Comment by stult
8 years ago
I would be interested to see the evidence for that inverse correlation. I remember seeing a study not so long ago which implied that higher intelligence individuals made poor managers. As did lower intelligence people. There's a sweet spot somewhere a little above average where you're smart enough to do the job but not so smart that you can't relate to employees and customers. I would not be surprised to see the same phenomenon in start ups, though admittedly I don't know if that study was especially reliable given the modern state of the social sciences.
My instinct is to question the causality anyway, because I think you highlight a strong candidate for the actual, underlying limitation on intelligent leaders: humility. My hypothesis would be that the negative leadership performance is actually a proxy measure of humility, which on average is lower with higher intelligence, likely because of the praise effect you describe.
Because I don't think it makes sense that intelligent leaders are less able to question their frame of thought or significant details supporting it. Or rather less capable in carrying out the actual cognitive task of self-questioning. Quite the opposite, because general intelligence is a measure of the correlation between performance on all cognitive tasks, so it's practically tautological that higher IQ individuals would be stronger within that cognitive domain. Which makes me think it must be their willingness or propensity to engage in the process of self-questioning.
To bring it back around to the OP, details matter, but the process for selecting relevant and filtering out irrelevant details matters most. Humility may be one way to enhance that process. Though maybe there is also a limit. Too much questioning prevents the establishment of a stable, actionable consensus. An inability to shut out irrelevant stimuli is disabling to individuals and organizations. Like Funes the Memorious, you get lost in minutiae.
I don't know where the ideal balance lies, but I wish I was better at finding it in practice.
It's kind of the Peter Principle: You rise to your own level of incompetence. Hopefully, you don't get boosted past that level. Then you can instruct and manage the next down level.
You make an excellent point about filtering out the irrelevant. The wood is brown, for example, is irrelevant to building a proper staircase. The angle of decline is highly relevant.
But, with regard to leadership, the Peter Principle (identified by Laurence J. Peter and published in 1969) is in inverse correlation to performance, I believe. Particularly if performance is tied to being able to communicate with the success of the high performer at that level, because they might not have met their own level of the Peter Principle.
And, after communicating, one must be able to act. If a person has reached their Peter Principle level, they will be incompetent at the task -- which is why so many managers are hated.