Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? | By Adediji Wasiu

During my undergraduate study, Mr X was recruited by my department as a senior lecturer based on his foreign credentials, but when he was expected to perform the role he was employed for, he was found wanting of ingenious ideas.

When our choice of recruiting, electing or selecting leaders either in political or business circle  is strongly influenced by how good we think people are through the  aura of confidence ( self contradicting) they bring to light without the system carrying out a proper evaluation to determine their true competence, we end up killing the system.

In a logical way, the world has been made to believe that there is relationship between confidence and competence. Alas, in the real sense, confidence is seldom sign of competence; that someone is charismatic, humble, incorruptible, well educated, religious savy etc is not a sign of competence rather confidence. That people are hankering to be noticed through politically correct statement or contestto bring nurturing ideas to light is enough to turn off such persons, because this model has shown to have failed us countless time.

Competence is how good a person is at something (evidence based )  while on the other hand confidence is how good the person think is good at something (lack evidence). Competence is an ability; confidence is the belief in that ability. Such belief or self-evaluations can refer to learned  skills (e.g., singing, kissing, and managing people) or to personality traits (e.g., smartness,  likability, persistence, and creativity).

For instance,  many political aspirants will makes all sort of eye catching, highly valued promises and political correct statements, the kind of what people want to hear in order to arouse thier  interests . That’s where it all ends, to get the job done when given the mandate becomes a huge problem.

And, this leads to the reasons why incompetent men assumed leadership, that someone is smart with huge followership both online and offline with persistence use of social media is not enough to assume the person is competent enough to assume leadership, but because our likability or choice of leader depends on all of these things, we end up making error in our choice. That someone made a politically sound decision or proposed  politically driven correct statements without any evidence of how the person plan to go about it is not enough to cheer him or her up for leadership. That’s simply confidence and not competent.

For instance, sometimes , in  2015/2019 general election, President Muhammadu Buhari made many politically sound proposals on how he will end insurgency, corruption and reduce inflation, no one bother to ask him how he intends to get theses jobs done, today Nigeria is battling not only with Boko haram, ceaseless pool of corruption but with additional problem like bandit, kidnappers among others.

Competence is not what any one think of you or his/er self   but how he or she can get the difficult task done in a shortest possible time.

We sometimes mistaken huge followership on social media or ability of someone to  toast well crafted words as competence. What we  fail to realise is that this is just the mastering of language rules, it  doesn’t in anyway translate to competence.

For clarity sake, that someone becomes succefull or known all over the world through skilled competence is not an evidence that he or she when selected or elected to lead will make a good leader, that Professor Wole Soyinka succeeded as Nobel Laurette through his literacy compentece is not enough reason to say he would succeed if elects as a democratic leader. Leadership skill is a special skillset that’s beyond numerical and literacy compence, if not our schools NBA should be a model for leadership.

Our selection processes must recognize talent and skills  (competence) and not confidence. Anyone could master confidence but not everyone can master competence.

That someone appears daily on different TV shows or has hundreds of invitation across the world as a guest speakers or appear daily on wall street magazine as opinion leader is not enough to think such person will perform creditably when elected or selected as a leader.

For me, I will rather vote a competent leader than confidence leader. Till date, late Umaru Yar’Adua remains the most competent leader Nigerian has ever elected even though he lacks confidence.

Confidence doesn’t corresponds with talent or abilities to lead. We can’t measure accurately or assess the abilities of a person by his charismatic posture. When people simply suit up or speaks queens english, we assumed they are leadership material, but the result we get over the years through this kind of thinking, shows this model is not working.

That’s how good we think people  are is the reflections of their social skill effects on us (confidence) but how good they actually are can only be measure by their perfomance (competence).

For example, in the last National Assembly, the common sense senator represented Bayelsa East Senatorial district, Ben Bruce is a self-rated  intelligent man, with huge social Media followership,  but when  the results of his stewardship at National Assembly was revealed  there is no translated gains between his social skills and his performance at the hallow chamber of the National Assembly. This shows that there is huge difference between how smart we people think they are (confidence) and  how smart they actually are (competent).

In that sense, confidence has been equated to mean competence. Whatever confidence people display or charisma it’s not enough to think such persons will come up with ingenious solution when put in leadership position.

Regardless of how smart we think people are and how smart they are really is not a measure of their look. Naturally, when we put competent person in a position of authority,  the effects of his leadership tends to cascade down  to the rest of the organization, turning the organization into genuine role models. For instance, Babatunde Irukere, has been applauded as a competent leader at consumer protection unity, thus the mere mentioned of this unity, organization treat people nicely.

Also, scientific evidences had revealed that quite people tends  to be driven relentless desire to achieve, a rather more astonishing organizational goal than individual success, this is because calm people are high intelligence quotients and goal driven than confidence people who researcher has described as narcissist or psychopath.

Let us compare two powerful women in the world (competent)Vs (confidence).

Mary Barra is the CEO of General Motors, despite being the most powerful female executive in the world and the first female  CEO of any car company, consensus driven and  team oriented, and having accomplished more in three years than any CEO, she is notoriously media shy.

Alision Madueke, Nigeria former petroleum minister and defacto president.

She’s arguably the most powerful woman during President Goodluck Johnathan’s administration. Her reign as petroleum minister plunged Nigeria into energy crisis, she’s a narcissistic kind of person. The effects of her being narcissist was  felt across the entire oil and gas industry, making all sort of agreement that further plunged the country into more debit. Her behavior and display of extravagance lifestyle, in turn, made her to deep her hands into national treasure awarding crooked contacts to friends and family.

When we choose humble, unassuming people as our leaders, the world around us  becomes a better place. Paradoxically,  when our search for leaders appear hardwired to saint, superheroesover-glorifying individuals who exude charisma and confidence in disguised as competence, the world around us becomes baldly affected with policy and framework that lacks real progress.