Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Very serious. And I think... you know, we often hear cynics or skeptics remind us that correlation does not mean causation, but at the same time correlations do have causes, and it is our job as social scientists to explore whether, perhaps, correlations are causally linked.

So I think, you know, this is the main thing I explore in my book. And the point is not so much to indulge (or overindulge) in "male bashing" – my only point is that there are many incompetent leaders out there, more often than not they are male rather than female.

It is actually extraordinarily difficult for an incompetent woman to become a leader, and that's OK. So we should apply the same rigorous standards we do when we select females into leadership positions to our selection or vetting of males. That's basically the book in a nutshell.

Rachel Salaman: Just to be clear at this point, you're not actually saying that generally, out in the world, more men are incompetent versus women?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Well that is actually true – it reflects the reality – but that is also driven by the fact that there are so many more men in leadership roles than women.

So somebody could argue, "Well there are also more competent male leaders than competent female leaders." Quantity does lead to quality. And, in this case, what we haven't emphasized enough is that it also augments the representation of bad leaders when they are male.

So, I think my point is not so much the issue of gender as a kind of a pure social demographic variable, but more that there is a particular style of incompetent leadership that has historically been linked to masculinity more than being a man.

You know, this idea that we pick leaders on the basis of their overconfidence, their bravado, their assertiveness – there are many women who have these traits but, at the same time, they are more commonly found in men, and they do contribute to their poor performance.

Rachel Salaman: Now you wrote that article I mentioned in 2013. So what's changed since then, both in the wider business environment that you may have observed, and also in your own thinking on this topic?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Yeah, I think maybe less has changed than we immediately think or perceive.

Just to give you a little bit of a back story, I actually wrote the original article in 2013 as a counterpoint to Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, because my view was that it's just too easy to blame women for their lack of ambition and then say, "Well, that's basically why we don't have more women leaders: they are not showing assertiveness, they don't want it enough and it's their fault."

Actually, I even thought it's dangerous to suggest that it's the case. Because if our choices of leaders are purely based on people's ability to blow their own trumpet, self-promote, put themselves forwards or "lean in," even when they don't have the talents to back it up – we're not going to improve the quality of our leaders.

So, my idea was simple: wouldn't it be better if we live in a world where actually people who are focused on delivering results, doing their work (instead of self-promoting), and who in a way let their achievements speak for themselves, are considered for leadership roles? Instead of promoting this more narcissistic mindset where, "Oh, you have to step up and tell us that you're great."

So that was the story, and I think not that much has changed.

Rachel Salaman: So why do you think that the so-called masculine traits, like self-belief and extroversion, are commonly believed to be predictors of good leadership?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Well, you know, I don't even think they are commonly believed, because for 20 or 30 years now we have been repeating (but mostly paying lip service) to this idea that the best leaders are humble.

And I think conceptually and theoretically we agree – humility is better than arrogance. Having said that, you know, we still are fooled and fall for people who seem unjustifiably pleased with themselves or unaware of their limitations. And I think there are two main reasons for this.

Firstly, leadership has become a lot more complex than it used to be. 1,000 or 10,000 years ago it was really more about physicality, bravado, courage, and perhaps there was a correlation between fearlessness and performance.

And then secondly, I think that there is a very sensible evolutionary explanation for the fact that when an individual is self-deceived – and most people are but some people more than others – ironically those who are capable to say it in a way of fooling themselves and are less aware of their flaws will project fewer insecurities to others.

If I think I'm better than I actually [am], especially if you're evaluating my performance or my potential during an interview, or watching video interviews of me, or in short-term interactions, you might be impressed, "Wow, this guy doesn't seem anxious, he doesn't seem worried at all, he doesn't seem fearful, so he's probably quite good!" Well it turns out I'm just deluded, and that type of delusion is significantly more common in men than women.

Rachel Salaman: And yet, as you've mentioned, it's kind of beguiling – it's the default that some hiring managers fall back on, so that's where the problem is.

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: And, I tell you, what makes the problem much worse is that it's actually hard to expose or reveal this bias as such – as a bias. Because, if the same mechanisms we use (or we rely on) to judge potential, are then used or utilized to judge performance later on, our bias will replicate, right?

So this is no different from a hiring manager liking you in an interview (because you seem fun and you seem to click and you seem to belong to the same tribe or the same kind of culture and have something in common), and then that same manager is in charge of evaluating your performance 12 months later or two years later.

Not only will the person be equally biased at time two, than he was or she was at time one, on top of that they have "skin in the game." Because if they suddenly accept that you're not performing well, they'll come across as stupid and have to accept that they made a mistake.

So it's interesting because often when we look for data to test whether we were right or not in picking leaders, we're actually looking at data that is biased in the first place because it's derived from the same human perceptions. And perceptions tend to trump reality.

Rachel Salaman: And in your book you talk about the female advantage in the context of leadership, what is that?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: It's important to start by clarifying that. Although there are many similarities between men and women, particularly vis-à-vis psychological traits (including some that make up the essence of leadership style and leadership potential), I am fundamentally emphasizing that there are also differences.

So when people say – and it tends to be people who are liberally minded – and argue for more equality, "Oh men and women are the same." I actually disagree. I think there are differences favoring women: around three or four soft skills that are very important (and should, by the way, be even more important when we select leaders) and those are competence, integrity, self-awareness, and humility.

I don't think it's controversial to say that in any area of business or any type of organizations – by the way, also politics, not just in business – we will be better off if we have leaders with more competence, with more integrity, with more self-awareness, and with more humility.

Well, on these four traits women score higher than men, and that's the female advantage. At the same time, male leaders tend to score higher than women on dark-side traits such as narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and that is a disadvantage. Ironically, these dark-side traits often contribute to their individual success, because they help people manage up and get promoted.

So even though these differences are modest (they are not very large), they aggregate. And if you take into account that, on the one side you have bright-side traits that predict good leadership effectiveness (and they favor women), and on the other hand you have dark-side traits that predict bad or poor leadership performance (and male over index), that explains some of the discrepancies we see. Not just vis-à-vis how many men get promoted and how many women don't – but how men actually do or fair as leaders when they get there.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and in this part of the book, where you expand on those ideas of the bright-side and the dark-side, you also talk about an "inside." So how does that play into it?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Well the inside has to do with the drivers, or the values, that leaders have. And I think that's really important because, as a leader, you will be responsible for creating and shaping the culture and the climate in your teams and in your organizations.

One specific driver that actually highlights the differences between men and women is altruism. Although altruism is distributed across the population as a kind of a quantitative trait, you know, some people have more than others, some people... Imagine, I don't know, a scale that ranges from Hitler, Mao and Stalin on the one side, up to the Dali Lama and Mother Theresa and Mandela on the other (to give some examples) – most people are average. But in general, overall, women do score slightly higher than men on altruism.

And again, if you take that data point into account, and then you also consider that it is often displays of greed, ambition and drive that are rewarded with leadership appointments or promotions, you can see why we have more men than women rising to leadership roles – but also why altruism is almost a disadvantage to your career success.

But as a value, as a driver, it's one of the main positive markers of leadership performance. If we have leaders who want to become leaders (or individuals who want to become leaders) because they want to help their teams, their organizations, and they're not doing it because of their own greed, then other people will be better off.

Rachel Salaman: Well clearly the difference between confidence and competence is central to this topic, and to your book. Can you talk a little bit more about the relationship between those two things?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Yes. So confidence is basically how good people think they are at something, and competence is how good people actually are at something.

We have habituated to the idea that confidence is so desirable that the more you have of it the better it is. Well confidence doesn't have to be as high as possible, it has to be in sync with your actual ability. The whole point of self-perceived talent or self-perceived abilities, which is what confidence is, is to give you an accurate insight as to how good you actually are.

If I'm about to cross a busy road walking, what's better: to think that I can cross even though cars and trucks are coming? Or to be able to estimate that maybe I should wait until the cars pass so that I can actually get to the other side?

By the way, if there's other people behind me looking at what I do because they're going to follow me, then my delusion or overconfidence won't just punish me but also the others.

So lots of studies in leadership have shown that the best performing leaders have confidence levels that match their actual abilities and performance. And in some instances they have confidence levels that are lower than their actual abilities, because they question themselves, they don't believe in their own hype, they don't get complacent, and they have this ability to keep learning and keep improving.

In order to get better as a leader, or in any field, you need to be aware of the gap between where you need to be and where you are. And if you have too much confidence you're going to think you're great when in fact you're not and you're going to get worse, not better.

Rachel Salaman: What are some tips for distinguishing between confidence and competence, as in some cases they can look very similar?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Yes, and that's a great point, because we need to create the conditions that disconnect or disentangle both.

How do you judge competence? Well, first of all, if we think about it as technical expertise or hard skills, it's essential that you have these skills yourself; I can only be an expert judging talent or competence in others if I have competence in that field. If I don't know anything about music or playing the piano and I'm going to judge your piano playing ability I won't be as prepared as somebody who is, right? Who is an expert. So that's the number one rule.

When it comes to the second part of it, which is judging soft skills, actually we know that the best single decision companies or hiring managers can make is de-emphasize the importance of the interview and any type of short term interactions.

So psychometric tests, for example, that evaluate your personality traits – so whether it's your extroversion, your integrity, your curiosity, even your intelligence – are a much better predictor of how you perform in the future than the impressions you make during a job interview.

In fact, in job interviews we know that narcissistic individuals and psychopathic individuals often perform really well, because these dark-side traits are masked as social skills, and they're often charismatic.

So basically, sadly, because it's hard for people to accept that, if you remove human raters from the equation and let the data speak for itself, you basically benchmark what are the actual hard skills and soft skills that high performing leaders in an organization have in common? And then you look for those same traits, without utilizing job interviews (or any kind of intuitive, subjective, human evaluation of candidates), then you're going to improve and upgrade your leadership choices.

Rachel Salaman: While that all makes sense, it does go against the grain a bit to follow a leader who appears a little unsure or lacking in confidence. So doesn't that mean we need leaders who are competent but also have that confident leadership aura?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Yes, I think so. But remember that the aura in itself, it's less important than we think.

And the main point here is that, yes, they need competence and confidence, but when they lack one [competence] the other [confidence] is detrimental, not positive. So if you have a leader who lacks competence or integrity, then the fact that they have confidence or charisma is going to make them more dangerous, more lethal.

I mean, this may sound like an extreme range of examples, but surely Stalin, Mao and Hitler would have been a lot less harmful to civilization if they lacked charisma, if they lacked confidence, right? Maybe because they wouldn't even have been followed.

So that's why, in general confidence (like charisma) will augment either the good or the bad performance that leaders have. In essence, it would augment their level of influence, but sometimes it would be better if leaders are less influential, not more influential. And that's why the emphasis should be on competence.

Rachel Salaman: So, I mean, you could see that this persistent impulse to appoint leaders, corporate leaders or indeed political leaders, with the wrong attributes, you could almost see that as self-sabotage, have you ever explored that side of it?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Yes, there's tons of independent scientific studies that show that, on average, when leaders are chosen on the basis of the traits that I have highlighted (their competence, their humility, their self-awareness, and even their coach-ability – so their willingness and ability to change), their teams do better, their companies have higher levels of revenues, profits, productivity, Net Promoter Score and everything else. And they also are more innovative, and they're also rated more highly as best places to work.

So, you could then therefore say, "Yes, it is self-sabotaging." And it's not just sexist but also expensive and costly to organizations and leaders to make these bad choices. Which is to say, "Well, why doesn't everybody then change and upgrade it?" Well some people are trying, but I think fundamentally most organizations and most decision makers still underestimate the impact that these choices have on their performance.

And also, let's not forget that sometimes there are short-term individual agendas that are prioritized over what's good for the organization: if I am benefitting from selecting certain individuals and I see a short-term benefit for my own personal kind of interest, maybe I don't care as much about what's good for the organization, the wider context. And to be fair, maybe nobody will find out, because by the time that question is asked I'm gone, I'm elsewhere, or there's so many other factors that could be blamed for what happened, you know.

This is truly a complicated world where lots of different things coexist and influence the same outcome.

Rachel Salaman: And what's your view of quotas on boards and other initiatives that promote underrepresented groups into leadership roles?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: I'm not a huge fan. I think it is an OK Plan B if the Plan A doesn't work. Plan A would be focus on actual talent, because (especially when it comes to gender) in any area of performance there are either no gender differences or gender differences favoring women.

So if you present any approach that includes quotas, or that frames the issue as, "We need to increase gender representation of women" or "We need to achieve equality through some artificial measure," I think it backfires.

Because it conveys the impression that actually there are talent deficits that women have. And in reality if you focus on talent, you won't just create a balanced gender ratio but you will have slightly more women than men.

Granted, I think it's quite utopian to have this view. I think I'm aware that people don't like it, on both sides of the arguments – even people who argue for gender equality think this is not the right approach, because... As if I didn't care about women or gender, and I do, but I think fundamentally the goal that we should have is to improve the quality of leaders, and if you focus on talent you will improve the quality and you will have more women than men.

Rachel Salaman: So what's a better way to go about hiring competent leaders of any gender? You've talked a little bit about personality and psychometric tests, what else would you advise people do?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Well I think, you know, looking at the persons, the individual's past performance and track record is important.

Realistically most people have some managerial experience when they are considered for senior leadership roles, which is the most consequential roles and... Where all change, all significant change is always driven top down, rather than bottom up.

I think things like evaluations [whether] they're direct reports, subordinates or 360-degree feedbacks are extremely underutilized. A lot of companies have this data but only use them to have a performance conversation with their leaders or tick a box that they're actually monitoring the performance – but I think they should be used even when making decisions about the promotion of leaders, because if you have managed a team correctly and your team rates you positively and says that you are fair, that you help them perform better, etc., that will probably replicate, you know.

Whereas, on the other hand, if we only look at how leaders are rated or evaluated by their bosses, we're going to praise people who are good at managing up rather than down, and leadership is a resource for the team or the group.

So that, in connection with psychometric assessments, in connection with really benchmarking current good performance in your organization to understand what are the attributes that lead to success.

And when people say, "Oh well, but what if the context changes or things change and I need something else?" Well, some things are not going to change – it's unlikely that in the future leaders are going to be better when they have less competence, less integrity, less self-awareness and less humility.

So focus on these four generic traits and things will get better.

Rachel Salaman: And there's a chapter in your book titled How Leaders Get Better, which is about developing people with leadership potential, could you talk a bit about that?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Yes. So the first (and sort of most paradoxical and I think interesting) point to make here is that leaders get better based on the coach-ability they already have or they already come with.

I've spent quite a lot of time coaching leaders and I will tell you that the best predictor of whether they get better, whether they improve or not, is neither how good I am nor how good the methodology, the framework, or the tools are: it's how good they are to begin with.

Ironically, coaching benefits those that need it the least! Because when people are curious, when they value and take on board feedback, when they have a desire to keep improving their performance, and when they actually do improve their performance, they were very good to begin with. And probably if we hadn't coached them they would have gone through that path anyway.

Then, on the other hand, you have a lot of leaders who clearly would benefit a lot from coaching and development but they're almost uncoachable, because they don't care about negative feedback or criticism, they will attack you if you provide them with negative feedback, and they have a sense of immunity and a sense of entitlement that makes any change unlikely.

So how do leaders get better?

Well first they need to get accurate feedback on their potential and their performance. Secondly, they need to be made uncomfortable with that feedback, they need to experience an unpleasant gap between where they want to be and where they are.

Third, they need to have the persistence and humility to actually pursue the difficult journey of eliminating bad habits and building new, effective habits. Then finally, they need to do this all the time. This isn't about, "OK, I wanted to lose 10 kilos, I lost 10 kilos, now I'm fine. I go back to not exercising and eating pie." It's the same with leadership, it's, "I wanted to improve my performance, I have, now I need to get to the next level, now I need to get to the next level," and so forth.

So I think, you know, the old joke in psychology is, how many psychologists are needed to change a light bulb? Well only one so long as the light bulb really wants to change – and it's the same with leaders, right?

So as a coach the best way to be effective and successful in your career is to pick those leaders who are most coachable.

Rachel Salaman: How do you identify how coachable someone is?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: The best way to get a sense is using science-driven or data-driven assessment data and looking for things such as: how curious they are, are they able to digest and pay attention to information or facts that actually refute or are inconsistent with their own values (and with their own views), how self-critical they are, how modest they are (especially internally, this is not about whether they come across as confident externally or not, but do they have the humility to question themselves), and then really how driven they are.

I define ambition as an inability to be satisfied with one's achievements. I think really the fundamental thing that extraordinary achievers have in common is that, as much as they keep on achieving and attaining things, they're never happy, they get to somewhere where most people would just stop, retire and be complacent – and, you know, maybe this is an inherent inferiority complex (where they need to self-medicate with more achievements, more) and this is something that the best leaders have and that's why they keep on getting better.

Rachel Salaman: You're an expert on people analytics, as I said at the start. When a hiring manager uses psychometric testing or data in this kind of context, how can they be sure they're not just measuring someone's mood and that it might change the next day if they put them through the same test?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Yes, so the best way is to actually administer repeated measures and then you see how much it changes. But in any trait, quality, competency that you're focusing on you will see a certain degree of fluctuation from one day to another or from time to time, but you also see stability.

The analogy that I think is very helpful here to understand is, you know, there's a difference between weather and climate. So the weather in London today might be representative of what the weather in London should be at this time of the year, i.e. 12 degrees and raining and gray, right? It's possible that the weather tomorrow in London is incredibly unrepresentative of what the weather should be, i.e. even if we're in winter it could be 22 and sunny.

OK, well we allow for a certain degree of fluctuation, but at the same time it will be silly to deny the fact that London has a climate, it has a typical weather across the year and that that climate is different from the climate in Singapore or the climate in Buenos Aires.

So this is the way we actually make sense of differences between people: you might not be as happy today as you were yesterday, or you might be happier on Fridays than Mondays, but at the same time you have a default typical level of happiness that is probably different from mine.

And both things are very important and relevant, by the way, but when we are selecting people for future jobs, what matters most is what they are typically likely to do, not what they could do in unusual days or moments.

Rachel Salaman: So looking ahead now, how hopeful are you that we'll begin to see more competent leaders in the future, and more diverse leaders at that?

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: I think I am hopeful – hope in this case is a data-driven state, emotional state – because we are seeing progress, we are seeing organizations become more data driven, we are seeing organizations wanting to be more meritocratic.

I think sometimes behaviors change before attitudes change, you know. I think a lot of organizations today have diversity and inclusion programs because they're afraid of getting sued, or they know that it impacts negatively on their image to not have these programs.

However, that is not the worst-case scenario, you know, that change in behaviors and actions can then drive changes in attitudes. And in particular, when we have good role models occupy[ing] leadership positions, then the effects snowball and are positive on other people. Especially when it comes to challenging their archetypes and their stereotypes of leadership.

So, although progress is probably slower than it could be, my hope is that 50 years from now, when we look back at where we were today, we will be as shocked as we are today when we look back 50 years and look at what was going on in the workplace in the 50s or in the 60s.

So sometimes, when you look at things all the time, much like when you look at yourself in the mirror every day, you can't see the process of change. But when you let 30, 40, 50 year intervals pass, then you can see how big and prominent changes can be.

And hopefully in this case change will be positive, not like when we look at ourselves 50 years later, usually that's not a very happy image, so I think we're hopefully not just changing but actually getting better.

Rachel Salaman: Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic, thanks very much for joining me today.

Tomas Chamarro-Premuzic: Thank you for having me.

The name of Tomas's book again is "Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It)."

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.