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No.
Leadership is an influence process. Such a person may get appointed to a position of power, but if she cannot influence, she will not be an effective leader.
{LEADER: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, BOSSES VS. LEADERS, GOOD LEADER, POSITIONAL POWER}
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The solution is complex.
If a person habitually does not work at her maximum and hates her job, she likely works in the wrong place.
While you can temporarily boost a person’s interest, your options are limited to carrots and sticks if the job does not motivate her.
However, these external incentives can only work effectively when you have clear performance criteria in place.
{LACK OF MOTIVATION, SUCCESS AND FAILURE, MOTIVATION THEORIES, ECPM, PROCRASTINATION}
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No matter how you behave, there will always be a gray zone—some people will see you as arrogant and cold even when you are sincere – sort of “false positive.” While some will see you warm and truthful when you are not—“false negative.” {SUBJECTIVITY, 2X2 MATRIX}
Next, if you act, you can make mistakes. {CURSE OF ACTION}
Thus, please do your best: be sympathetic to people, be attentive to them, and be responsive, but do not worry and overthink. {COMMON SENSE, IMPOSTOR SYNDROME}
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Many people in positions of power want to make such an impression. It is part of the package—being above and having others know it.
Yet, if you find yourself there and want to avoid demonstrating your unique position, show attention and care to people.
Showing attention is about showing normal, respectful affection akin to a partner relationship—not The King's Kindness. Your team is more likely to appreciate this type of interaction.
However, it is also true that familiarity breeds contempt.
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It is not only possible but likely.
Our behavior in different organizations and at different stages of maturity can vary significantly. For instance, acting as a partner on your second day at work might be perceived as premature and potentially obnoxious.
Also, different organizations have different expectations for their followers as there are dissimilar endpoints to reach: you can compare a university and an army.
{GROUPS: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, GROUP GOAL MIX, ENDPOINT TIERS}
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People might have traits predisposing them to specific roles in groups, thus, to be certain kinds of followers.
For instance, if you behave overly submissively, another person might perceive it as a signal to be dominant.
{GROUPS: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, ADEQUACY, CONSTRAINTS OF A SYSTEM}
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Hijack it?
Build a coalition, become a leader in it, and influence up.
If you see a problem you want to solve, ensure that others also see it as a problem, gather a coalition (three are already a coalition), decide on the action, and discuss it with the superior, suggesting your solutions. {CALIBRATE YOUR PERCEPTION, COALITION}
If the others do not see the problem, should you stay quiet? Is the problem then in you? It might be. {SUBJECTIVITY}
And it might be in them. Any work is affected by a person-environment fit. Some people enjoy rewards for obeying orders, while others do not.
Decide on your way in or out of this organization.
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It will depend on your context.
In one case, the person in charge of the project is not your boss—i.e., your bread does not depend on her. In another, it does.
The former situation is more manageable, and you have more freedom to act to achieve the desired endpoint. If so, find out why the person behaves like she does, question it with numbers, and suggest better ways. If it does not help, do the same with the person's boss.
Yet, if you see that nothing helps, likely you are dealing with the crappy joint as well. Then, the best thing you can do is leave the crappy joint, or you will become a part of it sooner than you expect. {CRAPPY BOSSES, CRAPPY JOINT, POSITIONAL POWER}
The situation when the person is your boss gives you less freedom, as you can lose your sustenance. Still, the best you can do is rational action—figures, numbers, suggesting solutions. {SUSTENANCE}
Next, managing or influencing upwards is almost always about fighting an uphill battle. Thus, your approach to the situation must always include looking for like-minded peers who share your view.
And if you find them, understand their readiness for a joint action to change something. If all they can do is water cooler talks to steam off their frustration, you do not have many resources to change the situation and think about leaving it. {CALIBRATE YOUR PERCEPTION, COALITION, PERMIES}
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I feel ambiguous.
From one perspective, modern research facilities are organizations, and organizations have hierarchies.
Hierarchies are needed to manage people, and they imply a minority in positions of power to command other people and divide resources.
Who, if not researchers, must be promoted to these positions? Having freshly baked MBAs run hospitals and labs will be a disaster. {EFFECTIVE MANAGERS, HIERARCHY, CRAPPY BOSSES}
Yet, managing implies some knowledge of management and some people skills. Some excellent researchers learn fast and have enough common sense to fit, yet others suck at dealing with people. These traits might have made them good researchers in the first place.
My solution is the universal teaching of principles of work at the high school or university level so that people know what they can use if promoted to positions of any power.
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Although this question is 26 words long, it likely has deep roots.
The first point is "motivation," which is a heterogeneous construct. If you, or anyone else, do not want to work—and that’s what the euphemism “lack of motivation” usually stands for—it happens for one or more of several reasons. {LACK OF MOTIVATION}
The second point is that the supervisor must motivate you to work.
Dull and unpleasant jobs exist. It is a fact.
Yes, we might try to deceive ourselves to that fact and say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and few things are more inspiring than cleaning the rail station toilets from vomit and cigarette butts. But, in reality, many (all?) monotonous physical jobs are dull. Many jobs are unpleasant. Yet people often perform them because they need money to support themselves and their families. {SUSTENANCE}
They might want to write a book or stage a play instead, but they cannot afford that in the first place.
Luckily, your work is different, or so it should be. You want to say something new to the world with your presentations, papers, and a thesis. In effect, you are working on a book and staging performances with you as a sole actor. Why would you need external motivation for that? {ENDPOINT TIERS}
Yet, there is the third point—that of crappy bosses and the crappy joints they run.
The fact that a person has some power in some context only sometimes means she is proficient. She might be, and she might be not.
According to the Peter principle, people in a hierarchy tend to rise to “a level of respective incompetence”: employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.
Crappy bosses and crappy joints can be of several types. {CRAPPY BOSSES, CRAPPY JOINT}
If this is the case, then honestly answer the following questions. Why are you there in the first place? Where do you want to be? What is your game plan?
Sometimes, quitting is the answer. The longer you linger, the harder the jump.
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We must define terms first.
Is a “good leader” a kind person who always has a smile, cookies, and funny stories to tell her followers?
Or is it a quality of influencing other people—i.e., setting them on fire with a goal and consuming them in trying to achieve it?
If the last one, then many bastards of the past were exceptionally “good leaders.” {GOOD LEADER}
If we focus on key leadership competencies—understanding people, the ability to influence them, and the ability to make decisions—then we can improve these by learning and practicing. {LEADER: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH}
I believe that the potential to develop differs between people, as do other potentials—to become a world-class athlete, dancer, or researcher.
There are certain things we can hardly change. People with imposing appearances and pleasant voices by default have more chances to be seen as leaders and to lead. Yet, the only way to discover is to develop and practice.
Another thing is the sufficiency of competency. {ADEQUACY}
In most cases, there is no need for the maximum amount of something: the quality or quantity must be enough to satisfy the want or achieve a goal.
Thus, even if your competencies might never be enough to become a national leader to remain in History, you can successfully lead in many other instances and be both happy and valuable to people around you.
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There are thousands of books and papers on charisma, leadership by example, loyalty, etc.
However, if leadership is about influence, the required personal characteristic is the ability to influence. And if we do not like others to affect us, the leader must be able to affect us without being seen as a manipulator.
If we know that flexibility is necessary, the leader must be flexible without looking dodgy. The leader also needs personal courage strengthened by common sense.
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Appropriate therapy might be the best.
Seriously, should everybody want to become a leader? Because the word "leader" implies status, and status is sexy, as more resources exist at the top than at the bottom? Only for these reasons?
A leader attracts followers to a goal over time, which can be anything from minutes to their whole lives. And many past and present leaders pay their lives for this influence.
{BOSSES AND LEADERS, LEADER: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, MAP YOUR DREAM, ENDPOINT TIERS}
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Nature and nurture.
Yet, first, one must ask herself: why? Does she need to force herself? Otherwise, practice and fake it till you become it.
{FAIL FORWARD, TRIAL AND ERROR, EXPERT, LEADER: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH}
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In the first place, leading must give you pleasure.
There are two variants of pleasure: good – you see that you can achieve big goals and help followers achieve theirs; bad – you enjoy bending people to your will.
If the “good” gives you pleasure, you can become. If it does not, it is not worth changing anything in yourself.
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Credibility, like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder.
Donald Trump seemed credible to people who occupied the Capitol on 6.1.21 (or 1.6.21), and his opponents did not seem so. And we have to live and see who will become the 47th President in 2024.
In many other countries, terrible leaders can be trendy (and credible).
The key is educating people to analyze the leaders' arguments adequately. You only eliminate darkness with light.
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Any technique is also a model—you do this to get that. Any model simplifies reality.
You are right: what is considered good in one place can backfire in another.
For example, in places (not necessarily countries, but workplaces) with high power distance, your democratic attitude might be considered a weakness, and your expectation that people take the initiative—laziness.
Yet, wherever you work with people, you work with people. And, although it might help to know differences, you work with individual people. Thus, do not be primed by stereotypical views of “them.” If people deserve attention, give it to them.
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That is an excellent point and an opportunity to think.
Is it possible to draw such a line?
The tactics we discussed sound like they come from the “playbook of a con artist.” Do good intentions make a difference? Do you believe that any leader does wrong for the sake of wrongness?
Next, “A good, respected leader” is who? Donald Trump? Napoleon? Hitler? Genghis Khan? Steve Jobs? Jeff Bezos? Elon Mask? Respected by whom? At what stage of their career?
When elected, one might have been an example of “a good, respected leader.” Was he a different person then? Did he change, did his behavior change, or is it simply that outcomes of his behavior became evident?
It is 100% true that “Ye shall know them by their fruits,” but it might be too late for many—the knowledge would have been irrelevant by then. (you might find interesting this talk)
{LEADER: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, MOTIVATION THEORIES, FOLLOW YOUR DREAM}
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I would modify the question.
How often do you see good manipulators? Think of a 2x2 matrix: effective-not-effective manipulator by see-not-see manipulation, and populate the four squares with fractions of 1. Try it.
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Nature and nurture.
We cannot deliberately add a foot to our height to look more imposing. Still, we can stop fidgeting and slouching, commenting on everything with jokes, and we can learn to control our faces from expressing too much emotion too soon. We can stop complaining as if we need to be comforted. We can speak distinctly, not letting others interrupt us. It is a lot already.
Above all, we can start expressing what we really think and feel about important matters.
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Nature and nurture, like almost always.
But, first, leading others towards a goal must give you pleasure. It might only be worth changing something in yourself if it does.
{BOSSES AND LEADERS, LEADER: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY)
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Our expertise in leading is similar to that of other areas of our expertise. Everywhere, experience is of paramount importance. {EXPERT, FAIL FORWARD, TRIAL AND ERROR}
Yes, getting experience dealing with people takes time and might depend on chance more than experience in other fields. However, twenty-five is not that young, and the person can have followers and a level of responsibility.
Consider leadership a broad concept: a teacher is a leader, and 25 suits that. A lieutenant is a leader in the army, and 25 is not considered young in that context. At 25, a person can be a Ph.D. student capable of leading master students.
A rock star is a leader; some might say that in that field, 25 is already close to the expiration date.
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Military leadership experience is not a transferrable skill.
Think of the goals and structure of the compared environments.
Armies exist to kill and destroy. Members of these large groups are trained to function under strain, pain, and danger of death. The stakes are very high. There is a pronounced hierarchy, and questioning superiors' orders is unwelcome.
At the same time, being in actual combat is usually a nil fraction of a soldier's life.
Moreover, in all their careers, most soldiers and officers (precise numbers differ from country to country and during different periods) have never been in combat. They had been preparing for the work all their lives but had never worked. Someone might call it playing Boy Scouts on steroids.
However, actual and real was getting orders and obeying anyone with more lines, stars, or other symbols on the uniform.
And, predictably, many of these lovely people have trouble after retirement. Even if they had never had a chance to develop PTSD, they all were worked on by the system.
Compare it to academia.
There, you work on your actual problems 100% of your career. Questioning should be the primary modus operandi of a researcher. And by the time most military personnel retire, you will be at your most productive age.
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No one can know everything.
The leader must know the subject well enough to speak the same language as the team, not just look concerned and vaporize with “I feel you” and “I’ve heard you.” The leader must also be competent enough to distinguish nonsense from possibility.
However, no specific knowledge can substitute for capabilities to influence, understand people, and make decisions.
{LEADER: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, COMMON SENSE, PROJECT: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, ADEQUACY, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES}
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The traditional hierarchical system that we inherit from our ancestors is a pretty effective one. Promotion means getting up the hierarchy and taking responsibility for those under you.
However, a person in a position of power is not necessarily a leader.
A leader is someone who not only sets a goal but can also influence others to adopt that goal as their own. Moreover, the ownership of the goal matters. Will you necessarily consider a leader the boss who comes to you and heralds a goal of increasing sales by 5%?
{HIERARCHY, BOSSES AND LEADERS, ENDPOINT TIERS, POSITIONAL POWER}
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Find other environments, such as associations, clubs, and charities. You will gain immense experience and meet people from various walks of life.
Seeing and working with different people is a necessary experience, as being confined in an academic bubble might only give you a small glimpse of the picture.
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You'd better get an executive position and experiment with low-stakes opportunities: PTAs, student boards, the YMCA, scouts…
But be prepared to work there. You can only get good experience by completely immersing yourself in actual work.
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Let’s look at it from two perspectives.
From your perspective, you already have all the necessary skills. You are ready. Start and practice them, reflect, and grow. You might start with low-stakes environments. {BUILD YOUR LAB, FAIL FORWARD, IMPOSTOR SYNDROME}
From a client’s perspective, look at their track record when deciding if you can trust a person to lead. If the person has no experience, it is safer to let him practice (and fail forward) in another environment.
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Different people exist at different development stages in different contexts.
These matrices are good at adding complexity but are as wrong as any model. Many things will depend on the work done and the communication needed. What fraction of people taking the initiative does a military unit need?