Roughly half the time, we have no idea ** why ** we’re picking leaders

From research at Stanford University on hierarchy and leader selection:

Most surprising, the researchers found, was that 45% of the time, team members picked leaders for reasons other than competence, such as the person’s age, dominance, or perceived power level.

That’s probably not that surprising in reality. Let me try to break it down as best I can and in simple terms: choosing “leaders” is a fraught exercise, and you can begin with the base concept. Are leaders really chosen, or do people rise to that role? There’s a huge difference between “leaders” and “managers,” and I think we often forget that. We tend to deify both concepts in a hierarchy, but a leader is more a coach/mentor-type, and a manager is someone that tries to hit deliverables and targets. Those are immensely different things.

The reason it’s not surprising is that … well, people are people. Biases exist, we respond to attractive people more, charisma is a turn-on, we think “leaders” need to be a certain way, we think someone in their 50s should be a manager, etc.

What’s funny is that we spend about 1/3 of the middle part of our lives at work, right? And at the organizational level, we spend about 1/2 the money going out on people and salaries, and yet … despite all of this … we…