Why Are We Still Promoting Incompetent Men?

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a psychologist and chief talent scientist at ManpowerGroup, says we're not picking leaders in the right way. While we should be promoting people based on their competence and potential, it's often the incompetent, overconfident candidates -- most of them men -- who get ahead. Studies show that, by many measures, women are actually better equipped to become strong, successful managers. But the solution to getting more of them into the executive ranks isn't quotas or other initiatives that mandate gender diversity. To improve leadership across the board, we need to focus on the metrics proven to enhance performance and set higher standards for everyone. Chamorro-Premuzic is also a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University, and the author of the book "Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It)" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone it's Kurt we need your help with our annual survey this is your last chance to help us get to know you so we can make idea cast even better for you
0:09.8	it's easy just go to HBR.org
0:13.0	podcast survey.
0:15.0	Again, that's HBR.org.
0:17.0	And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard. We'd like to think that most organizations choose leaders for their competence or even potential. But too often
0:55.1	hiring managers, HR departments, and even corporate boards are swayed by a
0:58.8	candidate's confidence or charisma instead. Those can be useful traits in business, but they're not always
1:05.0	the best predictors of performance. Research shows that's because many
1:08.9	executives, and especially men, are overconfident.
1:13.2	They believe they're better employees and managers than they actually are
1:16.7	and persuade others that they deserve to rise through the ranks.
1:20.0	The flip side is that women who are equally competent but not overconfident are bypassed.
1:25.2	Tamaz Chamorro Pumuzik, our guest today, is a psychologist and organizational consultant
1:31.2	who has studied this problem. His new book is
1:34.0	book is provocatively titled,
1:35.0	Why does so many incompetent men become leaders
1:38.0	and how to fix it?
1:39.0	Thomas, thanks so much for being here.
1:41.0	Thank you for having me.
1:43.0	So I have to start by asking are there really so many incompetent men in
1:57.5	leadership roles especially in the corporate world? I'm sure there are many
2:01.0	successful male CEOs and managers who had bristle at that idea.
	...

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