One thing he mentions in passing is that the Ivy League process is built on looking for "future leaders".
There's not really a test for such qualities. I mean, you can try, but it's very difficult to see how someone performs in trying circumstances until you put them there.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow (which I'm sure many of HNers have read), Kahneman gives an anecdote about his time working for the Israeli Defence Force. The IDF wanted a way to identify who should be put through officer training, and they turned to a team of psychologists to develop a testing program.
Kahneman and his colleagues came up with a series of scenario-based tests. Some problem would be posed to a group of soldiers ("move this log over the top of this wall"). The group would be observed and notes taken.
One thing that the psychologists watched for was spontaneous leadership. Who in the group took charge? Surely such a soldier was bound to command!
The problem is that, upon reviewing the performance of their selections, Kahneman and his colleagues found that their candidates did no better -- either in training or in the field -- than candidates chosen by other means. Simply seeing the "obvious" leadership qualities of a particular individual in a highly artificial situation is a basically useless predictor of actual outcomes.
Ivy League process is built on looking for "future leaders".
One of the problems with this of course is that the kinds of things that get you into such a school (grades, tests and extracurriculars) really have almost nothing to do with finding a leader. Even tests looking for dominant personality types (Type-A types) tend to find extroverts, not leaders. And even worse, it's been my observation that formal leadership training programs seems to churn out emotionally aloof general managers than "leaders".
One thing that the psychologists watched for was spontaneous leadership.
This is tough too. It ends up selecting for hardship leaders, not daily grind leaders. It's easy to start barking orders and look like you know what you are doing when there's an immediate task to accomplish and nobody else wants to. It's very hard to motivate a workforce for years at a time doing grind work.
An anecdote:
When I was a youngster, I knew a kid who was one of those emergent leader types. In any group activity he instantly tried to take charge and started organizing the other kids, barking orders etc. It didn't really matter what the activity was, kickball, hide and go seek, and when we were a bit older volunteer community work like habitat for humanity type things. And there were usually a few of the kids that would follow him.
The problem was that he was also terribly annoying. When facing a complex activity, one where there was no way he knew anything about the task or how to direct it. He'd still inevitably march up and start pointing and ordering like he had been doing this task for 20 years. The parents thought that he was such a wonderful natural leader. The other kids wanted to punch him in the face. It was only because of the trouble we'd get in that we didn't do exactly that (but oh where there backroom conspiracies about how to deal with him).
Now, decades later, I look back and realize that a great deal of my problem with him was likely due to differences in Keirsey Temperaments. He was obviously a Fieldmarshal [1] (correlate to Myers-Briggs ENTJ) while I'm very strongly a Mastermind [2] (MB:INTJ). According to the theory, my personality type will assume a leadership role IFF they feel the dominant Fieldmarshal personality has fundamentally failed. Basically I'm a coup maker and there was nothing more that I wanted to do with this kid than to undermine him, usurp him and delegitimize his assumption of power. I didn't want to necessarily be his replacement, but boy oh boy did I ever want to humble him. What troubled me the most was that there was inevitably a group of kids that would follow him simply because he was giving the appearance of organizing things.
I've reflected on this interaction deeply in my life to expose my own flaws, but also to learn from. Even though he wasn't qualified to run things, the fact that he simply stepped up and acted like he knew what he was doing was a terribly useful leadership technique. He really didn't seem to care that it was resented by his peer group, and as children I'm sure there was an element of parent pleasing to his behavior.
I've used this simple technique many times in business to organize out of control efforts that have floundered under the "emotionally aloof general manager types" mentioned before. Now that I'm aware of my Mastermind type tendencies, I can also watch out for destructive "coup" traits.
I don't know if I have a point other than to say that "leadership" is a very complex thing and that there are many many kinds of leadership we have to be aware of.
The first is that taking control of a new group is easy. Just start; people will fall into line. I can't remember where I first learned that, but I do from time to time consciously take control of groups to speed up the process.
(Being a tall white male is, um, helpful when pulling this stunt ... YMMV).
The secret to leadership, apparently, is delegation. It helps that I am naturally lazy.
The second thought is: avoid the MBTI. It's not a very good psychometric system. The current best classification approach is the "five factor model".
... and even then it's only weakly predictive and only for certain kinds of behaviour.
The secret to leadership, apparently, is delegation.
I think there's a lot of truth to this. One observation I've made over the years: a number of people I've known who might have made great leaders failed to due to almost overwhelming trust and control issues. Almost to the person I've found that almost all of them came from very troubled childhood homes. Anecdotal, but I wonder if our social inability to address these types of developmental issues short changes us as a society from a great number of potential leaders.
The secret to leadership, apparently, is delegation.
No, the secret to management is delegation. A big part of successful leadership is actually about being on the front lines with your followers and sharing their burden and risk.
I identify with the INTJ type as well, and I'm curious to know what destructive traits you're talking about. Also, I do somewhat identify with the description that you've given although I hate to put labels on people.
According the the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) [1], xNTJs correlate very closely to a type of Temperament called "Rationals" -- which make up about 3% of the population.
I can't remember where I did the reading, but engineering disciplines seem to have an unusually large concentration of them. All of the KTS types break down into two subtypes which are pretty much the difference between the Myers-Briggs E and I extraverts and intraverts.
All of the temperaments have strengths and weaknesses. In the case of an INTJ/Mastermind [2], there's a tendancy to ignore social costs in the pursuit of "getting shit done" (GSD). In some other readings on the type I've found descriptions that basically describe Masterminds as masters of strategy who prefer to sit in the backgroud behind a competent Field Marshall [3]. But when they feel the Field Marshall is no longer competent, the need to GSD can overwhelm them and they will attempt to assume control in order to accomplish the goal. Then once the goal is accomplished, fade into the background behind a new field marshall. Viewed negatively Masterminds are basically coup makers. And that's very rarely something to be desired. I've found that it's usually better to simply change positions and get away from under a poor leader than try and overthrow them. It almost never puts one in a good light.
Of course KTS and MB both have the feel of a kind of tarot card pseudo-science hand waiving. But I've found that none of the other KTS types come as close to matching the internal thought processes I have about my temperment. It's not a perfect descriptor, but it's about 90% on the nose.
The scary part of that paragraph is that it actually describes me accurately. Without giving too much about myself, I can say that I have been in, and utilized the situations where I've pulled strings behind the leader (this, was in school/college, but still quite scary).
Although I too consider this as hand-wavy, pseudo-y stuff I seriously think I should start looking at this and try to know when I'm committing such actions.
I think he was saying the coup mentality is a destructive trait. Instead of focusing on what he is good at, masterminding, he was focusing on how to undermine the guy who assumed charge. By definition that's counter-productive. It's difficult to earn your (potentially invaluable) spot in the group when you "don't play nice with others".
Yeah, exactly. Until this was described to me via the KTS, I never really realized I was doing it. But on internal reflection realized it was a deep and pressing psychological need I had. I've found becoming aware of it has given me the tools to supress it.
I think that this tendency was sub-conciously "read" by others and growing up I rarely found myself in direct leadership roles. But after I started working on that part of myself, I think that vibe started to go away and I find myself in many more leadership roles these days.
I think the idea of looking for a leader is poorly constructed.
Different tasks can be approached with different structures, which also depends on the composition of the group. The kind of person to lead (or not to lead) the group effectively would vary greatly.
So how does it make any sense to pick a leader without knowing the context?
Sure, there's a test for "future leaders": whether or not they are accepted by the Ivy League process. If someone gets that, they'll find it much easier to be a leader in the rest of their career.
Oh, you meant identifying individuals who would be good leaders? Yeah, you're hosed there.
There's not really a test for such qualities. I mean, you can try, but it's very difficult to see how someone performs in trying circumstances until you put them there.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow (which I'm sure many of HNers have read), Kahneman gives an anecdote about his time working for the Israeli Defence Force. The IDF wanted a way to identify who should be put through officer training, and they turned to a team of psychologists to develop a testing program.
Kahneman and his colleagues came up with a series of scenario-based tests. Some problem would be posed to a group of soldiers ("move this log over the top of this wall"). The group would be observed and notes taken.
One thing that the psychologists watched for was spontaneous leadership. Who in the group took charge? Surely such a soldier was bound to command!
The problem is that, upon reviewing the performance of their selections, Kahneman and his colleagues found that their candidates did no better -- either in training or in the field -- than candidates chosen by other means. Simply seeing the "obvious" leadership qualities of a particular individual in a highly artificial situation is a basically useless predictor of actual outcomes.
It's satisfying noise.