In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy during the American era after 1945. Nye works through each presidency from Truman to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not. Regardless of a president's policy preference, Nye shows that each one was not constrained by the structure of the system and actually had choices. He further notes the important ethical consequences of non-actions, such as Truman's willingness to accept stalemate in Korea rather than use nuclear weapons.
Since we so often apply moral reasoning to foreign policy, Nye suggests how to do it better. Most importantly, presidents need to factor in both the political context and the availability of resources when deciding how to implement an ethical policy--especially in a future international system that presents not only great power competition from China and Russia, but transnational threats as borders become porous to everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism to cyber criminals and climate change. : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44244970-do-morals-matter
The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A
Psychological Reckoning
The Strange Case
of Donald J. Trump provides a
coherent and nuanced psychological portrait of Donald Trump, drawing upon
biographical events in the subject's life and contemporary scientific research
and theory in personality, developmental, and social psychology.
Dan P. McAdams, renowned psychologist who pioneered the study of lives,
examines the central personality traits, personal values and motives, and the
interpersonal and cultural factors that together have shaped Trump's
psychological makeup, with an emphasis on the strangeness of the case--that is,
how Trump again and again defies psychological expectations regarding what it
means to be a human being. The book's central thesis is that Donald Trump is
the episodic man. The chapters, structured as stand-alone essays each riffing
on a single psychological theme, build on each other to present a portrait of a
person who compulsively lives in the moment, without an internal story to integrate
his life in time. With an emphasis on scientific personality research, rather
than political rhetoric, McAdams shows that Trump's utter lack of an inner life
story is truly exceptional. This book is a remarkable case study which should
be of as much interest to psychologists as it is to readers trying to reckon
with the often confounding behavior and temperament of the 45th President of
the United States. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51458681-the-strange-case-of-donald-j-trump
The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and
His Loyalists
Forensic psychiatrist Bandy
X. Lee explains the outgoing president’s pathological appeal and how to wean
people from it
By Tanya Lewis on January
11, 2021
Supporters listen as
President Trump speaks during a “Save America Rally” near the White House on
January 6—not long before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol Building.
Credit: Shawn
Thew Getty Images
The violent insurrection at
the U.S. Capitol Building last week, incited by President Donald Trump, serves
as the grimmest moment in one of the darkest chapters in the nation’s history.
Yet the rioters’ actions—and Trump’s own role in, and response to, them—come as
little surprise to many, particularly those who have been studying the
president’s mental fitness and the psychology of his most ardent followers
since he took office.
One such person is Bandy X.
Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health
Coalition.* Lee led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and other
specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book that she
edited called The
Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts
Assess a President. In doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly
rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline, known as
the Goldwater rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional
opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever
the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of
Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive
governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the
experience of Nazism.”
Lee recently wrote Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, a
psychological assessment of the president against the backdrop of his
supporters and the country as a whole. These insights are now taking on renewed
importance as a growing number of current and former leaders call for Trump to be impeached. On January 9 Lee and her
colleagues at the World Mental Health Coalition put out a statement calling
for Trump’s immediate removal from office.
Scientific
American asked Lee to comment
on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, what drives some of his
followers—and how to free people from his grip when this damaging presidency
ends.
[An edited transcript of
the interview follows.]
What attracts people to Trump? What is
their animus or driving force?
The reasons are multiple and
varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation,
I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared
psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make
the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry
for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose
omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or
developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded
individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the
population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions”
[“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced
delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond
ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an
influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population
through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing
delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy
individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.
Why does Trump himself seem to gravitate
toward violence and destruction?
Destructiveness is a core characteristic
of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. First, I wish
to clarify that those with mental illness are, as a group, no more dangerous
than those without mental illness. When mental pathology is accompanied by
criminal-mindedness, however, the combination can make individuals far more
dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of
violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have
love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to
fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by
a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of
powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.
Expert on the psychology of
Donald Trump and his supporters says their behavior can be explained by a
“narcissistic symbiosis” and “shared psychosis.” Tayfun
Coskun Getty Images
Do you think Trump is truly exhibiting
delusional or psychotic behavior? Or is he simply behaving like an autocrat
making a bald-faced attempt to hold onto his power?
I believe it is both. He is
certainly of an autocratic disposition because his extreme narcissism does not
allow for equality with other human beings, as democracy requires.
Psychiatrists generally assess delusions through personal examination, but
there is other evidence of their likelihood. First, delusions are more
infectious than strategic lies, and so we see, from their sheer spread, that
Trump likely truly believes them. Second, his emotional fragility, manifested
in extreme intolerance of realities that do not fit his wishful view of the
world, predispose him to psychotic spirals. Third, his public record includes
numerous hours of interviews and interactions with other people—such as the
hour-long one with the Georgia secretary of state—that very nearly confirm
delusion, as my colleague and I discovered in a systematic analysis.
Where does the hatred some of his
supporters display come from? And what can we do to promote healing?
In Profile of a
Nation, I outline the many causes that create his followership. But
there is important psychological injury that arises from relative—not
absolute—socioeconomic deprivation. Yes, there is great injury, anger and
redirectable energy for hatred, which Trump harnessed and stoked for his
manipulation and use. The emotional bonds he has created facilitate shared
psychosis at a massive scale. It is a natural consequence of the conditions we
have set up. For healing, I usually recommend three steps: (1) Removal of the
offending agent (the influential person with severe symptoms). (2) Dismantling
systems of thought control—common in advertising but now also heavily adopted
by politics. And (3) fixing the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to poor
collective mental health in the first place.
What do you predict he will do after his
presidency?
I again emphasize in Profile
of a Nation that we should consider the president, his followers and
the nation as an ecology, not in isolation. Hence, what he does after this
presidency depends a great deal on us. This is the reason I frantically wrote
the book over the summer: we require active intervention to stop him from
achieving any number of destructive outcomes for the nation, including the
establishment of a shadow presidency. He will have no limit, which is why I
have actively advocated for removal and accountability, including prosecution.
We need to remember that he is more a follower than a leader, and we need to
place constraints from the outside when he cannot place them from within.
What do you think will happen to his
supporters?
If we handle the situation
appropriately, there will be a lot of disillusionment and trauma. And this is
all right—they are healthy reactions to an abnormal situation. We must provide
emotional support for healing, and this includes societal support, such as
sources of belonging and dignity. Cult members and victims of abuse are often
emotionally bonded to the relationship, unable to see the harm that is being
done to them. After a while, the magnitude of the deception conspires with
their own psychological protections against pain and disappointment. This
causes them to avoid seeing the truth. And the situation with Trump supporters
is very similar. The danger is that another pathological figure will come
around and entice them with a false “solution” that is really a harnessing of
this resistance.
How can we avert future insurrection
attempts or acts of violence?
Violence is the end product
of a long process, so prevention is key. Structural violence, or inequality, is
the most potent stimulant of behavioral violence. And reducing inequality in
all forms—economic, racial and gender—will help toward preventing violence. For
prevention to be effective, knowledge and in-depth understanding cannot be
overlooked—so we can anticipate what is coming, much like the pandemic. The
silencing of mental health professionals during the Trump era, mainly through a
politically driven distortion of an ethical guideline, was catastrophic, in my
view, in the nation’s failure to understand, predict and prevent the dangers of
this presidency.
Do you have any advice for people who do
not support Trump but have supporters of him or “mini-Trumps” in their lives?
This is often very difficult
because the relationship between Trump and his supporters is an abusive one, as
an author of the 2017 book I edited, The Dangerous Case of Donald
Trump, presciently pointed out. When the mind is hijacked for the
benefit of the abuser, it becomes no longer a matter of presenting facts or
appealing to logic. Removing Trump from power and influence will be healing in
itself. But, I advise, first, not to confront [his supporters’] beliefs, for it
will only rouse resistance. Second, persuasion should not be the goal but
change of the circumstance that led to their faulty beliefs. Third, one should
maintain one’s own bearing and mental health, because people who harbor delusional
narratives tend to bulldoze over reality in their attempt to deny that their
own narrative is false. As for mini-Trumps, it is important, above all, to set
firm boundaries, to limit contact or even to leave the relationship, if
possible. Because I specialize in treating violent individuals, I always
believe there is something that can be done to treat them, but they seldom
present for treatment unless forced.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-shared-psychosis-of-donald-trump-and-his-loyalists/
American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related
Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery
by Craig Unger
This is a story of dirty
secrets, and the most powerful people in the world.
Craig Unger’s new book, American Kompromat, tells of the spies
and salacious events underpinning men’s reputations and riches. It
tells how a relatively insignificant targeting operation by the KGB’s New
York rezidentura (New York Station) more than
forty years ago—an attempt to recruit an influential businessman as a new
asset—triggered a sequence of intelligence protocols that morphed into the
greatest intelligence bonanza in history. And it tells of a coterie of
associates, reaching all the way into the office of the Attorney General, who
stood to advance power, and themselves.
Based on extensive, exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level
sources—Soviets who resigned from the KGB and moved to the United States,
former officers in the CIA, FBI counterintelligence agents, lawyers at
white-shoe Washington firms--and analysis of thousands of pages of FBI
investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian,
and Ukrainian, American Kompromat shows that something much
more sinister and important has been taking place than the public could ever
imagine: namely, that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat operations
documented the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world and
transformed them into potent weapons.
Was Donald Trump a Russian asset? Just how compromised was he? And how could
such an audacious feat have been accomplished? American Kompromat is
situated in the ongoing context of the Trump-Russia scandal and the new era of
hybrid warfare, kleptocrats, and authoritarian right-wing populism it helped
accelerate. To answer these questions and more, Craig Unger reports, is to
understand kompromat—operations that amassed compromising
information on the richest and most powerful men on earth, and that leveraged
power by appealing to what is for some the most prized possession of all: their
vanity.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635379/american-kompromat-by-craig-unger/
30.01.2021 08:40
Bijušais VDK
spiegs: Maskava 40 gadus kultivējusi Trampu
kā savu aktīvu
Padomju Savienība un Krievija vairāk
nekā 40 gadus kultivējusi Donaldu Trampu kā savu aktīvu un jūsmojusi par viņa
gatavību atkārtot pret Rietumiem vērstu propagandu, britu kreisi liberālajam
laikrakstam "Guardian" paziņoja bijušais Valsts drošības komitejas
(VDK) spiegs Jurijs Švecs…: https://www.delfi.lv/news/arzemes/bijusais-vdk-spiegs
“House
of Trump, House of Putin:
The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia"
“American Kompromat:
How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power,
and Treachery”
by Craig Unger
We Need to Do More Research on Honesty
Scientists and philosophers know a lot
about why we lie. Now let’s figure out how not to do so
- By Judi
Ketteler on September 20, 2020
Last year, I published a
book about honesty, exploring what it means to live a more honest
life. I examined my own struggles with honesty, and did my best to translate
academic research about honesty and apply it to everyday life. Through
interviewing many researchers and reading dozens of studies about ethics,
deception, moral character, secrecy, and self-delusion, I learned that we know
quite a bit about lying and the reasons people lie in a variety of
relationships.
But we know far less about
the reasons people are honest.
“From my perspective as a
philosopher, honesty is stunningly neglected,” says Wake Forest University
philosophy professor Christian B. Miller, author
of The
Character Gap: How Good Are We? “Almost no work about
honesty has been done in philosophy in the last 50 years. It’s been largely
overlooked.” And yet, he says, when you ask people what they consider to be the
most important virtues, a great majority will include honesty.
Courage, patience and kindness may also top the list. Humility, too, perhaps.
Chastity, probably not so much. But can you imagine anyone ever leaving honesty
off the list?
So why don’t we know more
about what motivates people to be honest? To disclose, to say the true thing,
to correct false information, to speak up?
One answer is that in
thinking about honesty, we’ve mostly been tuned into deception. By “we,” I mean
you and me, and I also mean philosophers and scientists. First of all, lying,
or saying untrue things with the explicit intent to deceive people, has been on
full display in the form of Donald Trump for the past several years (though he
is certainly not the only elected official to practice deception with
regularity). We’ve also had a front-row seat watching personalities like Lance
Armstrong and Elizabeth Holmes weave their tangled webs. As citizens of the
world, we’re obsessed with lying and lies right now—what’s real, what’s fake,
and what’s deliberate and deceitful manipulation?
For honesty researchers, the
deception focus wasn’t on purpose. Not exactly. There has been a surge of
research over the past 15 years in psychology, organizational behavior,
behavioral economics and related fields on lying and unethical decision-making.
Starting around 2005, investigators developed and refined new methods to
examine when and why people lie and cheat to earn money. “Examples include the
now classic matrix and die-rolling tasks where people lie about their
performance to earn extra money for themselves, and sender-receiver deception
‘games’ where people lie to other participants to earn extra money for
themselves,” says Taya
Cohen, associate professor of organizational behavior and theory at
Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. By allowing or
provoking people to lie in controlled experiments—methodology that Cohen
herself has used in much of her research—researchers can observe, measure and
track these behaviors. “This means that lying and cheating can be
operationalized in a way that isn’t restricted to people's hypothetical
decisions or recalled past behaviors,” Cohen says.
From these and other types
of studies, we’ve learned a great deal about how and why people lie. We lie
when we think we can get away with it. We lie more in groups,
especially if we see other people lying, or we’ve been exposed to a
bribe. We lie when the lie—even a lie of self-interest—feels
justifiable (it’s only a little bit of extra money). We lie
less if we’re reminded to be honest or if we have high
moral character or score
highly on measures of guilt-proneness or honesty-humility.
In organizations, our lies
often are related to preserving some
sort of identity, and we lie to protect our reputation, the
reputation of someone we support or the reputation of a group to which we
belong. In relationships, we lie to spare feelings or avoid awkward situations
(but we get really
irritated when our romantic partner does the same). We lie to
ourselves as well, consistently believing
we are smarter than we are. Children are also more
likely to lie if they’ve been lied to. We even lie if
we’re afraid the truth will look
like a lie. And of course, we lie on social media, even
if the lies look more like “reshaping” the truth.
These are all extraordinarily helpful findings, with relevant takeaway for nearly any group: bosses, teachers, parents, friends, spouses, voters (especially voters). If we understand what motivates and fosters deception, we can better curb those things in ourselves.
I argue in my book that
living a more honest life starts with confronting our own deception, instead of
simply noticing everyone else’s. For me personally, this has meant paying more
attention to what I’m saying and constantly examining my motivations. This
started as a more reactionary endeavor (to notice when I was lying), but morphed
into a far more proactive one (to continually think about truth). Though both
are in service of the same thing—being a more honest person—I have noticed that
they don’t feel the same.
This is because they aren’t
the same, either in practice or in research. If you set out to study what makes
people tell lies, you tend to keep coming up with the same questions to
investigate. But if you set out to learn what makes people tell the truth or
have the courage to speak up, you will inevitably come up with a different set
of questions to investigate. And that could do two things: (1) connect the dots
between related research that wasn’t previously linked to honesty since the
work didn’t focus on deception, and (2) create an entirely new body of
philosophical and scientific research on honesty. “There is so much opportunity
for more research about honesty,” Miller says. “And it’s not just an academic
matter. There is an obvious real-world relevance and need.”
This is exactly what’s
behind the Honesty Project,
a $4.4 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to study honesty that
Miller and a team of researchers (including Cohen) at Wake Forest and Carnegie
Mellon were awarded in August. The project has a three-year timeline that
involves funding competitions for Ph.D. academics studying the philosophy and science of
honesty, and a conference at the end of the project. Miller will serve as
project director (he previously directed the Character Project)
and team members have their own research they will conduct as well. Wake Forest
psychology professor William
Fleeson will study how to cultivate honesty across the
political divide. This is particularly interesting to me because I’ve noticed
that in our current climate of political polarization, the people on one side
tend to think all the people on the other side are just lying. Even as a person
who has engaged with honesty a lot and written a book about
it, I still feel this way whenever I hear anything Donald Trump is saying. That
he lies is a fact. But are all the people who support him liars who don’t care
about honesty? That’s an interesting question.
Cohen’s recent research has
been focused on honesty
in difficult conversations, particularly the idea that we cannot be
both kind and honest at the same time. Through her work with Emma Levine at
the University of Chicago, she’s found that
we often think being honest with people will be much harder and socially
disastrous than it is (in fact, people find that being honest strengthens
relationships and social connections more than they expect). She has plans to
do more research on honesty and disclosure in difficult situations, hoping to
discover concrete, actionable tips that people in organizations can use.
Though letters of intent for
proposals are not due until November, Cohen is already hearing from
investigators in fields as diverse as political science and computer science.
One of the aims of the project is to see what researchers are working on that
can be brought into the fold, particularly primary investigators early in their
career (the project will give preference to those who are within 10 years of
receiving their Ph.D.).
The hope is that through
this more specific focus on the virtue of honesty—the virtue we hold as one of
the most important virtues, or even the most important one—we can learn more
about what motivates people to be honest, how honesty impacts relationships,
groups and institutions, and how we can better cultivate honesty as individuals
and members of groups and families.
Candidly, my hope is even
bigger. I believe that through pouring substantial intellectual and financial
resources into the study of honesty, we can be better at everything from
disease prevention to racial reconciliation to climate change. Naturally, I’m
quite eager to see what these investigators turn up and ultimately present at
the 2023 conference. I do already know one thing though: Honesty carries with
it an amazing power. It’s not just a shield against deception; it’s a way to
change the world.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-need-to-do-more-research-on-honesty/
12-04-20
HOW
TO BE A SUCCESS AT EVERYTHING
Figuring
out whether you’re a good leader is harder than you think
Getting feedback is tricky
when you’re in a leadership position. So it can be difficult to know if you’re
actually doing a good job.
In 2011, I was asked to
serve as director of a new program at the University of Texas called the Human
Dimensions of Organizations. We were a startup inside the university
that aimed to bring the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences to individuals
in organizations who wanted to learn about people.
I always thought of myself
as approachable, and I encouraged staff, faculty, and students involved with
the program to come to me with their complaints and suggestions. As it turns
out, few people took me up on my offer to criticize the program. That doesn’t
mean that we were doing well, though. It just means that I wasn’t getting all
the feedback I needed.
In particular, no matter how
much you encourage people to come talk to you in a leadership role—and no
matter how approachable and responsive to feedback you are—you are going to
hear fewer criticisms than you need to. When people are having a problem or are
dissatisfied with something, they may want to complain, but they want to match
their complaints to the scope of the problem.
A student having difficulty
registering for a course may not feel that it is worth “escalating” the problem
all the way to the director. That is, when you’re talking to someone with a
high level of control within the organization, you don’t necessarily want to
address particular annoyances, even though those problems may have a
significant impact on your overall assessment of that person’s leadership
effectiveness.
In addition, research on “construal level theory” suggests that social
distance makes you think about things more abstractly. When you talk to the
director of an organization, you may feel socially distant from them, which can
make you think that they don’t really have a hand in worrying about the
specific solutions to problems—even though good leaders have to be skilled at
both strategic and operational thinking.
That means that a lot of the
daily feedback you get as a leader is biased away from many of the problems
that people within your organization are experiencing. So, how can you tell
whether you’re actually doing well?
1. GET SPECIFIC
When you’re having
conversations with the people who are working for you, listen to the way they
talk about their experience. If the focus is primarily on general statements
(“Things are great” or “I love my job”), then you may not be getting the full
picture. What is actually happening day-to-day?
To find out, ask specific
questions and focus them on situations rather than on your performance. When
you ask, “How am I doing?” you create two forces that will make it hard for you
to get an honest answer. First, many people don’t want to criticize their
supervisor directly. Second, you’re asking for a general assessment.
Instead, ask about
particular situations and ask for reactions and suggestions. By focusing on
situations, the problems people raise need not be interpreted as criticisms of
people in leadership positions. That makes it easier to get honest feedback.
Your interest in specific situations can also help the people working for you
recognize the level of detail that you focus on with your own work.
2. SEED THE CONVERSATION
If people working for you
are reluctant to give you good feedback, you can try to start a conversation by
raising your own concerns about projects you’re involved in. Describe things
that you’re hoping to improve or situations that you think you could have
handled more effectively.
There are two benefits to
this focus. First, it creates a spirit of joint problem-solving. You’re talking
about things that could be improved, because you are looking for input on how
to make changes. Second, it helps the people you work with see that you are
adopting a growth mindset about your leadership. People
are more likely to provide constructive criticism when
they think it will be taken to heart.
In general, if you want
feedback from people, don’t wait for them to provide it. Create opportunities
to get information that will help you improve the way you lead.
3. HAVE A SPY
If the group that you
supervise is large (or if there are a few layers of management between you and
some of your key employees), then you also need to have people who will report
back key observations. These are your spies.
You don’t want your spies
identifying who is saying things, but rather what is being said and what kinds
of people are saying it. For example, the associate director of the Human
Dimensions of Organizations program had a great relationship with our students.
When problems affecting the students came up, she would bring them to me
anonymously. We could then put a group together to generate ideas to address
the problem quickly.
4. SET PRIORITIES
If you are going to have
these conversations with the people who work for you, it’s also important to
set expectations about what problems you can and cannot fix. Effective
management involves knowing the mission of the organization and working to
achieve it. Some of the criticisms that you encounter involve issues that may
get in the way of the mission.
There will be times when you
become aware of concerns that you cannot address because there are other tasks
that take higher priority. Not only do you need to be aware that not every
problem that can be solved should be solved; you also need to
communicate with people about those priorities. It’s better for the people who
work for you to know that you are aware of issues and have chosen to put
resources elsewhere than for them to think you are unaware of what is
happening.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Art Markman, PhD is a professor of Psychology and Marketing at
the University of Texas at Austin and Founding Director of the Program in the
Human Dimensions of Organizations. Art is the author of Smart
Thinking and Habits
of Leadership, Smart
Change, Brain
Briefs, and, most recently, Bring
Your Brain to Work.
Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump
10
science-backed questions that determine whether you should be a leader
Here’s a simple checklist
you can use to determine whether you have what it takes to be a leader, based
on 100 years of academic research on the science of leadership:
Everything humans have
accomplished in our 300,000-year evolutionary history is the result of coordinated human activity.
People set aside their selfish interests and agendas to collaborate
effectively in the pursuit of a common goal. As it turns out, this never
happens without leadership, whether there is someone formally in charge, or
not.
Indeed, the main difference
between a high-performing team, and a group of people that cannot organize
themselves effectively, is leadership. If we want to productively collaborate
with others, it is not just helpful, but critical, to have someone allocating
resources, assigning roles and tasks, directing and guiding us, motivating us,
and keeping our egos in check.
Some people are much better
at this than others, just like some people are better at singing, running,
learning languages, or playing chess. Sure, anybody can learn to be a better
leader, but some people have much more potential than others. There are even
bigger differences when it comes to people’s willingness and desire to lead,
especially if we examine their underlying motives and intentions.
Here’s a simple checklist
you can use to determine whether you have what it takes to be a leader, based
on 100 years of academic research on the science of leadership:
DO YOU HAVE TECHNICAL
EXPERTISE?
In a rapidly changing job
market, hard skills–including knowledge and experience–are less relevant than
they used to be. But you still need to have credibility in your area of
expertise in order to be legitimized as a leader, and be respected by the
team. This does not mean you have to be the smartest person in the room, or
make decisions without consulting others. But, in order to hire and manage
smart people, and get a sense of when they are right, you need to have the
right knowledge and expertise in your field.
DO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT
PERSONALITY?
Personality accounts
for nearly 50% of
the variability in leadership outcomes, more than any other trait. Although the
“right” personality profile for being a leader will depend on the context and
situation, certain traits, such as emotional stability, conscientiousness,
agreeableness, extroversion, and openness to experience, are generally
advantageous, and more likely to describe high-performing leaders than opposite
traits (volatile, lazy and disorganized, rude, and narrow-minded).
To be clear, you can perform
highly as a leader irrespective of your personality, especially if you get
coached or learn the right
behaviors. But your probability of doing a good job will
largely depend on the personality you have, just like your probability of
learning to play the piano will largely depend on the musical talent you have.
This is why there is no better way to elevate the quality of our leaders than
to select the right people to begin with.
ARE YOU A FAST LEARNER?
Around 20% of the variability in leadership success
depends on people’s reasoning and problem-solving ability (which scientists
call intelligence). The more complex the world gets, the more data-driven you
need to be, and the more your job requires you to learn new things, the more this
ability to learn and think will matter.
Although people
underestimate the value of intelligence in leadership, we are all too aware of
the problems that emerge when we elect or select unintelligent people to
leadership roles, especially when we have to work for them. The faster you
learn and are able to reason, the better equipped you will be for leadership
roles, and the more likely it is that you can future-prove your leadership
potential. Great leaders are always a work in progress.
ARE YOU AN ETHICAL PERSON?
It should be obvious that we
don’t want to appoint unethical or immoral people to leadership roles, yet
history–and the current media–are replete with case studies of smart and driven
leaders who display antisocial, Machiavellian, and corrupt tendencies, seeking
to accumulate power and status irrespective of what they do for others (see the
next point).
Although nobody is a saint,
just like nobody is 100% corrupt or evil, integrity is largely a character
trait. It can be assessed
by science-based tests, or by carefully scrutinizing past
records, as well as reputation (particularly if you ask people who worked for them in the
past). Culture
matters, too. It is far more tempting for someone to behave
immorally if they are part of a rotten culture, and vice versa. However,
cultures are generally created by leaders, and reflect their values, behaviors,
and decisions.
ARE YOU PURELY DRIVEN BY
SELF-INTEREST?
Leaders, like all human
beings, seek to fulfill certain personal needs or motives, but they make that
fulfillment dependent on others’ success, notably team performance. This is
unlikely to occur when leaders are simply motivated by self-interest (e.g., greed, power, status,
fame, or narcissistic ambitions). And yet, many people are tempted by
leadership roles simply in order to advance their careers and professional
accomplishments. They see leadership as a glamorous title or career aspiration,
without understanding that the whole point is to serve others, and enable them
to work together in the pursuit of a valuable goal. When leaders are driven by
self-interest, they will manage up rather than down, focus more on their own
reputation than on team performance, and take credit for others’ achievements,
while blaming them for their own mistakes. Who wants to work for such people?
DO YOU CARE ABOUT OTHER
PEOPLE?
A minimum level of empathy and consideration are essential for
effective leadership, so you can tame your own selfish tendencies and refrain
from harming others. You need to care about your team to establish a human and
humane relationship with the individuals who work for you. People don’t want to
be led by a robot or machine. There’s no substitute for human validation.
As the world becomes more
polarized by ideological and political divides, the ability to see things from
other people’s perspective and unify people is an essential skill for modern
leaders, especially if you want to create a diverse and inclusive culture in
your team.
DO YOU HAVE A CLEAR VISION
OF WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?
People want to be inspired,
energized, and lured into a meaningful journey. Telling people what do, or how
to do it, is what managers do. But if you want to provide them with a higher
sense of purpose, with a meaningful mission, then you will need a compelling vision, and articulate it in an effective
way. Today, people have lots of career choices, and there’s unprecedented
pressure on jobs to provide a higher sense of purpose. This is why visionary
leaders are in high demand.
CAN YOU BRING UP THE BEST IN
OTHERS?
Just like you shouldn’t be a
teacher if you cannot help people learn, you shouldn’t be a leader if you
cannot make people work together. This means getting the best out of others,
and unlocking people’s potential. As Herminia
Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at London
Business School, has argued, great leaders today are in many ways great
coaches.
ARE YOU WILLING TO WORK
HARD?
For all the attempts to
describe highly accomplished people and distill the essential traits that
explain their success, hard work is often forgotten. Nobody wants to work hard for
someone who isn’t working even harder, and the ability to get the best out of
your people is utterly useless unless you combine it with a strong work
ethic.
DO YOU WANT TO MINIMIZE
STRESS AND PAIN IN YOUR LIFE?
If the answer is yes, and
you want to focus more on work-life balance, enjoy life, and be guided by your
personal curiosity and interests, as well as managing yourself rather than
others, then becoming a leader may not be for you.
A final consideration: There
are many ways of being productive, happy, and successful without being a
leader, including being a great follower or team member. In the West we have
grown used to the idea that unless you become a leader you are somehow not
successful, because you failed to climb to the top of an organizational ladder
or accumulate status or power. The world will always need more followers than
leaders, and good followers are critical to make leaders effective, and drive
progress in the world.
What are the Largest Economies in Europe?
Richest Country in Europe by GDP per capita since 1961.
Powerful Economies in EUROPE by real GDP.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita shows a country's GDP divided
by its total population
What is the Most Populous Country in the World?
https://www.facebook.com/watch/VGraphs/
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