Pick Up Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How To Fix It) Compiled By Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic Provided As Digital

very interesting and enlightening book about leadership, About stereotypes and mostly about why men have more commanding roles in business, management and decision making roles, Women are trapped in years and years of bad decisions, perception and wrong doing, I do agree with most of Tomas statements and I am a firm believe that gender equality should be a reality in leadership roles and I am the first to admit that women do carry a more hands on and reality approach to decision making.
I do hope we can change the future now, Read this book. The title of this book grabbed my attention because I work with a pretty incompetent leader: a “manager” my coworkers and I often do our best to work around, rather than with, because he is at best useless and often actively harmful.
In addition, he takes pride in being above knowing how to do anything on the office computer system thats for underlings, So if a problem comes up, he “solves” it by essentially running around the office shrieking with his hands in the air until someone else who actually knows whats going on and what to do steps in and deals with it.
Then he credits himself with having gotten the job done,

According to this book, aboutof employees see their managers and bosses as being about as useful as this guy, The gendered title stems from the fact that most leaders, whether elected or promoted to their positions, are still male,

Theres a certain comforting thrill in reading the opening chapters of this book, and realizing that ones own incompetent manager isnt an isolated case, But its also very depressing, because the author is pretty certain that if you leave your current job in hopes of finding a better manager, youll probably just find yourself working under another Pointy Haired Boss.


Even more depressing: Most male leaders seem to get selected for their positions based on their belief in and loud proclamation of their own perception of their great abilities and competence.
They arent necessarily required to demonstrate that they can work with people, or that they understand or care about the goals of the organization, or to put the achievements of the organization above their own individual pride and ambition.


The authors suggested “fix” is that since women are actually expected to demonstrate competence before they are elevated to leadership positions, men should be demanded to meet the same requirements as women, rather than just demonstrating confidence.


This was an interesting premise, but it didnt leave me with much hope for changes in my, or any other, workplace in the short run.


The most depressing sentence in this book to me was this: “A series of studies found that mens careers tend to suffer when the men are friendly, empathetic, and agreeable.
” So male as will continue to be rewarded at work for the foreseeable future, and nice, decent guys

will continue to come in last right along with women.


The most sexist part of this book was actually about women and a long section asserting that women have higher EQ emotional intelligence than men.
This may be true, but I would argue that this is more because women are commanded to behave emotionally towards other people than because its necessarily innate.
The book points out that women are required to be seen as “confident, competent, and caring,” emphasis added by me and I know Ive wasted a lot of energy in my life pretending to be caring when I really couldnt have cared less.
I am certain that if men were expected to be caring, theyd darned well learn to at least fake emotional intelligence as well, Instead they are punished for having it, so theres an equally good chance that men who have high EQ are pretending they dont,

Another assertion in this book that is definitely Junk Science and which really made me start questioning everything the author says was the assertion that testosterone affects peoples spatial intelligence and that men have better spatial abilities due to their higher testosterone levels.
It goes on to say, “Women with high testosterone levels have better spatial abilities than men with low testosterone levels, ” But men with “low” T levels have overnanograms of T per deciliter of blood, and generally gtng/dl normal for men istong/dl.
Women with “high” T levels have less thanng/dl, and generally ltng/dl! Normal for women istong/dl, Theres just no comparison when male “low” T is stilltimes female “high” T, so IMO something else is going on with the spatial intelligence, The book also says that studies show that a single shot of T improves both mens and womens mapreading abilities on the spot, which I also question as to the actual cause and effect.
If anyone reading this review knows anything deeper about these kinds of studies, please fill me in in the comments! I wish the author had thought to investigate further, or had an interest in sports or transgender issues so he would know this kind of basic biology.


So Im not sure reading this book gave me much insight other than “Men are rewarded for being arrogant, women are held to ridiculous standards of competence, and somehow we need to manage to hold men to the same standards as women, but no one is really sure how to get there.
”

To be fair, there are some useful charts in the book showing the difference between the kind of leadership you get from people who just want to be leaders for their own ambition, and people who actually want to run a team and a successful organization.
Hopefully some actual business leaders will look at those and start to make some changes in their view of what makes a good manager, In summary, people easily confuse confidence with competence in men, Therefore men who appear confident are assumed to be competent, Confidence in women is more often seen as a negative trait so they do not get the same benefits from confidence, This readable book brings in lots of research and examples, Look around your office, Turn on the TV. Incompetent leadership is everywhere, and there's no denying that most of these leaders are men,

In this timely and provocative book, Tomas ChamorroPremuzic asks two powerful questions: Why is it so easy for incompetent men to become leaders And why is it so hard for competent peopleespecially competent womento advance

Marshaling decades of rigorous research, ChamorroPremuzic points out that although men make up a majority of leaders, they underperform when compared with female leaders.
In fact, most organizations equate leadership potential with a handful of destructive personality traits, like overconfidence and narcissism, In other words, these traits may help someone get selected for a leadership role, but they backfire once the person has the job,

When competent womenand men who don't fit the stereotypeare unfairly overlooked, we all suffer the consequences, The result is a deeply flawed system that rewards arrogance rather than humility, and loudness rather than wisdom,

There is a better way, With clarity and verve, ChamorroPremuzic shows us what it really takes to lead and how new systems and processes can help us put the right people in charge.
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