Transcript
Hey everyone, a couple of episodes ago we talked about the definition of leadership and then we talked about the difference between leaders and managers.
And in that, I started talking about the different causes of why we have poor leadership in our organizations today. And so today I thought I’d do more of a deep dive. I have seven reasons why for you that kind of many of them tied together, but let’s dive into those.
1. The confusion about leadership and management
One of the first reasons is kind of what we’ve talked about in the past is the confusion about leadership and management and all of that. And so because of that confusion, often people don’t understand it, and they don’t understand why it’s so important because of that confusion.
2. Conventional wisdom
And part of that is because of conventional wisdom. And one thing I’ve found out in my life, and I’m sure you’ve seen many times, is that if it’s conventional wisdom, then it’s probably wrong. And that applies with leadership as well, because a lot of the leadership, things that are out there that people often post and publish, and sometimes the conventional wisdom is just not right.
You will not be a successful leader if you just follow conventional wisdom. And just being honest, because lots out there focuses more on you and your preferences and your strengths and styles and we can talk about those later specifically. But by those selves, those don’t make you a great leader.
It’s the principles of leadership, and often I see so much out there that’s just focused on being your best self and all this stuff which by itself isn’t necessarily bad but that doesn’t make you a great leader. It’s following principles, and knowing what’s important to be a good leader often seems in the light side.
Or you might have the infographics where people put leaders needs to be this, this, this, and this, but anyway, conventional wisdom is hurting us a lot, along with part of the confusion.
And when people follow conventional wisdom, they think they’re being good leaders, but they’re not because they’re just following what’s not true. And so sometimes people think they’re being good, but they’re not because what they’ve learned is not really accurate. So you have the confusion, and part of that’s for the conventional wisdom. And part of that, that adds on too, is that…
3. People aren’t trained well
People aren’t trained well. Part of that is because people don’t understand the importance of leadership, or remember the difference between the two, the conventional wisdom.
So often people aren’t trained. They may be moved up from graphic designer to graphic designer manager, but they’re not taught how to be a manager. They’re not really taught how to lead. And so what happens is people don’t do a good job because they weren’t trained.
And we’ve talked about before how leadership’s a skill and it takes time to learn these skills and it’s a process. If you don’t learn it, you’re not going to do it.
And then on top of that, sometimes they’re just not trained well. Sometimes it’s a one and done. So you have like one class, you’re supposed to read a book or whatever it is, and boom, you’ll train this later. Boom, yay.
No, it doesn’t really work that way. Leadership takes time. And not only that, they’re not only trained maybe poorly because it’s a one and done, it’s trained poorly because it’s of all the confusion. So they may teach conventional wisdom.
They may say, well, you just got to know your style. You got to know what your preferences are. You just need to know your strengths and that will make you a great leader.
Well, no, often those things from my perspective, from what I’ve seen, they can be light on principles and it focuses sometimes if, well, let me just say this, if it focuses on conventional wisdom, then they’re not gaining what they need to gain.
Also, sometimes because of the confusion, because of the conventional wisdom, because of that, not understanding the importance, people focus when they do leadership training or see they get, say they get manager training or they move up in the position where they’re supposed to be assistant principal or whatever it may be, they get training on the duties of the job but they but the actual, and it’s called leadership training, because they’re in leadership position, so these are your duties now, this is how you do your functions, but the actual how to lead these or the principles of how to lead and lead well, those are kind of not really taught, are taught very lightly.
Or it’s a one and done, if that makes sense. Anyway, so we have confusion, we have conventional wisdom, we have poorly trained, that hurts us, all mixes together, hurts us.
4. The Dunning Kruger Effect
Another big thing that adds into it is the Dunning-Kruger effect. Basically, which says that the less you know, the more confident you are about what you know. Sometimes people call it the armchair quarterback syndrome.
People learn a little bit about something. So people learn a little bit about leadership. That little bit of training they do at their company. And maybe they’ll read one book or whatever it may be. They learn a little bit about leadership.
And it’s the danger of little knowledge. This is really the danger of little knowledge. You learn a little bit and you think you know it. But you don’t.
It’s like I take a couple practices of guitar and as I say I’m playing guitar. I’m taking some lessons. And maybe I take a couple lessons or watch a couple YouTube videos. I practice a little bit. I learned some chords. I learned GCD really good. And maybe I can strum along some songs.
Does that mean I know how to play guitar? Well, no. I mean, yes, I know a little bit. I can do a little bit, but do I really know how to play? No, I don’t.
It’s the same thing with leadership. Sometimes we learn a little bit of knowledge. Or people learn a little bit of knowledge and they think they’ve got leadership down. That’s why nobody thinks they’re a bad leader.
Have you noticed that?
No one thinks they’re a bad leader. Think about the worst boss you’ve ever had. Do they think they were a bad leader? No. No one thinks they’re a bad leader.
And that’s part of the Dunn-Kruger effect. And so that really hurts us because of all the confusion of what leadership is, and they learn a little bit of knowledge and they think they know it and really don’t.
And so, they’re not…. It can sometimes lead to arrogance or things like when people say, “Hey, you could be better in this way.” “Well, I’m a leader. I know what I’m doing.”
No, you don’t. It just all mixes together.
5. It’s based off only what one’s seen
And then you have a situation of that what you know is what you’ve seen. Let me give you an example. And maybe I can think of a better way to explain it, too.
Let’s say you grew up eating grass. You, that’s all you ate from the time you’re little to the time to now, all you ate was grass. The thin grass was stringy, the thick grass was more juicy, but you loved the grass that had the yellow flowers. That was the best.
So tell me, if I came up to you and said, “Hey, do you know what good food tastes like”? You would say what?
“Yes, yes I do. It’s the grass with the yellow flower. That’s the best tasting food ever.”
But would you be right?
Well, no. For one, you’ve never had Thai food, because Thai food’s like the best. But besides that, no, you haven’t ever had anything else to really know. You’re just basing it off what you’ve experienced in your life. And all you’ve experienced is grass.
And it’s the same with leadership. And it’s kind of sometimes a perpetuating thing is, people often, they experience bad, mediocre leadership in their lives, and that’s all they’ve experienced. And so when they think of great leadership, they think mediocre leadership because that’s the best they’ve ever seen.
And so what do they model after? They model after what they’ve seen. And since there’s all that confusion and so on, it just all adds together.
Does that make sense? I hope I’m making sense in all that I’m saying.
6. They have the wrong motive
Then as we talked about a couple episodes ago is your motive. And depending on your motive… sometimes people get into position because they have the wrong motive.
They’re doing it for them, their career. Sometimes we perpetuate that because that’s the only way to move up and so on. We won’t dive more into that because we talked about the couple, in the few episodes in the past.
But so that was one reason, is people come in with the wrong motive, why we have poor leadership.
7. We hire for the wrong reasons
But kind of the last reason is because of mixed with all of the other reasons is we have poor leadership because we hire for the wrong reasons. Again, sometimes people do well as a graphic designer, or engineer, or a salesperson, or programmer, so we move them up to a management position over those people.
And we think they will do good because they did good in the other position. And again, those are two separate skills, two separate functions. Listen to the last couple episodes if you want to know more about that and the issues that can come with that.
But that’s dangerous and that’s one reason we have poor management because you have people moving up who really don’t want to be managers but that’s the only way up.
Or people just assume they will do good, and they’re not trained and so you end up having people who still love doing graphic design so they keep doing graphic design even though they’re supposed to manage and so on.
So you have that issue but also people get hired for the wrong reasons in the sense that people are hired for their education or they’re hired for their experience or technical ability, I should say, versus actual leadership ability. Even sometimes when people are interviewing, or checking references, they don’t necessarily check to see what kind of leader they were with the people who they were around.
And they just assume, oh, they’ve got the education, oh, they have experience doing graphic design, so of course they’re gonna be a great graphic design manager. Oh, they have a doctor in graphic designology. It doesn’t matter.
It’s great to have those things, but if you’re trying to have someone who leads, you want someone who’s going to be good at leading and who wants to have that function of managing and everything that goes with that.
It all combines
All of those things kind of combine. You have confusion, conventional wisdom, you have people, the training that’s not great, people that sees, or basing based off experience, you have people hired for the wrong reasons, the Dunning-Kruger effect, your motive, all those things kind of tie together.
And I hope I’ve not just come across as negative, and I’m just saying, oh, these things are terrible, blah, blah, blah. But I just want to kind of reveal or talk about why we have these bad leaderships in our companies and organizations because we can do something about it. So that’s why I’m doing this podcast.
That’s why I’m trying to do more videos and articles and stuff is because I really want to help people be great leaders and understand the truth behind what good leadership is. And I hope you take the time to realize that leadership is a skill, that to go beyond conventional wisdom and to really learn what great leadership is.
That if you really want to be in the leadership position, I understand sometimes you get put into a position where you’re a leader and there’s other things you have to learn. But if you don’t keep growing in leadership, it’s going to hurt your ability.
Hopefully, the more we learn why, what leadership is, and why we have poor leadership, we can work to fix it, we can work together. Because again, everybody deserves to work for a great leader. And it would be great if we have a world where great leadership’s the norm, that that’s just normal.
It can be possible, it just takes some work. So let’s work together and do that. And one thing I’ve noticed, I have not given you the kind of contact information, website or anything for the past number of episodes, if you would like to email me. Well first you can go to nomorebadleaders.com, it will go to my, it will redirect to my main website theexceptionalskills.com.
If you want to email me, you can use the contact form there or just email me at thomas@theexceptionalskills.com, and I should get it. Anyway thanks for listening and I do appreciate that and I’ll see you next time. Bye.