Incompetent people in leadership and authority positions and the Dunning-Kruger effect.
This article will explain how incompetent people in positions of power, such as managers, supervisors, commanding officers, and politicians.
Incompetent leaders do not know they are incompetent via the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Incapable people do not understand how their incompetence affects everyone else.
Do not accept truly incompetent leadership!
70% of employees report that the worst part of their job is their direct line manager.
I agree with the above statement wholeheartedly. While I have had some good managers, I’ve had many bad ones. The worst part about incompetent people is their inability to recognize it.
Their ego protects them, and their ego will eventually be their downfall.
“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”
– Thomas Sowell
Related: Type A Personality Traits
How To Spot an Incompetent Leader?
Below are the characteristics of incompetent leaders:
- Lack of clear vision and direction: Incompetent leaders often fail to articulate a clear vision for the team or organization and lack a strategic plan for achieving goals.
- Poor communication skills: Ineffective communication, such as unclear instructions, vague feedback, or inability to listen to others, can indicate incompetence in leadership.
- Micromanagement: Incompetent leaders may feel the need to control every detail of a project, decreasing morale, autonomy, and productivity among team members.
- Blaming others for failures: Instead of taking responsibility for mistakes or failures, incompetent leaders often shift blame onto others, refusing to acknowledge their own shortcomings.
- Resistance to feedback: Leaders unwilling to accept constructive criticism or feedback from team members are unlikely to improve and may continue to make mistakes.
- Lack of empathy: Incompetent leaders may disregard their team members’ needs and concerns, leading to low morale and diminished trust within the organization.
- Inconsistent decision-making: Leaders who make decisions that are arbitrary, contradictory, or based on personal biases rather than objective criteria may be incompetent.
- Failure to develop others: Incompetent leaders often neglect the professional development of their team members, failing to provide opportunities for growth and advancement.
- High turnover rates: A pattern of high turnover within a team or organization may indicate ineffective leadership and poor management practices.
- Stagnation or decline: If a team or organization consistently fails to meet goals or experiences a decline in performance under a leader’s guidance, it may be a sign of incompetence.
What Is An Incompetent Person?
An incompetent person is held responsible for performing a task or duty and cannot willingly or unwillingly meet the work requirement. There are all kinds of definitions for incompetent people. I’ll give you my description.
In a sense, an incompetent person is a lazy person.
They don’t have the ineptitude or skills to do something successfully.
There are tasks I couldn’t do now; however, with research, practice, and a willingness to learn, I could become competent.
Incompetent people refuse to learn and grow, so they don’t seem to notice their incompetence’s devastating effect.
Incompetent People in the Workplace
The Definition of Incompetence:
Inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose, lacking the qualities needed for effective action and unable to function correctly.
Since my post about Psychopaths in Positions of Power went viral, I thought I would write about another widespread problem in our society: Incompetent People in Positions of Power.
The definition of an incompetent manager or supervisor: In simple terms, they can not even do the simplest of their job responsibilities without being reminded to do it.
People don’t quit their jobs because they don’t like their assignments. They leave weak, lazy, entitled, and incompetent bosses, supervisors, and management.
Competence is about fulfilling your expectations and responsibilities as an employee, manager, leader, etc.
Yes, there should be clear definitions for your responsibilities. Yes, it always happens that your responsibilities seem to expand, yet, at its core, your primary responsibilities should be known to you.
The word power could be replaced with authority. Authority means the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. Most humans, by default, are resistant to people telling them what to do.
I am often perplexed about why competence is rewarded!
Incompetent People in Positions of Power
“Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.”
– Larry McMurtry
We all can be inefficient at times and make mistakes, but this post is about perpetually incapable people who, no matter what happens, seem oblivious to the fact that they are not ‘ready’ or up for the task of their position.
Incompetent managers eventually create an inadequate workplace unless their subordinates pick up the slack, which usually happens.
Much like incompetent parents cause unnecessary stress and uncertainty for children; incompetent leaders create extreme misery for the people who operate their businesses, cities, states, and Countries. Let’s face it: Some people aren’t a good fit for their jobs.
A great salesperson may make a poor manager or supervisor, and some of the best sports coaches are not outstanding players on the field.
Often, when a position becomes open, a supervisor may promote someone who doesn’t have the skills for the job because incompetent leaders tend to promote and hire someone who is less competent than they are.
Unfortunately, merit-based hiring criteria are a thing of the past.
3 Things make leaders better:
- Competence
- Humility
- Integrity
Incompetent People in Positions of Power/Authority/Control examples:
- Parenting
- Education System
- Civil Servants
- Corporations
- Small Businesses
- Supervisor/Manager/Boss
Any place with a supervisor, manager, or boss ‘lording’ over other people and or responsible for running business matters would be a position of power.
When I started working full-time in 1994, I believed only the most competent people were promoted to influence and power positions. Unfortunately, after working for thirteen years in Corporate America, my view has changed.
For clarity, before we label someone incompetent, we must ensure we are not projecting our weaknesses on them. We also need to consider the “Green Factor,” which means they are new to the position and may need time to adjust, make mistakes, and improve themselves.
I have a low tolerance for new managers, and instead of acting ‘unsure’ about something because they are new, they feign ‘false confidence.’
Instead, many people just put on a façade of ‘I know what I am doing,’ but they don’t because they don’t have the experience yet and are uncomfortable asking or observing how things are run.
Experience & Confidence
With experience comes confidence, not the other way around.
However, I have seen ‘Green Managers’ come into a new position and, on the first day, immediately start barking orders to their subordinates, which is something an ‘unsure person’ would do.
Your boss may be more incompetent during stressful times due to overwhelm, just like retail stores and their employees are under excess stress during the Christmas season – this can be forgiven.
Word of advice for new managers: build a relationship with your employees first before acting bossy.
Whenever I am new to a position, I know that I am new. I communicate with someone who has already done my job and interact with coworkers who need their input while learning the ropes.
I observe the ‘good’ workers and who is there to do the least amount possible to avoid getting fired. One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make is promoting people to manage a section they have no experience with.
You cannot adequately lead people without ‘zero’ experience doing the job. Your staff will not respect you if you attempt to tell them how to do their jobs, but you never have.
Manage by Doing
Being a successful manager helps you do the work that the people you lead are doing.
Without having this experience, how can you question them on anything? A correctly run business has its employees climb the ladder, not move laterally or slightly up into positions out of their league.
Nordstrom does this exceptionally well. After graduating from college, all current owners/Nordstrom Family members started at the bottom of the ladder.
They worked in the stockrooms, then moved onto the sales floor, then into department manager, then into a buyer, then to a Store Manager.
With this approach, they understand how the entire process works and know what happens at every level.
When you get a job, there is usually a job description. Just do the job description and do it well. Going through the process helps with competence, and to be a good leader, you must be competent in your job.
It seems that incompetent people who are promoted, generally speaking, have one or more of these qualities.
Incompetent Workers List
- Butt-Kisser
- Nepotism/Cronyism/Plays favorites
- Poor communication skills
- Narcissist
- Lacks Self-Awareness
- Lack of humility
- Sycophant
- Rumor-Spreader
- Constantly Moody
- Their employees frequently quit.
- Lazy
- Ignorance
- She doesn’t like the job and wants the money, status, and retirement package.
- Blames others when something goes wrong
- Ill-equipped for the job
- Responsibility avoidance
- Clueless about their responsibilities
- Poor time-management skills
- Tyrannical
- Feels employees are disposable.
- Appears senseless
- Don’t listen to their subordinates
- Bully others to cover up their incompetence
- Micro-Manages
- Do not set clear responsibilities for their employees
- Lacks people skills
- Poor communicator
- Unapproachable
- Promotes slackers
- Apathy
- Not willing to change
- Overly confident or acts like it, yet utterly clueless
- Expects subordinates to be perfect while they are far from it
Dunning-Kruger Effect = Incompetent Workers
Often, Incompetent people think they’re amazing.
In psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as more excellent than it is.
It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability. People cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence without the self-awareness of metacognition.
In 1999, psychologists David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kruger, now at New York University’s Stern School of Business, researched the issue, finding that ignorance is bliss.
What is the Dunning-Kruger Effect? In a nutshell, people who are least competent at a task often incorrectly rate themselves as ‘high-performers’ because they lack the self-awareness to know otherwise.
The pair discovered that unskillful individuals at something are ordinarily helpless to perceive how awful they are.
Moreover, the Dunning-Kruger Effect proposes that they are even prone to feel sure that they are skillful at that assignment. ‘Low Self-Awareness’ people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence at a particular task or career position.
According to Dunning, the hallmark of intelligence is being “good at knowing what we don’t know.” If we want to avoid the impact of cognitive biases such as the Dunning-Kruger effect and better ourselves overall, we must be aware that there is always more to know.
Unskilled and Unaware
Distributed in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the examination titled Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments found that “the information and insight that are required to be great at an assignment are frequently similar characteristics expected to perceive that one isn’t great at that task.
Just because employees perform well in their current role doesn’t mean they have managerial ability. Yes, there are competent people in power positions, but they are like a Unicorn, impossible to find.
And this is the reason why incompetent people think they are amazing!
Reasons why incompetent people are in positions of power
- People don’t know what to look for when they promote someone. Usually, a warm body with a heartbeat will do.
- Nepotism and Cronyism.
- A desire to destroy where they are working through their incompetence.
Incompetent employees, especially incompetent managers, cost their employers a lot of money and make life for their subordinates a living hell. There is nothing more frustrating than when your workplace rewards incompetence.
Someone like Gordon Ramsay would never tolerate an incompetent manager or worker in one of his restaurants.
So why do most businesses tolerate them? In this day and age of ‘legality,’ it is getting harder to fire someone. Most companies try to get the person to step down from their position or get them promoted to get rid of them.
Either way, it doesn’t work very well in the long run.
Type A personalities usually have the most difficulty dealing with incompetent managers because they are generally ‘hard workers’ and give their all.
In contrast, their incompetent boss spends time online or talking on the phone, arriving late to work, and generally not taking their responsibilities seriously.
Also, many incompetents are ‘trapped’ in their jobs. Because of pensions and retirement packages, many stay in situations they are not passionate about. Many of these types go to work in a semi-conscious state of mind, and their work performance shows it.
The Peter Principle
Why Aren’t Competent People Promoted To Positions Of Power?
Competent people are usually self-aware, and because they are self-aware – knowing their weaknesses, they typically hold themselves back from being promoted. This leaves ‘Power Positions’ open for incompetent people and power-hungry psychopaths to take.
Self-aware people avoid ‘authority positions’ because they are highly concerned with being corrupted and losing themselves in their positions. This happens more often than you realize.
Competent people must remember that no one is perfect, but their skills, abilities, and talents would greatly benefit those they are responsible for.
Another possible reason competent people prefer not to be in power positions is that they do not want to deal with the additional responsibilities (headaches) that come with promotions.
I understand this way of thinking, but it would be best if competent people looked at the big picture and realized they don’t have to stay in the position or company for the rest of their lives.
How to Fix Incompetence in the Workplace
People need to be in positions that they are naturally good at. You should feel confident in what you do. If you are not sure, you will feel it. Don’t think you are good. Know you are good.
Too many people are in positions they are not good at, which do not come quickly to them.
Specializing in what you are good at will make you feel competent and confident and create trust in yourself.
I’m not a fan of ‘punishing’ people for their unwanted behavior; I favor the Art of Self-Correcting. Self-correcting involves two parts.
- Self-awareness is the ability to observe yourself honestly and your behaviors, habits, and patterns.
- The ability to receive feedback from people on the effect of your behavior, habits, and patterns.
With this approach, incompetent people can improve themselves and their place of power. This is what personal growth is at its core.