How to Stop Promoting Incompetent Men (Quick Study)

Are there fewer women in management because we can’t discern between confidence and competence?

The popular explanations range from women just aren’t capable of being leaders to women just don’t want to be leaders. According to author Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic however, the absence of women in leadership roles has less to do with women themselves and more to do with how we interpret leadership traits. Confidence – a trait more associated with men – is often misinterpreted as competence. As a result, charismatic, but incompetent men have fewer barriers to reach the top than women. Individuals in positions to promote and hire managers should think more critically about what seems like a leadership trait versus what is an actual leadership trait. They will find that arrogance and overconfidence – the characteristics that get men into management positions – are also the characteristics that cause poor performance.

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[BlueSoulTiger]

One reason that incompetent people get away with their incompetence, is that there is poor monitoring and evaluation of their performance by their peers and "superiors", which of course is in itself incompetence: incompetent people are being allowed to get away with it. Incompetence rewards incompentence.

[gabrielaruizrivera]

2:10 absolutely agree with you, my friend! I'm amazed that A MAN pointed out this, Thank You!

[_NAED_]

Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Your article about "incompetent men" published August 22, 2013, is trending now on LinkedIn, more than nine years later. Still, so much work yet to do!

[drarpithavelanky]

Thank you for sharing the thoughts about competence and thank you for helping me see the situation from different perspective

[percymabasa]

Great work. This is pure gold for us young stars

[Arre]

What if the person evaluating competence is incompetent?

[alaplex]

I have seen shit float to the top during my career in the corporate environment. I have also seen the same shit fall when subjected to time and efficiency evaluation by outside specialists.

[SwissOnZ]

Unfortunately this gives fuel to incompetent men and women to label the competent as incompetent. Dangerous rhetoric. Vicious cycle.

[kaustubhpujari]

Very important and touchy topic. One effective way to address is this is to have 360 degree feedback. More weightage to the feedback from direct reportees (team members) and one level below.

[ramortiz]

Why bias such a great article by pointing out men are incompetent? I would suggest talking about incompetent leaders, no gender in between. I have struggled with both incompetent women AND men...

[chandnisaxena]

360 degree reviews seem like an easy way to reward competent leadership.

[JamilaJibril-eh]

What's the point if the right people don't get the credit and they got to struggle cause you simply lack

[kforest]

The REAL START would be by cutting out advertising. It’s CHEAP. Shapes behaviour.

[simulcra]

women outperform men in self awareness, coach ability and humility? i would love to see this study and if they included tenacity or ability to not complain to everyone around them when doing something hard. this video does not reflect anything I have seen can somebody show me this study?

[dteh]

Interesting, what I have seen in my industry is the women who are leaders ie VP, director, dept head, supervisor and lower are easier to get along with and depending on if she is comfortable being a woman has a sensible leadership style otherwise if she is trying to be like her male perceived counterpart she is the worse kind of leader to deal with..

Men as you describe incompetence is widespread in the industry and nepotism is normally hand in hand, the oddball is men of two categories that are easy going: 1. For the reason they won’t say anything to the uppers as adding to the betterment of policies and processes they go along to get along 2. Super rare, the competent man leads well by supporting those under him, listening to feedback and when warrants will argue in good fashion needs and ideas up to see lasting change

Of the two decades I have been working it is rare to come across men and women who are great leaders

[victorbrave]

Nonsensical.
Why would you define incompetence with the attributes of competence? And why is it men and not people in general? There exist women who are incompetent too.

The worst part is when he told leaders not to trust their instinct. Instincts are inborn impulses or motivation to action typically performed in response to specific external stimuli. Do you really think someone who can't trust their instinct is qualified to be a leader? If you believe it you are the incompetent man you have been talking about.

Is there incompetence in managerial roles? Yes. Are men the reason behind this? Absolutely not, but it is easy to point fingers because of the prejudices induced by Western feminism propaganda that demonizes men instead of giving women a voice as they claim.

If you are going to talk about leadership you need to set gender aside, because the data you claim to trust has proven anyone capable can lead regardless of their gender.

[srinivasanatesan]

No time to spare for such biased presentations.Shame i watched this even by accident.