The leader for this story is not a good leader

 

Consistent and stoic, Leah Williamson is most natural of unnatural leaders | England women's football team | The Guardian

Consistent and stoic, Leah Williamson is most natural of unnatural leaders History-making England captain is often seen barking orders but has a more introverted persona off the pitch www.theguardian.com

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What a stupid headline and analysis of leadership. Who thinks that consistency and stoicism are not leadership traits?

'She is the most natural of unnatural leaders, seen barking orders in huddles and firing the team up in stark contrast with her more introverted persona off the pitch. That is a learned trait...She plays and leads with an emotional intelligence, often seen deep in conversation with Sarina Wiegman whenever there is a pause in play, the mind constantly analysing, learning, recalculating...'

Wait, what? The mind constantly analysing, learning and recalculating is, er, emotional intelligence? I think that consistency (of approach), stoicism and constant analysis are very natural traits for good leadership. I also consider them strengths of mine.

What this author has implied is that the traits we usually select for leadership are indeed natural traits for good leadership: a dominating, expressive, loud presence; emotionality that mimics charisma; forceful, quick and individually-made decisions; and a confidence that drives all before it.

This is the sort of person who rises to leadership in a vacuum. Someone whose forceful personality drowns out caution and leaps into action before anyone else has considered what is best. And because we're accustomed to such leaders in playground games, we come to expect such leadership in more serious situations, until finally we believe that this is good leadership and we only pick such people to be leaders. And they, in turn, believe in themselves, and select others like them to succeed.

Such people, however, need to be controlled. They are disrupting forces who mess up team co-ordination and silence productivity. The point of systems, and formal selection processes, is not to imitate what would happen in anarchy, but to reach a better solution. We should select leaders, not noisy self-confident shysters. 

We have seen 'emotional intelligence' become a bit of a fashionable term, associated with femininity, while plain old intelligence is boringly masculine. This is presumably why the author tried to claim that Ms Williamson was demonstrating emotional intelligence as a leader. But in truth, we have suffered far too much from leaders relying on emotional intelligence. It is emotional intelligence to charm, smarm and browbeat people into agreement; this requires the ability to understand the audience's feelings and apply such tactics. It is emotional intelligence that underpins charisma, and we often say that emotional stability and confidence come from emotional intelligence; whereas self-doubt and hesitation require further self-reflection.

It is real intelligence that we lack in our leadership. A mind capable of constant analysis, with the sense to recognise that others can have good ideas and the ability to recognise those ideas. Intelligence means knowing that complex problems are complex and that the greatest risk comes from underestimating them by diving in without care or due diligence.  Intelligence is holding back from hazarding an opinion until you have as much information as possible.

People seem to have conflated arrogance with intelligence. It's not clever to blast your own ideas out first, trusting that they're usually good. 'Usually' is not 'always' and 'good' is not 'perfect'. What we think of as leadership is a sign of confidence and, perhaps, above-average but not amazing ability; the ability to have pretty good ideas and the willingness to promote them without ever supposing that there could be a better one. We don't need 'emotional intelligence' as a counter to this; we need more plain-old-boring intelligence. 

There is an old truism that when you ask a researcher in a field how much he knows about it, he will say "almost nothing", whereas an undergraduate or casual reader might claim to have very good knowledge of it.

We are too accustomed to assuming that the bright undergraduates who are over-promoted to positions of leadership in politics and business are humanity's best paragons of intelligence, when in truth our selection is deeply flawed. It's not intelligence that sees a bright undergraduate slave away for 16-hour days at a job which will promote only 10% to great wealth. If I offered you an employment contract of working 8 hours a day for me for 3 years, after which I might or might not choose to pay you a salary for your time, you'd turn me down. Yet this is effectively the offer from the highly-respected consultancies, law firms and banks: give us your free time and we might promote you later.

Anyone taking such an offer is either dangerously risk-seeking, deluded or has inside information and connections. Promotion is dependent on sucking up and networking, so perhaps these bright young things fancy their chances. But most likely they believe that hard work will achieve their goals, as it has throughout their schooling. Because these are not the brightest people who found schoolwork easy: these are the hard workers who did well because of their work ethic. That's not a bad thing, but it is a different thing. These are not paragons of brilliance. They are laudably hard-workers: important workers in a modern economy, no more and no less.

The author also unwittingly points out another aspect of leadership that we often overlook: Ms Williamson shows a 'learned trait'. We often think of leaders as born, not made. We trust that charisma, confidence and the ability to fast-talk others is innate and celebrate those who have managed to acquire and use these traits, but we work hard to try to teach people to understand and calculate. Various organisations I have been in seem to have assumed that leaders will find a way to understand a subject, or use underlings to do so, and that they, and others, should be promoted based on social performance.

I hazard the unpopular thesis that someone responsible for anything should understand what it is they are responsible for. People who are good at networking, brown-nosing bosses and dumping colleagues in trouble are showing precisely the behaviours that we do not want in senior positions. 

There should be nothing 'unnatural' about an adult displaying learned behaviour. We are humans: we are different from other animals because of our enormous, adaptable brainpower. It's natural to use it; if anything, it is inhuman to fail to learn and adapt.

When I was applying for graduate entry jobs, or thereabouts, I underwent a large number of quizzes about my behaviours. Mostly my real answers were not one of the multiple choice options: I wanted to say "it depends on what my boss expects, on organisational culture, on explicit instructions" but instead I had to pick one from four inadequate multiple choice options, and it seems I always got it wrong. They were looking, perhaps, for traditional leaders - have-a-go-failures who'd try to take on everything whether they had the information and ability to do it well or not, when my tendency, absent instruction or encouragement, would be to do what I am capable of and defer to others of supposedly greater ability on other things. 

But one instruction (e.g. "don't pester me unless it is [this urgent]" would be sufficient to change me into a different worker. Because I can learn and adapt. Yes, it rankles years later. I'd rather have had a choice of well-regarded fast-track careers to greatness than spend years in career doldrums. 

There is no harm in learning to behave in a better way. We start as mewling babes, puking in our mother's arms, and only gradually learn to be more thoughtful in our interactions with others. Deliberate behaviour is no less meaningful or leader-like for being deliberate. In fact, I would argue that it is more valuable, demonstrating that real thought and intent has gone into it, rather than it coming from an uncomprehending animal who is merely fortunate that his instincts have worked well for it so far, which is how I would describe some of our most famous 'leaders'.

In fact, Ms Williamson is clearly a natural leader. Our perception of leadership is so flawed that a writer can write the opposite and have it published, which is a far more interesting story.