It’s interesting that the kids with helicopter parents had reduced confidence, and reduced perception of their own skills - confidence does seem to be a necessary (but not sufficient) thing for leadership.
So much focus on developing the confidence and skills necessary to be a good leader. So little on developing the substance, breadth, and judgement necessary to lead to a place worth going. It would be nice if leadership skills and confidence correlated with wisdom and capability. But if they do it seems to be weak. Which makes people worth following that can lead so rare.
I can't upvote this more. Leadership comes from confidence, confidence comes from expertise, expertise comes from learning and practice. Confidence without expertise is hollow; leadership with hollow confidence and no expertise is quite dubious. A certain guy who likes to golf comes to mind.
Edit: Lol. I love the downvotes. I mean, who are you talking about? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus? Or were you dragging politics into this just to make a cheap shot? If so, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Claims that he even read a single full book in the past few decades (with his name on the cover or otherwise) are not credible. They changed the briefing format to a few bullet points in a large font with lots of pictures, and he still doesn't bother to read them (Tillerson: he "doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things"). He stumbles and mispronounces words when slowly reading a few sentences on a teleprompter (also reportedly set to a much larger than usual font), commonly misreads a word or phrase and then ad libs a nonsensical embellishment to play the mistake off as intentional, and frequently goes entirely off script with visible relief to just speak off the top of his head. There is a deposition video where he flat refuses to read a few sentences of a contract out loud. When people ask him about what he is reading, he grimaces and deflects with an answer about being too busy.
The speculation that poor eyesight contributes to his functional illiteracy seems plausible.
I would love a source on this. But even if true, that still paints Trump as the bigger golfer since Obama had 2x as many years to play essentially the same amount of golf.
Obama played golf 113 times in his first term. Trump played 302. In the first 100 days of the presidency Obama played golf once, Trump played 19 times.
If you look at schools, especially elite ones, there's a strange desire for all the kids to become leaders. Nobody questions it, I don't know why. I guess the school thinks it's useful to be associated with some future leaders?
The thing is leadership ought to be like you say. Some kind of competence that allows you to help a group of people complete some kind of task.
But let's be honest. The kids want to be student council president because it's prestigious. They grow up and then they want to be CEO because it's prestigious and well paying. They pay lip service to the idea of helping a team, but really, we know they don't care all that much. It's ass backwards, people want to be leaders because {prize} and then they think about how to get there. Sometimes we get lucky and they conclude that they need to climb the ladder by being competent (this fails a lot due to pyramid structures and politics), but often they just figure out that to seem competent, you have to shout a lot about how competent you are.
> If you look at schools, especially elite ones, there's a strange desire for all the kids to become leaders.
Those schools maintain their status and position by ensuring their alumni become leaders. Thus it is to their advantage.
Which brings us to the bigger picture... we live in a Darwinian word of evolve-or-die, strongest-will-survive. Thus passing on to our children the skills of leadership are part of this same desire for our children to thrive.
> ...so get more negotiating power as they have more information.
Information is certainly part of it (thus why we have NDAs), but so are relationships/connections, particularly in B2B or the startup world where CEOs have to sell the company to investors.
we make this kind of mistake all the time. it's the basis of the "you get what you measure" aphorism. confidence and charisma are secondary signals, loosely correlated with wisdom and capability. once we emphasize confidence and charisma over wisdom and capability in our leader-choosing algorithm (how political contests have evolved, for instance), we're pressuring the system to weaken that correlation even further, as it's very hard (likely impossible) to maximize all desirable characteristics at the same time.
we can see this with popularity itself, which has changed over the past century in the (american) culture from emphasizing capability to emphasizing confidence (with the concomitant rise of mass media and the concentration of mass attention and esteem).
Skills associated with great leadership have many applications outside of leadership itself. Traits such as high empathy, confidence, creativity, flexibility make great leaders, but also just generally make great people. It would be no surprise the two are correlated!
Honestly as a follower those are commonly praised, but bad signals. You want a leader who is loyal to you and materially and socially supportive of you above almost all else. It's such a mind fuck to work for someone who is empathetic but doesn't stand up for you, or even undermines what you are doing (whether or not deliberately). You can wind up sinking years of your life by being stuck in that situation without even seeing it
Paychecks are the "almost all else" in my assertion, yes. But I think it's wrong to assume that jobs can't or shouldn't provide value beyond remuneration.
Confidence is usually confused with competence, and charisma with vision and direction.
I've seen this enough that I've come to believe it's hard wired to some extent, though it can be overridden rationally. Confidence and charisma seems to tell our so-called "reptile brain" that this is a big alpha that should be followed, and I strongly suspect that the effect also tends to down-regulate the rational mind in the same way that stress and fear do. I've experienced the "if they're in the room you agree with them" type of charisma more than once, and personally I always found it creepy and disturbing.
Looking past superficial confidence and charisma is something that should be explicitly taught.
> It would be nice if leadership skills and confidence correlated with wisdom and capability.
Why? That only seems like it would be nice in a world where leadership skills and confidence are rare, and thus it's a "seller's market" for people with those skills, where people might have to settle for just picking a leader because they are good at leadership, regardless of whether they are wise. (Which is, admittedly, the world we live in now.)
However, in a world/cultural zeitgeist where leadership and confidence are commonly-cultivated attributes (like conscientiousness is in today's world: something inculcated by parents, teachers, media, etc.), most people would have that attribute, making most people potential leaders — and thus there would be a "buyer's market" for leaders. Leadership ability could be taken as pure table-stakes, and leaders would be selected first-and-foremost on their wisdom/capability/etc.
It is exactly the focus of the article, taken forward, that would make such a world come to pass.
What about a world where we all agreed to fight against our natural tendency to follow the guy who shouts the loudest and instead pick leaders who have the traits we want, like wisdom and capability? Then we don't need to bother trying to teach a bunch of naturally shy, intelligent people to shout at each other more.
> There is too little data to claim or even suggest that there exists a "recipe" for creating good leaders.
We‘ve been studying leadership since the very first books were written (and probably since the first tribal elders started sharing their experiences around the camp fire).
It is important to keep in mind that effective leadership can be stunningly diverse and depends heavily on personality and context. Stanley McChrystal makes this point quite well. Nonetheless, there are certain characteristics and traits that many effective leaders exhibit in some way or another. (IMO, John Maxwell provides an excellent summary of these.)
But I heartily agree with your sentiment that reading biographies of leaders is one of the best ways of „learning the trade“ (aside from actually, you know, leading).
> developing the substance, breadth, and judgement
A leader cannot have one without the other. If you've spend any time amongst high academic performers, many of these folks have "developing the substance, breadth, and judgement", but not nearly as many have the confidence to apply these skills as leaders.
Impatience for indecisiveness, courage to move forward with uncertainty, a focus on goals, vision of the goal, an ability to identify and overcome obstacles, the ability to cultivate and grow effective lieutenants. These are also some attributes of leadership that seem to me more a product of personality, and while you can learn to hone them, changing one’s personality isn’t that common or easy, IME.
The focus is perhaps in proportion to how children are. You can make them confident by making their wishes come true (“I want a piece of candy”, ok here you go); developing substance and judgement is a profound Socratic experience that gives every would be parent figure a run for their money (or, well, children)
>You’ve probably noticed how some of your colleagues take to leadership roles like a duck to water. They’re confident telling others what to do, and happy taking on an ever-growing number of responsibilities. It couldn’t be more different for others: bossing around people feels awkward, and a nagging self-doubt shadows every decision.
Why is the popular conception of leadership "bossing people around?" A healthier and more productive view of it is giving people what they need to grow and be successful. It's when a person guides someone and serves as a good steward for them, not exploiting them to whatever ends are at hand.
Why is the popular conception of leadership "bossing people around?
I guess this is because it dovetails with common experience. A leader these days doesn't have to have subject knowledge, he has connections and charisma and knows where to find experts that work for him. Just look at Elon Musk.
I could believe the general thesis, but Elon Musk is just about the worst example that you could have picked.
One of his outstanding characteristics is that he is constantly learning subject knowledge. Yes, he hires subject experts, but then he effectively arranges for private tutoring until he knows what he needs of what they know.
Elon is a big believer that he should be able to do any job of anyone who he employs, and to a shocking extent it is actually true.
"Why is the popular conception of leadership 'bossing people around?'"
That's a good question I've been pondering for a while and still don't have a great answer for.
I think some of it is that one degenerate form of leadership is to conflate it with authority, and a lot of people's experience with "leadership" is simply to receive orders.
I actually would call what you describe as the ideal form of management, which is not leadership either. An ideal manager is not simply an authority user/abuser, but someone who clears obstacles out of the way and works to enhance the ones they are managing's skills, but ideally, only a bit of authority is deployed, and a manager may in fact exhibit no leadership at all. (For instance, corporate goals may simply come from higher up, or market pressures, or things other than "leadership" per se.)
(There are also degenerate cases where raw, naked authority is in fact necessary and extensively used; I'm sure a lot of us worked a job at McDonalds or some rough equivalent and have memories of how much it was based on authority... fewer of us have experiences of managing in that environment and being directly exposed to the fact that it is just the only way to make it work, however distasteful you may find that fact.)
For me, leadership should be reserved for the cases in which one is visibly leading, e.g., you start a new initiative somewhere, gather up people to voluntarily follow you by a variety of non-coercive means, and then hold the group together in a variety of very context-sensitive means.
True leadership is rare. Authority is inescapable, good management is a gem to be treasured but still not that rare, but leadership is a rare thing. Most groups are held together by other bonds.
Some good thoughts there. Leadership skills can be valuable in a context where you have „hard“ authority, but the ultimate test of you as a leader is in groups where nobody is forced to follow you.
Some very interesting thoughts there. I agree with the gist of your views. Have you read any books in developing these thoughts? If so, what can you recommend?
I think the statement is that some people shy away from leadership since they don't know how not to be bossy.
Bossinesss isn't exploitation, it's a style of leadership -- giving orders (often orders that are too specific), taking down someone when something is not done in "just the right way", etc.
Only a leader can boss people around. Thus it becomes an easily noticable symbol. Let's say in fiction you want to quickly establish who is the leader then you can use the symbol. Just like how you can use a car or watch to establish that someone is rich.
Most teams aren't ideal, and a lot of times, you have to resort to just telling people what to do in order to get the ball rolling. It's like Maslow's hierarchy, but applied to teams. You first have to have a functioning team that completes it's basic needs (tasks) before you can move on to higher-order objectives such as "growth", "moral", strategic objectives, building confidence, training, etc. I think the important point is that the team/leadership of that team need to move past that basic point and grow in other needs.
I think the popular conception comes form the fact that if you are a good leader, you want them to make decisions. From a management perspective, this means telling people what to do. Of course, leaders recognize that bossing people around isn't sustainable.
My daughter's recently been into MasterChef Junior, where in a recent episode one of the kids appointed to be a team lead in a restaurant setting was attempting to perform the role by berating his team for their mistakes and insufficient productivity.
Halfway through the spot, host Gordon Ramsey (whom he was apparently trying to emulate) intervened and afterwards, the kid started saying things like, "Hey, let me know if you're having trouble with the panisse cakes; I can help you out as soon as I'm done with these string beans."
I also take issue with the assumption that everybody ought to be a leader, or at least try to be one. Apart from this being quite obviously impossibly, it shows a distressing lack of appreciation for all those team members who do not „lead“.
Having lead multiple teams over the past years, I have become increasingly grateful for and respectful of team members who work quietly in the background, reliably doing jobs I often could not do myself. We do ourselves a major disservice when we only value those tasks which happen in the limelight. Having a good leader is important, but in a team that is only one task among many.
Because most people have been taught to be bossed around by an authority? The lesson just needs to be reinforced over and over for years as a child in school and then later in the workplace.
>> The research relies on teenagers retrospectively recalling their parents’ behaviour
Seems likely that students that want to be perceived as having 'leadership potential' are going to understate their parents' involvement in their K-12 education. They are just practicing their origin story.
In addition, simply knowing that there's a causal relationship doesn't identify the cause. For instance you could discover that a sick person traveling to a distant town caused the people in that town to become sick, without knowing whether the underlying cause was an infectious agent, witchcraft, or a punishment from the gods for impious thoughts.
And not knowing the root cause severely limits your ability to manage the issue from a policy perspective. For instance you could launch a social campaign to persuade people to be more pious. That's close to level we're at in our understanding of parenting.
Struggle seems to be beneficial — TFA reminds me of a chapter in a book I'm Reading, Range by David Epstein [0]: When it comes to long-term retention and application of information, students seem to learn better if they have to struggle with the material, whereas if they have it beautifully explained to them by gifted teachers, they (the students) enjoy the immediate feeling of understanding, but later they don't perform as well in terms of recall- or use of the information.
Makes perfect sense to me; many other benefits are also obtained from having to struggle -- persistence, determination, confidence in the face of new challenges, resilience, empathy....
The value something has for us relates to how much we paid for it. The thing we struggled to learn is knowledge more dear than that which came as obvious, elegant revelation.
Blaming "over parenting" has been around for at least as long as I've been a parent, possibly even going back generations.
I wonder if the micro-management of parenting by popular culture can itself be seen as a form of over-parenting at a societal level. As we helicopter over our children, we are constantly aware of an even larger helicopter hovering over us, ready to blame parents (especially moms) for every tiny little transgression that led to our kids not growing up to be perfect in every way.
It's funny that the educational system complains the most about helicopter parenting yet they are the ones setting unrealistic performance expectations for students.
You are so right about parents being easily judged according with some high standards. Or it might be just me the one who when saw the title of this article I was thinking: "Great, another article which will show me how bad I am at parenting"
When my child was born I did an extensive research about what kind of books should I read which are baked by science and will teach me how to be a good parent and I read most of these books.
Then I found that - at least for me - it is very hard to apply what they are suggesting. Then I started to feel bad that I am not doing enough. I even paid time to talk with a paediatric psychologist to make sure that I was understanding the science of child development in the right way. And after a couple of sessions which were mostly going like this: I was going with a list of studies I read and questions I had about how to apply them and she explaining the big picture and where does fit or not. Until one day when she asked: "Did you watched your child? What does he want? What does he enjoy? Is he ready for this?"
And then (months later) I realised that by trying to apply all this things I was not myself and in the same time I was actually not paying attention to the child's own needs. I put a lot of stress to myself to the edge of burnout by reading and thinking all the time about this good parenting stuff. He is a full person which his own desires and forming his personality. Does not matter what I want him to be. I should offer the best that I can but in the direction that he wants to explore.
Now we go for a bike ride. Or play outside. Or read. Or do a paper rocket. Sometimes I help him dress, sometimes he wants to do it himself. But I don't have a plan of how the day will be. I still struggle with questions about my parenting style. But I try to be more aware of his personality.
> wonder if the micro-management of parenting by popular culture can itself be seen as a form of over-parenting at a societal level.
Can you elaborate on this?
We are social animals so I guess this is behaviour that might be quite old. I'm going to go on a limb to conjecture that coddled kids aren't as productive, resilient or resourceful as their headstrong counterparts. Could it be possible in old times that "the society" needed resourceful and headstrong young people over those who can hardly wipe their own arse without their mother, especially in unstable political groupings (from clans to villages to cities to provinces to nation states)?
But the kind of helicoptering in the article is basically coddling a child to oblivion regardless of age which hampers the development of said child's potential. No one said anything about perfection. No one ever has. That's the unreasonable and impossible standard an emotionally unstable parent(s) may strive for thereby overcompensating on some imaginary 'specialness' in their children.
Something that struck me from books set in the olden days was how children seemed to be parented by the whole community. I wonder if the diminished role of the "village" in our more individualistic era makes it more critical, in perception or in reality, for parents to get everything right.
Anecdotally, if your parents treat you like an adult and someone who deserves responsibility, you quickly grow to fill those shoes. I think you live a very different mental life as a child when are taught to evaluate situations and make decisions.
But when your parents have the expectation that you are their trained slave but meter work unfairly among siblings, you learn to resent work and leaders. Also when they criticize you for not doing it right, you just give up.
Speaking from experience and having debrainwashed myself from said mindset.
Lots of identical twin and adoption studies make a very convincing case that almost none of this stuff comes from parenting style and upbringing. It's all genetics.
So, I see this story is on the BBC, but seems to reference US based research.
So, I wonder, how culturally relative is this?
I remember reading a comment here where Americans portray confidence even when lacking knowledge, whereas in other countries, that behavior is perceived as off-putting, not admirable.
I can’t imagine that inspires confidence in leadership.
An obvious source of additional information on this would be studies regarding how those we identify as good leaders were raised. Were they helicoptered or 'free-range'[0] kids? I was free range. I've never been in a substantial leadership role, but I have a solid sense of self awareness, self confidence and agency. I can set a goal that is realistic for me and then work towards it, even if it's a 10 year effort.
It's pretty obvious that knowing what you're capable of can only be learned if failing is part of the program. You can't know how much you can dead lift until you've tried to push more than you physically can. You can't know how accurately you can shoot without missing. You won't know how much you can learn in a semester without poor test scores. Once you know the limits, those limits are another point to draw on when planning your life. Free range parenting serves that purpose better than helicoptering.
I'm rather skeptical about this and this could also be a case of correlation!=causation. First of all, what they mean by "leaders" are management positions. However, the professional choices that lead to these are mostly based on your family background in many countries, e.g. the connections of the parents, how much parents pressure their children into certain career paths that are more likely to lead to leadership positions, and the necessary money for expensive education. To you give you an example, one of my close friends from school is the CFO of a successful company. His father was a manager, too. He had good contacts to the media business, so when this friend of mine was studying economics his father's contacts gave him an internship as the personal assistant of a board member of one of the worlds top five media concerns. The contacts from this internship later allowed him to get a five million Euro loan just to cover the advertising costs of a co-founded startup (which failed, btw). This friend of mine is not special in any way. He's kind, reasonable and an overall intelligent person like many others. I really don't think leadership positions have much to do with character traits or parenting. You can find all kinds of different people in elevated positions, from sociopaths to sensitive people with a kindred spirit.
As another example, if you study at Harvard in certain areas and come from a wealthy, well-connected family, then you are way more likely to end up in a leadership position in business or politics in the US than if you study at a non-Ivy League university or abroad. The same is true for Oxford in the UK, or one of the Grands Ecoles in France - and, of course, unless you're a total failure money and special tutoring will get you into those places.
Well, it is in the "Worklife" section of their web site, so yes, it's probably talking about career success.
But leadership is a good ability to have even if you don't care about career success or money at all. Any kind of endeavor needs leaders, not just money-making endeavors. Suppose there's a problem that could be solved if volunteers banded together to do it. Who's going to initiate that, organize them, and make it happen? A leader.
Work for your boss, but follow a true leader.
There was a time where leaders and kings stood right there with their subjects on the battlefields, today the highest executives take all the money and delegate the responsibility.
To see a president or king at the front lines these days is nigh impossible.
If you work in a place with bosses too incompetent to be leaders, get the best monetary value out of the gig and move on to greener (more dollars) pastures as soon as the opportunity arises.
Not necessarily but leading by example is the best way to educate kids, so a parent who is a leader in some capacity will have also leader children, either by socialising them or by pure genetics.
Not just the US. Almost every nation regardless of whether it is capitalist ( US, Britain, etc ) or communist? ( China, North Korea ) or theocratic ( Saudi Arabia ). You'll notice most of the leaders come from wealthy families.
Simple math states that not everyone can be a leader. 1 leader needs more than 1 “followers”, hence only a tiny subset of people become leaders.
People can come up with all sorts of way that might increase their or their kids’ chances of becoming a leader, but in reality only a small subset ever will.
And most of the time, those that do become leaders do so because of their parents’ socioeconomic status
There are so many different aspects in life — you could be a leader in some, and a follower in the others.
For example, you could have a non-leadership position at your day job, but lead local neighborhood’s landscaping initiatives, or organize a hobby club, or lead a guild in an online game, or participate in local elections, or record and sell online paid math courses.
Literally everybody can be a leader, there’s no shortage of leadership positions.
Colloquially, this parenting approach is known as ‘helicopter parenting’ in reference to the idea of hovering nearby whether needed or not.
Your parents likely had good intentions, such as ensuring you didn’t face uncomfortable challenges. Unfortunately this might have had some inadvertent, unhelpful effects, including “making you less confident and less capable of facing difficulties, therefore [leading you to] exhibit poorer leadership skills”,
Actually, for many parents it is not about THEIR intentions but that the child protective services can take your children away if you are not hovering nearby at all times whether needed or not.
Go out to the park across the street by themselves? Could be reported.
Walk home from school bus by themselves? There may be a pedophile lurking...
Leave them alone at home while you’re out? Reckless child endangerment.
Other countries are not like this. Previous generations in the US were not like this. But now... you’re basically never left alone even for a moment until you pass a certain age. Maybe in your own room...
I hate this pervasive notion that leadership is unquestionably a good thing. Leadership is bullshit. It's implicitly a dependency on getting other people to do things for you.
Instead, we should value the abilities to work independently and in mutual cooperation.
I would argue that the role of a leader is to provide the coordination that effective cooperation requires - in a sense, to foster interdependence.
I believe that it is impossible for any group of people to work together without some form of leadership taking place. I also believe that the bigger the task, the more important it becomes to have good coordination and leadership.
Of course, that‘s not to say that there aren‘t plenty of „leaders“ out there who‘s idea of their job is to „get other people to do things for you“.
There's this trend of using the words "leaders", "leadership", where I think 20 years ago we just said "managers", or maybe "upper management". It's unsettling to me. Is this another step on the euphemism treadmill?
The paper Can a Parent Do Too Much for Their Child? An Examination By Parenting Professionals of the Concept of Overparenting [1]:
> One hundred and twenty-eight professionals responded to an online survey about their observations of overparenting, with eighty-six respondents providing lists of the types of actions they believed were behavioural examples of the term.
This study demonstrates that 128 “professionals” are still oblivious to Judith Rich Harris’ findings 22 years after she published The Nurture Assumption [2].
106 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadEdit: Lol. I love the downvotes. I mean, who are you talking about? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus? Or were you dragging politics into this just to make a cheap shot? If so, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
That’s not a dig, it just seems like a poor ROI.
The speculation that poor eyesight contributes to his functional illiteracy seems plausible.
https://thegolfnewsnet.com/golfnewsnetteam/2020/12/29/how-ma...
This article supports the numbers for Trump and adds additional information.
https://www.golfchannel.com/article/golf-central-blog/obamas...
The above article gives numbers for Obama.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-defends-golf-trips-fal...
This article compares them both as of the summer of their 4th year in office. Short summary, Trump played at about 2x the pace of Obama.
Interesting to have your feelings hurt that easily.
I’m laughing at you.
The thing is leadership ought to be like you say. Some kind of competence that allows you to help a group of people complete some kind of task.
But let's be honest. The kids want to be student council president because it's prestigious. They grow up and then they want to be CEO because it's prestigious and well paying. They pay lip service to the idea of helping a team, but really, we know they don't care all that much. It's ass backwards, people want to be leaders because {prize} and then they think about how to get there. Sometimes we get lucky and they conclude that they need to climb the ladder by being competent (this fails a lot due to pyramid structures and politics), but often they just figure out that to seem competent, you have to shout a lot about how competent you are.
Those schools maintain their status and position by ensuring their alumni become leaders. Thus it is to their advantage.
Which brings us to the bigger picture... we live in a Darwinian word of evolve-or-die, strongest-will-survive. Thus passing on to our children the skills of leadership are part of this same desire for our children to thrive.
Money. In our society it pays more in average to be a leader.
On the why it pays more, I’d posit leaders are closer to the money source so get more negotiating power as they have more information.
Information is certainly part of it (thus why we have NDAs), but so are relationships/connections, particularly in B2B or the startup world where CEOs have to sell the company to investors.
we can see this with popularity itself, which has changed over the past century in the (american) culture from emphasizing capability to emphasizing confidence (with the concomitant rise of mass media and the concentration of mass attention and esteem).
I've seen this enough that I've come to believe it's hard wired to some extent, though it can be overridden rationally. Confidence and charisma seems to tell our so-called "reptile brain" that this is a big alpha that should be followed, and I strongly suspect that the effect also tends to down-regulate the rational mind in the same way that stress and fear do. I've experienced the "if they're in the room you agree with them" type of charisma more than once, and personally I always found it creepy and disturbing.
Looking past superficial confidence and charisma is something that should be explicitly taught.
Why? That only seems like it would be nice in a world where leadership skills and confidence are rare, and thus it's a "seller's market" for people with those skills, where people might have to settle for just picking a leader because they are good at leadership, regardless of whether they are wise. (Which is, admittedly, the world we live in now.)
However, in a world/cultural zeitgeist where leadership and confidence are commonly-cultivated attributes (like conscientiousness is in today's world: something inculcated by parents, teachers, media, etc.), most people would have that attribute, making most people potential leaders — and thus there would be a "buyer's market" for leaders. Leadership ability could be taken as pure table-stakes, and leaders would be selected first-and-foremost on their wisdom/capability/etc.
It is exactly the focus of the article, taken forward, that would make such a world come to pass.
Better to read some biographies of great leaders so at least you have a good view of the original data. Here is one for starters:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/05/those-who-hav...
We‘ve been studying leadership since the very first books were written (and probably since the first tribal elders started sharing their experiences around the camp fire).
It is important to keep in mind that effective leadership can be stunningly diverse and depends heavily on personality and context. Stanley McChrystal makes this point quite well. Nonetheless, there are certain characteristics and traits that many effective leaders exhibit in some way or another. (IMO, John Maxwell provides an excellent summary of these.)
But I heartily agree with your sentiment that reading biographies of leaders is one of the best ways of „learning the trade“ (aside from actually, you know, leading).
A leader cannot have one without the other. If you've spend any time amongst high academic performers, many of these folks have "developing the substance, breadth, and judgement", but not nearly as many have the confidence to apply these skills as leaders.
All to say your comment is spot-on.
Why is the popular conception of leadership "bossing people around?" A healthier and more productive view of it is giving people what they need to grow and be successful. It's when a person guides someone and serves as a good steward for them, not exploiting them to whatever ends are at hand.
I guess this is because it dovetails with common experience. A leader these days doesn't have to have subject knowledge, he has connections and charisma and knows where to find experts that work for him. Just look at Elon Musk.
One of his outstanding characteristics is that he is constantly learning subject knowledge. Yes, he hires subject experts, but then he effectively arranges for private tutoring until he knows what he needs of what they know.
Elon is a big believer that he should be able to do any job of anyone who he employs, and to a shocking extent it is actually true.
That's a good question I've been pondering for a while and still don't have a great answer for.
I think some of it is that one degenerate form of leadership is to conflate it with authority, and a lot of people's experience with "leadership" is simply to receive orders.
I actually would call what you describe as the ideal form of management, which is not leadership either. An ideal manager is not simply an authority user/abuser, but someone who clears obstacles out of the way and works to enhance the ones they are managing's skills, but ideally, only a bit of authority is deployed, and a manager may in fact exhibit no leadership at all. (For instance, corporate goals may simply come from higher up, or market pressures, or things other than "leadership" per se.)
(There are also degenerate cases where raw, naked authority is in fact necessary and extensively used; I'm sure a lot of us worked a job at McDonalds or some rough equivalent and have memories of how much it was based on authority... fewer of us have experiences of managing in that environment and being directly exposed to the fact that it is just the only way to make it work, however distasteful you may find that fact.)
For me, leadership should be reserved for the cases in which one is visibly leading, e.g., you start a new initiative somewhere, gather up people to voluntarily follow you by a variety of non-coercive means, and then hold the group together in a variety of very context-sensitive means.
True leadership is rare. Authority is inescapable, good management is a gem to be treasured but still not that rare, but leadership is a rare thing. Most groups are held together by other bonds.
Halfway through the spot, host Gordon Ramsey (whom he was apparently trying to emulate) intervened and afterwards, the kid started saying things like, "Hey, let me know if you're having trouble with the panisse cakes; I can help you out as soon as I'm done with these string beans."
Good lesson for all of us.
I also take issue with the assumption that everybody ought to be a leader, or at least try to be one. Apart from this being quite obviously impossibly, it shows a distressing lack of appreciation for all those team members who do not „lead“.
Having lead multiple teams over the past years, I have become increasingly grateful for and respectful of team members who work quietly in the background, reliably doing jobs I often could not do myself. We do ourselves a major disservice when we only value those tasks which happen in the limelight. Having a good leader is important, but in a team that is only one task among many.
Seems likely that students that want to be perceived as having 'leadership potential' are going to understate their parents' involvement in their K-12 education. They are just practicing their origin story.
I personally do believe causation is more likely here, but I cannot be sure based on the study.
And not knowing the root cause severely limits your ability to manage the issue from a policy perspective. For instance you could launch a social campaign to persuade people to be more pious. That's close to level we're at in our understanding of parenting.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized... (not an affiliate link AFAIK)
I wonder if the micro-management of parenting by popular culture can itself be seen as a form of over-parenting at a societal level. As we helicopter over our children, we are constantly aware of an even larger helicopter hovering over us, ready to blame parents (especially moms) for every tiny little transgression that led to our kids not growing up to be perfect in every way.
When my child was born I did an extensive research about what kind of books should I read which are baked by science and will teach me how to be a good parent and I read most of these books.
Then I found that - at least for me - it is very hard to apply what they are suggesting. Then I started to feel bad that I am not doing enough. I even paid time to talk with a paediatric psychologist to make sure that I was understanding the science of child development in the right way. And after a couple of sessions which were mostly going like this: I was going with a list of studies I read and questions I had about how to apply them and she explaining the big picture and where does fit or not. Until one day when she asked: "Did you watched your child? What does he want? What does he enjoy? Is he ready for this?"
And then (months later) I realised that by trying to apply all this things I was not myself and in the same time I was actually not paying attention to the child's own needs. I put a lot of stress to myself to the edge of burnout by reading and thinking all the time about this good parenting stuff. He is a full person which his own desires and forming his personality. Does not matter what I want him to be. I should offer the best that I can but in the direction that he wants to explore.
Now we go for a bike ride. Or play outside. Or read. Or do a paper rocket. Sometimes I help him dress, sometimes he wants to do it himself. But I don't have a plan of how the day will be. I still struggle with questions about my parenting style. But I try to be more aware of his personality.
Can you elaborate on this?
We are social animals so I guess this is behaviour that might be quite old. I'm going to go on a limb to conjecture that coddled kids aren't as productive, resilient or resourceful as their headstrong counterparts. Could it be possible in old times that "the society" needed resourceful and headstrong young people over those who can hardly wipe their own arse without their mother, especially in unstable political groupings (from clans to villages to cities to provinces to nation states)?
But the kind of helicoptering in the article is basically coddling a child to oblivion regardless of age which hampers the development of said child's potential. No one said anything about perfection. No one ever has. That's the unreasonable and impossible standard an emotionally unstable parent(s) may strive for thereby overcompensating on some imaginary 'specialness' in their children.
Speaking from experience and having debrainwashed myself from said mindset.
https://www.todaysparent.com/family/nature-vs-nurture-does-p...
So, I wonder, how culturally relative is this?
I remember reading a comment here where Americans portray confidence even when lacking knowledge, whereas in other countries, that behavior is perceived as off-putting, not admirable.
I can’t imagine that inspires confidence in leadership.
It's pretty obvious that knowing what you're capable of can only be learned if failing is part of the program. You can't know how much you can dead lift until you've tried to push more than you physically can. You can't know how accurately you can shoot without missing. You won't know how much you can learn in a semester without poor test scores. Once you know the limits, those limits are another point to draw on when planning your life. Free range parenting serves that purpose better than helicoptering.
[0] https://www.todaysparent.com/family/parenting/the-one-thing-...
As another example, if you study at Harvard in certain areas and come from a wealthy, well-connected family, then you are way more likely to end up in a leadership position in business or politics in the US than if you study at a non-Ivy League university or abroad. The same is true for Oxford in the UK, or one of the Grands Ecoles in France - and, of course, unless you're a total failure money and special tutoring will get you into those places.
I’d much rather have a child who grows up to be resilient, kind, and compassionate.
But leadership is a good ability to have even if you don't care about career success or money at all. Any kind of endeavor needs leaders, not just money-making endeavors. Suppose there's a problem that could be solved if volunteers banded together to do it. Who's going to initiate that, organize them, and make it happen? A leader.
Leaders usually make more money compared to others and lets be honest here, more money you have the more successful you are.
At age of majority, throw them out in the middle of nowhere with a knife, compass, and fire source.
Simple math states that not everyone can be a leader. 1 leader needs more than 1 “followers”, hence only a tiny subset of people become leaders.
People can come up with all sorts of way that might increase their or their kids’ chances of becoming a leader, but in reality only a small subset ever will.
And most of the time, those that do become leaders do so because of their parents’ socioeconomic status
For example, you could have a non-leadership position at your day job, but lead local neighborhood’s landscaping initiatives, or organize a hobby club, or lead a guild in an online game, or participate in local elections, or record and sell online paid math courses.
Literally everybody can be a leader, there’s no shortage of leadership positions.
Your parents likely had good intentions, such as ensuring you didn’t face uncomfortable challenges. Unfortunately this might have had some inadvertent, unhelpful effects, including “making you less confident and less capable of facing difficulties, therefore [leading you to] exhibit poorer leadership skills”,
Actually, for many parents it is not about THEIR intentions but that the child protective services can take your children away if you are not hovering nearby at all times whether needed or not.
Go out to the park across the street by themselves? Could be reported.
Walk home from school bus by themselves? There may be a pedophile lurking...
Leave them alone at home while you’re out? Reckless child endangerment.
Other countries are not like this. Previous generations in the US were not like this. But now... you’re basically never left alone even for a moment until you pass a certain age. Maybe in your own room...
I believe that it is impossible for any group of people to work together without some form of leadership taking place. I also believe that the bigger the task, the more important it becomes to have good coordination and leadership.
Of course, that‘s not to say that there aren‘t plenty of „leaders“ out there who‘s idea of their job is to „get other people to do things for you“.
> One hundred and twenty-eight professionals responded to an online survey about their observations of overparenting, with eighty-six respondents providing lists of the types of actions they believed were behavioural examples of the term.
This study demonstrates that 128 “professionals” are still oblivious to Judith Rich Harris’ findings 22 years after she published The Nurture Assumption [2].
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-psycholog...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption