The Appeal of incompetent Leaders

According to organizational Psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, who specializes in personal profiling, there are three main reasons why there are so many incompetent leaders:

👉 We are having a difficult time distinguishing between competence and confidence

We tend to believe that confident people are competent leaders. There is, however, little overlap between their perception of their leadership ability (confidence) and their actual leadership capabilities (competence).

👉 Our love of charismatic individuals

We want charismatic and entertaining leaders as we expect them to be inspiring. But the assumption that with charisma come great leadership skills is a false one. Charisma and competence are two different things.

👉 Our inability to resist the allure of narcissistic individuals

We are drawn to their grandiose visions. The admiration for people who are full of self-admiration has been with us for a long time now and is intensified through social media.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀?

The Gallup Engagement Index 2016 helps us to a better understanding of their self-awareness.

It was found that only one out of five employees are motivated to achieve outstanding work results because of the leadership skills of their manager.

👉 18 % of employees were already thinking about leaving the company.

👉 69% had confirmed that they had at least once worked with a bad line manager.

❗️Yet, 97% of managers considered themselves good leaders and saw no shortcomings in their leadership skills whatsoever.

Some more insights into the abilities of line managers were offered by psychologist Jürgen Hesse. He recently explained that only one-third are good leaders, another third needs improvement in social interaction, and one-third needs to be replaced right away due to nonexistent leadership skills and other issues (e. g. being neurotic, psychopathic, narcissistic, or egomaniacal).