[HN Gopher] The parenting style that creates leaders
___________________________________________________________________
The parenting style that creates leaders
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-01-01 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| dctoedt wrote:
| Struggle seems to be beneficial -- TFA reminds me of a chapter in
| a book I'm Reading, _Range_ by David Epstein [0]: When it comes
| to long-term retention and application of information, students
| seem to learn better if they have to struggle with the material,
| whereas if they have it beautifully explained to them by gifted
| teachers, they (the students) enjoy the _immediate_ feeling of
| understanding, but _later_ they don 't perform as well in terms
| of recall- or use of the information.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-
| Specialized... (not an affiliate link AFAIK)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Makes perfect sense to me; many other benefits are also
| obtained from having to struggle -- persistence, determination,
| confidence in the face of new challenges, resilience,
| empathy....
| h2odragon wrote:
| The value something has for us relates to how much we paid for
| it. The thing we struggled to learn is knowledge more dear than
| that which came as obvious, elegant revelation.
| dadoge wrote:
| Such clickbait
|
| Simple math states that not everyone can be a leader. 1 leader
| needs more than 1 "followers", hence only a tiny subset of people
| become leaders.
|
| People can come up with all sorts of way that might increase
| their or their kids' chances of becoming a leader, but in reality
| only a small subset ever will.
|
| And most of the time, those that do become leaders do so because
| of their parents' socioeconomic status
| nlitened wrote:
| There are so many different aspects in life -- you could be a
| leader in some, and a follower in the others.
|
| For example, you could have a non-leadership position at your
| day job, but lead local neighborhood's landscaping initiatives,
| or organize a hobby club, or lead a guild in an online game, or
| participate in local elections, or record and sell online paid
| math courses.
|
| Literally everybody can be a leader, there's no shortage of
| leadership positions.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| So, I see this story is on the BBC, but seems to reference US
| based research.
|
| So, I wonder, how culturally relative is this?
|
| I remember reading a comment here where Americans portray
| confidence even when lacking knowledge, whereas in other
| countries, that behavior is perceived as off-putting, not
| admirable.
|
| I can't imagine that inspires confidence in leadership.
| struct wrote:
| It's interesting that the kids with helicopter parents had
| reduced confidence, and reduced perception of their own skills -
| confidence does seem to be a necessary (but not sufficient) thing
| for leadership.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Yes - interesting and important. Dweck's "Mindset" (Growth, vs
| Fixed) speaks to this, as does "Free-Range Parenting".
| EGreg wrote:
| _Colloquially, this parenting approach is known as 'helicopter
| parenting' in reference to the idea of hovering nearby whether
| needed or not.
|
| Your parents likely had good intentions, such as ensuring you
| didn't face uncomfortable challenges. Unfortunately this might
| have had some inadvertent, unhelpful effects, including "making
| you less confident and less capable of facing difficulties,
| therefore [leading you to] exhibit poorer leadership skills",_
|
| Actually, for many parents it is not about THEIR intentions but
| that the _child protective services_ can take your children away
| if you are not hovering nearby at all times whether needed or
| not.
|
| Go out to the park across the street by themselves? Could be
| reported.
|
| Walk home from school bus by themselves? There may be a pedophile
| lurking...
|
| Leave them alone at home while you're out? Reckless child
| endangerment.
|
| Other countries are not like this. Previous generations in the US
| were not like this. But now... you're basically never left alone
| even for a moment until you pass a certain age. Maybe in your own
| room...
| flax wrote:
| I hate this pervasive notion that leadership is unquestionably a
| good thing. Leadership is bullshit. It's implicitly a dependency
| on getting other people to do things for you. Instead, we should
| value the abilities to work independently and in mutual
| cooperation.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Does anyone have s link to the study? I'm curious what their test
| for "leadership skills" looks like.
| godelzilla wrote:
| The title of this article alone is misleading at best. Too much
| weak, bad, and pseudo science on this "hacker" website.
| threwawaysoff wrote:
| Let them solve their own problems, do their own chores far before
| other parents, let them have much more freedom, and stay out of
| their way.
|
| At age of majority, throw them out in the middle of nowhere with
| a knife, compass, and fire source.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| An obvious source of additional information on this would be
| studies regarding how those we identify as good leaders were
| raised. Were they helicoptered or 'free-range'[0] kids? I was
| free range. I've never been in a substantial leadership role, but
| I have a solid sense of self awareness, self confidence and
| agency. I can set a goal that is realistic for me and then work
| towards it, even if it's a 10 year effort.
|
| It's pretty obvious that knowing what you're capable of can only
| be learned if failing is part of the program. You can't know how
| much you can dead lift until you've tried to push more than you
| physically can. You can't know how accurately you can shoot
| without missing. You won't know how much you can learn in a
| semester without poor test scores. Once you know the limits,
| those limits are another point to draw on when planning your
| life. Free range parenting serves that purpose better than
| helicoptering.
|
| [0] https://www.todaysparent.com/family/parenting/the-one-
| thing-...
| hirundo wrote:
| So much focus on developing the confidence and skills necessary
| to be a good leader. So little on developing the substance,
| breadth, and judgement necessary to lead to a place worth going.
| It would be nice if leadership skills and confidence correlated
| with wisdom and capability. But if they do it seems to be weak.
| Which makes people worth following that can lead so rare.
| credit_guy wrote:
| I can't upvote this more. Leadership comes from confidence,
| confidence comes from expertise, expertise comes from learning
| and practice. Confidence without expertise is hollow;
| leadership with hollow confidence and no expertise is quite
| dubious. A certain guy who likes to golf comes to mind.
| lordnacho wrote:
| If you look at schools, especially elite ones, there's a
| strange desire for all the kids to become leaders. Nobody
| questions it, I don't know why. I guess the school thinks
| it's useful to be associated with some future leaders?
|
| The thing is leadership ought to be like you say. Some kind
| of competence that allows you to help a group of people
| complete some kind of task.
|
| But let's be honest. The kids want to be student council
| president because it's prestigious. They grow up and then
| they want to be CEO because it's prestigious and well paying.
| They pay lip service to the idea of helping a team, but
| really, we know they don't care all that much. It's ass
| backwards, people want to be leaders because {prize} and then
| they think about how to get there. Sometimes we get lucky and
| they conclude that they need to climb the ladder by being
| competent (this fails a lot due to pyramid structures and
| politics), but often they just figure out that to seem
| competent, you have to shout a lot about how competent you
| are.
| dpeck wrote:
| Schools, especially elite ones, often see their purpose as
| creating/fostering leaders out of the pool of potential
| that they've curated.
| hrktb wrote:
| > Nobody questions it, I don't know why.
|
| Money. In our society it pays more in average to be a
| leader.
|
| On the why it pays more, I'd posit leaders are closer to
| the money source so get more negotiating power as they have
| more information.
| indigochill wrote:
| > ...so get more negotiating power as they have more
| information.
|
| Information is certainly part of it (thus why we have
| NDAs), but so are relationships/connections, particularly
| in B2B or the startup world where CEOs have to sell the
| company to investors.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| > If you look at schools, especially elite ones, there's a
| strange desire for all the kids to become leaders.
|
| Those schools maintain their status and position by
| ensuring their alumni become leaders. Thus it is to their
| advantage.
|
| Which brings us to the bigger picture... we live in a
| Darwinian word of evolve-or-die, strongest-will-survive.
| Thus passing on to our children the skills of leadership
| are part of this same desire for our children to thrive.
| technothrasher wrote:
| That sounds more like a Lamarckian metaphor than
| Darwinian one.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I assume you're talking about this guy?
| https://freebeacon.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2014/06/AP11061802...
|
| Edit: Lol. I love the downvotes. I mean, who are you talking
| about? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus? Or were you dragging
| politics into this just to make a cheap shot? If so, what's
| sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
| arolihas wrote:
| Trump has played 308 rounds of golf since becoming
| president in 2017. Obama in his 8 years in office had
| played 333.
| jackpirate wrote:
| I would love a source on this. But even if true, that
| still paints Trump as the bigger golfer since Obama had
| 2x as many years to play essentially the same amount of
| golf.
| csa wrote:
| > I would love a source on this.
|
| https://thegolfnewsnet.com/golfnewsnetteam/2020/12/29/how
| -ma...
|
| This article supports the numbers for Trump and adds
| additional information.
|
| https://www.golfchannel.com/article/golf-central-
| blog/obamas...
|
| The above article gives numbers for Obama.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-defends-golf-trips-
| fal...
|
| This article compares them both as of the summer of their
| 4th year in office. Short summary, Trump played at about
| 2x the pace of Obama.
| [deleted]
| MobileVet wrote:
| Easy now... let's not bring facts into this discussion.
| lumberingjack wrote:
| One of them owns several places where you can golf the
| other one is married to a man
| bjourne wrote:
| Interestingly, in Trump's book How to get Rich he
| recommends taking up golf as a means to becoming
| successful.
| Retric wrote:
| It seems a stretch to assume he actually wrote any of the
| books with his name on the cover. Ghostwriters are cheap,
| and writing takes time.
|
| That's not a dig, it just seems like a poor ROI.
| Tarsul wrote:
| Probably true. The book "The art of the deal" was
| ghostwritten. Here's a nice article about the ghostwriter
| (and how it haunts him): https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2020/oct/04/donald-trump...
| jacobolus wrote:
| Claims that he even _read_ a single full book in the past
| few decades (with his name on the cover or otherwise) are
| not credible. They changed the briefing format to a few
| bullet points in a large font with lots of pictures, and
| he still doesn 't bother to read them (Tillerson: he
| "doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports,
| doesn't like to get into the details of a lot of
| things"). He stumbles and mispronounces words when slowly
| reading a few sentences on a teleprompter (also
| reportedly set to a much larger than usual font),
| commonly misreads a word or phrase and then ad libs a
| nonsensical embellishment to play the mistake off as
| intentional, and frequently goes entirely off script with
| visible relief to just speak off the top of his head.
| There is a deposition video where he flat refuses to read
| a few sentences of a contract out loud. When people ask
| him about what he is reading, he grimaces and deflects
| with an answer about being too busy.
|
| The speculation that poor eyesight contributes to his
| functional illiteracy seems plausible.
| klyrs wrote:
| It really helps the getting rich plan if you golf at your
| own resort, and charge the government to feed and house
| your entourage.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Is complaining about downvotes the same "snowflake"
| behavior I've been hearing about for years?
|
| Interesting to have your feelings hurt that easily.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I'm not complaining, and my feelings aren't hurt.
|
| I'm _laughing_ at you.
| lumberingjack wrote:
| Obama and Biden I was thinking the same things they golf so
| freaking much
| bzb6 wrote:
| You can make a point like this without getting politics
| involved because it inevitably cheapens the discussion.
| clairity wrote:
| we make this kind of mistake all the time. it's the basis of
| the "you get what you measure" aphorism. confidence and
| charisma are secondary signals, loosely correlated with wisdom
| and capability. once we emphasize confidence and charisma over
| wisdom and capability in our leader-choosing algorithm (how
| political contests have evolved, for instance), we're
| pressuring the system to weaken that correlation even further,
| as it's very hard (likely impossible) to maximize all desirable
| characteristics at the same time.
|
| we can see this with popularity itself, which has changed over
| the past century in the (american) culture from emphasizing
| capability to emphasizing confidence (with the concomitant rise
| of mass media and the concentration of mass attention and
| esteem).
| derefr wrote:
| > It would be nice if leadership skills and confidence
| correlated with wisdom and capability.
|
| Why? That only seems like it would be nice in a world where
| leadership skills and confidence are rare, and thus it's a
| "seller's market" for people with those skills, where people
| might have to settle for just picking a leader _because_ they
| are good at leadership, regardless of whether they are wise.
| (Which is, admittedly, the world we live in now.)
|
| However, in a world/cultural zeitgeist where leadership and
| confidence are _commonly-cultivated attributes_ (like
| conscientiousness is in today 's world: something inculcated by
| parents, teachers, media, etc.), _most_ people would have that
| attribute, making _most_ people potential leaders -- and thus
| there would be a "buyer's market" for leaders. Leadership
| ability could be taken as pure table-stakes, and leaders would
| be _selected_ first-and-foremost on their wisdom
| /capability/etc.
|
| It is exactly the focus of the article, taken forward, that
| would make such a world come to pass.
| feoren wrote:
| What about a world where we all agreed to fight against our
| natural tendency to follow the guy who shouts the loudest and
| instead _pick leaders who have the traits we want_ , like
| wisdom and capability? Then we don't need to bother trying to
| teach a bunch of naturally shy, intelligent people to shout
| at each other more.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| What about a world where we're not compelled to follow
| anyone just because another segment of the population
| thinks it's correct?
| aksss wrote:
| Impatience for indecisiveness, courage to move forward with
| uncertainty, a focus on goals, vision of the goal, an ability
| to identify and overcome obstacles, the ability to cultivate
| and grow effective lieutenants. These are also some attributes
| of leadership that seem to me more a product of personality,
| and while you can learn to hone them, changing one's
| personality isn't that common or easy, IME.
| ericnolte wrote:
| Skills associated with great leadership have many applications
| outside of leadership itself. Traits such as high empathy,
| confidence, creativity, flexibility make great leaders, but
| also just generally make great people. It would be no surprise
| the two are correlated!
| dnautics wrote:
| Honestly as a follower those are commonly praised, but bad
| signals. You want a leader who is loyal to you and materially
| and socially supportive of you above almost all else. It's
| such a mind fuck to work for someone who is empathetic but
| doesn't stand up for you, or even undermines what you are
| doing (whether or not deliberately). You can wind up sinking
| years of your life by being stuck in that situation without
| even seeing it
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| We'd do well if we all lived by the immortal words of
| Arthur Seaton: "There's no peace between worker and
| management, only a truce over paychecks."
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > developing the substance, breadth, and judgement
|
| A leader cannot have one without the other. If you've spend any
| time amongst high academic performers, many of these folks have
| "developing the substance, breadth, and judgement", but not
| nearly as many have the confidence to apply these skills as
| leaders.
| qzw wrote:
| This is very astute. Some of history's "best" leaders have been
| humanity's greatest villains.
| api wrote:
| Confidence is usually confused with competence, and charisma
| with vision and direction.
|
| I've seen this enough that I've come to believe it's hard
| wired to some extent, though it can be overridden rationally.
| Confidence and charisma seems to tell our so-called "reptile
| brain" that this is a big alpha that should be followed, and
| I strongly suspect that the effect also tends to down-
| regulate the rational mind in the same way that stress and
| fear do. I've experienced the "if they're in the room you
| agree with them" type of charisma more than once, and
| personally I always found it creepy and disturbing.
|
| Looking past superficial confidence and charisma is something
| that should be explicitly taught.
| marmaduke wrote:
| The focus is perhaps in proportion to how children are. You can
| make them confident by making their wishes come true ("I want a
| piece of candy", ok here you go); developing substance and
| judgement is a profound Socratic experience that gives every
| would be parent figure a run for their money (or, well,
| children)
|
| All to say your comment is spot-on.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes. There is too little data to claim or even suggest that
| there exists a "recipe" for creating good leaders.
|
| Better to read some biographies of great leaders so at least
| you have a good view of the original data. Here is one for
| starters:
|
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/05/those-who-hav...
| analog31 wrote:
| Blaming "over parenting" has been around for at least as long as
| I've been a parent, possibly even going back generations.
|
| I wonder if the micro-management of parenting by popular culture
| can itself be seen as a form of over-parenting at a societal
| level. As we helicopter over our children, we are constantly
| aware of an even larger helicopter hovering over us, ready to
| blame parents (especially moms) for every tiny little
| transgression that led to our kids not growing up to be perfect
| in every way.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > wonder if the micro-management of parenting by popular
| culture can itself be seen as a form of over-parenting at a
| societal level.
|
| Can you elaborate on this?
|
| We are social animals so I guess this is behaviour that might
| be quite old. I'm going to go on a limb to conjecture that
| coddled kids aren't as productive, resilient or resourceful as
| their headstrong counterparts. Could it be possible in old
| times that "the society" needed resourceful and headstrong
| young people over those who can hardly wipe their own arse
| without their mother, especially in unstable political
| groupings (from clans to villages to cities to provinces to
| nation states)?
|
| But the kind of helicoptering in the article is basically
| coddling a child to oblivion regardless of age which hampers
| the development of said child's potential. No one said anything
| about perfection. No one ever has. That's the unreasonable and
| impossible standard an emotionally unstable parent(s) may
| strive for thereby overcompensating on some imaginary
| 'specialness' in their children.
| closeparen wrote:
| Something that struck me from books set in the "olden days" was
| how children seemed to be parented by the whole community. For
| example, you'd wander around town all day with your friends. No
| one's parents explicitly supervising. Any random adult who saw
| you misbehave would just spank you themselves, then and there.
| You'd _hope_ you parents didn 't find out.
|
| I'll venture a guess that modern parenting is as private and
| autonomous as it's ever been, and that children have less
| interaction with strange adults than ever before. It's probably
| ingrained in us somewhat to worry about other people's kids.
| When the norms don't allow direct interaction (of any kind, let
| alone discipline) we channel it into second-guessing parents
| instead.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's funny that the educational system complains the most about
| helicopter parenting yet they are the ones setting unrealistic
| performance expectations for students.
| gls2ro wrote:
| You are so right about parents being easily judged according
| with some high standards. Or it might be just me the one who
| when saw the title of this article I was thinking: "Great,
| another article which will show me how bad I am at parenting"
|
| When my child was born I did an extensive research about what
| kind of books should I read which are baked by science and will
| teach me how to be a good parent and I read most of these
| books.
|
| Then I found that - at least for me - it is very hard to apply
| what they are suggesting. Then I started to feel bad that I am
| not doing enough. I even paid time to talk with a paediatric
| psychologist to make sure that I was understanding the science
| of child development in the right way. And after a couple of
| sessions which were mostly going like this: I was going with a
| list of studies I read and questions I had about how to apply
| them and she explaining the big picture and where does fit or
| not. Until one day when she asked: "Did you watched your child?
| What does he want? What does he enjoy? Is he ready for this?"
|
| And then (months later) I realised that by trying to apply all
| this things I was not myself and in the same time I was
| actually not paying attention to the child's own needs. I put a
| lot of stress to myself to the edge of burnout by reading and
| thinking all the time about this good parenting stuff. He is a
| full person which his own desires and forming his personality.
| Does not matter what I want him to be. I should offer the best
| that I can but in the direction that he wants to explore.
|
| Now we go for a bike ride. Or play outside. Or read. Or do a
| paper rocket. Sometimes I help him dress, sometimes he wants to
| do it himself. But I don't have a plan of how the day will be.
| I still struggle with questions about my parenting style. But I
| try to be more aware of his personality.
| 13415 wrote:
| I'm rather skeptical about this and this could also be a case of
| correlation!=causation. First of all, what they mean by "leaders"
| are management positions. However, the professional choices that
| lead to these are mostly based on your family background in many
| countries, e.g. the connections of the parents, how much parents
| pressure their children into certain career paths that are more
| likely to lead to leadership positions, and the necessary money
| for expensive education. To you give you an example, one of my
| close friends from school is the CFO of a successful company. His
| father was a manager, too. He had good contacts to the media
| business, so when this friend of mine was studying economics his
| father's contacts gave him an internship as the personal
| assistant of a board member of one of the worlds top five media
| concerns. The contacts from this internship later allowed him to
| get a five million Euro loan just to cover the advertising costs
| of a co-founded startup (which failed, btw). This friend of mine
| is not special in any way. He's kind, reasonable and an overall
| intelligent person like many others. I really don't think
| leadership positions have much to do with character traits or
| parenting. You can find all kinds of different people in elevated
| positions, from sociopaths to sensitive people with a kindred
| spirit.
|
| As another example, if you study at Harvard in certain areas and
| come from a wealthy, well-connected family, then you are way more
| likely to end up in a leadership position in business or politics
| in the US than if you study at a non-Ivy League university or
| abroad. The same is true for Oxford in the UK, or one of the
| Grands Ecoles in France - and, of course, unless you're a total
| failure money and special tutoring will get you into those
| places.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Work for your boss, but follow a true leader. There was a time
| where leaders and kings stood right there with their subjects on
| the battlefields, today the highest executives take all the money
| and delegate the responsibility. To see a president or king at
| the front lines these days is nigh impossible. If you work in a
| place with bosses too incompetent to be leaders, get the best
| monetary value out of the gig and move on to greener (more
| dollars) pastures as soon as the opportunity arises.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Why should I be concerned with whether my child grows up to be a
| leader? Is this a euphemism for success?
|
| I'd much rather have a child who grows up to be resilient, kind,
| and compassionate.
| analog31 wrote:
| To first order, the most likely outcome is that the child will
| grow up to resemble their parents.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| What if their parents aren't very much alike?
| analog31 wrote:
| Then it's luck o' the draw. Or the parents themselves
| discover that they're more alike than they realize.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Well, it is in the "Worklife" section of their web site, so
| yes, it's probably talking about career success.
|
| But leadership is a good ability to have even if you don't care
| about career success or money at all. Any kind of endeavor
| needs leaders, not just money-making endeavors. Suppose there's
| a problem that could be solved if volunteers banded together to
| do it. Who's going to initiate that, organize them, and make it
| happen? A leader.
| boh wrote:
| I think being wealthy is the most effective parenting style to
| create leaders (in the US anyway).
| golemiprague wrote:
| Not necessarily but leading by example is the best way to
| educate kids, so a parent who is a leader in some capacity will
| have also leader children, either by socialising them or by
| pure genetics.
| disown wrote:
| Not just the US. Almost every nation regardless of whether it
| is capitalist ( US, Britain, etc ) or communist? ( China, North
| Korea ) or theocratic ( Saudi Arabia ). You'll notice most of
| the leaders come from wealthy families.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >You've probably noticed how some of your colleagues take to
| leadership roles like a duck to water. They're confident telling
| others what to do, and happy taking on an ever-growing number of
| responsibilities. It couldn't be more different for others:
| bossing around people feels awkward, and a nagging self-doubt
| shadows every decision.
|
| Why is the popular conception of leadership "bossing people
| around?" A healthier and more productive view of it is giving
| people what they need to grow and be successful. It's when a
| person guides someone and serves as a good steward for them, not
| exploiting them to whatever ends are at hand.
| dnautics wrote:
| I think the statement is that some people shy away from
| leadership since they don't know how not to be bossy.
| Bossinesss isn't exploitation, it's a style of leadership --
| giving orders (often orders that are too specific), taking down
| someone when something is not done in "just the right way",
| etc.
| hn_asker wrote:
| I think the popular conception comes form the fact that if you
| are a good leader, you want them to make decisions. From a
| management perspective, this means telling people what to do.
| Of course, leaders recognize that bossing people around isn't
| sustainable.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _Why is the popular conception of leadership "bossing people
| around?_
|
| I guess this is because it dovetails with common experience. A
| leader these days doesn't have to have subject knowledge, he
| has connections and charisma and knows where to find experts
| that work for him. Just look at Elon Musk.
| btilly wrote:
| I could believe the general thesis, but Elon Musk is just
| about the worst example that you could have picked.
|
| One of his outstanding characteristics is that he is
| constantly learning subject knowledge. Yes, he hires subject
| experts, but then he effectively arranges for private
| tutoring until he knows what he needs of what they know.
|
| Elon is a big believer that he should be able to do any job
| of anyone who he employs, and to a shocking extent it is
| actually true.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Only a leader can boss people around. Thus it becomes an easily
| noticable symbol. Let's say in fiction you want to quickly
| establish who is the leader then you can use the symbol. Just
| like how you can use a car or watch to establish that someone
| is rich.
| jerf wrote:
| "Why is the popular conception of leadership 'bossing people
| around?'"
|
| That's a good question I've been pondering for a while and
| still don't have a great answer for.
|
| I think some of it is that one degenerate form of leadership is
| to conflate it with authority, and a lot of people's experience
| with "leadership" is simply to receive orders.
|
| I actually would call what you describe as the ideal form of
| _management_ , which is not leadership either. An ideal manager
| is not simply an authority user/abuser, but someone who clears
| obstacles out of the way and works to enhance the ones they are
| managing's skills, but ideally, only a bit of authority is
| deployed, and a manager may in fact exhibit no leadership at
| all. (For instance, corporate goals may simply come from higher
| up, or market pressures, or things other than "leadership" per
| se.)
|
| (There are also degenerate cases where raw, naked authority is
| in fact necessary and extensively used; I'm sure a lot of us
| worked a job at McDonalds or some rough equivalent and have
| memories of how much it was based on authority... fewer of us
| have experiences of _managing_ in that environment and being
| directly exposed to the fact that it is just the only way to
| make it work, however distasteful you may find that fact.)
|
| For me, leadership should be reserved for the cases in which
| one is visibly _leading_ , e.g., you start a new initiative
| somewhere, gather up people to voluntarily follow you by a
| variety of non-coercive means, and then hold the group together
| in a variety of very context-sensitive means.
|
| True leadership is rare. Authority is inescapable, good
| management is a gem to be treasured but still not _that_ rare,
| but _leadership_ is a rare thing. Most groups are held together
| by other bonds.
| zappo2938 wrote:
| I was a private yacht chef for 6 years. People ask if the
| guests and owners tell me what they want to eat every night.
| The answer is no. No one tells me what to do. It is my job to
| make the decision what people eat. The families I've worked for
| are worth billions if not hundreds of millions. They make
| choices all day every day that affect millions of people and
| businesses. The last thing they want to do is waste time
| thinking about what is for dinner. One thing I learned is that
| the top 0.1% of the top 0.1% do not micromanage, they delegate.
| Then often the person asking if rich people just boss people
| around will say if I had a yacht I'd tell the chef what to make
| every night. I say, that is why you don't have a mega yacht.
| zo1 wrote:
| Most _teams_ aren 't ideal, and a lot of times, you have to
| resort to just telling people what to do in order to get the
| ball rolling. It's like Maslow's hierarchy, but applied to
| teams. You first have to have a functioning team that completes
| it's basic needs (tasks) before you can move on to higher-order
| objectives such as "growth", "moral", strategic objectives,
| building confidence, training, etc. I think the important point
| is that the team/leadership of that team need to move past that
| basic point and grow in other needs.
| raldi wrote:
| My daughter's recently been into MasterChef Junior, where in a
| recent episode one of the kids appointed to be a team lead in a
| restaurant setting was attempting to perform the role by
| berating his team for their mistakes and insufficient
| productivity.
|
| Halfway through the spot, host Gordon Ramsey (whom he was
| apparently trying to emulate) intervened and afterwards, the
| kid started saying things like, "Hey, let me know if you're
| having trouble with the panisse cakes; I can help you out as
| soon as I'm done with these string beans."
|
| Good lesson for all of us.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> The research relies on teenagers retrospectively recalling
| their parents' behaviour
|
| Seems likely that students that want to be perceived as having
| 'leadership potential' are going to understate their parents'
| involvement in their K-12 education. They are just practicing
| their origin story.
| xixixao wrote:
| Every article like this should mention that observation can
| only show correlation, but cannot prove causation.
|
| I personally do believe causation is more likely here, but I
| cannot be sure based on the study.
| analog31 wrote:
| In addition, simply knowing that there's a causal
| relationship doesn't identify the cause. For instance you
| could discover that a sick person traveling to a distant town
| caused the people in that town to become sick, without
| knowing whether the underlying cause was an infectious agent,
| witchcraft, or a punishment from the gods for impious
| thoughts.
|
| And not knowing the root cause severely limits your ability
| to manage the issue from a policy perspective. For instance
| you could launch a social campaign to persuade people to be
| more pious. That's close to level we're at in our
| understanding of parenting.
| david-cako wrote:
| Anecdotally, if your parents treat you like an adult and someone
| who deserves responsibility, you quickly grow to fill those
| shoes. I think you live a very different mental life as a child
| when are taught to evaluate situations and make decisions.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Do we really want everyone to be a leader?
| mcrittenden wrote:
| Lots of identical twin and adoption studies make a very
| convincing case that almost none of this stuff comes from
| parenting style and upbringing. It's all genetics.
|
| https://www.todaysparent.com/family/nature-vs-nurture-does-p...
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