2) Clearly the only solution for our incompetent leader problem is for everyone to go to HBS, right?
- pdonis 13y agoThe 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 13y agoUnfortunately, 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.