Could it be the active recruitment of incompetent men that stops women getting to the top?

The central cause, argues Tomas Chasmorro-Premuzic, of the low numbers of women recruited into leadership, ranging from 36% in bottom tier management to only 6% at CEO level, isn’t that they aren’t competitive, assertive, bold, talented or in some other ill-defined way, enough like men; but rather that a persistent systematic mistake is made during the recruitment process. A mistake that leads to many of the opportunities, up to 74% according to one survey quoted, being filled with incompetent men.

Hence the question isn’t: how can we get more women into management, but rather, how do we stop so many incompetent men filling the available positions?

No one sets out to hire incompetent leaders, so how can this happen? The answer lies in the difference between what is attractive at the selection process and what is effective in a leader.

Why do men get selected more often?

When looking for leadership potential, many instinctively look for behaviour that suggests a forceful and dominant character. This attentional focus on forcefulness and dominance reinforces the preferential selection of men for leadership in two ways. Firstly, this behaviour, along with the traits that support it, are found more often in men than in women. And secondly, when they are displayed by women they can be frowned upon. Such women can be dismissed as being too forceful or domineering to be considered as good leadership material. Yet, in a classic Catch-22 situation, if they don’t display this type of behaviour they are also not perceived as being suitably leader-like. Hence it is frequently forceful and dominant presenting men who get selected into leadership positions.

Research shows, however, that those who are most likely to appear forceful and dominant, are also those who are more likely to self-centred, entitled and narcissistic. All of which are related to the personality traits of narcissism and psychopathy, and none of which are good predictors of effective leadership behaviour.

In this way, it becomes apparent that there is a fundamental, and negatively impactful, difference between the personality traits and behaviours it takes to be chosen as a leader, and those it takes to be effective as a leader. The essential problem is that the traits that are taken as signs of leadership talent in men, are the very same that will eventually predict their downfall as leaders. In other words when considering male candidates, clear character flaws are mistaken for attractive leadership qualities. How does this happen?

The mistaken appointment of narcissists and psychopaths

Chamorro-Premuzic explains how this mistake is made. One important aspect is that confidence is taken as a proxy for competence. However, there is no relationship between confidence and competence. Most of us skew a little to over-confidence, it’s normal and healthy. But excessive overconfidence becomes dangerous and, statistically speaking, men are significantly more likely than women to display excessive overconfidence in their abilities. And while confidence is commonly regarded as the most important quality for a leader, research suggests that in fact it is less important than expertise, intelligence, hard-work, connections and even luck!

This over-confidence that we can find so attractive has its roots in two particular personality traits, narcissism and psychopathology. Narcissism and psychopathology are both more common in leaders than in the general population. For example, psychopathy is present in 4-20% of people in senior management roles, compared to 1% in the general population. Narcissism also runs at about 1% in the general population yet is estimated to be 5% amongst CEOs. By accident, this is what we end up recruiting for. Why, how does it happen?

Narcissists are master are masters of impression management, great at conveying confidence (and remember we use confidence as a proxy for competence). At the same time the advertised rewards of leadership, lucrative compensation, fancy titles and the other signs of success, could have been purpose designed to attract them in their droves. Meanwhile courage and risk-taking often coexist with psychopathology, enabling psychopaths to demonstrate striking audacity and resilience under stress, for example. They also often display a high verbal ability, meaning they can be eloquent and persuasive and tend to come across as charming and charismatic. What’s not to like, then, at the interview stage?

What happens when they become leaders

However, both narcissists and psychopaths, while brilliant at getting the role, often perform poorly thereafter. For examples psychopaths, once in the role, tend to operate passively, failing to fulfil basic management tasks such as evaluating performance, giving accurate feedback or rewarding employees. They don’t hold teams accountable for their performance and are likely to prove unable to motivate others. They are loathe to accept blame and responsibility for the consequences of their actions. As overconfident leaders they can be immune to negative feedback.

Narcissists, meanwhile, are significantly prone to counterproductive behaviour such as bullying, fraud, white-collar crime and harassment, including sexual harassment. And while they are good at dreaming big, they are less good at delivering on that dream. What to do instead then?

Going forward

Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that, given this picture, the last thing we should be doing, if we want to improve the quality of our leaders, is to help women contenders become ‘more like the men’!

 Secondly, Emotional Quotient (EQ), or emotional intelligence is acknowledged as the best single measure of people skills, which are key to getting the best out of other people, the distilled task of leadership. And people with a higher EQ are generally more effective in leadership roles. This is the proxy we should be using to predict leadership success, not levels of confidence.

Thirdly, the three important leadership competencies that are enabled by higher EQ are found at higher rates in women. These are transformational leadership, personal effectiveness and self-awareness.

So, in essence, we need to

• Stop using confidence as a proxy for competence

• Stop being dazzled by attractive qualities at the point of selection, and select instead for the personality traits and other factors that predict success once in the role

• Avoid prompting narcissists and psychopaths to positions of leadership

• Stop looking at leadership potential through a gendered lens

• Start to appreciate some of the qualities that are more typically, but obviously not exclusively, found in woman that correlate with successful leadership, and look for them in our selection processes.

Those interested to explore this topic further are referred to Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2019) Harvard Review Business Press. All statistics quoted and other assertions made are referenced in this text.

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, published by BMI Publishing, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’, published by Pavillion, ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management', published by Kogan Page.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Thought Provoking’ 

THREE CHANGE STRATEGIES IN ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT: DATA-BASED, HIGH ENGAGEMENT, AND GENERATIVE BY GERVASE R. BUSHE & SARAH LEWIS

Please find below an article co-authored by Gervase Bushe and myself recently accepted for publication in the Leadership and Organization Development Journal, Jan 2023 - Sarah Lewis

Bushe, G.R. and Lewis, S. (2023), "Three change strategies in organization development: data-based, high engagement and generative", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2022-0229

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited. This AAM is provided for your own personal use only. It may not be used for resale, reprinting, systematic distribution, emailing, or for any other commercial purpose without the permission of the publisher.

How can we bring the benefits of Appreciative Inquiry to stuck change projects?

There are various signs that a change project has got stuck. One is that the senior managers are working all hours while everyone else is sort of waiting, not knowing what to do. Another is frustrated change agents pointing to the plans and diagrams all over their office walls while talking about their problems of ‘resistance to change’ and ‘lack of buy-in’. Yet another is a workforce that is demoralised, demotivated and rapidly losing hope of any improvement any time soon.

It’s not resistance to change, it’s resistance to imposed change

The fundamental issue behind stuck change is often that the wrong approach has been applied to the change challenge, typically that the organization has applied logical rational problem-solving to a challenge of a different nature. In brief, if the change challenge is a logical, rational problem then taking a logical, rational ‘planned’ or ‘diagnostic’ approach might work.

However, often the challenge is of a different order, for example, how to change ways of working, how to create a different culture, how to get people to be more adaptable, flexible, creative in their work. These can be seen as being ‘wicked’ or ‘adaptive’ problems, and they are generally not amenable to logical resolution. Instead, they need a different approach, something more emergent, more dialogic, more like Appreciative Inquiry.

ideally we wouldn’t start from here, but since we’re here…

With the planned change already underway, the challenge becomes how to introduce different ways of approaching change, like Appreciative Inquiry. The answer lies in Appreciative Inquiry processes rather than the well-known 5D Appreciative Inquiry summit. We are coming aboard a ship already underway and we have to negotiate such areas of influence as we can.

For example, I was once asked to help a company that was implementing a new IT system and hadn’t fully appreciated the culture change nature of their plans: the whole work process was being redesigned, some people’s department were closing and other people were having to re-apply for what they thought of as ‘their’ jobs. I was asked in once it became apparent that the project was getting very stuck.

I was able to negotiate a three-hour session with a voluntary group of front-line staff entitled ‘Making sense of the changes’. In which I hoped to address three questions: What will be different? How will it impact my work? How can I positively affect my experience and that of my colleagues around me?

The first question released an avalanche of stories of bad management: they don’t tell us what is going on, they are all too busy to talk to us, they aren’t doing this change very well. The Appreciative Inquiry approach is here to acknowledge this, but not amplify it, not inquire into it. Instead I asked, has this always been the case or is the experience you are describing more recent?

It took a few more minutes but then someone said, ‘It wasn’t like this when it started’ ‘How was it, I asked?’ ‘It was very consultative,’ came the reply, along with a recognition that their managers, the same people, used to be fine. ’So, what’s changed recently?’

This was a pivot point in the conversation which then moved to a focus on the change in circumstances rather than a managerial personality transplant. This important change in the story allowed for different ways forward, started to create hope and opened the way, later, to more fruitful questions such as ‘What fires can I light, what seeds can I plant to help this organization continue to be a great place to work`’ and ‘How can I contribute to help make the experience of change as good as possible for me and others? In this way the group become more appreciative of the fact that they had choices about how they behaved. In response to a final ‘what’s changed in the last three hours?’ question, people reported feeling more positive, more accepting and, paradoxically, also more assertive, more pro-active, more choiceful and braver. They had clear ideas about what they would do, in their own spheres of interest, to start moving the change process in a better direction.

Top tips

Here are my top tips for bringing Appreciative Inquiry to get stuck situations moving again

•       Focus on what you can influence and help others do the same

•       Attend to the stories being created about change and people

•       Create and recreate states of positive affect

•       Create, amplify and enlarge a state of hope and choice

•       Co-create ideas for the future and ways forward with others

•       Start where people are at and move to more productive place

•       Use your attention as a resource, re-direct the attention of others

Other Resources

Sarah Lewis is the owner and principal psychologist of Appreciating Change. She is author of ‘Co-Creating Planning Teams For Dialogic OD’, ‘Positive Psychology in Business’ ‘Positive Psychology at Work’ and ‘Positive Psychology and Change’ both published by Wiley. She is also the lead author of 'Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management'.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organisations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership, Culture change and with employee Engagement.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715. A selection of strength card packs are available from our online store.

If you want to know more about implementing approaches and processes that positively affect people’s happiness, engagement, motivation, morale, productivity and work relationships, see Sarah’s positive psychology books.

More blog posts categorised as ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ 

How To Avoid Triggering Resistance To Change: 5 Benefits of Co-Creation

The problem: Silence is not 'buy-in'

Key change questions

Two of the questions most frequently heard when talking to leaders about their plans for change are:

•       How can we get buy-in?

•       How do we deal with the resistance to change?

They reflect assumptions about people and change so embedded as to be endemic.

Assumptions about people and change

These assumptions are that ‘people don’t like change’, and, that people can be ‘sold’ change.

It is true that, on the whole, people aren’t widely enthusiastic about change that is forced upon them without consultation that appears to make their life or working conditions worse. It is also true that people will buy the idea that if they point out the problems that the proposed change will cause, they will be labeled as a troublemaker or worse. Given this, they may stop saying anything. This compliance is often confused with ‘buy-in’.

An alternative approach

Co-creation change processes offer an alternative. By working closely, from the beginning, with those who will be affected by any proposed change, these questions become irrelevant. A number of additional benefits accrue.

Benefits of the Co-creation approach to change

1) Tapping into Collective Intelligence

Participative co-creation taps into the collective intelligence of the organisation at the point where it’s application can have the most effective impact at the least cost - at the very beginning. Involved early, before irreversible decisions are made, people can draw on their wealth of localised knowledge about what works and what doesn’t while the challenge is still being formulated and considered. They can also road-check solution ideas for feasibility before they have become invested with the weight of being the right and only answer.

Utilising the organisation’s collective intelligence leads to better solutions arrived at in a cost effective manner.

2) Creating Active Participation

When people are involved in the definition of the problem or challenge and the design of the solution, they start to make changes in their behaviour immediately. In addition, once formal plans are issued, or projects started, they already understand why and don’t need to be persuaded of, or sold on, the rightness of the action. Co-creation approaches to change lead to faster implementation.

Encouraging active participation in design leads to faster solution implementation.

3) Direct Involvement in Decision-making

When people have direct involvement in decision-making, they are much more likely to accept the outcome. As long as their views have been genuinely appreciated and considered they are likely to accept the evolving nature of the solution. People can track their particular contributions as the answer evolves. Such involvement inspires a sense of ownership of, and commitment to, the final design. Co-creation leads to a high level of commitment.

 Facilitating direct involvement in decisions creates a high level of commitment.

4) Building Social Capital

People who have worked together in a positive way on something that is important to them form stronger social bonds. Collectively the strength of these internal relationships is known as the social capital of the organisation. High social capital means a high level of trust across the organisation; good information-sharing and easy information flow. It also facilitates problem-solving at the level of the problem. Investment in social capital helps to ameliorate the well known problems of silo-mentality. Co-creation facilitates low level, quick and effective, peer-to-peer problem-solving, vital when new, unfamiliar systems are being implemented.

 Increasing social capital leads to coherent, co-ordinated action

5) Leverage Strengths

Co-creation processes that focus on identifying existing strengths and core values as part of the change process help people link the need for change with success and personal integrity. They also create positive emotion that is energy for the change. Aligning the future with the past along the lines of what is best about the current organisation makes it more likely that people will feel hopeful and optimistic about the change and the future. Co-creation based on existing strengths and clear values is likely to be implemented with hope and enthusiasm, leading to a smoother implementation process

 Leveraging strengths and values leads to hope and optimism

How can you implement change like this?

There now exists an abundance of co-creation change processes that help organisations avoid triggering resistance and all the costs and delays incurred with that. They require organisations to demonstrate a different style of leadership, one that is predicated on an understanding that an organisation is a social system, with leadership a privileged position within that system. The role of the leader then becomes to find ways to help the organisation continually evolve towards a better future. To do that the leader needs to call on and release the collective intelligence and capability of the whole organisation.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at Our Approach to change.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715